place, to be ready for embarkation. With these a great many trading boats are laden, which float down the river, stopping at the towns on its banks to vend the articles. In a country, so remote from commerce, and of so great extent, where each one resides {43} on his own farm, and has neither opportunity nor convenience for visiting a market, these trading boats contribute very much to the accommodation of life, by bringing to every man's house those little necessaries which it would be very troublesome to go a great distance to procure.
At and near this place, ship-building is an object of great attention. Several vessels are now on the stocks; and three have been launched this spring, from 160 to 275 tons burden.
The principal navigation of the Ohio river is during the floods of the spring and autumn. The spring season commences at the breaking up of the ice in the Alleghany, which generally happens about the middle of February, and continues for eight or ten weeks. The fall season is occasioned by the autumnal rains in October, and lasts till about the beginning of December, when the ice begins to form. But the times of high-water can scarcely be called periodical; for they vary considerably as the season is dry or rainy, and with the later setting in or breaking up of winter. Sometimes, also, the falling of heavy showers on the mountains, during the summer, will so {44} swell the sources of the Monongahela as to supply a temporary sufficiency of water for the purpose of navigation.
In the time of the freshets the Ohio rises from fifteen to thirty feet, and sometimes even higher; overflowing its banks to a very considerable distance. The rise is generally sudden, often ten feet in twenty-four hours. The
