in those days as in these, were very muddy, and had it not been for the magnificent trees which abundantly lined the firm banks, the stream could not have been termed very beautiful. These trees were chiefly walnuts, black-oaks, hickories, maples, and button-woods, and afforded a bountiful supply of logs for the many saw-mills which the pioneers had already erected along the river at the mouths of the various tributaries. Mr. Cramer tells us that the lumber obtained from these logs was floated down to Pittsburg, Wheeling, or some more remote point, and sold for a price ranging from a dollar to a dollar and a half per hundred feet. The country of the Monongahela was, even at this early day (1806), well populated; the land along the river was fertile and productive, and sold at any price from twelve to thirty dollars an acre. The "bottoms" contained many valuable sugar-maples and Cramer estimated that, if properly managed, each tree would yield four pounds of maple-sugar per annum—about one dollar a tree each season.
"The mean velocity of the current of
