Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1881 — A Dive tor Life. [ARTICLE]

A Dive tor Life.

Just below Kanawha falls, in West Virginia, is an overhanging rock of immense size jutting out .about one hundred feet over a seething whirlpool and it was once the scene of a remarkable adventure. The Indians were in hot pursuit of. Van Bibber, a settler and a man of distinction in those early times. He was hard pressed, and all access to the river below and above being cut off, he Was driven to this Jutting rock; which E roved to be the jumping off place for im. He stood* on the rock, in full view of the enemy above and below, who yelled like demons at the certainty of his speedy capture. He stood up boldly, and with his rifle kept them at bay. As be stood there he looked across the river, saw his friends—his wife and her babe in her arms—all helpless to render assistance. They stood as if petrified with terror and amazement. She cried at the top of her voice: “Leap into the river and meet me!” Laying her babe on the grass, she seized the oars and sprang into a skiff alone. As she neared the middle of the river, her husband saw the Indians coming in full force yelling like demons. “Wife, wife!” he screamed, “I am coming, drop down a little lower.” With this ho sprang from his crag and descended like an arrow into the water, feet foremost. The wife rested on her oars a moment to see him rise to the surface, the little skiff floating like a cork, bobbing about on the boiling flood. It was an awful moment; it seemed an age to her. Would he ever rise? Her earnnest gaze seemed -to penetrate the depths of the water, and she darted her boat further down the stream. He rose near her: in a moment the boat was alongside him,and she helped him to scramble into it amid a shower of arrows and shot that the baffled Indians poured into them. This daring wife did notspeak a word 1 her husband was more dead than alive, and all depended upon her strength being maintained till they could reach the bank. This they did, Just where she had started, right where the babe still lay, crowing 'and laughing. The men pulled the skiff high on the land, and the wife 1 slowly arose and helped to lift Van Bib per to his feet. He could not walk, but she laid him down by her babe, and then seating herself, she wept wildly, just as any other woman would have done Under the circumstances. That babe is now a grandfather, and that rock iscalled“Van Bibber’s Rock” to this day.