n to a little hotel at
the lower end of town.

A quaint, old-fashioned house, the Sciotoville tavern, with an inner
gallery looking out into a small garden of peaches, apples, pears,
plums, and grapes--a famous grape country this, by the way. In our
room, opening from the gallery, is an antique high-post bedstead;
everywhere about are similar relics of an early day. In keeping
with the air of serene old age, which pervades the hostelry, is the
white-haired landlady herself. In well-starched apron, white cap, and
gold-rimmed glasses, she benignly sits rocking by the office stove,
her feet on the fender, reading Wallace's _Prince of India_; and
looking, for all the world, as if she had just stepped out of some old
portrait of--well, of a tavern-keeping Martha Washington.

[Footnote A: Two miles up the Little Scioto, Pine Creek enters.
Perhaps a mile and a half up this creek was, in 1771, a Mingo town
called Horse Head Bottom, which cuts some figure in border history as
a nest of Indian marauders.]

CHAPTER XIII.

The Scioto, and the Shawanese--A night at
Rome--Limestone--Keels, flats, and boatmen of the olden time.

Rome, O., Monday, May 21st.--At intervals through the night, rain
fell, and the temperature was but 46 deg. at sunrise. However, by the
time we were afloat, the sun was fitfully gleaming through masses of
gray cloud, for a time giving promise of a warmer day. Dark shadows
rested on the romantic ravines, and on the deep hollows of the hills;
but elsewhere over this gentle landscape of wooded amphitheatres,
broad green meadows, rocky escarpments, and many-colored fields,
light and shade gayly chased each other. Never were the vistas of the
widening river more beautiful than to-day.

There are saw-mill and fire-brick industries in the little towns,
which would be shabby enough in the full glare of day. But they
are all glorified in this changing light, which brings out the rich
yellows and reds in sharp relief against the gloomy background of the
hills, and mellows into loveliness the soft grays of unpainted wood.

At the mouth of the Scioto (354 miles), is Portsmouth, O. (15,000
inhabitants), a well-built, substantial town, with good shops. It
lies on a hill-backed terrace some forty feet above the level of the
neighboring bottoms, which give evidence of being victims of the high
floods periodically covering the low lands about the junction of the
rivers. Just across the Scioto is Alex