shore we may well miss it, hence make constant
inquiry as we proceed. There was a houseboat in the mouth of one
goodly affluent. As we hove in sight, a fat woman, whose gunny-sack
apron was her chief attire, hurried up the gang-plank and disappeared
within.

"Hello, the boat!" one of us hailed.

The woman's fuzzy head appeared at the window.

"What creek is this?"

"Gunpowder, I reck'n!"--in a deep, man-like voice.

"How far below is Big Bone?"

"Jist a piece!"

"How many miles?"

"Two, I reck'n."

Big Bone Creek (512 miles), some fifty or sixty feet wide at the
mouth, opens through a willow patch, between pretty, sloping hills. A
houseboat lay just within--a favorite situation for them, these
creek mouths, for here they are undisturbed by steamer wakes,
and the fishing is usually good. The proprietor, a rather
distinguished-looking mulatto, despite his old clothes and plantation
straw-hat, was sitting in a chair at his cabin door, angling; his
white wife was leaning over him lovingly, as we shot into the scene,
but at once withdrew inside. This man, with his side-whiskers and fine
air, may have been a head-waiter or a dance-fiddler in better days;
but his soft, plaintive voice, and hacking cough, bespoke the invalid.
He told us what he knew about the creek, which was little enough, as
he had but recently come to these parts.

At an ordinary stage in the Ohio, the Big Bone cannot be ascended in a
skiff for more than half a mile; now, upon the backset, we are able to
proceed for two miles, leaving but another two miles of walking to
the Lick itself. The creek curves gracefully around the bases of the
sugar-loaf hills of the interior. Under the swaying arch of willows,
and of ragged, sprawling sycamores, their bark all patched with green
and gray and buff and white, we have charming vistas--the quiet
water, thick grown with aquatic plants; the winding banks, bearing
green-dragons and many another flower loving damp shade; the
frequent rocky palisades, oozing with springs; and great blue herons,
stretching their long necks in wonder, and then setting off with
a stately flight which reminds one of the cranes on Japanese ware.
Through the dense fringe of vegetation, we have occasional glimpses of
the hillside farms--their sloping fields sprinkled with stones, their
often barren pastures, numerous abandoned tracts overgrown with weeds,
and blue-grass lush in the meadows. Along the edges of the Creek, and
in lit