]
198. The first steamboat in the west; the Great Shake.--Four years
later Fulton built a steamboat for the west. In the autumn of 1811
it started from Pittsburg[7] to go down the Ohio River, and then down
the Mississippi to New Orleans. The people of the west had never seen
a steamboat before, and when the Indians saw the smoke puffing out,
they called it the "Big Fire Canoe."
On the way down the river there was a terrible earthquake. In some
places it changed the course of the Ohio so that where there had been
dry land there was now deep water, and where there had been deep water
there was now dry land. One evening the captain of the "Big Fire
Canoe" fastened his vessel to a large tree on the end of an island.
In the morning the people on the steamboat looked out, but could not
tell where they were; the island had gone: the earthquake had carried
it away. The Indians called the earthquake the "Big Shake": it was
a good name, for it kept on shaking that part of the country, and
doing all sorts of damage for weeks.
[Footnote 7: Pittsburg: see map in paragraph 135.]
199. The "Big Fire Canoe" on the Mississippi; the fight between steam
and the Great River; what steamboats did; Robert Fulton's
grave.--When the steamboat reached the Mississippi, the settlers on
that river said that the boat would never be able to go back, because
the current is so strong.
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