The Ohio is the most beautiful river on earth. Its current gentle, waters clear, and bosom smooth and unbroken by rocks and rapids, a single instance only excepted. It is a quarter of a mile wide at Fort Pitt; 500 yards at the mouth of the Great Kanhaway; 1 mile and 25 poles at Louisville; quarter of a mile on the Rapids, 3 or 4 miles below Louisville; half a mile where the low country begins, which is 20 miles above Green River; one and a quarter at the receipt of the Tanissee; and a mile wide at the mouth. Its length, as measured according to its meanders by Captain Hutchings, is as follows:
From Fort Pitt:
| Miles. | |
| To Log's Town, | 18½ |
| Big Beaver Creek, | 10¾ |
| Little Beaver Creek, | 13½ |
| Yellow Creek, | 11¾ |
| Two Creeks, | 21¾ |
| Long Reach, | 53¾ |
| End Long Reach, | 16½ |
| Muskingum, | 25½ |
| Little Kanhaway, | 12¼ |
| Hockhocking, | 16 |
| Great Kanhaway, | 82½ |
| Guiandot, | 43¾ |
| Sandy Creek, | 14½ |
| Sioto, | 48¼ |
| Little Miami, | 126¼ |
| Licking Creek, | 8 |
| Great Miami, | 26¾ |
| Big Bones, | 32½ |
| Kentuckey, | 44¼ |
| Rapids, | 77¼ |
| Low country, | 155¾ |
| Buffalo River, | 64½ |
| Wabash, | 97¼ |
| Big Cave, | 42¾ |
| Shawanee River, | 52½ |
| Cherokee River, | 13 |
| Massac, | 11 |
| Missisipi, | 46 |
| 1,188 |
In common Winter and Spring tides it affords 15 feet water to Louisville, 10 feet to La Tarte's Rapids, 40 miles above the mouth of the Great Kanhaway, and a sufficiency at all times for light batteaux and canoes to Fort Pitt. The Rapids are in latitude 38° 8′. The inundations of this river begin about the last of March, and subside in July. During these, a first rate man of war may be carried from Louisville to New Orleans, if the sudden turns of the river and the strength of its current
