Journey from Bethlehem in Pennsylvania to New Harmony on the Wabash
Reading – Harrisburg on the Susquehanna – Picturesque Juniata Valley – Height of the Alleghenies – Stay at Ebensburg – Hunting excursions – Laurel Hill – Blairsville – New Alexandria – Pittsburgh – Economy on the Ohio – Society of Mr. Rapp – Wheeling – Navigation of the Ohio – Marietta – Parkersburg – Cincinnati – Louisville– Mount Vernon
October 9, 1832
The ship has two decks. On the upper one aft, the ladies’ cabin. Before it, the large room, where there were now only immigrants. Underneath this was our cabin, or the gentlemen’s cabin, with sixteen bedsteads. The length of the ship is [——] paces; its name was Nile. These small steamboats are dangerous. They are stoked heavily, and since they all have high pressure, there is always the danger that the boiler will explode as soon as the ship is stopped to take on passengers.
Our departure was delayed until five o’clock, when we finally left. Right away we passed an island; the channel was narrow, very little water now. We passed a flatboat rowed by immigrants who are working for their passage.
[The flatboats] have unusual rudders (a pole with a crosspiece on the end of it), no mast, and are completely even on top. The banks of the Ohio are 40 to 50 feet high here [and consist of] yellow-reddish sand or clay. Everywhere we still saw uprooted Platanus trunks, lying since the big flood in March, when there was water standing in the lower floors of houses in Wheeling.
The mountains that form the Ohio Valley here are bare near the bottom; tall forest in the upper region. At the base of the mountain, mostly in the narrow valley plains, there are cornfields and individual habitations. The bank itself was covered with lofty, often gigantic Platanus and other tall trees. Wheeling disappeared from sight; we recognized its location from the coal smoke rising there. There were often sandbars in the river; cornfields in the tall timber along the bank. On the second island, the bank was covered especially nicely by grapevines (Vitis) on the shoreline timber. To the left, near some dwellings along the bank, coal appeared in the steep wall of the bank, perhaps dumped there. Near the bank lay flat coal barges and a ferry with several horses. Along the bank we saw domestic geese sitting together in gaggles, all of them a European breed. Here we encountered the steamboat Orion. We stopped [for] a while and turned. Mr. Bodmer sketched the beautiful view upstream downstream. The evening was pleasant after the great heat of the day. Magnificent moonlight appeared. After supper we sat for a long time on the stern deck of the ship, where one is safest. It was not very pleasant to sleep that night in the cabin with fifteen persons in two rows, one above the other.