Cutler’s Trip up the Ohio.

After three weeks’ stay the Doctor started back, up stream, in the boat of a well-to-do Creole trader from the Illinois.  This trader was no less a person than Francis Vigo, who had welcomed Clark when he took Kaskaskia, and who at that time rendered signal service to the Americans, advancing them peltries and goods.  To the discredit of the nation be it said, he was never repaid what he had advanced.  When Cutler joined him he was making his way up the Ohio in a big keel-boat, propelled by ten oars and a square sail.  The Doctor found his quarters pleasant; for there was an awning and a cabin, and Vigo was well equipped with comforts and even luxuries.  In his travelling-chest he carried his silver-handled knives and forks, and flasks of spirits.  The beds were luxurious for the frontier; in his journal the Doctor mentions that one night he had to sleep in “wet sheets.”  The average pioneer knew nothing whatever of sheets, wet or dry.  Often the voyagers would get out and walk along shore, shooting pigeons or squirrels and plucking bunches of grapes.  On such occasions if they had time they would light a fire and have “a good dish of tea and a french fricassee.”  Once they saw some Indians; but the latter were merely chasing a bear, which they killed, giving the travellers some of the meat.  Cutler and his companions caught huge catfish in the river; they killed game of all kinds in the forest; and they lived very well indeed.  In the morning they got under way early, after a “bitter and a biscuit,” and a little later breakfasted on cold meat, pickles, cabbage, and pork.  Between eleven and twelve they stopped for dinner; usually of hot venison or wild turkey, with a strong “dish of coffee” and loaf-sugar.  At supper they had cold meat and tea.  Here and there on the shore they passed settlers’ cabins, where they obtained corn and milk, and sometimes eggs, butter, and veal.  Cutler landed at his starting-point less than a month after he had left it to go down stream. [Footnote:  Cutler, p. 420.]

Another Massachusetts man, Col.  John May, had made the same trip just previously.  His experiences were very like those of Dr. Cutler; but in his journal he told them more entertainingly, being a man of considerable humor and sharp observation.  He travelled on horseback from Boston.  In Philadelphia he put up “at the sign of the Connastago Wagon” —­the kind of wagon then used in the up country, and afterwards for two generations the wheeled-house with which the pioneers moved westward across plain and prairie.  He halted for some days in the log-built town of Pittsburg, and, like many other travellers of the day, took a dislike to the place and to its inhabitants, who were largely Pennsylvania Germans.  He mentions that he had reached it in thirty days from Boston, and had not lost a pound of his baggage, which had accompanied him in a wagon under the care of some of his hired men.  At Pittsburg he was much struck by the beauty of the mountains and the river, and also by the numbers of flat-boats, loaded with immigrants, which were constantly drifting and rowing past on their way to Kentucky.  From the time of reaching the river his journal is filled with comments on the extraordinary abundance and great size of the various kinds of food fishes.