itself
not be noticeable amid the crowd of minor creeks and runs, coursing
down to the great river through rugged ravines which corrugate
the banks. But it has a history. Here, late in October or early in
November, 1772, young George Rogers Clark made his first stake west of
the Alleghanies, rudely cultivating a few acres of forest land on what
is now called Cresap's Bottom, surveying for the neighbors, and in
the evenings teaching their children in the little log cabin of his
friend, Yates Conwell, at the mouth of Fish Creek, a few miles below.
Fish Creek was in itself famous as one of the sections of the great
Indian trail, "The Warrior Branch," which, starting in Tennessee, came
northward through Kentucky and Southern Ohio, and, proceeding by way
of this creek, crossed over to Dunkard Creek, thence to the mouth of
Redstone. Washington stopped at Conwell's in March or April, 1774; but
Clark was away from home at the time, and the "Father of his Country"
never met the man who has been dubbed the "Washington of the West."
Lord Dunmore's War was hatching, and a few months later the Fish Creek
surveyor and schoolmaster had entered upon his life work as an Indian
fighter.

At Bearsville (126 miles) we first meet a phenomenon common to the
Ohio--the edges of the alluvial bottom being higher than the fields
back of them, forming a natural levee, above which curiously rise to
our view the spires and chimneys of the village. Harris' _Journal_
(1803) made early note of this, and advanced an acceptable theory: "We
frequently remarked that the banks are higher at the margin than at
a little distance back. I account for it in this manner: Large trees,
which are brought down the river by the inundations, are lodged upon
the borders of the bank, but cannot be floated far upon the champaign,
because obstructed by the growth of wood. Retaining their situation
when the waters subside, they obstruct and detain the leaves and mud,
which would else recoil into the stream, and thus, in process of time,
form a bank higher than the interior flats."

Tied up to Bearsville landing is a gayly painted barge, the home
of Price's Floating Opera Company, and in front its towing-steamer,
"Troubadour." A steam calliope is part of the visible furniture of the
establishment, and its praises as a noise-maker are sung in large
type in the handbills which, with numerous colored lithographs of the
performers, adorn the shop windows in the neighboring riv