Thomas Ashe 1806

Thomas Ashes’s trip down the Ohio in 1806 preceded the founding of Madison. However, it describes the Carrollton area and gives descriptions of the Ohio River between there and Louisville.

Travels in America performed in 1806, for the purpose of exploring the rivers Alleghany, Monongahela, Ohio, and Mississippi, and ascertaining the produce and condition of their banks and vicinity. By Thomas Ashe, esq. ... Ashe, Thomas, 1770-1835. London, R. Phillips, 1808. 3 Volumes

vol. 2

Letter XIX

Around the town is four hundred dollars per acre; within one mile two hundred; within two or three miles one hundred; five or six miles, from sixty to seventy. A few miles more distant, the price falls to from forty to fifty dollars per acre, and decreases progressively to from thirty to twenty, fifteen, ten, and five, at which price it breaks off at the mountains, where the land bears no price at all. There are circumstances also, which often contribute to set a local enhanced value on landed property. The most fertile part of Kentuckey, the very spot yet allowed to be an Eden, is very scarce of water. Land, therefore, which possesses a mill seat capable of acting three months in a year, would fetch a very large sum of money. Salt-springs also, considerably raise the price of land surrounding them.

The situation is so unhealthy, that the town must eventually be abandoned. There is also a mean little town on one side of the confluence, called Williams Port [modern Carrollton], and another on the other side of equal insignificance. They are subject to periodical inundation, inductive of fever and every species of lassitude and sickness. Were it not for this, the towns would rise into eminence and obtain importance from the growing commerce of the country and the navigation of the river.

The Kentucky is about ninety yards at its mouth. Its banks, or rather precipices, ought to be reckoned among the grandest natural curiosities of the country. There the astonished eye beholds three hundred, and often five hundred feet of solid perpendicular rock, in some parts of lime stone, and in others of fine white marble, chequered with strata of extraordinary beauty and regularity,

The salt spring is very weak at the Big Bone Lick. One thousand gallons of water yield but a bushel of salt. About twenty miles back of the Big Bone, is Grant's Lick, one hundred gallons of which make a bushel of salt of a very strong and fine quality. I should think there could be no great difficulty in ascertaining whether the water of Grant's Lick does not issue from a salt rock in its immediate vicinity. It is to Be regretted that no person of leisure and intelligence has yet investigated a subject of such public utility and importance; as I make no doubt that at the same springs which are, now worked with little advantage and great labor, water could be found of ten-fold strength, and possibly the rock from which it undoubtedly issues. There are other springs in the neighbourhood of the Big Bone Lick, and through several parts of Kentucky, which are said to be medicinal, and to have the property of relieving various disorders incident to the spring and fall of the year. All that I have met with are strongly impregnated with sulphur, and some so hot as to be within twenty degrees of boiling water. A sulphur spring near the Big Bone Lick turned a dollar black in less than five minutes. Nitre caves, and hills impregnated with nitre, are also common throughout the State, and are worked to great profit, every bushel of earth yielding on an average, three pounds of nitre.

In the course of another day and night's navigation, I dropped forty-four miles lower down, and put into the mouth of the Kentucky River, which gives name to the State it intersects nearly in equal halves. It flows in innumerable meanders, and through a very extensive body of good land, except within fifty or more miles of the Ohio, where it is too mountainous for the purposes of a profitable agriculture. It is navigable for loaded boats during a considerable part of the year, upwards of one hundred and fifty miles.

Frankfort, the capital of the State, is situted in the west bank, about seventy miles from its confluence with the Ohio. The legislature and the supreme courts hold their sessions there. The State-house is a large stone building. which gives the river the appearance of an immensly deep and artificial canal, whose rocky banks are crowned with sumptuous cedar, and other trees, of a perpetual verdure.

While exploring the banks, I fell in with some antiquities peculiar to the country. They consist of old forts, not circular like the many I have pointed out, but oblong, and situated on strong well-chosen grounds, and always contiguous to the best landings of the river. When, by whom, and for what purpose thrown up, is, most unfortunately uncertain. They are undoubtedly very ancient, as there is not the least visible difference in the age or size of the timber growing on or within those forts, and that which grows without; and I never yet could obtain any satisfactory tradition respecting them. Doctor Cutler, who has accurately examined the trees in those, forts, and which he thinks, from the appearances, are the second growth, is of opinion, that they must have been built upwards of one thousand years. One fact is also clear; they must have been the efforts of a people acquainted with some science, and capable of infinite labor; and it is difficult to conceive how they could be constructed without the use of iron tools and the instruments we are compelled to employ in works of much less magnitude and character. At a small distance from each fort there stands a mound of earth thrown up in the manner of a pyramid.

The water, owing to its low state, beginning to flow in a very sluggish manner, it took two days and two nights to bear me along to Louisville, from which I now write. The distance seventy-seven miles; in which run the river presented nothing very remarkable, though I observed it encrease in breadth, grandeur, and sublimity, and to appear more awful from the height of its banks, and the silence which prevailed from the distance of the habitations of man, and the absence of population and society. I amused myself each day by going ashore with my gun, and walking along for hours together, while the boat dropped down with the stream. I killed several dozen of fine ducks, and one deer, in the act of swimming across the water to elude the pursuit of a wolf that had been long chasing him.

Late in the year and in the spring season the river is covered with wild geese, swans, and ducks of various descriptions. In the summer, and at this season they visit the Lakes, where they breed and bring up their young in great multitudes. One species of duck alone remain permanently on the river, and that is the worst of the whole kind. I killed a few young turkies, which were exquisite in taste and flavor. The shores abound in subjects of speculation and interest. Animal and vegetable petrifactions may be picked up nearly at every step, and in the highest state of purity and perfection; so much so, that the characters of each object are distinct and visible, and nothing wanting in the one but scent, softness, and colour, and in the other, the active principle of life. All the waters of the Ohio and of its tributaries are gifted with the powers of petrefaction.

The first intimation I had of the approach to Louisville was the roaring of the falls, which reached me at the distance of fifteen miles. Four miles farther on gave me a fine view of the town which stands about two miles above the falls on the Kentucky shore. The entire coup d'oeil is very grand, but the disposition to admire is drowned in the murmur of the waters, and the danger

it announces to the mind. As the falls cannot be passed without a pilot and a number of extra hands to govern the helm and the oars, it is always necessary to look out within five or six miles, and pull in for the left shore before there is a possibility of getting into the suction of the fall stream, and from thence into the vortex of the flood. By my not attending to this in time I was very near perishing. The velocity of the water encreased; the uproar of the falls became tremendous, and nothing but the continued and vigorous exertion of the oars saved us from sudden and violent perdition. We rowed one hour across the stream and got into dull water but five minutes before our deaths must have been certain; whereas, had I pulled in on seeing the town, I might have dropped quietly down along the bank, and enjoyed the grandeur and sublimity of the general scene, in the place of experiencing so much labor and apprehension.

Having secured the boat in the mouth, of Bear Grass Creek, I walked up to the town of Louisville, which is situated on a high and level bank of the Ohio, about two hundred poles above the commencement of the rapid descent of the water, and contains about eighty dwellings, besides the court-house of Jefferson county, and other public buildings. The prospect from the town is very extensive, commanding a view up the river, for some distance above what is called Six Mile island; and on the opposite shore, which is the distance of one mile and a quarter, the eye is carried over an extent of level country, terminated by the hills of Silver Creek, which are five miles distant, and down the river to Clarksville, about two miles below.