son's British captives of the Battle of the Thames were, for a time, placed under guard, has now mostly disappeared. Another bit of insular territory, of which no vestige now remains, clove the channel of the river just above the present bridge of the Little Miami Railway. It was variously known as Brickell Island, Willow Island and Bloody Island, of which latter title the derivation is thus explained:

On a certain occasion, about 1840, a ball took place at the Neil House, and among the wild and mercilessly bewitching maidens there present, was Miss Lizzie H -, a frolic-loving romp, who was simultaneously solicited to dance by two young gentlemen, one from Logan County, the other from Richland. Miss Hgave her preference to one of the suitors, no matter which, and jokingly told the other he could "settle it" with his rival. The suggestion was taken in dead earnest, a duel arranged, seconds chosen, and the Willow Island, then a retired spot, selected as the scene where offended honor was to be propitiated with blood. The murderous intentions of the young quarrelers having become known, quite a number of persons assembled on the river's bank to see them fight it out. Everything being made ready, shots were exchanged two or three times, but without effect. The seconds were sensible men, and had been careful to put no bullets in the pistols. Finally some boys who had been out hunting came along with loaded rifles, whereupon one of the duelists proposed to "stop this nonsense," take the weapons of the hunters and settle the affair at once. But this proposition did not suit the other antagonist, and so the affair, after some further parleying, ended, and the willowy sandbar of the Scioto which formed the scene of this melodramatic episode bore thenceforward the name of The Bloody Island.

Attempts to navigate the Scioto by steam have been frequently made. The earliest of these attempts seems to be indicated by the following advertisement, bearing date March 6, 1828, and quaintly illustrated with a picture of a steamboat:

For Ripley

The Superior Fast Sailing S. B.

TIOSCO.

A. H. KEEF, Master.

Will positively sail from the port of Columbus for Ripley between the 25th and 28th of the present month - weather permitting; and will touch at Circleville, Chillicothe, Piketon, Portsmouth, and the several intermediate landings. The Tiosco was built at Columbus in a superior manner, and of the best materials, being timbered and iron-fastened. She has excellent accommodations for cabin passengers, being very lofty between the decks, and is sufficiently capacious to contain several small families. For freight or passage apply to the captain on board, or to

SMITH & BARNEY, State Street.

The writer hereof is not able to embellish this record with any reliable facts as to the fate of the Tiosco. With her departure from Columbus, with "several small families," perhaps, between decks, she disappears from history. How successfully she made her way amid the snags and sawyers of the sinuous Scioto, whether she ever reached Ripley, or whether she perished miserably enmeshed in the octopuslike roots of some riparian sycamore, are matters of pure speculation. The probabilities seem to be that one trip to Ripley was all that her adventurous commander cared to make. But however the Tiosco may have fared, there still existed, in

later years, bold spirits firm in the faith that the Scioto could be made a vehicle for the uses of steam. Of this we have evidence in the following advertisement which was dated August 8, 1843, and appeared in the newspaper prints then

will leave Gill & McCune's dock at the foot of Town Street every day (Sundays excepted) for the head of navigation, at 7 o'clock A. M., touching at all intermediate points on the Scioto and Olentangy, and run until 10 o'clock; and from 3 P. M. until 8 o'clock in the evening. Parties wishing to take a morning or evening excursion can charter this boat by leaving a card at the American, or by applying to the Captain on board. The proprietors have been at considerable expense to make this boat safe and comfortable, and the engine having been fitted up by Messrs. J. D. Dare & Co., experienced engineers of Zanesville, is second to none for safety. Charges moderate.

The end of the Experiment is as uncertain as that of the Tiosco, but whatever it was it did not prove to be the last of steam navigation of the Scioto, for, in a Piketon letter to the Ohio State Journal of February 3, 1848, we read:

The steamboat American, Grey, Master is a few rods below this place on her first trip up the Scioto, and will, without doubt, arrive in the neighborhood of Chillicothe either this evening or tomorrow morning. A thorough examination of the river was made a few days since by competent captains, and it fully confirmed the opinion heretofore entertained, that the Scioto is navigable for light draught steamers during the greater part of the year. The American is not a small boat, but it has not as yet met with any obstructions, and none are anticipated.

A steam canalboat called the Enterprise, Captain Douel, arrived at Columbus from Zanesville in August, 1859, and on the twenty fourth of that month made an excursion up the Scioto "as far as water would permit."

In May, 1877, the steamer Vinnie began making trips from her dock at the foot of Town Street to points on the river above the mouth of the Whetstone.

Thus closes the catalogue of steam vessels of local origin which have plowed the Scioto's waters. It has probably not been exhausted, but a sufficiency of instances has been given to show, let us hope, that the marine annals of Columbus are not so barren as an uninformed person might be induced to suppose.

NOTES.

1. In February, 1833, Mr. Sullivant published an advertisement inviting proposals "for the construction of a bridge across the Scioto River at Columbus, after the plan of the Alum Creek Bridge, on the National Road." The advertisement stated that the bridge would have two spans, of about one hundred and forty feet each.

CHAPTER XIX.

FROM TRAIL TO TURNPIKE.

Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilization of our species. Every improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the branches of the great human family. In the seventeenth century the inhabitants of London were, for almost every practical purpose, further from Reading than they now are from Edinburg, and further from Edinburg than they now are from Vienna.-Macaulay's History of England, Chapter 3.

At the time the borough of Columbus was originally located and surveyed, it was touched by no road or path excepting a few primitive trails through the forest. All the thoroughfares which then existed centered at Franklinton. "There was not a road leading to or out of the town," says Colonel Olmsted.'

The first pathway through the Ohio wilderness marked by civilized man was Zane's Trace, described in a note to a preceding chapter. The original explorers either took their course by the compass, followed the principal rivers and their tributaries, or traveled in the paths beaten by the feet of the deer, the bison and the Indian. When the avant-couriers of the pioneer host varied from these paths, they marked their routes by the barking or girdling of trees. No routes for wheeled travel having yet been opened, most of the merchandise for the early settlements was transported on the backs of horses, oxen and mules. "The packsaddle of yore," says one of the historians of the wilderness period," was the express car of the backwoods, carrying passengers, freight and mails. Pack horses were often driven in lines of ten or twelve. Each horse was tied to the tail of the one going before, so that one driver could manage a whole line. The pack or burden of a single animal was of about two hundred pounds weight." Packsaddles were made by trimming the forked branches of trees so as to adjust the pronged part to the back of the burden-bearing beast. "Mr. Speed," says the writer just quoted, "relates an anecdote of a frontier preacher who, at an outdoor service, paused in the midst of his sermon to look up, and point to a treetop, saying: Brethren, there is one of the best limbs for a packsaddle that ever grew. After meeting we will go and cut it.'"

Writing in 1868 of his father's emigration from Connecticut to Granville, Ohio, in 1808, Colonel P. H. Olmsted says:

At that time we had to pass through an almost unbroken wilderness to reach our destination. Only a few marked trees served as a guide through the dense forest, there being no cut-out road. During a December afternoon we were overtaken with a tremendous snowstorm which so blinded our way that when within about ten miles of Alum Creek, we had to stop for the night. We made a kind of protection against the storm with logs and branches of trees, and a large fire in front, which we kept burning all night. Our horses were fastened to the wagon and covered with bedquilts, where they remained during the night without water or forage. It was a most terrible situation to be placed in, and one I shall never forget. The next morning we found the snow about ten inches deep, and the marks upon the trees so obliterated that it was almost impossible for us to find our way, but we persevered, and about two o'clock P. M. crossed Alum Creek and were soon domiciled in an old log cabin which was tendered us for the winter.3

Such were the conditions of emigrant travel in Ohio at that early period. The country possessed neither roads nor bridges. The gristmill nearest to Granville, says Colonel Olmsted, was Governor Worthington's, eight miles north of Chillicothe, and thither and back was a journey of six days.

In one of the most striking chapters in his History of England, Macaulay emphasizes the civilizing importance of roads, highways, and other facilities of intercommunication. Singularly in keeping with the improvement of such facilities in England, particularly by the construction of solid wagonroads for neighborhood intercourse, was the advancement made, as the historian shows, in the intellectual and social condition of the people. Just so it has been still is — in Ohio. The pioneer settlers being, for the most part, intelligent and enterprising, one of their very first concerns was the improvement of their means of social and commercial intercourse. The highway, the schoolhouse and the church were allied enterprises and advanced abreast.

When the first Common Pleas Court of Franklin County was organized in 1803, the opening and construction of roads took a conspicuous part in the earlier proceedings. From these proceedings, quoted in an antecedent chapter, it appears that preliminary steps were taken for opening various roads, first of which was one leading" from the public square in Franklinton" by "the nearest and best way to Lancaster, in Fairfield County." This road, says Martin, in a footnote, was made to cross the Scioto at the Old Ford below the canal dam, and pass through the bottom fields (then woods) to intersect what is now the Chillicothe road south of Stewart's Grove and continued to be a travelled road until after Columbus was laid out. Jacob Armitage kept the ferry over the river."

The second road for which viewers were appointed by the Court, was one leading, "from the northeast end of Gift Street, in Franklinton, on as straight a direction as the situation of the ground will admit of a road, towards the town of Newark, in Fairfield County." Joseph Vance was appointed to survey the Lancaster road, Samuel Smith that to Newark. At the same sitting a commission was appointed to "view," and Captain John Blair was authorized to survey, a road "from the public square in Franklinton to Springfield, in Greene County." At the January sitting, in 1804, "a petition was presented by the Rev. James Kilbourn and others, praying for a view of a road to lead from Franklinton to the town of Worthington." The prayer was granted by the Court, and Joseph Vance was named as surveyor of the line. Mr. Kilbourn was at the same time appointed to