e needed some one to
assist in the store, and took in Orion, who was by this time twelve or
thirteen years old; but, besides his youth, Orion--all his days a
visionary--was a studious, pensive lad with no taste for commerce. Then
a partnership was formed with a man who developed neither capital nor
business ability, and proved a disaster in the end. The modest tide of
success which had come with John Clemens's establishment at Florida had
begun to wane. Another boy, Henry, born in July, 1838, added one more
responsibility to his burdens.

There still remained a promise of better things. There seemed at least a
good prospect that the scheme for making Salt River navigable was likely
to become operative. With even small boats (bateaux) running as high as
the lower branch of the South Fork, Florida would become an emporium of
trade, and merchants and property-owners of that village would reap a
harvest. An act of the Legislature was passed incorporating the
navigation company, with Judge Clemens as its president. Congress was
petitioned to aid this work of internal improvement. So confident was
the company of success that the hamlet was thrown into a fever of
excitement by the establishment of a boatyard and, the actual
construction of a bateau; but a Democratic Congress turned its back on
the proposed improvement. No boat bigger than a skiff ever ascended Salt
River, though there was a wild report, evidently a hoax, that a party of
picnickers had seen one night a ghostly steamer, loaded and manned,
puffing up the stream. An old Scotchman, Hugh Robinson, when he heard of
it, said:

"I don't doubt a word they say. In Scotland, it often happens that when
people have been killed, or are troubled, they send their spirits abroad
and they are seen as much like themselves as a reflection in a
looking-glass. That was a ghost of some wrecked steamboat."

But John Quarles, who was present, laughed:

"If ever anybody was in trouble, the men on that steamboat were," he
said. "They were the Democratic candidates at the last election. They
killed Salt River improvements, and Salt River has killed them. Their
ghosts went up the river on a ghostly steamboat."

It is possible that this comment, which was widely repeated and traveled
far, was the origin of the term "Going up Salt River," as applied to
defeated political candidates.--[The dictionaries give this phrase as
probably traceable to a small, difficult stream in Kentucky; but i