usually with loads of flour. The heyday of the keel-boat was also the day of the portage path--which played a most important part in the development of the land. These portages or carries were mostly located far in the interior where rivers flowing in opposite directions took their rise. The keel-boat was the only craft of burden that could ascend many of our streams to the carrying-place; they were also less unwieldy to carry than the old batteau which was used also in the portage carrying-trade.[52] Mention has been made of Burd's invasion of Kentucky during the Revolutionary War, in keel-boats. If this was not a misnomer it is probable that they were brought from the lakes and carried across the portage, as was done in the case of Hamilton's capture of Vincennes. The keel-boat may be considered, therefore, the first upstream boat of burden which plied the Ohio and its tributaries; its special functions: first, the upstream trade, second, to touch and connect interior settlements and do the carrying-trade of the portages. The great craft of burden on the Ohio and its larger tributaries were the barges and the flat-boats, the latter commonly known as the Kentucky "broad-horns" or Kentucky boats, and New Orleans boats. The Ohio and Mississippi barge resembled the "West Country" barges of England and the "wherries" of London. They were great, pointed, covered hulks carrying forty or fifty tons of freight and manned by almost as many men. They were the great freighters of the larger rivers, descending with the current and ascending by means of oars, poles, sails and cordelles--ropes by which the craft was often towed from the shore. The following description of a barge journey, from the pen of the famous naturalist Audubon, is perhaps one of the most accurate left to us: