They had their songs, too, usually sentimental, as the songs of rough men are, that they bawled out as they toiled at the sweeps or the pushpoles. Some have been preserved in history: "It's oh! As I was walking out, One morning in July, I met a maid who axed my trade. 'A flatboatman,' says I. "And it's oh! She was so neat a maid That her stockings and her shoes She toted in her lily-white hands, For to keep them from the dews." [Illustration: "THE EVENING WOULD PASS IN RUDE AND HARMLESS JOLLITY."] Just below the mouth of the Wabash on the Ohio was the site of Shawneetown, which marked the line of division between the Ohio and the Mississippi trade. Here goods and passengers were debarked for Illinois, and here the Ohio boatmen stopped before beginning their return trip. Because of the revels of the boatmen, who were paid off there, the place acquired a reputation akin to that which Port Said, at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal, now holds. It held a high place in river song and story. "Some row up, but we row down, All the way to Shawneetown. Pull away, pull away," was a favorite chorus. Natchez, Tennessee, held a like unsavory reputation among the Mississippi River boatmen, for there was the great market in which were exchanged northern products for the cotton, yams, and sugar of the rich lands of the South. For food on the long voyage, the boatmen relied mostly on their rifles, but somewhat on the fish that might be brought up from the depths of the turbid stream, and the poultry and mutton which they could secure from the settlers by barter, or not infrequently, by theft. Wild geese were occasionally shot from the decks, while a few hours' hunt on shore would almost certainly bring reward in the shape of wild turkey or deer. A somewhat archaic story among river boatmen tells of the way in which "Mike Fink," a famous character among them, secured a supply of mutton. Seeing a flock of sheep grazing near the shore, he ran his boat near them, and rubbed the noses of several with Scotch snuff. When the poor brutes began to caper and sneeze in dire discomfort, the owner arrived on the scene, and asked anxiously what could ail them. The bargeman, as a traveled person, was guide, philosopher, and friend to all along the river, and so, when informed that his sheep were suffering from black murrain, and that all would be infected unless those already afflicted were killed, the farmer unquestioningly shot those that showed the strange symptoms, and threw the bodies into the river, whence they were presently collected by the astute "Mike," and turned into fair mutton for himself and passengers. Such exploits as these added mightily to the repute of the rivermen for shrewdness, and the farmer who suffered received scant sympathy from his neighbors.