Under a Wild Sky. William Souder

Extra caulk and a pump were essential gear. A low, shedlike house sat amidship. Though austere, these shelters could be fitted out with brick fireplaces for cooking and some heat.

      Flatboats were not so much piloted as they were passively ridden. Travelers were advised to let the current do the work of finding the channel as it meandered among the Ohio’s many islands and sandbars, though the boats could be steered a little with a long sweep on the stern and oars deployed toward the bow. The trip downriver was usually smooth and safe, but a flatboat could be swamped if unevenly loaded or carelessly handled. Overnight changes in the level of the river could put a corner of an improperly moored flatboat under—and the rest might follow in short order. Tangles of fallen trees that collected in “snags” at the heads of islands were a common hazard—it could take several days to free a boat caught in a snag. In fair weather and high water it was considered prudent to put ashore as infrequently as possible and to travel through the night, though there were so many boats on the river that groups of pioneers often tied up alongside one another for company after dark. Encounters with hostile Indians or pirates were possible, but such risks diminished with each passing year as the river valley filled with settlers. Travelers were more likely to be accosted by entrepreneurs and pimps who converted flatboats into floating taverns. By the time the Audubons set out for Louisville, people were already talking about how crowded with towns and farms the riverbanks had become. The frontier was moving west. And however far you went, that was where you stayed—flatboats were one-way propositions. At their final destination, the boats were knocked apart and their timbers sold or used to build a house.

      The Audubons’ departure in late April came at an auspicious time. Spring brought high water and easy navigation on the Ohio. The boat, Lucy reported, was reasonably comfortable, with a cabin ceiling “just high enough to admit a person walking upright.” The ride was surprisingly smooth, Lucy said, though on one windy section of the river the boat began to pitch sufficiently that she felt momentary seasickness.

      Ashore, the new season had replenished the woods along the river with game, and it was quick work for Audubon to disappear into the trees with his gun and return with a turkey or a brace of wood ducks. Lucy packed bread and ham, plus some beer, for the trip. They bought milk, eggs, and an occasional chicken en route. The suddenly lush forests lent an almost submarine quality to the journey. Lucy found the dense wall of trees and flowers flanking the river remarkable, though she was disappointed that the closeness of the overhung shorelines and high bluffs limited the vistas from midstream. Even so, it was the river itself that bedazzled.

      The name Ohio, puzzlingly, seemed to have been derived from an Indian expression meaning “bloody river.” The French, however, who were probably the first Europeans to descend the Ohio, called it La Belle Rivière—“the beautiful river”—and settlers who came later agreed. The Ohio, it was said, was “beyond all competition the most beautiful river in the universe.” At its head in Pittsburgh, the more powerful and crystal-clear Allegheny pushed across the darker current of the Monongahela at a right angle, so that the waters of the two did not mix for several miles. Below Pittsburgh, the Ohio blended and broadened and took on the color of the sky. An abundance of navigable tributary streams, many beautiful in their own right, gave the Ohio communication with a vast region on its way west. In fact, as Lewis and Clark had discovered only a few years earlier, it was possible to descend the Ohio, proceed up the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, cross the continental divide, and then continue down the Columbia all the way to the Pacific Ocean. This great network of rivers seemed to many people proof that the young country’s destiny ultimately reached across North America. Zadok Cramer, a Pittsburgh bookseller and expert on Ohio River travel, saw a link between America’s rivers and America’s future that filled him with optimism: “No country perhaps in the world is better watered with limpid streams and navigable rivers than the United States of America,” Cramer wrote, “and no people better deserve these advantages, or are better calculated to make a proper use of them than her industrious and adventurous citizens.”

      The Ohio River’s uniform breadth was striking—it was generally between four hundred and six hundred yards across along its entire length, except near Louisville and at the river’s end at the Mississippi, where it was wider. Much of the land on either side of the river was a steady procession of hills standing in ranks, changeless waves on an emerald sea. Seams of coal had been found between Pittsburgh and Wheeling, but where the land had not been cleared, a formidable forest remained. The uplands were thick with oak, walnut, hickory, chestnut, and ash. Willows, locusts, mulberry, beech, elm, aspen, and maples filled the bottoms. Tremendous stands of cedar and cypress grew in the swamps below Louisville.