a batteau, or flat bottomed skiff, twenty feet long, very light, and the stern sheets roofed with very thin boards, high enough to sit under with ease, and long enough to shelter us when extended on the benches for repose, should we be benighted occasionally on the river, with a side curtain of tow cloth as a screen from either the sun or the night air. We had a pair of short oars, or rather long paddles, for one person to work both, and a broad paddle to steer with; and a mast, and a lug or square sail to set when the wind should favour us; we had a good stock of cold provisions and liquors. The river being neither flooded, nor very low, was just in that state, to promise a pleasant passage to its navigators. The current running between two and three miles an hour, allowed time to examine every thing worthy of curiosity, and the water was sufficiently high to prevent delays through grounding on any of the numerous flats, which impede the navigation of the first two hundred miles, during the principal part of the summer and fall, and yet not so high as to prevent our being able to see and remark all the shoals or rocks of any consequence, which gave us an opportunity {73} of proving Mr. Cramer's Navigator which we had with us, of correcting it in a few places, and of adding to it a sketch of the river, in its very winding course, between Pittsburgh and Limestone or Maysville, in Kentucky.[43]
In a quarter of an hour after embarking on the Monongahela we passed its confluence with the Allegheny, and entered the Ohio formed by the other two.
The Allegheny rises between two and three hundred miles following its different meanders, N. E. of Pittsburgh.
