e priggish author but unconsciously
shows himself, and fails to hold the mirror up to the rest of nature.
With the introduction of steamboats,--the first was in 1811, but they
were slow to gain headway against popular prejudice,--the old river
life, with its picturesque but rowdy boatmen, its unwieldy flats and
keels and arks, began to pass away, and water traffic to approach the
prosaic stage; the crossing of the mountains by the railway did away
with the boisterous freighters, the stages, and the coaching-taverns;
and when, at last, the river became paralleled by the iron way, the
glory of the steamboat epoch itself faded, riverside towns adjusted
themselves to the new highways of commerce, new centers arose, and
"side-tracked" ports fell into decay.

[Footnote A: See Turner's "Western State-Making in the Revolutionary
Era," in _Amer. Hist. Rev._, Vol. I.; also, Alden's "New Governments
West of the Alleghanies," _Bull. Univ. Wis._, Hist. Series, Vol. II.]

APPENDIX B.

Selected list of Journals of previous travelers down the Ohio.

_Gist, Christopher._ Gist's Journals; with historical, geographical,
and ethnological notes, and biographies of his contemporaries, by
William M. Darlington. Pittsburg, 1893.

Gist's trip down the valley, from October, 1750, to May, 1751,
was on horseback, as far as the site of Frankfort, Ky. On his
second trip into Kentucky, from November, 1751, to March 11,
1752, he touched the river at few points.

_Gordon, Harry._ Extracts from the Journal of Captain Harry Gordon,
chief engineer in the Western department in North America, who was
sent from Fort Pitt, on the River Ohio, down the said river, etc., to
Illinois, in 1766.

Published in Pownall's "Topographical Description of North
America," Appendix, p. 2.

_Washington, George._ Journal of a tour to the Ohio River. [Writings,
ed. by Ford, vol. II. New York, 1889.]

The trip lasted from October 5 to December 1, 1770. The party
went in boats from Fort Pitt, as far down as the mouth of
the Great Kanawha. This journal is the best on the subject,
written in the eighteenth century.

_Pownall, T._ A topographical description of such parts of North
America as are contained in the [annexed] map of the Middle British
Colonies, etc. London, 1776.

Contains "Extracts from Capt. Harry Gordon's Journal,"
"Extracts from Mr. Lewis Evans' Journal" of 1743, and
"Christopher Gist's