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83 The Bivouac; or, A Night at the Mouth of the Ohio, A Sketch of Western Voyaging Joseph Holt Ingraham The vicissitudes of Joseph Holt Ingraham’s literary career can be summed up in the following announcement, dating from 1851: “Mr J. H. Ingraham, author of ‘The Southwest, by a Yankee,’ ‘Burton; or The Sieges,’ and a large number of the vilest yellow-covered novels ever printed in this country, has been admitted to the deaconate in the Episcopal church at Natchez” (quoted in Johannsen 2:152). A prolific, popular author whose Lafitte, the Pirate of the Gulf (1836) was reviewed by Edgar Allan Poe, Ingraham published a large number of similarly action-packed novels before entering the church and turning his hand to theological fiction (most famously, The Prince of the House of David, 1855). The following account of a riverboat gambler’s tragic end is a typical example of Ingraham’s thrilling tales of life and death on the Mississippi frontier. For further information see Albert Johannsen, The House of Beadle and Adams and Its Dime and Nickel Novels (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1950), 2:151–55. A few years since I was on my way to St. Louis, and took passage at Cincinnati on board the steamer Chief Justice Marshall, which was bound to New Orleans , but from which I was to disembark at the mouth of the Ohio, there to wait for some New Orleans boat going up to take me to my destination. Our travelling party consisted of three ladies—a mother and two lovely daughters —deep in their teens, and a young gentleman and his bride from Louisiana , with her brother just from college. The boat was large and comfortable; a spacious state-room offered us all the retirement of a private apartment in a dwelling. It was a bright morning in October when we got under head-way from the landing, and bending our course down the river, left the queen city receding in the distance. The prospect from the decks as we swept round the noble curve which forms the peninsula of this great metropolis, was unequalled for beauty and variety. To the eye of the voyager, who gazes on the city and its opposite suburban shore, the river seems to flow through a valley peopled for centuries, rather than a region but fifty years ago a desolate wilderness . Crowded population, taste, wealth, and a high degree of agriculture on the banks, all indicate the home of a long settled people, instead of the emigrant of yesterday. Astonished at what he beholds, the traveller’s mind is Blacklegs, Card Sharps, and Confidence Men 84 overpowered at the contemplation of the future destiny of the land. This feeling is not only awakened by the sight of Cincinnati and its environs, with its fleets of steamers, but it is kept alive as he proceeds down the winding and romantic river. On either bank noble farms descend with their waving fields to touch the lip of the laughing wave, and at short intervals thriving villages meet his never wearying sight. Unlike the monotony of the Mississippi, the Ohio ever presents objects of interest. The voyager of taste is ever upon deck, as he is borne through the picturesque regions, and exclamations of surprise are exhausted only to be repeated and renewed again and again. The next morning after quitting Cincinnati we reached Louisville, its levee as we approached presenting a scarcely less business like air than that of her rival city. Situated just above the ‘Falls,’ it was then the head of large boat navigation. But a deep canal has since then been constructed around the falls nearly two miles in length, by which steamers laden in New Orleans can pass through without as heretofore, being detained and transferring their freight by drays to smaller boats above the falls, and pursue their way to Cincinnati or Pittsburg. The river being now unusually high, the rocks of the rapids were nearly covered, and with skilful pilotage they might be ventured. After an hour’s delay at the landing we shot out into the middle of the stream, and then set the boat’s head to descend the rapids. As we approached them with the velocity of an arrow, there was not a word spoken on board save by the pilot, who stood forward, giving brief orders to the helmsman. Black rocks appeared on every side—the rapids reared and foamed before us, seemingly in our...

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