CHAPTER XII.

A FLAT-BOATMAN’S HORN.

It was in the golden age of whittling that wooden bugles and the Wabash horns were in their prime.

It is hardly an exaggerated figure of speech to say that the United States, with all its power and wealth, has been whittled out of the raw material by our ancestors, with their Barlow knives.

I think I have already told the readers, in one of my other books, that the practice of

Whittling

was not formerly confined to the youth of the country; lawyers, merchants, and statesmen, were adepts in the art, and on the counter of every well-regulated tavern was always to be found a heap of sweet-smelling cedar sticks for the guests to whittle, after meals.

Even as early as Puritan times the jack-knives were busy, and the little conscience-stricken Nathaniel Mathers confesses that “of the manifold sins which then I was guilty of none so sticks upon me as that, being very young, I was _whittling on the Sabbath day_, and for fear of being seen I did it behind the door.”

Times have changed since this poor little chap hid behind the door to whittle a stick, and some of the less conscientious descendants of the Puritans would not dare now to whittle on Sunday, or any other day, for fear of cutting their clumsy, untrained fingers. But the fingers of the readers of this book, I trust, are skilful in the use of a pocket-knife, and for them it will not be a difficult task to make a Wabash, or Flat-boatman’s, wooden horn.

The wooden horn was the particular favorite of the jolly, reckless flat-boatmen. Its soft musical notes sounded especially sweet and mellow in the early morning, when the boatmen were casting loose their cables from their moorings. From Pittsburg to New Orleans the reveille of the boatmen’s horns announced the dawn of another day.

Descriptions of these horns have come to us from our pioneer grandparents, and printed accounts can only be found by rummaging among old Western papers. The Frankfort (Kentucky) _Commonwealth_, in 1836, published some verses extolling the boatman’s music:

Oh, boatman, wind that horn again! For never did the joyous air Upon its lambent bosom bear So wild, so soft, so sweet a strain.

And this horn was made of the same material as the boat. They performed upon a wooden bugle of long conical shape, constructed of small wooden staves, which, according to all accounts, produced sounds of a wonderfully sweet tone. On a beautiful, clear and still morning the echoes of the boatmen’s trumpets, prolonged at a great distance through the neighboring woods and hills which bordered the river, are said to have possessed a charm and enchantment which none can realize but those who have heard them.

The Western boatmen were not the only ones who used

Wooden Bugles,

for there is an instrument of this kind still preserved in Kentucky, and is now, or was a few years ago, in the possession of Mrs. Annie Mayhall, a granddaughter of Captain Robert Collins.

Colonel Richard Johnson made a famous charge in the war of 1812, and Captain Bob Collins sounded the charge on his home-made cedar horn.

If there are any illustrations of this charge, the bugler will no doubt be represented as blowing on the regulation brass instrument; but you must remember, boys, that the artists were not in that fight. Artists have a way of doing things up fine, as may be seen by the pictures of our

Revolutionary Soldiers,

all in regulation uniforms, when the truth is that there was scarcely a uniformed regiment in the army. The grand old fellows fought in their hunting garb, or the dress they wore on the farm, in the store, the church, or the tavern; and while they may not have used wooden horns, it is very probable that many a Continental bugler carried an old cow’s-horn, with which to sound the reveille.

But the bugle which sounded the death-knell of the great Indian chief Tecumseh was

The Old Wooden Horn of Captain Bob Collins.

It was made of two cedar slabs, three-sixteenths of an inch in thickness, and these were trimmed and bent so that when their edges were joined they formed a funnel-shaped instrument which was about four inches in diameter at the bell or larger end, and tapered down to a convenient size at the small end, or mouth-piece. The two cedar slabs were held in place by hoops made of cow’s-horn.

Whether it was a habit acquired in the army, or whether Captain Bob was once a flat-boatman, is not recorded, but certain it is that the doughty Captain always sounded the reveille at sunrise, and it was not until 1864, when death called the old man home, that the neighbors, for miles around, saw the sun rise unheralded by the notes of the quaint instrument.

To make a horn like Captain Bob’s requires nice work in steaming, bending, and joining the cedar slabs, but Captain Bob belonged to the Barlow-knife age, and undoubtedly knew how to use one.

Fortunately for boys less skilful than this old pioneer, our ancestors have furnished us another kind of horn, which any boy can make. The original sketches, from which the accompanying diagrams are drawn, were made for the author by a very old gentleman who was himself once a flat-boatman and used the Wabash horn.

This instrument is known as

The Wabash Horn,

(see illustration), for it was among the boatmen from that river that it was always found.

Since the introduction of the house-boat as a popular summer vacation boat, there is no reason why the Wabash horn should not be rescued from the legends of the West and hung under the eaves of every American boy’s house-boat, to be used to summon the crew, as it was in the good old times before Fulton filled the waters with his steam-boats and the air with their ear-splitting whistles.

The Wabash horn is one of the most primitive affairs possible; it is simply a long box, open at both ends, and differs from an ordinary box in the fact that one end is very much smaller than the opposite end; the big end is the bell of the horn, and the small end is the part you put to your lips.

Among the Flat-boatmen

these horns were made of pine, and sometimes they were as much as eight feet long; but five or six feet will be long enough for any ordinary boy.

Fig. 109 shows a six-foot slab, smoothed and trimmed into proper form. It should be less than a quarter of an inch thick, and made of red-wood, pine, or cedar, which is free from knots, cracks, or blemishes of any kind. Make it four or five inches wide at the big end and two inches wide at the small end, outside measurement. See that the edges are perfectly straight and true; otherwise your horn will leak, and not only be difficult or impossible to blow, but if you do succeed in making a noise with it the notes will be flat and unpleasant. The other three slabs are of the same form as the one described, but to make the openings square two sides must be of dimensions given, and with the other two you must allow for the thickness of the wood, and make them just that much narrower than the first two (Fig. 110).

For a Mouth-piece,

to fit the end of the horn, take a cedar block (Fig. 111) of such dimensions that there will be no risk of splitting it with an auger, and bore a hole through its centre, after which it may be trimmed down to any required dimensions. Next put three sides of your box together and fasten them securely, with small brads.

You can now see the exact form of the small end, and can whittle your cedar mouth-piece (Fig. 112) to fit the little end of the box, and round off the protruding end, as shown in the diagram.

The diagrams of the block and mouth-piece are drawn on a much larger scale than those of the slab and box, that they may be better understood.

With a piece of sand-paper, wrapped around a pine stick, sand-paper the hole in the cedar mouth-piece until it is perfectly smooth. Put the mouth-piece in place, tack on the remaining side to the box, and your Wabash horn is finished.

You can now practise until you learn the bugle-calls, and then hang it under the eaves of your boat, with a just feeling of pride in the knowledge that you are not only a boatman, and a modern wide-awake boy of to-day, but that you lack neither the skill nor the self-reliance of the boy of the day before yesterday.