employed his former fellow-laborer, John Hanks, and a son of his
step-mother named John Johnston. In the spring of 1831 Lincoln set out
to fulfil his engagement. The floods had so swollen the streams that the
Sangamon country was a vast sea before him. His first entrance into that
county was over these wide-spread waters in a canoe. The time had come
to join his employer on his journey to New Orleans, but the latter had
been disappointed by another person on whom he relied to furnish him a
boat on the Illinois river. Accordingly all hands set to work, and
themselves built a boat on that river, for their purposes. This done,
they set out on their long trip, making a successful voyage to New
Orleans and back."

Mr. Herndon says: "Mr. Lincoln came into Sangamon County down the North
Fork of the Sangamon river, in a frail canoe, in the spring of 1831. I
can see from where I write the identical place where he cut the timbers
for his flatboat, which he built at a little village called Sangamon
Town, seven miles northwest of Springfield. Here he had it loaded with
corn, wheat, bacon, and other provisions destined for New Orleans, at
which place he landed in the month of May, 1831. He returned home in
June of that year, and finally settled in another little village called
New Salem, on the high bluffs of the Sangamon river, then in Sangamon
County and now in Menard County, and about twenty miles northwest of
Springfield."

The practical and ingenious character of Lincoln's mind is shown in the
act that several years after his river experience he invented and
patented a device for overcoming some of the difficulties in the
navigation of western rivers with which this trip had made him
familiar. The following interesting account of this invention is given: