of which
inscription are the home and name of the owner, and the date at which
the license expires. The standard of education among houseboaters is
evinced by the legend borne by a trader's craft which we boarded near
Slim Island: "Lisens exp.rs Maye the 24 1895." The young woman in
charge, a slender creature in a brilliant red calico gown, with blue
ribbons at the corsage, had been but recently married to her lord,
who was back in the country stirring up trade. She had few notions of
business, and allowed us to put our own prices on such articles as
we purchased. The stock was a curious medley--a few staple groceries,
bacon and dried beef, candies, crockery, hardware, tobacco, a small
line of patent medicines, in which blood-purifiers chiefly prevailed,
bitters, ginger beer, and a glass case in which were displayed two or
three women's straw hats, gaudily-trimmed. The woman said their custom
was, to tie up to some convenient shore and "buy a little stuff o' the
farmers, 'n' in that way trade springs up," and thus become known. Two
or three weeks would exhaust any neighborhood, whereupon they would
move on for a dozen miles or so. Late in the autumn, they select a
comfortable beach, and lie by for the winter.

Mt. Vernon, Ind. (819 miles), is on a high, rolling plain, with a
rather pretty little court-house set in a park of grass, some good
business buildings, and huge flouring-mills, which appear to be the
leading industry. Another flouring-mill town, with the addition of the
characteristic Kentucky distillery, is Uniontown (833 miles), on
the southern shore--a bright, neat little city, backed by smooth,
picturesque green hills.

The feature of the day was the entrance, through a dreary stretch of
clay banks, of the Wabash River (838 miles), which divides Indiana
from Illinois. Three hundred and sixty yards wide at the mouth, about
half the width of the Ohio, it is the most important of the latter's
northern affluents, and pours into the main stream a swift-rushing
body of clear, green water, which at first boldly pushes over to the
heavily-willowed Kentucky shore the roily mess of the Ohio, and for
several miles exerts a considerable influence in clarification. The
Lower Wabash, flowing through a soft clay bottom, runs an erratic
course, and its mouth is a variable location, so that the bounds of
Illinois and Indiana, hereabout, fluctuate east and west according to
the exigencies of the floods. The far-reaching bott