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THE FAMILY ON THE RAFT.
That would unquestionably have been the end of Bob Yancy when he was shot out into the muddy waters of the Elk River, had not Mr.
Richard Keppel Cavendish, variously known as Long-Legged Dick, and Chills-and-Fever Cavendish, of Lincoln County, in the state of Tennessee, some months previously and after unprecedented mental effort on his part, decided that Lincoln County was no place for him.

When he had established this idea firmly in his own mind and in the mind of Polly, his wife, he set about solving the problem of transportation.
Mr.Cavendish's paternal grandparent had drifted down the Holston and Tennessee; and Mr.Cavendish's father, in his son's youth, had poled up the Elk.

Mr.Cavendish now determined to float down the Elk to its juncture with the Tennessee, down the Tennessee to the Ohio, and if need be, down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and keep drifting until he found some spot exactly suited to his taste.

Temperamentally, he was well adapted to drifting.