ir buildings often silhouetted against the
western sky, and the meaner sort down low on the river's bank. Through
this pastoral scene, the broad river winds with noble sweep, until,
both above and below, it loses itself in the purple mist of the
distant hills.

We are now upon the Great Bend of the Ohio, beginning at Neville (435
miles) and ending at Harris's Landing (519 miles), with North Bend
(482 miles) at the apex. The bend is itself a series of convolutions,
and our point of view is ever changing, so that we have kaleidoscopic
vistas,--and with each new setting, good-humoredly dispute with each
other, we at the oars, and the others in the stern-sheets, as to which
is the more beautiful, the unfolding or the dissolving view.

Our camp to-night is beside a little hillside torrent on the lower
edge of Point Pleasant. We are well up on the rocky slope; an
abandoned stone-quarry lies back of us, up the hill a bit; and leading
into the village, half a mile away, is a picturesque country road,
overhung with sumacs and honey locusts--overtopped on one side by a
precipitous pasture, and on the other dropping suddenly to a beach
thick-grown to willows, maples, and scrub sycamores.

The Boy and I made an expedition into the town, for milk and water,
but were obliged to climb one of the sharpest ascents hereabout,
before our search was rewarded. A pretty little farmstead it is, up
there on the lofty hill above us, with a wealth of chickens and an
ample dairy, and fat fields and woods gently sloping backward into
the interior. The good farm-wife was surprised that I was willing to
"pack" commodities, so plentiful with her, down so steep a path; but
canoeing pilgrims must not falter at trifles such as this.

Point Pleasant is the birthplace of General Grant. Not every hamlet
has its hero, hereabout. Everyone we met this evening,--seeing we were
strangers, the Boy and I,--told us of this halo which crowns their
home.

* * * * *

Cincinnati, Thursday, May 24th.--During the night there were frequent
heavy downpours, during which the swollen torrent by our side roared
among its boulders right lustily; and occasionally a heavy farm-wagon
crossed the country bridge which spans the ravine just above us, its
rumblings echoing in the quarried glen for all the world like distant
thunder. Before turning in, each built a cairn upon the beach, at the
point which he thought the water might reach by morning. The Bo