t, their season on the hills
is but a prolonged picnic. When the waters sufficiently subside, they
float back again to their home; the river mud is scraped out of the
rooms, the kitchen-stove rubbed up a bit, and soon everything is again
at rights, with a fresh layer of alluvial deposit to fertilize the
fields.

Few of these small farmers own the lands they till; from Pittsburg
down, the great majority of Ohio River planters are but tenants. The
old families that once owned the soil are living in the neighboring
towns, or in other parts of the country, and renting out their
acres to these cultivators. We were told that the rental fee around
Owensboro is usually in kind,--fourteen bushels of good, salable corn
being the rate per acre. In "Egypt," as Southern Illinois is called,
the average rent is four or five dollars in money, except in years
when the water remains long upon the ground, and thus shortens the
season; then the fee is correspondingly reduced. The girl on the
balcony averred, that in 1893 it amounted to one-third the value of
the average yield.

The numerous huge stilted corn cribs we see are constructed so that
wagons can drive up into them, and, after unloading in bins on either
side, descend another incline at the far end. Sometimes a portion of
the crib is boarded up for a residence, with windows, and a little
balcony which does double duty as a porch and a landing-stage for
the boats in time of high water. Scattered about on the level are
loosely-built sheds of rails, for stock, which practically live _al
fresco_, so far as actual storm-shelter goes.

Usually the flooded bottoms are denuded of trees, save perhaps a
narrow fringe along the bank, and a few dead trunks scattered here and
there; while back, a third or a half-mile from the river, lies a dense
line of forest, far beyond which rises the low rim of the basin. But
just below Saline River (857 miles), a lazy little stream of a few
rods' width, the hills, now perhaps eighty or a hundred feet in
height, again approach to the water's edge; and henceforth to the
mouth we are to have alternating semi-circular, wooded bottoms and
shaly, often palisaded uplands, grown to scrub and vines much in the
fashion of some of the middle reaches. A trading-boat was moored
just within the Saline, where we stopped for lunch under a clump of
sycamores. The owner obtains butter and eggs from the farmers, in
exchange for his varied wares, and sells them at a good