Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
The Ohio River below Louisville passes Evansville, the chief town of
southwestern Indiana, having sixty thousand people and a large trade.
A short distance beyond, the Wabash River flows in, the boundary
between Indiana and Illinois. Shawneetown in southern Illinois and
Paducah in Kentucky are passed, and the Ohio River finally discharges
its waters into the Mississippi at Cairo, the southern extremity of
Illinois, the town being built upon a long, low peninsula protruding
between the two great rivers, around which extensive levees have been
constructed to prevent inundation. The place has about twelve thousand
people and considerable manufacturing industry. All about is an
extensive prairie land, which in times of great spring freshets is
generally overflowed.
CUMBERLAND AND TENNESSEE RIVERS.
A large portion of the waters brought down by the Ohio come from its
two great affluents flowing in almost alongside each other on the
southern bank, just above Paducah, the Cumberland and Tennessee
Rivers. The Cumberland has its sources in the Cumberland Mountains,
the eastern boundary of Kentucky, and flows for six hundred and fifty
miles, the whole length of that State, making a wide, sweeping circuit
down into Tennessee, where it passes Nashville, at the head of
steamboat navigation, two hundred miles from its mouth. For twenty
miles above their mouths, in their lower courses, these two great
rivers are rarely more than three miles apart. The Tennessee is twelve
hundred miles long from its head stream, the Holston River, rising in
the mountains east of Kentucky and Tennessee. It comes through East
Tennessee, makes a great bend down into Alabama, and then coming up
northward flows through Tennessee and Kentucky to the Ohio. It is
navigable for nearly three hundred miles to the Mussel Shoals at
Florence, Alabama, where canals and locks have improved the navigation
for twenty miles past the shoals, and it can also be navigated for
eight hundred miles above, excepting at very low stages of water. Its
name signifies "the river of the Great Bend," and it was also called
in early times the "river of the Cherokees."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account