loyed his intervals of leisure in coarse and brutal recreation. Their
roistering exploits, indeed, have made these rivermen almost better
known at play than at work. One of them, the notorious Mike Fink, known
as "the Snag" on the Mississippi and as the "Snapping Turtle" on the
Ohio, has left the record, not that he could load a keel boat in a
certain length of time, or lift a barrel of whiskey with one arm, or
that no tumultuous current had ever compelled him to back water, but
that he could "out-run, out-hop, out-jump, throw down, drag out, and
lick any man in the country," and that he was "a Salt River roarer."

Such men and the craft they handled were known on the Atlantic rivers,
but it was on the Mississippi and its branches, especially the Ohio,
that they played their most important part in the history of American
inland commerce. Before the beginning of the nineteenth century wagons
and Conestogas were bringing great loads of merchandise to such points
on the headwaters as Brownsville, Pittsburgh, and Wheeling. As early as
1782, we are told, Jacob Yoder, a Pennsylvania German, set sail from
the Monongahela country with the first flatboat to descend the Ohio
and Mississippi. As the years passed, the number of such craft grew
constantly larger. The custom of fixing the widespreading horns
of cattle on the prow gave these boats the alternative name of
"broadhorns," but no accurate classification can be made of the various
kinds of craft engaged in this vast traffic. Everything that would
float, from rough rafts to finished barges, was commandeered into
service, and what was found unsuitable for the strenuous purposes
of commercial transportation was palmed off whenever possible on
unsuspecting emigrants en route to the lands of promise beyond.

Flour, salt, iron, cider and peach brandy were staple products of the
Ohio country which the South desired. In return they shipped molasses,
sugar, coffee, lead, and hides upon the few keel boats which crept
upstream or the blundering barges which were propelled northward
by means of oar, sail, and cordelle. It was not, however, until the
nineteenth century that the young West was producing any considerable
quantity of manufactured goods. Though the town of Pittsburgh had been
laid out in 1764, by the end of the Revolution it was still little more
than a collection of huts about a fort. A notable amount of local trade
was carried on, but the expense of transportation was ver