down in a fog
is not pleasant to contemplate. On board one of these steamers was a
sorry company--apparently a Sunday-school excursion. Children in gala
dress huddled in swarms on the lee of the great smoke-stacks, and in
imagination we heard their teeth chatter as they glided by us and in
another moment were engulfed in the mist.

We catch sight for a moment, through a cloud crevasse, of Ceredo, the
last town in West Virginia--a small saw-milling community stuck upon
the edge of the clay cliff, with the broad level bottom stretching out
behind like a prairie. A giant railway bridge here spans the Ohio--a
weird, impressive thing, as we sweep under it in the swirling current,
and crane our necks to see the great stone piers lose themselves in
the cloud. But the Big Sandy River (315 miles), which divides West
Virginia and Kentucky, was wholly lost to view. In an opening a few
moments later, however, we had a glimpse of the dark line of her
valley, below which the hills again descend to the Ohio's bank.

Catlettsburg, the first Kentucky town, is at the junction, and extends
along the foot of the ridge for a mile or two, apparently not over
two blocks wide, with a few outlying shanties on the shoulders of the
uplands. Washington was surveying here, on the Big Sandy, in 1770, and
entered for one John Fry 2,084 acres round the site of Louisa, a dozen
miles up the river; this was the first survey made in Kentucky--but
a few months later than Boone's first advent as a hunter on the
"dark and bloody ground," and five years before the first permanent
settlement in the State. Washington deserves to be remembered as a
Kentucky pioneer.

We have not only steamers to avoid,--they appear to be unusually
numerous about here,--but snags as well. With care, the whereabouts of
a steamer can be distinguished as it steals upon us, from the superior
whiteness of its column of "exhaust," penetrating the bank of dark
gray fog; and occasionally the echoes are awakened by the burly roar
of its whistle, which, in times like this, acts as a fog-horn. But the
snag is an insidious enemy, not revealing itself until we are within
a rod or two, and then there is a quick cry of warning from the
stern sheets--"Hard a-port!" or "Starboard, quick!" and only a strong
side-pull, aided by W----'s paddle, sends us free from the jagged,
branching mass which might readily have swamped poor Pilgrim had she
taken it at full tilt.

At Ashland, Ky. (320 miles)