The Arizona champion., 1890-11-22
MOUNTAIN COMMERCE.
The Principal Highways ir
 Eastern Kentucky.
TRAVELLING ON THE BIC SANDY.
How the Mountianeer gets his Supplies
 The Push Boat.

Among the many novelties which the stranger finds among the mountains of eastern Kentucky few will interest a man of practical turn of mind more than the public highways The mountain roads, except where mountain gap is to be crossed, are the mountain streams. In consequence there is scarcely cross road or four corners in this county outside of this, the only village in the county, but wherever a creek forks or 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 year past for roads less than nine feet wide. This may seem narrow to northern farmers. who lay out private lanes at least rod wide, but in country where travelling is done on horseback, and where the vehicles for transporting goods of any sort, even ill summer, are narrow sleds, the pine foot road is a novelty which has set the county to talking.
 THE CREEK BED ROADS.
 Of course there are necessarily wagons 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 and runs in the actual bed of the stream only where the con- fguration of the mountain sides on each bank of the stream makes it necessary. When the logging is done 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 highway out of a creek bed. There is not such thing in Pike county as a big nigger head rock. The beds of the streams are of sand or sand stone, and there is never rapid or water fall of such descent as to bother 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 mountaineers supplies have been brought up from the Ohio river ever since there was any one on 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 it's 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 @ bar, or to find themselves left in pocket between bars by the sud den fall of the water. Out of this uncer- tainty regarding the length of 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 feet wide, 60 feet long and IS inches deep. At one end is windowless house high enough for man to stand upright in and 5tx8 feet in area. This is the cabin. There is Q sort of quarter deck abaft the house, and above this sweeps the tiller end of long steering oar, which the pilot yields by walking to and fro on a shelf built half way up on the Stefn-
 The merchandise is piled on three wide blanks that run, like keels, the length of the boat, so as to cover large part of the boats bottom; but clear gangway 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 blanks laid bilge-keelson fashion.
 A boat like this will carry twelve to fifteen tons dead weight of goods on draught of eight inches. There are over 100 of them regularly employed on the Big Sandy, and the cargoes carried up consist chiefly of the goods kept in the ticularly ill the fall, down cargoes can be had.
 SHOWING 4 BOAT.
 When the boat is loaded the skipper climbs to his shelf and grasps the tilier. 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 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 cannot slip along the bottom, the boat is forced forward. The push boat is horizontally acting treadmill. Of course, the men walk aft on the bilgG blanks, which are left clear of merchan. disc so that they can walk there freely It is distressing to a 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 even walk away to the tune of some rollicking love song or ditty which they have learned from the favorite artist of q travelling theatrical troupe at Catlettsburg.
 The men get $1 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 five cents a hundred pounds for general merchandise brought from Catlettsburg to Pikeville. a distance of 100 miles. Flour he brings at S1 a barrel. It is only when the boat has full cargo and pros porous passage. the boatmen say, that ! the push boat owner gets any return on his investment, which, however, is not great, for good boat costs but S60 or $70. -Pikeville (Ky.) Cor. New York Sun.
 Not Qualified to Judge.