the stream, lustily joined in a chorus of "Good-bye!"
and "Good luck to yees, an' ye don't git th' missus drowndid 'fore ye
git to Cairo!"

The current is slight on these lower reaches of the Monongahela. It
comes down gayly enough from the West Virginia hills, over many a
rapid, and through swirls and eddies in plenty, until Morgantown
is reached; and then, settling into a more sedate course, is at
Brownsville finally converted into a mere mill-pond, by the back-set
of the four slack-water dams between there and Pittsburg. This means
solid rowing for the first sixty miles of our journey, with a current
scarcely perceptible.

The thought of it suggests lunch. At the mouth of Redstone Creek, a
mile below Dunlap Creek, our port of departure, we turn in to a shaly
beach at the foot of a wooded slope, in semi-rusticity, and fortify
the inner man.

A famous spot, this Redstone Creek. Between its mouth and that of
Dunlap's was made, upon the site of extensive Indian fortification
mounds, the first English agricultural settlement west of the
Alleghanies. It is unsafe to establish dates for first discoveries,
or for first settlements. The wanderers who, first of all white men,
penetrated the fastnesses of the wilderness were mostly of the sort
who left no documentary traces behind them. It is probable, however,
that the first Redstone settlement was made as early as 1750, the
year following the establishment of the Ohio Company, which had been
chartered by the English crown and given a half-million acres of
land west of the mountains and south of the Ohio River, provided it
established thereon a hundred families within seven years.

"Redstone Old Fort"--the name had reference to the aboriginal
earthworks--played a part in the Fort Necessity and Braddock campaigns
and in later frontier wars; and, being the western terminus of the
over-mountain road known at various historic periods as Nemacolin's
Path, Braddock's Road, and Cumberland Pike, was for many years the
chief point of departure for Virginia expeditions down the Ohio River.
Washington, who had large landed interests on the Ohio, knew Redstone
well; and here George Rogers Clark set out (1778) upon flatboats, with
his rough-and-ready Virginia volunteers, to capture the country north
of the Ohio for the American arms--one of the least known, but most
momentous conquests in history.

Early in the nineteenth century, Redstone became Brownsville. But,
whether as Redsto