As the Roosevelts made their way down the Ohio River, the landscape around them was changing.  The hills "now entirely disappear, and there is nothing to be seen but an extensive level country," the guidebook said.  When they stopped for the night near what is now Henderson, Kentucky, Nicholas had reason to congratulate himself: the steamboat was loaded with coal from a coal mine he had earlier established at Yellow Banks, Kentucky. 
Little did they know what the morning would bring.

(The New Orleans' location on this day is extrapolated based on her average speed between recorded locations.)