sometimes sinks a hundred
of them. Perhaps a third of the whole number are lost, but the coal
costs almost nothing--three halfpence a bushel--and brings a price
proportional to the distance which it floats in safety.

At Pittsburg, a city of coal and iron, smoky and grimy as Newcastle or
Birmingham, we took a larger boat, but still a small one, for
Cincinnati. The Ohio was very low. We passed slowly down, getting
pleasant glimpses of the towns upon its banks, and especially of the
flourishing cities of Cincinnati and Louisville.

I was disappointed with the Ohio for a few hundred miles from its
source, most unreasonable tourist that I was. I recall whatever I may
have said to its disparagement. The Ohio, charming in all its course of
a thousand miles, becomes grandly beautiful below Louisville for the
lower half of its course. Were it but deep as well as broad and splendid
in its great reaches and graceful curves and picturesque banks, nothing
would be wanting to its pleasing souvenirs. But I have tried its current
at an unfortunate period,--the river at its lowest point. At its highest
it would be fifty feet deeper,--a great torrent pouring onward towards
the sea.

We were all of us in high spirits on the "Fort Wayne." The crew was
firing up, and singing merrily below; and in the cabin we were sitting
round our good coal-fire, chatting, reading, and some playing poker,
calculating the next morning but one to wake upon the Mississippi. So
passed we down merrily, until, sunk upon a bar, we saw the wreck of the
steamboat "Plymouth," which two nights before had been run into by
another boat, which sunk her instantly, and her deck-passengers woke up
under the waters of the Ohio. Twenty unfortunates were drowned; and our
passengers, accustomed to the river, spoke of it with perfect
indifference, as a very common affair.

We passed this bar safely, touching bottom indeed, as we often did; but
in passing over the next we grounded firm and fast. The engines were
worked at their greatest power, but in vain. Efforts were made all day
to get the boat off, but without moving her, and older voyagers began to
tell pleasant stories of boats lying for three weeks on a sand-bar, and
getting out of provisions and wood. For us passengers there was but
patience, but for captain and crew there was a hard night's work in a
cold November rain. They went at it heartily, and when we woke up in the
morning the steamboat was afloat, and as so