John Quincy Adams Digital Diary

121 Packet Rob Roy. Ohio Canal Friday. 3. November 1843.

3. VI. Friday

In the course of yesterday and this day we passed through the places named in the margin of Wednesday’s page. We reached Massillon last evening after dark, and it being a considerable place, there were symptoms of a desire on the part of its inhabitants to give me a reception— Several of them came on board the boat. Two or three were introduced to me, but I could not retain their names—we finally persuaded them to let us pass on quietly— As acquaintance became familiar with my fellow passengers; time slip’d away more cheerily. They are all kind and obliging.— The young Ladies very lively and good humoured. The weather has been so harsh and churlish that we have not been tempted to open our windows or to stand on the deck of the boat to see the country around us.— The banks of the canal are so muddy that there is no comfort in walking. We see we are in a beautiful country, with a deep, rich soil; but much of it along the borders of the canal is woodland, and much with the wood cut down, and the stumps standing like the pins of a bowling green, and presenting an aspect rather of desolation than of plenty. In the common dining room and dormitory I made out with no small trouble and inconvenience to write for about two hours in the forenoon of yesterday and this day, and one hour of each afternoon, to write in this diary, but without fully keeping up with the flight of time. We beguile some of our supernumerary hours, with card parties at whist and Eucre a game of which I had never heard before.— I write amidst perpetual interruptions, in the presence of half a dozen strangers, who seem to think me a strange sulky person to spend so much time in writing— The most uncomfortable part of our navigation is caused by the careless and unskilful steering of the boat into and through the locks, which seem to be numberless, upwards of two hundred of them on the canal.— The boat scarcely escapes a heavy thump at entering every one of them— She strikes and grazes along against their sides; and staggers along like a stumbling nag. We passed in the course of last Night through a settlement of Germans called Zoar, a community under an absolute ruler; and this day through Gnadenhutten, originally a Moravian Settlement, but now fallen into the ordinary track of breeding towns— This afternoon the sky cleared off and on approaching a placed called Roscoe, several of us landed and walked about a mile, when we were obliged to return to the boat. W. C. Johnson despatched through the Post-Office a Letter which at my request he had written to my wife, and addressed to her at Washington, advising her of our progress: I find myself utterly unable to write— About 8 this Evening, on taking a momentary look out, I saw a large circle round the moon whence I predicted foul weather for to-morrow morning— Spent the Evening at Eucre, and at 10 retired to my settee.