John Halley's journals provide the earliest first-hand accounts of the voyage down the Kentucky, Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. Halley supplies insightful accounts of what became one of Kentucky's major early industries-shipping goods and produce by flatboat to the port of New Orleans-and he does so almost at the birth of that industry, just two years after Gen. James Wilkinson's inaugural trip in 1787. Although rivermen often suffered at the hands of Native Americans and Spanish officials, Halley seems to have gotten along well with everyone he met. He describes every encounter and tells of shooting the rapids at the Falls of Ohio (Louisville), getting stuck on a sandbar, breaking his steering oar, almost losing one of the men in a pile of driftwood, and many other adventures. He was a keen observer and comments on hunting and fishing along the way, local flora and fauna, weather and river conditions, settlements, and notable landmarks. 52 pp, illustrated