, 1888-11-24
MOUNTAIN COMMERCE.
STREAMS ARE THE PRINCIPAL HIGH
WAYS IN EASTERN KENTUCKY.

The 'Push Boat and the Method of
Navigating It-TraveIins Up Stream on
tho Big Sandy.
Among the many novelties which the
stranger finds among the mountains of
eastern Kentucky few will interest a man
of q practical turn of mind more than the
public highways. The mountain roads,
except where a mountain gap is to be
crossed, are the mountain streams. In
consequence there is scarcely a cross road
or four corners in this county outside of
this, the only village in the county, but
wherever a creek forks or a brook enters
a creek the road forks.
Under Kentucky law the county Judge
decides where and how new roads shall
be laid out. The ordinary mountain road
is laid out six feet wide, and the roadway
proper must be graded not less than two
feet wide. But Judge Wagner, of this
county, is an enterprising citizen, who
desires to improve the country, and in
consequence he has refused to issue any
order for a year past for roads less than
nine feet wide. This may seem narrow to
northern farmers, who lay out private
lanes at least a rod wide, but in a country
where travelling is done on horseback, and
where the vehicles for transporting goods
of any sort, even in summer, are narrow
sleds, the pine foot road is a novelty
which has set the county to talking.
TEL CREEK BED ROADS.
OF course there are necessarily o
wherever logging is done, but the log
wagon sticks to beds of the streams,
which are invariably wide and hollow,
while the public highway winds along the
bank of the stream n run in the actual
bed of the stream only where the con-
figuration of the mountain sides on each
bank of the stream makes it necessary.
When the logging is lone no effort is
made to keep open the highway formed.
These creek bed roads are excellent in
warm weather and low water; in winter
and spring they are impossible for weeks.
The creek beds were originally selected
for highways because very little labor was
needed to make a highway out of a creek
bed. There is not such a thing in Pike
county as a big niger head rock. The
beds of the streams are of sand or sand
stone, and there is never a rapid or water
fall of u descent as to bother q team.
Another very good reason for utilizing
the creeks as roads was the fact that all
the imports and exports of the mountains
have been necessarily carried in and out
on the rivers. The mountaineer's supplies
have been brought up from the Ohio river
ever since there was any one OF the Ohio
to sell them. AS all creeks run by the
easiest and generally the shortest route to
the rivers, it was natural for the mount
aineer to follow the creek down to its
mouth TO get his supplies at the stores
which were located along the river.
THE push BOAT"
The rivers are not very Trustworthy
highways. The steamboats, on the Big
Sandy very often get started up for Pike
vile, the head of navigation, only to get
stranded on a bar, or to find themselves
left in a pocket between bars by the sud
den fall of the water. Out of this uncer-
tainty regarding the length of a steam
boats journey to and from the headwaters
of the rivers has grown the craft, very
novel to northern eyes, called the push
boat. No better craft for the water could
be imagined.
The push boat is a scow Z feet wide, 60
feet long and 10 inches deep. At one end
is a windowless house high enough for q
man to stand upright in and 5txS feet in
area. This is the cabin. There is a sort
of q quarter deck abaft the house, and
above this sweeps the tiller end of a long
steering oar, which the pilot Yields by
walking to and fro on a shelf built half
way up on the stern.
The merchandise is piled on three wide
planks that run like keels, the length of
the boat, so as to cover a large part of the
boats bottom; but q clear anyway of at
least fifteen inches in width Is left along
on each side of the merchandise, no mat
ter how great the load. These gangways
are also foored by planks laid bilge-keelson
fashion.
A boat like his will carry twelve to
fifteen tons dead weight of goods ON a
draught of eight inches. There are over
100 of them regularly employed on the
Big Sandy, and the cargoes carried up
consis chiefly of the goods kept in tho
country stores. At certain seasons, par
ticularly in the fall, down cargoes can be
had.
HovIN A BOAT
When the boat is loaded the skipper
climbs to his shelf and grasps the tiller.
The crew of four men cast off the ropes
and pick up their push poles. These
poles are about ten feet long and from an
inch and a half thick at the upper end
swell to two inches thick at the bottom,
where they are shod with a short pike.
Two of the crew stand on the ~starboard
bow and two on the port, one behind the
other, and facing aft, place the lower ends
of the push poles on the bottom of the
stream, the upper ends against their out
board shoulders, and then, throwing their
weight against the poles, they walk aft.
AS the poles mo slip along the bottom,
the boat is forced forward. The push
boat is q horizontally acting treadmill.
OF course, the men walk aft on the bilge
planks, which are left clear of merchan-
disc, so that they can walk there freely.
1t is distressing to q stranger-it makes
him feel as if his own back was about to
~break-merely to look at the men as they
shove the boat along; but the Big Sandy
boatmen are a hardy and cheerful race,
and not only do not fret and chafe over
their toll, but ever walk away to the
tune of some rollicking love song or ditty
which they have learned from the ~favorite
artist of a travelling theatrical troupe at
Catlettsburg.
The men get 81 a day each and board.
The day runs from sunrise to sunset, and
in that time four men will shove a boat
from thirteen to fourteen miles up stream
on the Big Sandy. The pilot is usually
the owner of the boat. He gets seventy