e meant to do. Offut
engaged Abraham, with his stepmother's son, John D. Johnston, and John
Hanks, to take a flatboat from Beardstown, on the Illinois River, to
New Orleans; and all four arranged to meet at Springfield as soon as the
snow should melt.

In March, when the snow finally melted, the country was flooded and
traveling by land was utterly out of the question. The boys, therefore,
bought a large canoe, and in it floated down the Sangamon River to keep
their appointment with Offut. It was in this somewhat unusual way that
Lincoln made his first entry into the town whose name was afterward to
be linked with his own.

Offut was waiting for them, with the discouraging news that he had been
unable to get a flatboat at Beardstown. The young men promptly offered
to make the flatboat, since one was not to be bought; and they set to
work, felling the trees for it on the banks of the stream. Abraham's
father had been a carpenter, so the use of tools was no mystery to him;
and during his trip to New Orleans with Allen Gentry he had learned
enough about flatboats to give him confidence in this task of
shipbuilding. Neither Johnston nor Hanks was gifted with skill or
industry, and it is clear that Lincoln was, from the start, leader of
the party, master of construction, and captain of the craft.

The floods went down rapidly while the boat was building, and when
they tried to sail their new craft it stuck midway across the dam of
Rutledge's mill at New Salem, a village of fifteen or twenty houses not
many miles from their starting-point. With its bow high in air, and its
stern under water, it looked like some ungainly fish trying to fly, or
some bird making an unsuccessful attempt to swim. The voyagers appeared
to have suffered irreparable shipwreck at the very outset of their
venture, and men and women came down from their houses to offer advice
or to make fun of the young boatmen as they waded about in the water,
with trousers rolled very high, seeking a way out of their difficulty.
Lincoln's self-control and good humor proved equal to their banter,
while his engineering skill speedily won their admiration. The amusement
of the onlookers changed to gaping wonder when they saw him deliberately
bore a hole in the bottom of the boat near the bow, after which, fixing
up some kind of derrick, he tipped the boat so that the water she had
taken in at the stern ran out in front, and she floated safely over the
dam. This novel