At four P. M. I could endure the cold no longer, and when a beautiful creek with wooded shores, which divided fine farms, opened invitingly before me on the Kentucky side, I quickly entered it, and moored the sneak-box to an ancient sycamore whose trunk rose out of the water twelve feet from shore.  I was not a moment too soon in leaving the wide river, for as I quietly supped on my cold bread and meat, which needed no better sauce than my daily increasing appetite to make it tempting, the wind increased to a tempest, and screeched and howled through the forest with such wintry blasts that I was glad to creep under my hatch before dark.

On Monday, December 13, the violent wind storm continuing, I remained all day in my box, writing letters and watching the scuds flying over the tops of high trees.  At noon a party of hunters, with a small pack of hounds, came abruptly upon my camp.  Though boys only, they carried shot-guns, and expectorated enough tobacco-juice to pass for the type of western manhood.  They chatted pleasantly round my boat, though each sentence that fell from their lips was emphasized by its accompanying oath.  I asked them the name of the creek, when one replied, “Why, boss, you don’t call this a creek, do you?  Why, there is twenty foot of water in it.  It’s the Tiger River, and comes a heap of a long way " Another said, “Look here, cap’n, I wouldn’t travel alone in that ’ere little skiff, for when you’re in camp any feller might put a ball into you from a high bank.”  “Yes,” added another, “there is plenty o’ folks along the river that would do it, too.”

As my camp had become known, I acted upon the friendly hint of the boy-hunters, and took my departure the next day at an early hour, following the left bank of the river, which afforded me a lee shore.  As I dashed through the swashy waves, with the apron of the boat securely set to keep the water from wetting my back, the sun in all its grandeur parted the clouds and lighted up the landscape until everything partook of its brightness.  This was the second time in two weeks that the God of Day had asserted his supremacy, and his advent was fully appreciated.

Two miles below Portsmouth, Ohio, I encountered a solitary voyager in a skiff, shooting mallards about the mouths of the creeks, and having discovered that he was a gentleman, I intrusted my mail to his keeping, and pushed on to a little creek beyond Rome, where, thanks to good fortune, some dry wood was discovered.  A bright blaze was soon lighting up the darkness of the thicket into which I had drawn my boat, and the hot supper, now cooked in camp, and served without ceremony, was duly relished.

The deck of the boat was covered with a thin coating of ice, and as the wind went down the temperature continued to fall until six o’clock in the morning, when I considered it unsafe to linger a moment longer in the creek, the surface of which was already frozen over, and the ice becoming thicker every hour.  An oar served to break a passage-way from the creek to the Ohio, which I descended in a blustering wind, being frequently driven to seek shelter under the lee afforded by points of land.