Our voyage had begun. We were afloat in the grasp of the river, and for the time need only to fold our arms and gaze at the changing vistas of forest-clad hills on either bank, past which the current swept us along at more than post speed. Before the noon meal we had passed in turn the important shipping town of McKeesport, at the mouth of the Youghiogheny, and the hillside ravine near Turtle Creek, where, within a gunshot of the river bank, the British General Braddock met with his disastrous defeat at the hands of the French and Indians, and where he whose life was to prove so precious to his countrymen came so near to losing it beneath the edge of the tomahawk. In the midst of our meal we came so close under the heights of Pittsburg that I had need to leave the table to take advantage of a slant in the current which would bring us shoreward. Before the others joined me, I had the boat fast alongside the warehouse wharf where I hoped to find the chest of clothes I had sent on from Washington. My expectations were not of the firmest, for I knew the Cumberland Pike to be quite as miry as the Philadelphia road. It had been, indeed, a close shave, for on inquiring of the warehouse keeper, I learned that my box had come down from Redstone by skiff only the previous evening. We had no letters to deliver in Pittsburg, and no desire either to wade the unpaved streets or to linger beneath a sky whose shower of soot bore out only too well the boast of the townsfolk that good coal could be bought in their streets at five cents a bushel. For my part, I would prefer to pay more for wood fires, and escape the smearing of house and garments with lampblack. However, the residents may consider this inconvenience offset by their numerous social and cultural advantages, which are unequalled among all our trans-Alleghany towns, unless it may be at Lexington or Cincinnati. As we put off again into the stream, I pointed out the site of Fort Pitt, built by the British to replace the French Fort Duquesne. But a storm cloud drove down over the Pittsburg hills, and Alisanda hastened to withdraw with her uncle into the cabin to escape the April rain which soon poured upon us in torrents. It was not, as I had hoped, a mere squall. With the passing of the first roaring wind gusts that rocked our heavy craft, the rain settled into a steady drizzle, which obscured river and banks for the rest of the afternoon, and sheeted us in like a black pall throughout the night. With the nightfall, trusting to the height of the flood to carry us over all shoals and rocks, I made no attempt to effect a landing or to tie up to the half-submerged willows along the bank. We had wood enough aboard to last for three days or more, and our fireplace, with its pots and ranger, saved the necessity of a shore camp to prepare food.