, upon becoming familiar with the setting. The contention is made
that La Salle was here at the Falls of the Ohio, during the closing
months of 1669; but it was over a century later, under British
domination, before a settlement was thought of. Dr. John Connolly
entertained a scheme for founding a town at the Falls, but Lord
Dunmore's War (1774), and the Revolution quickly following, combined
to put an end to it; so that when George Rogers Clark arrived on the
scene with his little band of Virginian volunteers (May, 1778), en
route to capture the Northwest for the State of Virginia, he found
naught but a savage-haunted wilderness. His log fort on Corn Island,
in the midst of the rapids, served as a base of military operations,
and was the nucleus of American settlement, although later the
inhabitants moved to the mainland, and founded Louisville.

The falls at Louisville are the only considerable obstruction to
Ohio-River navigation. At an average stage, the descent is but
twenty-seven feet in two-and-a-half miles; in high flood, the rapids
degenerate into merely swift water, without danger to descending
craft. At ordinary height, it was the custom of pioneer boatmen, in
descending, to lighten their craft of at least a third of the
cargo, and thus pass them down to the foot of the north-side portage
(Clarksville, Ind.), which is three-quarters of a mile in length;
going up, lightened boats were towed against the stream. With the
advent of larger craft, a canal with locks became necessary--the
Louisville and Portland Canal of to-day, which is operated by the
general government.

The action of the water, hastened by the destruction of trees whose
roots originally bound the loose soil, has greatly worn the islands
in the rapids. Little is now left of historic Corn Island, and that
little is, at low water, being blasted and ground into cement by a
mill hard by on the main shore. To-day, with a flood of nearly twenty
feet above the normal stage of the season, not much of the island
is visible,--clumps of willows and sycamores, swayed by the rushing
current, giving a general idea of the contour. Goose Island, although
much smaller than in Clark's day, is a considerable tract of wooded
land, with a rock foundation. Clark was once its owner, his home being
opposite on the Indiana shore, where he had a fine view of the river,
the rapids, and the several islands. As for Clarksville, somewhat
lower down, and back from the river