Having crossed the Pennsylvania western boundary, the Ohio River separates West Virginia from the State of Ohio, passing a region which seems mournful from the many abandoned oil-derricks displayed near the banks for a long distance. The Ohio shore is Columbiana County, a name fancifully compounded by an early State Legislature from "Columbus" and "Anna;" and it is recorded that when the subject was pending one member proposed to add "Maria," so that the euphonious whole would be "Columbianamaria." His effort failed, however. At the various towns, the railroads come out from the mountain regions of West Virginia, bringing the bituminous coal for shipment. Ninety-four miles below Pittsburg is Wheeling, the metropolis of West Virginia, a busy manufacturing city of forty thousand people. Farther down, in the midst of the flats adjoining the river, at Moundsville, is the great Indian Mound, a relic of the prehistoric inhabitants of this region standing up eighty feet high and being eight hundred and twenty feet in circumference at the base. In this mound were found two sepulchral chambers containing three skeletons. At Benwood, near by, one branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad crosses the river to Bellaire in Ohio. The Muskingum River, coming out of the heart of the State, flows in at Marietta, a stream thus named by the Delaware Indians when they first came to this region, from the abundance of elk and deer who could be approached near enough to see their eyes, Muskingum meaning "elk's eyes." Marietta is the oldest town in Ohio, settled in 1788 by a colony sent out by the "Ohio Company" of New England, which had been granted many square miles of land along the river. This colony of forty-seven Yankee pioneers marched over the Alleghenies, floated down the Ohio on a flatboat which they called the "Mayflower," and landing at the mouth of the Muskingum, their first act was writing a set of laws and nailing them to a tree, and in this code naming their settlement in honor of Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France. A company of troops in a little stockade fort protected them from the Indians. Here they found a curious mass of ancient fortifications, relics of the prehistoric mound-builders--a square enclosed by a wall of earth ten feet high, having twelve entrances, a covered way, bulwarks to defend the gateways, and other elaborate works, including a moat fifteen feet wide defended by a parapet. Thirteen miles below, the Little Kanawha River flows in at Parkersburg, and here the other branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad crosses on a massive bridge, a mile and a half long, over the river and lowlands. This is the entrepot of a great petroleum district which gives the town a large trade, and they are said to be still striking in the Ritchie County oilfield thousand-barrel wells. In the river two miles below is the noted Blennerhassett's Island, where that gentleman, an Irishman of