e like," he
said, "an' hav'n' nuth'n 'gin you folks, as knows what's what, I kin
see with half a eye!"

[Footnote A: Figures in parentheses, similarly placed throughout the
volume, indicate the meandered river mileage from Pittsburg, according
to the map of the Corps of Engineers, U.S.A., published in 1881. The
actual mileage of the channel is a trifle greater.]

CHAPTER III.

Shingis Old Town--The dynamiter--Yellow Creek.

Kneistley's Cluster, W. Va., Tuesday, May 8th.--We were off at a
quarter past seven, and among the earliest shoppers in Rochester, on
the east bank of the Beaver, where supplies were laid in for the day.
This busy, prosperous-looking place bears little resemblance to the
squalid Indian village which Gist found here in November, 1750. It was
then the seat of Barney Curran, an Indian trader--the same Curran whom
Washington, three years later, employed in the mission to Venango. But
the smaller sister town of Beaver, on the lower side of the mouth,--or
rather the western outskirts of Beaver a mile below the mouth,--has
the most ancient history. On account of a ford across the Beaver,
about where is now a slack-water dam, the neighborhood became of
early importance to the French as a fur-trading center. With customary
liberality toward the Indians, whom they assiduously cultivated, the
French, in 1756, built for them, on this site, a substantial town,
which the English indifferently called Sarikonk, Sohkon, King Beaver's
Town, or Shingis Old Town. During the French and Indian War, the place
was prominent as a rendezvous for the enemies of American borderers;
numerous bloody forays were planned here, and hither were brought to
be adopted into the tribes, or to be cruelly tortured, according to
savage whim, many of the captives whose tales have made lurid the
history of the Ohio Valley.

Passing Beaver River, the Ohio enters upon its grand sweep to the
southwest. The wide uplands at once become more rustic, especially
those of the left bank, which no longer is threaded by a railway, as
heretofore all the way from Brownsville. The two ranges of undulating
hills, some three hundred and fifty feet high, forming the rim of the
basin, are about a half mile apart; while the river itself is perhaps
a third of a mile in width, leaving narrow bottoms on alternate sides,
as the stream in gentle curves rebounds from the rocky base of one
hill to that of another. When winding about such a base, there