owns like Wheeling, Parkersburg, Point Pleasant, and
Maysville are very nearly an offset to Steubenville, Marietta,
Pomeroy, Ironton, and Portsmouth. North-shore towns of wealth and
prominence are more numerous than on the Dixie bank, and are as a
rule larger and somewhat better kept, with the negro element less
conspicuous; but to say that the difference is anywhere near as marked
as the landlord averred, or as my own previous reading on the subject
led me to expect, is grossly to exaggerate.

After leaving Manchester, O. (394 miles), with a beautiful island at
its door, there are spasmodic evidences of the nearness of a great
city market. A large proportion of the hills are completely denuded of
their timber, and patched with rectangular fields of green, brown, and
yellow; upon the bottoms there are frequent truck farms; now and then
are stone quarries upon the banks, with capacious barges moored in
front; and upon one or two rocky ledges were stone-crushers, getting
out material for concrete pavements. When we ask the bargemen, in
passing, whither their loads are destined, the invariable reply is,
"The city"--meaning Cincinnati, still seventy miles away.

Limestone Creek (405 miles) occupies a large space in Western story,
for so insignificant a stream. It is now not over a rod in width, and
at no season can it be over two or three. One finds it with difficulty
along the mill-strewn shore of Maysville, Ky., the modern outgrowth of
the Limestone village of pioneer days. Limestone, settled four years
before Marietta or Cincinnati, was long Kentucky's chief port of entry
on the Ohio; immigrants to the new state, who came down the Ohio,
almost invariably booked for this point, thence taking stage to
Lexington, and travelers in the early day seldom passed it by
unvisited. But years before there was any settlement here, the valley
of Limestone Creek, which comes gently down from low-lying hills, was
regarded as a convenient doorway into Kentucky. When (1776) George
Rogers Clark was coming down the river from Pittsburg, with powder
given by Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia, for the defence of
Kentucky settlers from British-incited savages, he was chased by the
latter, and, putting into this creek, hastily buried the precious
cargo on its banks. From here it was cautiously taken overland to the
little forts, by relays of pioneers, through a gauntlet of murderous
fire.

About twenty-five miles from Limestone, too,