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Myron Scarlett. This Mr. Scarlett was from Connecticut, had been a quartermaster in the army, and at much risk brought ploughs and hardware, and scissors and buttons, and broadcloth and corduroy, across the Alleghanies, and down the Ohio in flatboats. These he sold at great profit.
These were the Indians who kept Boone in captivity, made Simon Kenton run the gauntlet, stole thousands of horses in Kentucky, and who for years attacked the flatboats and keel boats that floated down the Ohio, torturing their captives by burning at the stake.
It needs here to be recalled that Lincoln's father was a carpenter, and that Abraham had no doubt acquired considerable skill in the use of tools during his boyhood and a practical knowledge of the construction of flatboats during his previous New Orleans trip, sufficient to enable him with confidence to undertake this task in shipbuilding.
A train of six-mule wagons has just pass'd bearing pontoons, great square-end flatboats, and the heavy planking for overlaying them. We hear that the Potomac above here is flooded, and are wondering whether Lee will be able to get back across again, or whether Meade will indeed break him to pieces. The cavalry camp on the hill is a ceaseless field of observation for me.
His only source of uneasiness lay in the south, for he feared that Amherst, with his army, might capture Ticonderoga and advance into the colony, in which case he must weaken his army, by sending a force to oppose him. On the day after the army landed on the island, a sudden and very violent squall drove several of the ships ashore, and destroyed many of the flatboats.
Then his flatboats, manned by tall backwoodsmen in their picturesque dress, rowed or floated cautiously down the Ohio River. They did not know on how great a journey they had entered, for even to his followers Clark could not tell his plan.
I saw Bob and several other boys, grimy with blacking, chasing each other across the flatboats, but Dickens was not there. Down the river aways there is a crazy, old warehouse with a rotten wharf of its own, abutting on the water when the tide is in, and on the mud when the tide is out the whole place literally overrun with rats that scuffle and squeal on the moldy stairs.
The whole region was rich in provender of all kinds, and as the people with rare exceptions were enthusiastically loyal, we in a little while got more than enough food for ourselves, and by means of flatboats began sending the surplus down the river to the troops at Knoxville. The intense loyalty of this part of Tennessee exceeded that of any other section I was in during the war.
With every fair wind, ships and transports passed the batteries of Quebec, favored by a hot fire from Point Levi, and generally succeeded, with more or less damage, in gaining the upper river. A fleet of flatboats was also sent thither, and twelve hundred troops marched overland to embark in them, under Brigadier Murray.
A little later this same year George A. Johnson came to the mouth of the river on the schooner Sierra Nevada with further supplies for the fort, including lumber for the construction of flatboats with which to go up to the post.