All kinds of
craft were used, even bark canoes and pirogues, or dugouts; but the
keel-boat, and especially the flat-bottomed scow with square ends, were
the ordinary means of conveyance. They were of all sizes. The passengers
and their live stock were of course huddled together so as to take up as
little room as possible. Sometimes the immigrants built or bought their
own boat, navigated it themselves, and sold it or broke it up on
reaching their destination. At other times they merely hired a passage.
A few of the more enterprising boat owners speedily introduced a regular
emigrant service, making trips at stated times from Pittsburg or perhaps
Limestone, and advertising the carriage capacity of their boats and the
times of starting. The trip from Pittsburg to Louisville took a week or
ten days; but in low water it might last a month.
Numbers of the Immigrants.
The number of boats passing down the Ohio, laden with would-be settlers
and their belongings, speedily became very great. An eye-witness stated
that between November 13th and December 22d, of 1785, thirty-nine boats,
with an average of ten souls in each, went down the Ohio to the Falls;
and there were others which stopped at some of the settlements farther
up the river.
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