- hannon Creek from the S.S.E. it is called the Kiskimenetas River. It is navigable for batteaux forty or fifty
miles, and good portages are found between it and the Juniata and Potomac rivers. A batteau is a flat-bottomed boat, widest in the middle, and tapering to a point at each end, of about 1500 weight burden; and is managed by two men with paddles and setting-poles.
At the mouth of Sandy Creek, a vessel of 160 tons burden was lately launched, took in her cargo, and sailed for the West-Indies.
The principal creeks and tributary streams with which the Alleghany river is replenished, are delineated on the Map, I believe with a good degree of accuracy; but a particular account of each it was not in {39} my power to obtain. The junction of this river with the Monongahela at Pittsburg has been already mentioned.
The Alleghany is remarkable for the clearness of its waters and the rapidity of its current; and the freshets in it are greater and more sudden than those of its connubial stream.[26] It seldom happens that it does not mark its course across the mouth of the Monongahela, with whose turbid and sluggish waters it forms a very observable contrast. It is curious, also, in the time of the spring floods to see the Alleghany full of ice, and the Monongahela entirely free. These floods are occasioned by the dissolution of the immense bodies of ice and snow accumulated during winter in those northern regions through which the river passes, and by the heavy falls of rain at the setting in and breaking up of winter.
