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Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la mdthode. 3y errata ed to }nt me pelure, apon d 1 2 3 32X 1 2 3 4 5 6 ) /3^^ TRAVELS. 6?c. 6fc. ,:=^ '*:% $>^^ ■'%J' f t ■v»r. z**^ ^^i^i 'ly la^ *^j A^ Parti I] me:« AN TRAVELS TO THE WEST OF THE IN THE STATES OF KENTUCKY, AND TENNESSEA, AND BACK TO CHARLESTON, BY THE UPPER CAROLINES; COMPRISING The vwst interesting Details en the present State of Agriculture, AND * THE NATURAL PRODUCE OF THOSE COUNTRIES: TOGETHER WITH Particulars relative to the Commerce that exists between the above- mentioned States, and those situated East of the Mountains and Low Louisiana, UNDERTAKEN, IN THE YEAR 1802> TTNDEIl THE AU3PICW OF His Excellency M. CHAPTAL, Minister of the InterirtlT, By F. a. MICHAUX, MEMBr.R OF THE SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY AT PARIS; CORRES- PONDENT or THE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY IN THE DEPARTMENT or THE SEINE AND OISE. SECOND EDITION, lonuon % PrtKMkrD.N. 8HUR7, Berwick street, Sokss <(k FOR B. CROSBY AND CO. STATIONBRs' COURT J AND J. F. HVGHBS, WI6M0RB STREET^ CAVENDISH SOUARB; 1805. =^1 ^v*? 1$^^ 11 D I CONTENTS. 'f-: ■*— Uii CHAP. I. Departure from Bourdeaux. — Arrival at Charleston.-— Remarks upon the yellow fever — A short description ' of the town of Charleston. — Observations upon seve- ral trees, natives of the old continent, reared in a bo- tanic garden near the city Page ^, CHAP. II. Departure from Charleston for New York. — A short de- scription of the town. — Botanic excursions in New Jersey. — Remarks upon the quercus thictoriay or black oak, and the nut trees of that country,— Departure from New York for Philadelphia. — Abode ,. 13 b VI CONTENTS. m I CHAP. III. Departure from Philadelphia to the western country. — Communications by land in the United States.— Arrival at Lancaster. — Description of the town and its environs. — Departure. — Columbia. — Passage from Susquehannah, York, Dover, Carlisle. — Arrival at Shippensburgh. — Remarks upon the state of agricul- ture during the journey • Page 23 f I CHAP. IV. Departure from Shippensburgh to Strasburgh. — Journey over the Blue Ridges. — New Species of rhododendrum. — Passage over the river Juniata.— -Use of the cones of the magnolia acumitiata. — Arrival at Bedford Court House. — Excesses to which the natives of that part of the country are addicted. — Departure from Bed- ford. — Journey over Alleghany Ridge and Laurel Hill.— Arrival at West Liberty Town 35 it ! ■ CHAP. V. Departure from West Liberty Town to go among the , mountains in search of a shrub supposed to give good oil, a new species of azalea. — Ligonier Valley. — Coal Mines. — Greensburgh. — Arrival at Pittsburgh 47 \i CONTENTS. VU CHAP. VI. Description of Pittsburgh. — Commerce of the Town and adjacent countries with New Orleans. — Construc- tion of large vessels. — Description of the rivers Mo- nongahela and Alleghany. — ^Towns situated on their banks. — Agriculture.— -Maple sugar Page 58 CHAP. VIL Description of the Ohio. — Navigation of that river. — Mr. S. Craft. — ^^fhe object of his travels. — Remarks upon the state of Vermont 68 CHAP. VIII. Departure from Pittsburgh for Kentucky. — Journey by land to Wheeling. — State of agriculture on the route. — West Liberty Town in Virginia. — Wheeling 76 CHAP. IX. Departure from Wheeling for Marietta.— Aspect of the banks of the Ohio. — Nature of the forests. — Extra- ordinary size of several kinds of trees ............. 82 b2 ft CONTENTS. I CHAP. X. Marietta. — Ship building. — Departure for Gallipoli. — Falling in with a Kentucky boat. — Point Pleasant. — The Great Kenhaway Page 8!> 1,1 "I i -, CHAP. XI. Gallipoli. — State of the French colony Scioto. — Alex- andria at the mouth of the Great Scioto. — Arrival at Limestone in Kentucky 98 , , _ CHAP. XII. Fish and shells of the Ohio. — Inhabitants on the banks of the river. — Agriculture. — American emigrant. — Commercial intelligence relative to that part of the United States , \0Q ' , , ,, CHAP. XIII. Limestone. — Route from Limestone to Lexinton. — Washington. — Salt-works at Mays-Iatk. Milles- burgh. — Paris IK) CHAP. XIV. Lexinton. — Manufactories established there. Com- merce. — Dr. Samuel JJrown 1 22 CONTENTS, IX )li.— isant. .-Page 8! > Alex- /a1 at 98 )aiiks It. — r the lOQ n. — llcs- 11(> oni- I 122 CHAP. XV. Departure from Lcxinton. — Culture of the vine at Ken- tucky. — Passage over tlic Kentucky and Dick Rivers. — Departure for Nashcville. — Mulder Hill. — Passage over Green River - 132 CHAP. XVI. Passage over the Barrens, or Meadows — Plantations upon the road. — The view they present. — Plants dis- covered there, — Arrival at Nashcville IH CHAP. XVII. General observations upon Kentucky. — Nature of the soil. — First settlements in the state. — Right of pro- perty uncertain. — Population 155 CHAP. XVIII. Distinction of Estates. — Species of Trees peculiar to each of them. — Ginseng. — Animals in Kentucky 164 CHAP. XIX. Different kinds of culture in Kentucky. — Exportation of colonial produce. — Peach trees, — Taxes "...-- 178 ,'!"' CONTENTS. CHAP. XX. "J . '■; ■ ' • ■. Particulars relative to the manners of the inhabitants of ' ' Kentucky. — Horses and cattle. — Necessity of giving them salt. — Wild Horses caught in the Plains of New Mexico. — Exportation of salt provibions 187 XXI. '**> Nasheville. — Commercial details. — Settlement of the Natches. 19S CHx\P. XXII. Departure for Knox ville. — Arrival at Fort Blount. — Re- marks upon the drying up of the Rivers in the Sum- mer.— Plantations on the road. — Fertility of the soil. — Excursions in a canoe on the river Cumberland 204- CHAP. XXIII. Departure from Fort Blount to West Point, through the Wilderness. — Botanical excursions upon Roaring Ri- ver. — Description of its Banks. — Saline productions found there. — Indian Cherokecs. — Arrival at Knox- ville 209 &* CONTENTS. Xt tsof ving 187 CHAP. XXIV. KnoxvlUe. — Commercial intelligence. — ^Trees that grow in the environs. — Converting some parts of the Mea- dows into Forests^ — River Nolachuky. — Greensville. Arrival at Jonesborough 220 the 198 Re- Mm- oil. ,. 204 the R.i- )ns )X- . 209 * CHAP. XXV. General observations on the state of Tennessea. — Rivers Cumberland and Tennessea. — What is meant by East Tennessea or Holston, and West Tennessea or Cum- berland. — First settlements in West Tennessea. — Trees natives of that country 229 CHAP. XXVI. Different kinds of produce of West Tennessea. — Domes- tic manufactories for cottons encouraged by the Legis- lature of this State. — Mode of letting out Estates by some of the Emigrants , 239 CHAP. XXVII. East Tennessea, or Holston. — Agriculture. — Popula- tion. — Commerce. .« - 24^ J ^ (.1* xu CONTENI'S. i CHAP. XXVIII. Departure from Jonesborough for Morganton, In North Carolina. — Journey over Iron Mountains. — Sojourn on the mountains. — Journey over the Blue Ridges and Linneville Mountains. — Arrival at Morganton 25! CHAP. XXIX. General observations upon this part of the Chain m the Alleghanies. — Salamander which is found in the tor- rents. — Bear huntuig - 25S CHAP. XXX. Morganton. — Departure for Charleston. — Lincolnton. — Chester. — Winesborough. — Columbia. — A spect of the Country on the Road. — Agriculture, &c. &c. - - 265 CHAP. XXXL General observations on the Carolinas and Georgia. — Agriculture and produce peculiar to the upper part of these states - - 276 CHAP. XXXII. Low part of the Carolines and Georgia. — Agriculture. — Population. — Arrival at Charleston 285 North 3Journ es and 251 ^the le tor- 258 i TRAVELS, ^c. ^c. CHAP. I. ton. — ■ ect of &c... 265 gia.— )art of 276 ire.- - 285 i ^.'■iS Departure from Bordeaux. — Arrival at Charleston. — Remarks upon the yellow fever. — A short de- scription of the town of Charleston. — Observations upon several trees, natives of the old continent, reared in a botanic garden near the city. ..:.:.•:!;. ^ • ' • ' .'. •■ Charleston, in south Carolina, being tlie first place of my destination, I went to Bourdeaux as one of the ports of France that trades most with the southern parts of the United States, and where there are most commonly vessels from the different points of North America. I embarked the 24th of s 2 li'l L^.: September 1801, on board the John and Francis, commanded by the same captain with whom I re- turned to Europe several years ago. A fortnight after our departure we were overtaken by a calm, within sight of the A9orian Islands. Saint George's and Graciosa were those nearest to us, where we clearly distinguished a few houses, which appeared built with stone and chalk ; and the rapid declivity of the land divided by hedges, which most likely se- parated the property of different occupiers. The major part of these islands abound with stupendous mountains, in various directions, and beyond which the summit of Pico, in a pyramidical form rises majestically above the clouds, which were then illumined by the rays of the setting sun. A gentle breeze springing up, we soon lost sight of that charming prospect, and onthc Qth of October fol- lowing entered the Charleston roads, in company with two other vessels which had left Bourdeaux, the one eighteen days, and the other a month before us. The pleasure that we felt on discovering the shore was very soon abated. The pilot informed us that the yellow fever had made dreadful ravages at Charleston, and wns still carrying off a great number of the inhabitants. This intelligence alarmed the ■'■4 I 8 Francis, m I re- brtnight a calm, jcorge's /here we appeared declivity likely se- •s. The apendous beyond ical form ch were sun. A ht of that Itober fol- company aux, the efore us. he si lore us that agCvS at number med the passengers, who were fourteen in number, the most of whom had either friends or relatives in the town. Every one was fearful of learning some disastrous news or other. The anchor was no sooner weighed than those who had never been accustomed to warm countries were escorted by their friends to the Isle of Sullivan. This island is situated about seven miles from Charleston. Its dry and parched-up soil is almost bereft of vegetation ; but as it is exposed to the breeze of the open sea, the air is generally cool and pleasant. Within these few years, since that bilious and inflammatory disorder, commonly known by the name of the yellow fever, shows itself regu- larly every summer at Charleston, a great number of the inhabitants and planters, who took refuge in the town to escape the intermittent fevers which attack seven-tenths of those resident in the country, have built houses in that island, where they, sojourn from the early part of July till the first frost, which usually takes place about the 15th of November. A few of the inhabitants keep boarding-houses, where they receive those who have no settled residence. It has been remarked that foreigners, newly arrived from Europe or the states of North America, and B 2 -:^ ^ .[ Ill ''I f I; . I who go immediately to reside in this island, are ex- empt from the yellow fever. However powerful these considerations were, they could not induce me to go and pass my time in such a dull and melancholy abode ; upon which I refused the advice of my friends, and staid in the town. I had nearly been the victim of my obstinacy, having been, a few days after, attacked with the first symp- toms of this dreadful malady, under which I laboured upward of a month. . The ybllow fever varies every year according to the intenseness of the heat ; at the same time the ob- servation has not yet been forcible enough to point out the characteristic signs by which they can dis- cover whether it will be more or less malignant in the summer. The natives are not so subject to it as foreigners, eight- tenths of whom died the year of my arrival ; and whenever the former are attacked with it, it is always in a much less proportion. It has been observed that during the months of Julys, August, September, and October, when this disorder is usually most prevalent, the persons who leave Charleston for a fev/ days only, are, on their return to town, much more susceptible of patching it ..*' I ■' iU are ex- ^re, they 1 in such [ refused town. I ', having st symp- labourcd ng to the 2 the ob- to point can dis- ^nant in t to it as ear of my K.ed with onths of ?hen this ons who on their itching it 4 m than those who staid at home. The natives of Upper Carolina, two or three hundred miles distant, are as subject to it as foreigners ; and those of the environs are not always exempt from it : whence it results that during one third of the year all communications are nearly cut off between the country and town, whither they go but very reluctantly, and seldom or ever sleep there. The supply of provisions at that time is only made by the negroes, who are never subject to the fever. On my return to Charleston in the month of October 1802, from my travels over the western part of the country, I did not meet, on the most populous road, for the space of three hundred miles, a single traveller that was either going to town or returning from it ; and in the houses where I stopped there was not a person who conceived his business of that importance to oblige him to go there while the season lasted. .. From the 1st of November till the month of May the country affords a picture widely different ; every thing resumes new life ; ,trade is re-animated ; the suspended communications re-commence ; the roads are covered with waggons, bringing from all quar- ters the produce of the exterior; an immense num- ber of carriages and sin'gle-liorse chaises roll rapidly > :. ;»;. \ \^ a along, and keep up a continual correspondence be- tween the city and the neighbouring plantations, where the owners spend the greatest part of the season. In short, the commercial activity renders Charleston just as lively as it is dull and melan- choly in the summer. It is generally thought at Cliarleston that the yel- low fever which rages there, as well as at Savannah, every summer, is analogous to that which breaks out in the colonies, and that it is not contagious : but this opinion is not universally adopted in the northern cities. It is a fact, that wlienever the dis- ease is prevalent at New York and Philadelphia, the natives are as apt to contract it as foreigners, and that they remove as soon as they learn that their neighbours are attacked with it. Notwithstanding they have a very valuable advantage that is not to be found at Charleston, which is, that the country places bordering on Philadelphia and New York are pleasant and salubrious ; and that at two or three miles' distance the inhabitants are in perfect safety, though even the disorder committed the greatest ra- vages in the above-mentioned towns. I took the liberty to make this slight digression, for the informtion of those who might have to go to the ii 'ii ence be- :■■" mtations. y t of the renders (1 melan- the yel- •i' avannah, 1 breaks itagious : '^^ d in the the dis- ^4 Dhia, the 1 lers, and lat their standing lot to be country Tork are or three t safety, itest ra- ion, for to the .-■1 southern parts of the United States that it is dan- gerous to arrive there in the months of July, Au- gust, September, and October. I conceived, like many others, that the using of every means necessary to prevent the effervescence of the blood was infol- libly a preservative against this disorder ; but every year it is proved by experience that those who have pursued that mode of living, which is certainly the best, are not all exempt from sharing the fate of those who confine themselves to any particular kind of regimen. . Charleston is situated at the conflux of the rivers Ashley and Coo})er. The spot of ground that it oc- cupies is about a mile in length. From the middle of the principal street the two rivers might be clearly seen, were it not for a public edifice built upon the banks of the Cooper, which intercepts the view. The most populous and commercial part of the town is situated along tlie Ashley. Several ill-constructed quays project into the river, to facilitate the trading vessels taking in their cargoes. These quays are formed with the trunks of palm trees fixed together, and laid out in squares one above the other. Expe- rience has shown that the trunks of these trees, al- though of a very spungy nature, lie buried in the .^AJifiLi^li^Af..'! f water many years without decaying ; upon which account they are generally preferred for these pur- poses to any other kind of wood in the country. The streets of Charleston are extremely wide, hut not paved, consequently every time your foot slips from a kind of brick pavement before the doors, you are immerged nearly ancle-deep in sand. The rapid circulation of the carriages, which, proportionately speaking, arc far more considerable here in number than in any other part of America, continually grinds this moving sand, and pulverizes it in such a manner, that the most gentle wind fills the shops with it, and renders it very disagreeable to foot passengers. At regular distances pumps supply the inhabitants with water of such a brackish taste, that it is truly asto- nishing how foreigners can grow used to it. Two- thirds of the houses are built with wood, the rest with brick. According to the last computation, made in 1803, the population, comprising foreigners, amounted to 10,<590 whites andQOoO slaves. -" •'.". r Strangers that arrive at Charleston, or at any town in the United States, find no furnished hotels nor rooms to let for their accommodation, no coffee-houses where they can regale themselves. The whole of this is replaced by boarding-houses, where every thing ne- 9 on which these pur- itry. The , but not slips from , you are 'he rapid rtionatcly 1 number lly grinds 1 manner, :h it, and ^ers. At ants with uly asto- Two- the rest putation, •feigners, my town otels nor !e-houses le of this hing ne- cessary is provided. In Carolina you pay, at these receptacles, from twclveio twenty piastres per week. This enormous sum is by no means proportionate to the price of provisions. For example, beef very sel- dom exceeds sixpence a pound. Vegetables arc dearer there than meat. Independent of the articles of consumption that the country supplies, the port of Cliarleston is generally full of small vessels from Boston, Newport, New York, and Phi- ladelphia, and from all the little intermediate ports, which are loaded with flour, salt provisions, pota- toes, onions, carrots, beet-roots, apples, oats, Indian corn, and hay. Planks and building materials com- prize another considerable article of importation; and although these different kinds of produce are brought from three to four hundred leagues, they are not so dear and of a better quality than those of their own growth. In winter the markets of Charleston are well stocked with live sea-fish, which are brought from the northern part of the United States in vessels so constructed as to keep them in a continual supply of water. The ships engaged in this kind of traffic load, in return, with rice and cottons, the greater part of which is re-exported into Europe, the freight ;;* .;vi»-. "Vkv- "i^diiUt 10 III •being always higher in the northern th.ift in the southern states. The cotton wool that they keep in the north for their own consumption is more than sufficient to supply the manufactories, being but very few : the overplus is disposed of in the country places, where tli women fabricate coarse cottons for the use of their families. Wood is extravagantly dear at Charleston ; it costs from forty to fifty shillings a cord, notwillistand- ing forests, which arc almost boundless in extent, begin at six miles, and even at a less distance from the town, and the conveyance of it is facilitated by the two rivers at the conflux of which it is situated j on which account a great number of the inhabitants burn coals that are brought from England. As soon as I recovered from my illness I lefl Charleston, and went to reside in a small plantation about ten miles from the town, where my father had formed a botanic garden. It was there he collected and cultivated, with the greatest care, the plants that he found in the long and painful travels that his ardent love for science had urged him to make, almost every year, in the difterent quarters of America. Ever animated with a desire of serving the country he was in, he conceived that the climate of South Carolina M Jl 1 In the 1 keep in ore than uing but : country ; cottons ; it costs ithstand- 1 extent, ice from litated by situated j habitants ss I left antation her had cted and that he is ardent ost every Ever yr he was Carolina must be favourable to the culture of several useful vegetables of the old continent, and made a memo- rial of them, whic h he read to the Agricultural So- ciety at Charleston. A ffw liappy essays confirmed him in his opinion, but his return to Europe did not permit him to continue his former attempts. On my arrival at Carolina I found in this garden a su- perb collection of trees and plants that had survived almost a total neglect for nearly the space of four years. I likewise found there a great number of trees belonging to the old continent, that my father had planted, some of which were in the most flourishing state. I principally remarked two ginkgo bilobas, that had not been planted above seven years, and which were then upward of thirty feet in height ; Keveral sterculia platanifoliay which had yielded seed upward of six years ; in short, more than a hundred and fifty mimosa iUihrissin, the first plant of which came from Europe about ten inches in diameter. I set several before my return to France, this tree being at that time very much esteemed for its mag-» nificent flowers. The Agricultural Society at Caro- lina are now in possession of this garden : they in- tend keeping it in order, and cultivating the useful vegetables belonging to the old continent, which, C2 12 ft : from the analogy of the dimate, promise every suc- cess. I employed the remainder of the autumn in making collections of seed, which I sent to Europe ; and the winter, in visiting the different parts of Low Carolina, and in reconnoitring the places where, the year following, I might make more abundant har- vests, and procure the various sorts that I had not been able to collect during the autumn. On this account I must observe, that in North Americaj and perhaps more so than in Europe, there are plants that only inhabit certain places ; whence it happens that a botanist, in despite of all his zeal and activity, does not meet with them for years ; whilst another, led by a happy chance, finds them in his first excursion. I shall add, in favour of those who wish to travel over the southern part of the United States for botanical researches, that the epoch of the flower season begins in the early part of February ; the time for gathering the seeds of herba- ceous plants in the month of August ; and on the 1st of October for that of forest trees. I I J S5' if I 13 rery sue- itumn in Europe ; :s of Low here, the danl har- [ had not in North >pe, there ; whence ill his zeal or years ; nds them r of those art of the that the •ly part of of herba- id on the CHAP. II. D^parturefrom Charleston for Neiv York, — A ihort description of the toivn. — Botanic excursions in New Jersey. — Remark upon the Quercus tinctoria or Black Oak, andthe^ut trees of that country/. — Departure from Neiv York for Philadelphia, — Abode, IN the spring of the year 1 802 I left Charleston to go to New York, where I arrived after a passage of ten days. Trade is so brisk between the northern and southern states, that there is generally an oppor- tunity at Charleston to get into any of the ports of the northern states you wish. Several vessels have rooms, tastefully arranged and commodiously fitted up, for the reception of passengers, who every year go in crowds to reside in the northern part of the United States, during the unhealthy season, and re- turn to Charleston in the month of November fol- lowing. You pay for the passage from forty to fifty 14 r. i 11 piastres. Its duration varies according to the weather. It is generally about ten days, but it is sometimes prolonged by violent gusts of wind which casually spring up on doubling Cape Hatras. New York, situated at the conflux of the rivers from the east and north, is much nearer to the sea tlliUi* Philadelphia^ Its iiarbour being safe, and of an Qa&y, access in all seasons, makes it very advan- tageous totlie ciby,, and adds incessantly to its ex- tent, riches, and population. The town consists of more than 50,000 souls, among whom are reckoned but a very small number of negroes. Living is not , so dear there as at Charleston ; one may board for eight or ten piastres a week. During my stay at New York I frequently had an opportunity, of seeing Dl*. Hosack, who was held in the. highest reputation as a professor of botany. He vva'i.at that time employed in establishing a. botanical gardeni where he intended giving a regular course of lectures. This garden is a few miles from the town : the. spot of ground is well adapted, especially for plants that require a peculiar aspect or situation, Mr. Hosack is the physician belonging to the hospital and prison, by virtue of whicli he permitted me to . accompany him in one of his visits, and. I had by that '!*/ •>i» f -1 ai tl I to tlie but it is ncl which he rivers the sea i, and of y advan- 3 its ex- onsists of reckoned ng is not board for y had an ,s lield in ,ny. He Ibotanical ourse of le town : ially for ituation. hospital me to by that 15 means an opportunity of seeing those two establish- ments. The hospital is well situated, the buildings are extensive, the rooms lofty and well aired ; but the beds appeared to me very indifferent ; they are composed of a very low bedstead, edged with board about four inches wide, and furnished with a mat- tress, or rather a pallias, filled with oat straw, not very thick, coarse brown linen sheets, and a rug. The prison is remarkable for the decorum, the ar- rangement, the cleanliness that reigns there, and more especially for the willingness with which the prisoners seem to work at the differc nt employments allotted for t!hem. Each seemed to be tasked according to his abili- ties or profession ; some were making shoes, and others manufacturing cut-nails. These nails, made by the help of a machine, have no point, and cannot be used for the same purposes as others wrought in the usual way ; notwithstanding, a great many people prefer them for nailing on roofs of houses. They pretend that these nails have not the inconvenience of starting out by reason of the weather, as it fre- quently happens with others ; as upon the roofs of old houses a great number of nails may be seen 16 ii«l which do not appear to have been driven in more than half or one-third of their length. During my stay at New York, I took a botanical excursion into New Jersey, by the river side, towards the north. This part of New Jersey is very uneven ; the soil is hard and flinty, to judge of it by the grass which I saw in places pulled up. Large rocks, of a chalky nature, as if decayed, appeared even with the ground upon almost all the hills. Notwithstanding, we observed different species of trees ; among others, a variety of the red oak, the acorn of which is nearly round ; the white oak, quercus alba ; and, among the different species or varieties of nut trees^ ih^ ju^lans tomentosa, or mocker-nut, and the juglans minima^ or pig-nut. In the low and marshy places, where it is overflowed almost all the year, we found the/w^- lans'hickery f or shell- barked hickery ; the quercus prinus aquaticay which belongs to the series of pru- mis, and is not mentioned in the " History of Oaks*,^' The valleys are planted with ash trees, palms, cornus jlorida's, poplars, and quercus tinctorid'sy knowi> in the country by the name of the black oak. The quercus tinctoria i$ very common in all the ".fi ■i 4 * The History of Oaks discovered in America by A. Michaux. 17 en in more a botanical de, towards ;ry uneven ; >y the grass rocks, of a m with the thstanding, ong others, :h is nearly , among the ihejuglans ns minima, !S, where it id the yug* he quercus •ies of pru- of Oaks*r Ims, cornus , knowi> in • L in all the \. Michaux. northern states ; it is likewise found to the west of the Alleghany mountains, but is not so abundant in the low part of Georgia and the two Carolinas. The leaves of the lower branches assume a different form from those of the higher branches ; the latter are more sharp and pointed. The plate given in the History of Oaks only represents the leaves of the lower branches, and the shape of them wlu^n quite young. Amid these numerous species and varieties of oaks, the leaves of which vary, as to form, ac- cording to their age, which generally confounds them with each other ; notwithstanding, there are certain charactcristip signs by which the quercus tinctoria may be always known. In all the other species the stalk, fibres, and leaves themselves are of a lightish green, and towards the autumn their colour grows darker, and changes to a reddish hue ; on the con- trary, the stalk, fibres and leaves of the black oak are of a yellowish cast, and apparently very dry; again, the yellow grows deeper towards the approach of winter. This remark is sufficient not to mistake them ; notwithstanding, there is another still more positive, by which this species may be recognised in winter, when even it has lost its leaves ; that is, by the bitter taste of its bark, and the yellow colour %■ % 18 which the spittle assumes when chewed. The bark of the querais cincrea has nearly the same property ; and, finding this, I made an observation of it to Dr. Bancroft, who was at Charleston in the winter of 1 802. Upon the whole, it is impossible to be mis- taken concerning these two kinds of oaks ; for the latter grows only in the dryest parts of the southern states. It is very rarely more than four inches in diameter, and eighteen feet in height ; its leaves are lanceolated : on the other hand, the quercus tinctoria grows upwards of eighty feet in height, and its leaves are in several lobes, and very long. Among the species of acorns that I sent over from the northern states of America to France, and those which I brought with me in the spring of 1803, were some of the black oak, which have come up very abundantly in the nursery at Trianon. Mr. Cels has upwards of a hundred young plants of them in his garden. . The species and variety of nut trees natural to the United States are also extremely numerous, and might be the subject of a useful and interesting mo- nography ; but that work would never be precisely accurate provided the different qualities of those trees are not studied in the country itself. I hav^; sCCl . Vt -I 10 The bark 3 property ; jn of it to the winter I to be mis- LS ; for the ic southern r inches in s leaves are lis tinctoria id its leaves over from , and those of 1803, come up Mr. Cels f them in -iral to the rous, and ;sting mo- precisely of those I have u4 seen some of those nut trees which, by the leaves and blossom, appeared of the same species, when the shells and nuts seemed to class them differently. I have, on the contrary, seen others where the leaves and blossoms were absolutely different, and the fruit perfectly analagous. It is true there are some, where the fruit and blossom are systematically regular at the same time, but very few. This numerous species of nut trees is not confined to the United States ; it is remarked in every part of North America from the northern extremity of the United States as far as Mississipi ; that is to say, an extent of more than eight hundred leagues from north to south, and five hundred from east to west. I brought over with me some new nuts of six different species, which have come up exceedingly well, and which appear not to have been yet described. I left New York the 8th of June 1 802, to go to Philadelphia ; the distance is about a hundred miles. The stages make this journey some in a day, others in a day and a half ; the fare is five piastres each person. At the taverns where the stages stop they pay one piaster for dinner, half one for supper or breakfast, and the same for a bed. The space of ground that separates the two cities is completely B 2 20 cleared, and the farms are contiguous to each other. About nine miles from New York is a place called Newark, a pretty little town situated in New Jersey. The fields that encompass it are planted with apple trees ; the cyder tliat is made there is accounted the best in the United States ; however, I conceived it ])y far inferior to that of Saint Lo, Coutance, or Bayeux. Among the other small towns by the road side, Trenton seemed worthy of attention. Its situ- ation upon the Delaware, the beautiful tract of coun- try that surrounds it, must render it a most delight- ful place of abode. Philadelphia is situated upon the Delaware, a hun- i^id miles distant from the sea ; at this period the most extensive, the handsomest, and most populous city of the United States. In my opinion, there is not one upon the old continent built upon so regular a plan. The streets cut each other at right angles, and are from forty to fifty feet in breadtli, except the middle one, which is twice as broad. The market is built in this street, and is remarkable for its extent and extreme cleanliness ; it is in the centre of the town, and occupies nearly one-third of its length. The streets are paved commodiously before the houses with brick; pumps erected on both sides, about '21 each other, place called "lew Jersey, with apple ;ounted the :onceived it !outance, or by the road 1. Its situ- ict of coun- ost delight- 'are, a hun- period the st populous )n, there is I so regular ight angles, except the e market is r its extent itre of the its length. before the sides, about ■aS i fifty yards distant from each other, afford nn abun- dant supply of water; upon the top of each is a brilliant lamp. Several streets are planted with Italian po[)lars of a most beautiful growth, whick makes the houses appear elegantly rural. The population of Pliil'idelphia is always on the in- crease; in 1749, there were eleven thousand inhabit- ants ; in 1785, forty thousand ; and now the number is computed to be about seventy thousand. The few Negroes that are there are free, the greatest part of whom go out to service. Provisions are not quite so dear at Philadelphia as New York ; on which account the boarding houses do not charge more than from six to ten piastres per week. You never meet any poor at Philadelphia, not a creature wearing the aspect of misery in his face ; that distressitig spec- tacle, so common in European cities, is unknown in America; love, industry, the want of sufficient hands, the scarcity of workmanship, an active commerce, property, are the direct causes that contend against the introduction of beggary, whether in town or country. During my stay at Philadelphia, I had an opportu- nity of seeing the Rev. Dr. Collin, minister of the 3wedish church, ^nd president of the Philosophical ( 22 Society; Mr. John Vaughan, the secretary; Messrs. Piles, John and William Bortram. These different gentlemen had formerly been particularly acquainted with my father, and I received from them every mark of attention and respect. Mr. Piles has a beautiful cabinet of natural history. The legislature of Pen- sylvania have presented him with a place to arrange it in ; that is the only encouragement he has received. He is continually employed in enriching it by in- creasing the number of his correspondents in Europe, as well as in the remote parts of the United States ; still, except a bison, I saw nothing in his collection but what may be found in the Museum gx Paris. The absence of Mr. W. Hamilton deprived me of the pleasure of seeing him ; notwithstanding, I went into his magnificent garden, situated upon the borders of the Schuylkill, about four miles from Philadelphia. His collection of exotics is immense, and remarkable for plants trom New Holland ; all the trees and shrubs of the United States, at least those that could stand the winter at Philadelphia, after being once removed from their native soil ; in short, it would be almost impossible to find a more agreeable situation than the residence of Mr. W. Hamilton. M. '9. 4 r; Messrs. ; different icquainted very mark I beautiful e of Pen- :o arrange ; received, it by in- ri Europe, d States; collection ^aris. rived me anding, I upon the les from mmense, and ; all at least idelphia, soil ; in J a more Mr. W. ■i%. I vA <23 CHAP. III. Departure from Philadelphia to the JVestern Country. -—Communications by land in the United States.— ^ Arrival at Lancaster, — Description of the town and its environs. — Departure. — Columbia. — Passage from Susquehannah, York, Dover, Carlisle. — Arri- val at Shippensburgh. — Remarks upon the state of agriculture during the journey, THE states of Kentucky, Tennessea, and Ohio comprise that vast extent of country known in Ame- rica by the name of the Western Country. Almost all the Europeans who have published observations upon the United States, have been pleased to say, according to common report, that this part of the country is very fertile ; but tiicy have never entered into the least particulars. It is true that, to reach these new settlements, one U obliged to travel over a considerable tract of uninhabited country, and that m il ■ii 34 those jouruics arc tccliims, painful, and aflbrd notliing very interesting to travellers wlio wish to describe the niatnierft of the people who reside in the town or most populous parts ; but as natural liistory, and more especially vegetable productions, witli the state of agriculture, were the chief object of my researches ; my business was to avoid the parts most known, in order to visit those which had been less explored ; conscfjuently, I resolved to undertake the journey to that remote and almost isolated part of the country. I had nearly two thousand miles to travel over be- fore my return to Charleston, where I was to be absolutely about the beginning of October. My journey had likewise every appearance of being re- tarded by a thousand common-place obstacles, which is either impossible to foresee, or by any means pre- vent. These considerations, however, did not stop me; accordingly I fixed my departure from Phila- delphia on the 27th of June 1802 : I had not the least motive to proceed on slowly, in order to collect observations already confirmed by travellers who had written before me on that subject ; this very reason induced me to take the most expeditious means for the purpose of reaching Pittsburgh, situated at the extremity of Ohio j in consequence of which I took ■^ ^.-1 26 d nothing iscribc the n\ or most and more le state of sscarchcs ; known, in explored ; journey to ic country, el over be- was to be ober. My f being re- cles, which neans pre- id nut stop "rom Phila- id not the to collect s who had ery reason means for ed at the lich I took the stage • at Plnladelphia, that goes to Shippcns- burgh by Lancaster, York, and Carlisle. Shippens- burgb, pbout one lumdred and forty miles from Phi- ladelphia, is the farthest place that the stages go to n})on tliat road. It is • L'ckoned sixty miles from Philadelj)hia to Lancaster, where I arrived the same day in the after- noon. The road is kept in good repair by the means of turnpikes, fixed at a regular distance from each other. Nearly the whole of the way the houses are almost close together; every proprietor to his enclosure. Throughout the United States all the land that is cultivated is fenced in, to keep it from the cattle and quadrupeds of every kind that the inhabitants leave the major part of I he year in the woods, which in that respect are free. Near towns or villages these • Till the year 1802, the stages that set out at Philadelphia UiJ not go farther South than to Petersburg in Virginia, which is about three hundred miles from Philadelphia ; but in the month of March of that year, a new line of correspondence wa? formed between the latter city ar.d Charleston. The journey is about a fortnight, the distance fifteen hundred miles, and the fiire tifty piastres. There are stages also between Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, as well as between Charleston and Savannah, m Georgia^ so that from Boston to Savannah, a distance of twelve hundred miles, persons may travel by the stages. E ad iJi iiii-i ■■V* enclosures are made with posts, fixed in the ground about twelve feet from each other, containing five mortises, at the distance of eight or nine inches, in which are fitted long spars about four or five inches in diameter, similar to the poles used by builders for making scaffolds. The reason of their enclosing thus is principally through economy, as it takes up but very little wood, which is extremely dear in the en- virons of the Northern cities; but in the interior of tile country, and in the Southern states, the enclo- sures are made with pieces of wood of equal length, placed one above the other, disposed in a zig-zag form, and supported by their extremities, which cross and interlace each other ; the enclosures ap- pear to be about seven feet in height. In the lower part of the Carolines they are made of fir ; in the other parts of the country, and throughout the North, they are comprised of oak and walnut-tree ; they are said to last about five and twenty years when kept in good repair. The tract of country we have to cross, before we get to Lancaster, is exceedingly fertile and productive ; the fields are covered with wheat, rye, and oats, which is a proof that the soil is better than that between New York and Philadelphia. The inns are very ■e * * a he ground aining five inches, in ive inches Liilders for osing thus es up but in the en- interior of the enclo- al length, a zig-zag 2S, which jsures ap- the lower r ; in the le North, ee ; they irs when re we get •ductive ; s, which between ire very m 27 numerous on the road ; in almost all of them they speak German. My fellow travellers being continu- ally thirsty, made the stage stop at every inn to drink a glass or two of grog. This beverage, which is generally used in the United States, is a mixture of brandy and water, or rum and water, the proportion of which depends upon the person's taste. Lancaster is situated in a fertile and well-cultivated plain. The town is built upon a regular plan ; the houses, elevated two stories, are all of brick ; the two principal streets are paved as at Philadelphia. The population is from four to five thousand inhabi- tants, almost all of German origin, and various sects ; each to his particular church ; that of the Roman Catholics is the least numerous. The inhabitants are for the most part armourers, hatters, saddlers, and coopers ; the armourers of Lancaster have been long esteemed for the manufacturing of rifle-bar- relled guns, the only arms that are used by the inha- bitants of the interior part of the country, and the Indian nations that border on the frontiers of the United States. At Lancaster I formed acquaintance with Mr. MuJhenberg, a Lutheran minister, who, for twenty years past, had applied himself to botany. He shewed £ 2 «ii3iil ifll { 28 me the manuscript concerning a Flora Lancastrieri'- sis. The number of the species described were up- wards of twelve hundred. Mr. Muihenberg is very communicative, and more than once he expressed to me the pleasure it would give him to be on terms of intimacy with the French botanists ; he corresponds regularly with Messrs. Wilde now and Smith. I met at Lancaster Mr. W. Hamilton, whose magnificent garden I had an opportunity of seeing near Philadel- phia. This amateur was very intimate with my father; and I can never forget the marks of benevo- lence that I received from him and Mr. Muihenberg, as well as the concern they both expressed for the success of the long journey I had undertaken. * On the 27th of June I set out from Lancaster fof Ship[iensburgh. There were only four of us in the stage, which was fitted up to hold twelve passengers. Columbia, situated upon the Susquehannah, is the first town that we arrived at ; it is composed of about fifty houses, scattered here and there, and almost all built with wood ; at this place ends the turnpike road. It is not useless to observe here, that in the United States they give often the name of town to a group of seven or eight houses, and that the mode of constructing them is not the same everywhere. Ajt otll th( wo< of age. •^8 fCincastritn* ?d were up- berg is very X pressed to on terms of :orresponds ith. I met nagnificent ir Philadel- ■ with my of benevo- tilhenberg, ed for the en. ncaster fof us in the assengers. is the first iboiit fifty 5t all built road, le United a group mode of lere. At 29 Piiiladelphiu the houses are built with brick. In the other towns and country places that sun-ound them, the half, and even frequently the whcle, is built with wood ; but at places within seventy or eighty miles of the sea, in the central and southern states, and again more particularly in those situated to the West- ward of the Alleghany Mountains, one third of the inhabitants reside in Jog houses. These dwellings are made with the trunks of trees, from twenty to thirty feet in length, about five inches diameter, placed one upon another, and kept up by notches cut at their extremities. The roof is formed with pieces of similar length to those that compose the body of the house, but not quite so thick, and gradually sloped on each side. Two doors, which often supply the place of windows, are made by sawing away a part of the trunks that form the body of the house ; the chimney, always placed at one of the extremities, is likewise made with the trunks of trees of a suitable length ; the back of the chimney is made of clay, about six inches thick, which sej)nr:!tes the fire from the wooden walls. Notwithstanding this want of precaution, fires very seldom happen in the country places. The space between these trunks of trees is filled up with clay, but so very carelessly, that the u 1-' 'I • ■ iiiil ill!; 30 L'ght may be seen through in every part ; in conse- quence of which these huts are exceedingly cold in winter, notwithstanding the amazing quantity of wood that is burnt. The doors move upon wooden hinges, and the greater part of them have no locks. In the night time they only push them to, or fasten tiiem with i wooden peg. " Four or five days are sufficient for two men to finish one of these houses, in which not a nail is used. Two great beds receive the wihole family. Jt frequently happens that in sum- «>er the children sleep upon the ground, in a kind of rug. The floor is raised from one to two feet above the surface of the ground, and boarded. They ge- nerally make use of feather beds, or feathers alone, and not marttresses. Sheep being very scarce, the wool is very dear ; at the same time they reserve it to make stockings. The clothes belonging to the fa- mily are hung up round the room, or suspended upon a long pole. At Columbia the Susquehannah is nearly a quar- ter of a mile in breadth. We crossed it in a ferry- boat. At that time it had so little water in it, that we could easily see the bottom. The banks of this river were formed by lofty and majestic hills, and the bosom of it is strewed with little islands^ which II 31 in conse- [ly cold in luantity of on wooden no locks. , or fasten 5 days are se houses, sds receive lat in sum- 1 a kind of feet above They ge- tiers alone, carce, the eserve it to to the fa- nded upon ly a quar- in a ferry- in it, that ks of this hills, and dsj which seem to divide it into several streams. Some of them do not extend above five or six acres at most, and still they are as lofty as the surrounding hills. Their irregularity, and the singular forms that they present, render this situation picturesque and truly remarkable, more especially at that season of the year, when the trees were in full vegetation. About a mile from Susquehannah I observed an annona triloba, the fruit of which is tolerably good, although insipid. When arrived at maturity it is nearly the size of a common i^gg. According to the testimony of Mr. Mulhenberg this shrub grow* ' in the environs of Philadelphia. About twelve miles from Columbia is a little toww called York, the houses of which are not go strag- gling as many others, and are principally built with brick. The inhabitants are computed to be upward of eighteen hundred, most of them of Germatt ori- gin, and none speak English. About $i* ftiiles from York we passed through Dover^ compos€id of IWetttf' ^ or thirty log-houses, erected here artd there. The stage stopped at the house of one M^Lo^, t^hd ^ keeps a miserable inn fifteen miles from York. That day we travelled only thirty or forty i»ile$. Inns are very numerous in the United S^ei, m4 js0 I 32 especially in the little towns ; yet almost everywhere, except in the principal towns, they are very bad, notwithstanding rum, brandy, and whiskey * are in plenty. In fact, in houses of the above descrip- tion all kinds of spirits are considered the most ma- terial, as they generally meet with great consump- tion. Travellers wait in common till the family go to rineals. At breakfast they make use of very indif- ferent tea, and coftee still worse, with small slices of ham fried in the stove, to which they sometimes add eggs and a broiled chicken. At dinner they give a piece of salt beef and roasted fowls, and rum and water as a beverage. In the evening, cofFee, tea, and ham. There ar always several beds in the rooms where you sleep : seldom do you meet with clean sheets. Fortunate is the traveller who arrives on the day they happen to be changed ; although an American would be quite indifferent about it. , iiarly on the 26th of June we reached Carlisle, situated about fifty-four miles from Lancaster. The town consists of about two hundred houses, a few of them built with brick, but by far the greatest part * They give the tiame of whiskey, in the United States, to a sort •f. biandy^.made with ryq. l ' '. i '■■.,' everywhere, e very bad, cey * are in ivc dcscrip- le most ma- t consump- e family go J* very indif- lall slices of netimes add they give a d rum and coffee, tea, )eds in the meet veith who arrives il though an It it. 3d Carlisle, ster. The ises, a few reatest part ;ates, to a sort I I Avith wood. Upon the whole it has a respectable ap- pearance, from a considerable number of large shops and warehouses. These receptacles are supplied from the interior parts of the country vvi«!i large quantities of jewellery, mercery, spices, &c. The persons who keep those shops purchase and also barter with the country people for the produce of their farms, which they afterwards send oft' to the sea-port towns for exportation. . From M^Logan's inn to Carlisle the country is barren and mountainous, in consequence of which the houses are not so numerous on the road, being at a distance of two or three miles from each other; and out of the main road they are still more strag- gling. Tlie white, red, and black oaks, the ches- nut, and maple trees are those most common in the forests. Upon tlie summit of the hills we observed the (juercus bauisteri. From Carlisle to Shippens- burgh the country continues mountainous, and ' ^ not much inhabited, being also barren and uncul- tivated. We found but very few huts upon the road, and those, from their miserable picture, clearly an- nounced that their inhabitants were in but a wretched state; as from every appearance of their approachuig fs H i-l: 1 3,i i' : -3& ,!* i i II m 34 harvest it could only afford them a scanty subsist- ence. The coach stopped at an inn railed the General Washington, at Shippensburgh, kept hy one Colonel Ripey, whose character is that of being very obliging to all travellers that may happen to stop at his house on their tour to the western countries. Shippens- burgh has scarcely seventy houses in it. The chief of its trade is dealing in corn and flour. When I left this place, a barrel of flour, weighing ninety-six pounds, was worth five piastres. From Shippensburgh to Pittsburgh the distance Is about an hundred and seventy miles. The stages going no farther, a person must either travel the re- mainder of the road on foot, or purchase horses. There are always some to be disposed of; but the natives, taking advantage of travellers thus situated, make them pay more than double their value ; and when you arrive at Pittsburgh, on your return, you can only sell thcin fur one luilfof what they cost. I could have wished, for the sake of eco'uomy, to tra- vel the rest of the way on foot, but from the ob- servations I liad heard I was induced to buy a horse, in conjunction with an American officer with whom I came in the stage, and who was also going to PiLtbburgh. We agreed to ride alternately. I 1 i ■' < \ D'jiXi ^ ( -"t 1 d 'i- C . ■>■ I ti L E - 7 A C ■M. Shi{ Stra -'i J towt 1 situf "•' The ^^ get - you i subsist- 35 t General z Colonel 7 obliging his house shippens- 16 chief of len I left ninety-six listance is he stages el the re- e horses, but the situated, ue ; and turn, you f cost. I y, to tra- I the ob- to buy a II officer was also tcrnately. CHAP. IV. D*? h a rt u re fro m Sh ipp en sbu rgh to Strasbu rgh — Jo u rn ey over the Blue Ridges — Neiv species of Rhododen- drum — Passage over the river Juniata — Use of the Cones of the Magnolia Acuminata — j4rrival at Bedford Court House — Excesses to which the Na^ lives of that part of the Country are addicted — Departure from Bedford — Journey over Alleghany Ridge and Laurel Ilill'-^Arrival at West Liberty Toivn. ON the morning of the 30th of June we left Shi{)pensburgh, and arrived at twelve o'clock at Strasburgh, being a distance of ten miles. This town consists of about forty log-houses, and is situated at the foot of the first chain of Blue Ridges. The tract of country you have to cross before you get there, althoui'J) uneven, is much better; and you have a view oi several plantations tolerably well F 2 M if ; ■ ■ i > ?l jj~*** 36 I' f, » I cultivated. After having taken a moment's repose at Strasburgli, we j)ursued our journey notwithstand- ing the heat, which was excessive, and ascended the first ridge by an extremely steep and^lDcky [)ath. We reached the summit after three quarters of an hour's difficult walking, and crossed two other ridges of nearly the same height, and which follow the same direction. These three ridges form two little valleys, the first of which presents several small huts built on the declivity ; in the second, which is rather more extensive, is situated a town called Fenetsburgh, composed of about thirty houses, which stand on both sides of the road ; the planta- tions that surround them are about twenty in number, each of which is composed of from two to three hundred acres of woody land, of which, from the scarcity of hands, there are seldom more than a few acres cleared. In this part of Pensylvania every individual Is content with cultivating a sufficiency for himself and family ; and according as that is more or less numerous the parts so cleared aie more or less extensive ; whence it follows, that the larger family a man has capable of assisting him, the greater independence he enjoys ; this is one of the principal II! JU. 37 causes of the rapid progress that population makes in the United States. Tliis day we travelled only six-and twenty miles, and slept at Fort Littleton, about six miles from Strasburgh, at tlie house of one Colonel Bird, who keeps a good inn. From Shippensburgh the moun- tains are very flinty, and the soil extremely bad; the trees of an indifferent growth, and particularly the white oak that grows upon the summit, and the €almia latifolia on the other parts. • ' The next day we set out very early in the morning to go to Bedford Court House. From Fort Little- ton to the river Juniata we found very few planta- tions ; nothing but a succession of ridges, the spaces between which were filled up with a number of little hills. Being on the summit of one of these lofty ridges, the inequality of tliis group of mountains, crowned with innumerable woods, and overshadow- ing the earth, it afforded nearly the same picture that the troubled sea presents after a dreadful storm. Two miles before you come to the river Juniata, the road is divided into two branches, which meet again at the river side. The right leads across, the mountains, and t)ie left, which we took, appeared to .'■» ' ■■' 38 111 have been, and may be still the bctl of a deep torrent, the ground being wet and marshy. The banks were covered witli the amlromeda^ vacciniuviy and more partieularly with a species of rhododendnun^ that bears a flower of the elearest white ; the fibres of the stamina arc also white, and tlie leaves more ob- tuse, and not so large as the rlwdodendruni maximum. This singular variation must of course admit its being classed under a particular species. I disco- vered this beautiful shrub a second time on the mountains of North Carolina. Its seeds were at that time ripe, and [ carried some of them over with me to France, which came up exceedingly well. The river Juniata was not, in that part, above thirty or forty fathoms broad, and in consequence of the tide being very low, we forded it ; still, the greatest part of the year people cross it in a ferry-boat. Its biu^.ks are lofty and very airy. The magnoHa acumi- nata is very common in the environs ; it is known in the country by the name of the cucumber tree. The inhabitants of the remote parts of Pensylvania, Vir- ginia, and even the western countries^ pick the cones when green to infuse in whiskey, which gives it a ^ pleasant bitter. This bitter is very much esteemed in the country as a preventive against intermittent mix( I Cou is s travi altlu 4 # 39 torrent, ks were id more /?, that ibres of ore ob- ximum. Imit its . tlisco- on the vere at er with y well. t thirty of the reatest Its a cu mi- town in The a, Vir- cones cs it a eemed nittent fevers ; but I linvc my doubts whether it would be so i^en^^nilly useil if it had the same qualities when mixed witli water. From tlic crossing of the river Juniata to Bedford Court House, the country, although mountainous, is still better, and more inhabited, than that we travelled over from Sliip|)ensburgh. The plantations, althoujrh seldom in siii^ht of each other, arc near enough to give a more animated appearance to the couutry. We arrived at Bedford in the dusk of the evening, and took, lodgings at an inn, the landlord of which was an accjuaintancc of the American 'v officer witli whom I was travelling. His hoUvSe was commodious, and elevated one story above the ground floor, which is very rare in that part of the country. The day of our arrival was a day of re- joicing for the country people, who had assembled together in this little town to celebrate the sup- pression of die tax laid upon the whiskey distilleries ; rather an arbitrary tax, that had disaffected the in- habitants of the interior against the late president, Mr. Adams. The public houses, inns, and more especially the one where we lodged, wei-e filled with the lower class of people, who made the most dread- ful riot, and committed such horrible excesses, that I 40 is almost impossible to fonn the least idea of. The rooms, st.'lirs, and yard were strewed witli driinlcen men ; anil those who liad still the power of speecii uttered nothing but the accents of rage and fury. A passion for spirituous licjuors is one of the features that characterise the country people belonging to the interior of the United States. This passion is so strong, that they desert their homes every now and then to get drunk in public houses; in fact, I do not conceive there are ten out of a hundred who have resolution enough to desist from it a moment provided they had it by them, notwithstanding their usual bcvt)rage in summer is nothing but water, or sour milk. They care very little for cyder, which they find too weak. Their dislike to this wholesome and pleasant beverage is the more distressing as they^ might easily procure it at a very trifling expense, for for apple trees of every kind grow to wonderful per- fection in this country. This is a remark which I have made towards the east as well as the west of the Alleghany Mountains, where I have known lofty trees spring up from kernels, v/hich boi'c ap[)les from eight to nine inches in circumference . At Bedford there are scarce a hundred and twenty houses in the whole, and those but of a miserable 41 appearance, most of them being built of wood. This little town, like all the rest on that road, trades in all kinds of corn, flour, &c. which, with salt pro- visions, arc the only articles they sell for exportation. During the war, in the time of the French revolu- tion, the inhabitants found it more to their advantage to send their corn, &c. to Pittsburgh, there to be sent by the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans, or embark them for the Carribbees, than to send them to Philadelphia or Baltimore; notwithstanding it is not computed to be more than two hundred miles from Bedford to Philadelphia, and a hundred and fifty from Bedford to Baltimore, whilst the distance from Bed- ford to New Orleans is about two thousand two hun- dred miles; viz. a hundred miles by land to Pitts- burgh, and two thousand one hundred miles by water from Pittsburgh to the mouth of the Missis- sippi. It is evident, according to this calculation, that the navigation of the Ohio and Mississippi is very easy, and by far less expensive, since it compen- sates for the enormous difference that exists between those two distances. The situation of New Orleans, with respect to the Carribbees, by this rule, gives this town the most signal advantage over all the ports eastward of the United States ; and in proportion as G * ', ill ■ ^f ' 1 i!li '■■ '' It i r ir 42 the new western states increase in population. New Orleans will become the centre of an immense com- merce. Other facts will still rise up to the support of this observation. On the following day (the 1st of Ju\y^ we left Bedford very early in the morning. The heat was excessive; the ridges that we had perpetually to climb, and the little mountains that rise between these ridges, rendered the journey extremely diffi- cult ; we travelled no more than six-and-twcnty miles this day. About four miles from Bedford the road divides into two diiTcrtiit directions; we took the left, and slopped to breakfast with a miller who keeps a public house. We found a man there lying upon tlie ground, wrapt up in a blanket, who on the preceding evening had been bitten by a rattle-snake. The first symptoms that nppeared, about an hour after the accident, were violent vomitings, which was succeeded by a lagiiig fever. When I saw him jfirl his leg and thigh were very much swelled, his respiiatioii very laborious, and his countenance tur- gCFceiit, and siii.ilarto that of a person attacked with the hydiophe'bia wltoni I had an opi^ortunity ofsee- mg at Cbarii.'. I put several questions to hi.n ; but he was so absorbed that it was impossible to obt;aia I I The ! ■: ion, New ;nse com- e support ^ we left heat was etually to e between nely diffi- cnty miles I the road ; took the liller who here lying ho on the tie-snake. an hour ^s, which saw him elled, his nance tur- ckcd with ty ofsee- in ; but to obtjain 43 the least answer from him. I learnt from some ncr- sons in the house that immediately after the bite, the juice of certain plants had been applied to the wound, waiting the iloctor's arrival, who lived fifteen or twenty miles off. Those who do not die with it arc always very sickly, and sensible to the changes of the atmosphere. The plants made use of against the bite are very numerous, and almost all succulent. There are a great many rattle-snakes in these moun- tainous parts of Pensylvania ; we found a great num- ber of them killed upon the road. In the warm and dry season of the year they come out from be- r«ath the rocks, and inhabit those places where there I ,. 1 r. On that same day we crossed the ridge which takes more particularly the name of Alleghany Ridges. The road we took was extremely rugged, and covered with enormous stones. We attained the summit after two hours painful journey. It is truly astonishing how the vehicles of conveyance pass over so easily, and with so few accidents this multitude of steep Iiills or ridges, that uninterruptedly follow in suc- cession from Shippensburgh to Pittsburgh, and where the spaces between each are tilled up with an infinity of small mountains of a less elevation. 92 m M 44 ■ * 4' ■y M'4 Alleghany Ridge is the most elevated link in Pcn- sylvania ; on its summit are two log-houses, very indifferently constructed, about three miles distant from each other, which serve as public houses. These were the only habitations we met with on the road from Bedford; the remaining part of the coun- try is uninhabited. We stopped iit the second, kept by one Chatlers, tolerably well supplied with provi- sions for the country, as they served us up for dinner slices of ham and venison fried on the hearth, with a^ kind of muffins made of flour, which they baked before the fire upon a little board. Notwithstanding a very heavy fall, of rain, we went to sleep that day at Stanley Town, a small place, which, like all those in that part of Pensylvania, is built upon a hill. It is composed of about fifty houses, the half of which are log-houses ; among the rest are a few inns, and two or three shops, sup- plied from Philadelphia ; the distance is about seven miles from Chatler's ; the country that separates them is very fertile, and abounds with trees of the highest elevation ; those most prevalent in the woods are the white, red, and black oaks, the beech, tulip, and magnolia acuminata. The horse we bought at Shippensburgh, and which !'■;. m 45 we rode alternately, was very much fatigued, in con- sequence of which we travelled but very little farther than if we had been on foot ; in the mean time the American officer, my companion, was in haste to arrive at Pittsburgh, to be present at the fete of the 4th of July in commemoration of the American inde- pendence. In order to gain a day, he hired a horse at Stanley Town, with which we crossed Laurel Hill, a distance of four miles. The direction of this ridge is parallel with those we had left behind us ; the woods which cover it are more tufted, and the vegetation appears more lively. The name given to this mountain I have no doubt proceeds from the great quantity of calmia latifolia, from eight to ten feet high, which grows exclusively in all the vacant places, and that of the rhododendrum maximum, which enamel the borders of the torrents ; for the inhabitants call the rhododendrum laurel as frequently as the calmia laiijhUa. Some describe the latter shrub by the name of the colico-tree, the leaves of which, they say, are a very subtle poison to sheep, who die almost instantaneously after eating them. At the foot of Laurel Hill begins the valley of Ligo- nier, in which is situated, about a quarter of a mile from the mountain, West Liberty Town, composed i i * f SI \ 46 of eighteen or twenty log-liouscs. The soil of this valley apj:)ears extremely fertile. It is very near this place that the French, formerly masters of Canada, built Fort Ligonier, as every part of the United States west of the Alleghany Mountains depended on Canada or Louisiana. 1ft. iU: ;ii I ill ill m " M ' V ' ! 6 ITQi h 47 CHAP. V. Departure from West Liberty Town to go among the Mountains in search of a Shrub supposed to give good Oilf a new Species of Azalea. — Ligonier Fa/Icy. — Coal Alines, — Greensbw gh. — Arrival ai Pittsburgh, ON my journey to Lancaster Mr. W. Lancaster had informed me that at a short distance from West Liberty Town, and near the plantation of Mr. Pat- rick Archibald, there grew a shrub, the fruit of which he had been told produced excellent oil. Several persons at New York and Philadelphia had heard the same, and entertained a hope that, culti- vated largely, it might turn to general advantage. In fact, it would have been a treasure to find a shrub which, to the valuable qualities of the olive-tree, united that of enduring the cold of the most northern countries. Induced by these motives, I left my rm 48 i ' travelling companion to go amongst the mountains in quest of the shrub. About two miles from West Liberty Town I passed by Probes's Furnace, a foundry established by a Frenchman from Alsace, who manufactures all kinds of vessels in brass and copper ; the largest contain about two hundred pints, which are sent into Kentucky andTennessca, where they use them for the preparation of salt by evapo- ration; the smaller ones are destined for domestic uses. They directed me at the foundry which road I was to take, notwithstanding I frequently missed my way on account of the roads being more or less cut, which lead to different plantations scattered about the woods ; still I met with the greatest civility from the inhabitants, who very obligingly put me in my road, and on the same evening I reached Patrick Archibald's, where I was kindly rect;ived after having imparted the subject of my visit. One would think that this man, who has a mill and other valuables of his own, might live in the greatest comfort ; yet he resides in a miserable log-house about twenty feet long, subject to the inclemency of the weather. Four large beds, two of which are very low, are placed underneath the others in the day-time, and drawn out of an evening ima. 1 H M 'j: ^9 irto the middle of the room, receive the whole family, composed of ten persons, and at times strangers, who casually entreat to have a bed. This mode of living, which would announce poverty in Europe, is by no means the sign of it with them ; for in an extent of two thousand miles and upward that I have travelled, there is not a single family but has milk, butter, salted or dried meat, and In- dian corn generally in the house ; the poorest man has always one or more horses, and an inhabitant very rarely goes on foot to see his neighbour. The day after my anival I went into the woods, and in my first excursion I found the shrub which was at that moment the object of my researches. I knew it to be the same that my father had discovered fifteen years before in the mountains of South Caro- lina, and which, in despite of all the attention he bestowed, he could not bring to any perfection in his garden. Mr. W. Hamilton, who had received a few seeds and plants of it from that part of Pen- sylvania where I then was, had not been more suc- cessful. The seeds grow so soon rancid, that in the course of a few days they lose their germinative faculty, and contract an uncommon sharpness. This shrub, which seldom rises above five feet in H I Ml 50 height is diocah It grows exclusively on the inoiin* tains, and is only found in cool and shady places, and where the soil is very fertile. Its roots, of a ci- tron colour, do not divide, but extend horizontally to a great distance, and give birth to several shoots, which very seldom grow more than eighteen inches high. The roots and the bark rubbed together, pro- duce an unpleasant smell. I commissioned my land- lord to gather half a bushel of seed, and send it to Mr. William Hamilton, giving him the necessary prcca'.tion to keep it fresh. — On the banks of the creek where Mr. Archibald's mill is erected, and along the rivulets in the environs, grows a species of the azalea, which was then in full blossom. It rises from twelve to fifteen feet. Its flowers, of a beautiful white, and larger than those of the other known species, exhale the most delicious perfume. The azalea coccinea, on the contrary, grows on the summit of the mountains, is of a nasturtium colour, and blows two months before. Ligonier Valley is reckoned very fertile. Wheat, rye, and oats arc among its chief productions. Some of the inhabitants plant Indian corn upon the summit of the mountains, but it does not succeed well, the country being too cold. Tlie sun is not i 2 moiin- y places, , of a ci- izontally il shoots, in inches her, pro- my land- jend it to necessary s of the :ted, and a species ssom. It ers, of a the othet perfume, vs on the m colour, Wheat, oductions. upon the t succeed sun is not I 51 seen tliere for three quarters of an hour after it has risen. Tliey also cultivate liemp and flax, and each gathers a sufficient quantity of it to supply his do- mestic wants ; and as all the women know how to spin and weave, they supply themselves and family, by this means, with linen. The price of land is from one to two piastres an acre. The taxes are very mo- derate, and no complaints are ever made against them. In this part of the United States, as well a* in all mountainous countries, the air is very whole- some. I have seen men there upward of seventy- five years of age, which is very rare in the Atlantic states situated south of Pennsylvania. During my travels in this country the measles were very preva- lent. At the invitation of my host I went to see se- veral of his relatives and friends that were attacked with it. I found them all drinking whiskey, to ex- cite perspiration. I advised them a decoction of the leaves of the viscous elm, with the addition of a spoonful of vinegar to a pint, and an ounce of sugar of maple. In consequence of the country being poor, and the population not very numerous, there are but few medical men there ; and in cases of ne- cessity they have to go twenty or thirty miles to fetch them. H 2 I .: 52 ■. u: Oiitlic 4th of July I left Archibald'?, and posted on toward Grcensburgli, which is about eleven niiles from it. I had not gone far before I had to cross Chesnut K'dge, a very steep hill, the suiniiiit of which, for an extent of two miles, presents nothing but a dry and chalky soil, abounding witli oaks and chesnut trees, stunted in their growtii : but as I ad- vanced toward Grecnsburgh the aspect of the coun- try changes, the soil becomes better. The planta- tions, although surrounded with woods, are not so far apart as in the valley of Ligonier. Tlie houses arc much larger, and most of them have two rooms. The land better cultivated, the enclosures better formed,- prove clearly it is a German settlement. With them every thing announces case^ the fruit of their assiduity to labour. They assist each other in their harvests, live happy among themselves, al- ways speak German, and preserve, as much as pos- sible, the customs of their ancestors, formerly from Europe. They live much better than the American descendants of the English, Scotch, and Irish. Tliey are not so much addicted to spirituous liquors, and have not that wandering mind wliich often, for the slightest motive, prompts them to emigrate se- \ 93 veral hundred miles, in hopi;s of finding a more fer- tile soil. Prior to my arrival at Grecusburgh I had an op- r)ortiinity of remarking several parts of the woods exelusively eomposed of white oaks, or quercus albn, the foliage of which bong a lightish green, formed a beautiful contrast witli other trees of a deeper co- lour. About a mile from the town, and on the bor- ders of a tremendous cavity I perceived unequivocal signs of a coalmine. I learnt at Greensburgh a*^'d Pittsburgh that this substance was to common and so easy to procure, that many of the uihajitants burnt it from economical motives. Not that thet* is a scarcity of wood, the whole country being «l,o- vered with it, but labour is very dear ; so hat there is not a proprietor who would not consent to sell a cord of wood for half the sum that coals would cost, provided a person would go a mile to fell iIjC trees, and take them home. Greensburgh contains about a hundred houses. The town is built upon the sum^^'t of a hill on the road from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. The soil of the environs is fertile ; the inhabitants, who are of German origin, cultivate v iieat, rye, and oats with great success. The flour is exported at Pittsburgh. II l^ 54 I lodged at the Seven Stars with one Erbach, who keeps a good inn. I there fell into company with a traveller who came from the state of Vermont, and through necessity we were obliged to sleep in one room. Without entering into any explanation rela- tive to the intention of our journey, we communi- cated to each other our remarks upon the country that we had just travelled aver. He had been up* ward of six hundred miles since his departure from his place of residence, and I had been four hundred since I left New York. He proposed accompanying me to Pittsburgh. I observed to him that I was on foot, and gave him my reasons for it, as it is very uncommon in America to travel in that manner, the poorest inhabitant possessing always one, and even several horses. From Greensburgh to Pittsburgh it is computed to be about thirty-two miles. The road that leads to it is very mountainous. To avoid the heat, and to accelerate my journey, I set out at four in the morn- ing. 1 had no trouble in getting out of the Fiouse, tlie door being only on the latch. At the itins in small towns, on the contrary, they are extremely careful in locking the stables, as horsc-stealers are by no means uncommon in certain parts of the 'W^''^m 65 United States ; and this is one of the accidents t» which travellers are the most exposed, more espe- cially in the southern states and in the western countries, where they are sometimes obliged to sleep in the woods. It also frequently happens that they steal them from the inhabitants ; at the same time nothing is more easy, as the horses are, in one part of the year, turned out In the forests^ and in the spring they frequently stray many miles from home ; but on the slightest probability of the road the thief has taken, the plundered inhabitant vigorously pur- sues him, and frequently succeeds in taking him ; upon which he confines him in the county prison, or, which is not uncommon, kills him on the spot. In the different states the laws against horse-stealing are very severe, and this severity appears influenced by the great facility the country presents for com- mitting the crime. I had travelled about fifteen miles when I was overtaken by an American gentleman whom I had met the preceding evening at Creensburgh. Al- though he was on horseback, he had the politeness to slacken his pace, and 1 accompanied him to Pitts- burgh. This second interview made us more inti- mately acquainted. He informed me that his in- t6 tention was to go by the side of the Ohio. Having the same design, I entertained a wish to travel with him, and mpre so, as he was not an amateur of wliiskey, being compelled, by the heat of the weather, frequently to halt at the inns, which are tolerablv numerous. I had observed that he drank very little of that liquor in water, and that he gave a preference to souf milk, whenever it could be pro- cured. In that respect he differed from the Ameri- can officer with whom I had travelled almost all the way from Shipi)en5burgh. About ten miles from Greensburgh, on the left, ii a road that cuts ofFmorethan three miles, but which is only passable for persons on foot or on hoxseback. We took it, and in the course of half an hour per- ceived the river Monongahela, which we coasted till within a short distance of Pittsburgh. A tremendous shower obliged us to take shelter in a house about a a hundred fathoms from the river. The owner hav- ing recognized us to be strangers, informed us that it wa^ on that very spot that the French, in the seven years' war, liad completely defeated General Brad- dock ; and he also showed us several trees that arc still damaged by the balls. W^ reached Pittsburgh at a very early hour, when i.W' 57 I took up n.y icsldcnce with a Frenchman named Miirie, who keeps a respectable inn. What pleased me most was ihy having accomplished my journey, as I began to be fatigued with travelling over so moiuitaiiious a country ; for during an extent of about a hundred and eighty ml'^s, which 1 had t'a- vellcd almost entirely on foot, I do not think I walked fifty fathoms without either ascending or descending. ^ 58 CHAP. VI. Description of Pittsburgh, — Commerce of the Town and adjacent Countries luith New Orleans — Con- struction of large Vessels. — Description of the Rivers Monongahcla and ^4lleghanij. — Towns situated on their Banks. — Agriculture. — Maple Sugar, lti|!l'» IP ! ^ if 1 » 4i , M '*% ; \ ■ i iMi |r V PITTSBURGH is situated at the conflux of the rivers Monongahela and Allegliany, tlie uniting of which forms the Ohio. The even soil upon which it is built is not more than forty or fifty acres in ex- tent. It is in the form of an angle, the three sides of which are enclosed either by the bed of the two rivers or by stupendous mountains. The houses are principally brick, they are computed t(j be about four hundred, most of which are built upon the Monon- gahela ; that side is considered the most commercial part of the town. As a great number of the houses are separated from each other by large spaces, the 59 X of the niting of m which res in ex- hree sides f the two lOuses are about four e Monon- ommercial whole surface of the angle is completely taken up. On the summit of the angle the French built Fort Duquesne, whicli is now entirely destroyed, and no- thing more is seen than the vestige of the ditches that surrounded it. Tliis spot affords the most pleas- ws; view, produced by the perspective of the rivers, overshadowed with forests, and especially the Ohio, which flows in a strait line, and, to appearance, loses itself in space. The air is very salubrious at Pittsburgh and its environs; intermittent fevers are unknown there, although so common in the southern states, neither are they tormented in the summer with musquitoes. A person may subsist there for one-third of what lie pays at Philadelpliia. Two printing-offices have been long established there, and, fortlic amuse- ment of the curious, each publish a newspaper weekly. Pittsburgh has been long considered by the Ame- ricans as the key to the western country. Thence the federal forces were marched against the Indians who opposed the former settlementof the Americans in Kentucky, and on the banks of the Ohio. How- ever, now the Indian nations are repulsed to a con- siderable distance, and reduced to the impossibility I 2 i. 6o I!. i I i'l «,:■ 'i 1- 1! Ii? ■:i1 fif^i Ki -■ *t 'J of hurting the most remote settlers in the interior of the states; besides, the western roimtry has acquired a great mass of population, insomuch that there is nothing now at Pittsburgh but a feeble garn- son, barracked in a fort belonging to the town, on the banks of the river Allighany. However, tliough this town has lost its importance as a military post, it has acquired a still greater one in respect to commerce. It serves as a staple for the different sorts of merchandise that Philadelphia and Baltimore send, in the beginning of spring and autumn, for supplying the states of Ohio, Kentucky, and the settlement of Natches. The conveyance of merchandise from Philadel- phia to Pittsburgh is made in large covered waggons, drawn by four horses two a-breast. The price of carrying goods varies according to the season ; but in general it does not exceed six piastres the quintal. They reckon it to be three hundred miles from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and the carriers generally make it a journey of from twenty to twenty-four days. The price of conveyance would not be so high as it really is, were it not that the waggons fre- quently return empty ; notwithstanding they some- times bring back, on their return to Philadelphia or \i , ■■ 61 Baltimore, fur skins that come from Illinois or Gin- seng, which is very common in that part of Pen- sylvania. Pittsburgh is not only the staple of the Philadel- phia and Baltimore trade with the western country, but of the numerous settlements that are formed upon the Monongahcla and Alleghany. The terri- torial produce of that part of the country finds an easy and advantageous conveyance by the Ohio and Mississippi. Corn, hams and dried pork are the principal articles sent to New Orleans, whence they are re-exported into the Carribbccs. They also export for the consumption of Louisiana, bar-iron, coarse linen, bottles manufactured at Pittsburgh, whiskey, and salt butter. A great part of these provisions come from Redstone, a small commercial town, situated upon the Monongahcla, about fifty miles beyond Pittsburgh. All these advantages joined together have, within these ten years, increased ten- fold the population and price of articles in the town, and contribute to its improvements, which daily grow more and more raj;id. The major part of the merchants settled at Pitts- burgh, or in the environs, are the partners, or else the factors, belonging to the houses at Philadelphia. ■- «a I U II ;: i ri j ii , t f ' :^ ' i i i" 02 Their brokers at New Orleans sell, ns much as tlicy can, for ready money ; or ratlier, take in exchange cotton.s, indigo, raw sugar, tlie produce of Low Ixdu- isiana, wliich they send off by sea to the houses at Philadelpliia <\\\d Baltimore, and thus cover their frst advances. The bargemen return thus by sea to Philadelphia or Baltimore, whence they go by land to Pittsburgh and the environs, where the major part of them generally reside. Although the pas- sage from New Orleans to one of these two ports is twenty or thirty days, aiul that they have to take a route by land of three hundred miles to return to Pittsburgh, they prefer this way, being not so (diffi- cult as the return by land from New Orleans to Pitts- burgh, this last distance being fourteen or fifteen hundred miles. However, when the barges are only destined for Limeston, in Kentucky, or for Cincin- nati, in the state of Ohio, the bargemen return by land, and by that means take a route of four or five bundled miles. The navigation of the Ohio and Mississippi is so much improved of late that they can tell almost to a certainty the distance from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, which they compute to be two thousand one hundred miles. The barges in the spring sea- ()3 ' *l suii usually take forty or fifty days to make the passage, which two or three persons in a pirogue ♦ make in five and-twenty days. What many, j)erhaps, are ignorant of in Europe is, that they huild large vessels on the Ohio, and at the town of Pittfihurgh. One of the principal i?hip yards is upon the Monongahela, about two huntl/ed fathoms beyond the last houses in the town. The timber they make use of is the white oak, or querent alba; the red oak, or quercus rubra; the black oak, or quercus linctoria; a kind of nut tree, or J uglans minima ; the Virginia cherry-tree, or cerasus f'lrgi- nia ; and a kind of pine, which they use for masting, as well as for the sides of the vessels which require a slighter wood. The whole of this timber being near at hand, the expense of building is not so great as in the ports of the Atlantic states. The cordage is manufactured at Redstone and Lexinton, where there are two extensive rope- walks, which also supply ships with rigging that are built at Marietta and Louis- ville. On my journey to Pittsburgh in the month of July 1802, there was a three-mast vessel -|r of two * An Indian boat. + I have been informed since my return, that this ship, named the Pittsburgh, was arrived at Philadelphia. ' )-■ bi L i I' III'' ' 1 JJ..«t n I 64 hundred and fifty tons, and a smaller one of ninety, wliich was on the point of heing Hnishcd. These ships were to go, in the spring following, to New Orleans, loaded with the produce of the country, after having made a passage of two thousand two hundred miles before they got into the ocean. There is no doubt but they can, by the same rule, build ships two hundred leagues beyond the mouth of the Missouri, fifty from that of the river Illinois, and even in the Mississippi, two hundred beyond the place whence these rivers flow ; that is to say, six hundred and fifty leagues from the sea ; as their bed in the appointed space is as deep as that of the Ohio at Pittsburgh ; in consequence of which it must be a wrong conjecture to suppose that the immense tract of country watered by these rivers cannot be populous enough to execute such under- takings. The rapid population of the three new western states, under less favourable circumstances, proves this assertion to be true. Those states, where thirty years ago there was scarcely three hundred inhabitants, arc now computed to contain upwards of a hundred thousand ; and although the planta- tions on the roads are scarcely four miles distant from each other, it is very rare to find one, even among 65 the most flourishing, where one cannot with confi- dence ask tlie owner, whence he has emigrated ; or, according to the trivial manner of the Americans, " What part of the world do you cotne from ?" as if these immense and fertile regions were to he the asylum common to all the inhabitants of the globe. Now it we consider these astonishing and lapid ameliorations, what ideas nnist we not form of the Jjeight of prosperity to which the western country is rising, and of the recent spring that the commerce, population and culture of the country is taking by uniting Louisiana to the American territory. The river Monongahela derives its source in Vir- ginia, at the foot of Laurel Mountain, which com- prises a part of the chain of the Alleghanies ; bend- ing its course toward the west, it runs into Pennsyl- vania, and before it reaches Alleghany it receives in its current the rivers Cheat and Youghiogheny, which proceed from the south west. The territory watered by this river is extremely fertile ; and the settlements formed upon the banks are not very far apart. It begins to be navigable at Morgan Town, which is composed of about sixty houses, and is situated upon the right, within a hundred miles of its timbouchure. Of all the little towns built upon I: i-il H lit n J. liii 66 the Monongaliela, New Geneva and Redstone hav« the most aetive coniinerce. The ("onner has a glass- house in it, the prcxluce of which is exixjrteil chiefly into the western country ; the latter has fihoe and paper manufactories, several flour mills, and contains ahout five hundred inhahitants. At this town a great number of those who emigrate froui the eastern states embark to go into the west. It is also famous for building large boats, called Ken- tuchy boats, used in the Kentucky trade ; numbers are also built at Elizabeth Town, situated on the same river, about twenty-three miles from Pittsburgh — the Monongahi'la Farmer was launched there, a sailing vessel of two hundred tons. Alleghany takes its source fifteen or twenty milcfj from lake Eria ; its current is enlarged by the French Creek, and various small j-ivers of less importance. The Alleghany begins to be navigable within two hundred miles of Pittsburgh. The banks of this river are fertile ; the inhabitants w ho have formed settlements there export, as well as those of Monon- gahela, the produce of tlieir culture by the way of the Ohio and Mississippi. On the banks of this river they begin to form a few small towns ; among the most considerable are Meadville, situated two Wi-".: r 67 i* liunclrcfl and thirty miles from Pittsburgh; Frank- lin, about two huiulrcd ; and Frceport, scarcely one ; each cf which docs not contain above forty or fifty ]»ouscs. Lot tlie weather b*- what it will, the stream of the Allcirhany is clear and limpid ; that of the Monon- gahela, on the contrary, grows rather muddy with a few days incessant rain in that part of the Alleghany Mountains where it derives it source. The sugar-maple is very common in every part of Pennsylvania which the Monongahela and Alleghany water. This tree thrives most in cold, wet, and mountainous countries, and its seed is always more abundant when the winter is most severe. The sugar extracted from it is generally very coarse, and is sold, after having been prepared in loaves of six, eight, and ten pounds each, at the rate of seven-pence per |)ound. The inhabitants manufacture none but for their own use ; the greater part of them drink tea and coffee daily, but they use it just as it has passed the first evaporation, and never take the trouble to refine it, on account of the great waste occasioned by the operation. '4 m- K 2 '^^•• •^ a?* 68 r m i* CHAP. VII. Description of the Ohio. — Navigation of that river, — Mr. S. Craft. — Ihe object of his travels. — Re- marks upon the State of P^ermont, I i! 1 11 .. ililf ■ !:;;." i S- 'I !■' ! I't THE Ohioj formed by the union of the Mor,on- gabela and Alleghany rivers, appears to be rather a continuance of the former than the latter, which only happens obliquely at the conflux. The Ohio may be, at Pittsburgh, two hundred fathoms broad. The current of this immense and magnificent river inclines at first north west for about twenty miles, then bends gradually west south west. It follows that direction for about the space of five hundred miles ; turns thence south west a hundred and sixty miles ; then west two hundred and seventy- five ; at length runs into the Mississippi in a south-westerly direction, in the latitude of 36 deg. 46 min. about eleven hundred miles from Pittsburgh, and nearly ! id '''^ 69 the same distance from Orleans. This river runs so cvlrcmely serpentine, that in ,G:()ing clown it, you ap- pear following a track directly opposite to the one you mean to take. Its breadth varies from two hun- dred to a thousand fathoms. The islands that are met with in its current are very numerous. We counted upward of fifty in the space of three hun- dred and eighty miles. Some contain but a few acres, and others more than a thousand in length. Their banks are very low, and nnist be subject to inundations. These islands are a great impediment to the navigation in the summer. The sands that the river drives up form, at the head of some of them, a number of little shoals ; and in this season of the year the channel is so narrow from the want of water, that the few boats, even of a middling size, that venture to go down, are frequently run aground, and it is with great ditHculty that they are got afloat; notwidistanding which there is at all times a suffi- ciency of water for a skifi' or a ranoe. As these little boats are very light when th y strike upon tlic sands, it is very easy to push them oil' into a deeper part, in consequence of this, it is only in the spring and autumn that the Ohio is navigable, at least as far as Limestone, about a hundred and twenty Mi mi^ • I < 70 miles from Pittsburgh. During those two seasons the water rises to such a height, tliat vessels of three hniudred tons, piloted by men who arc ac- quainted with the river, may go down in the greatest safety. The spring season begins at the end of Fe- bruary, and lasts three months ; the autumn begins in October, and onl\- lasts till the first of December. In the mean time these two epochs fall sooner or Jater, as the winter is more or less rainy, or the rivers are a shorter or a longer time thawing. Again, it so happens, that in the (X)urse of the summer heavy and incessant rains fall in the Alheg- hany Mountains, which suddenly swell the Ohio : at that time persons ma 'g.-Hlovvn it with the greatest safety; but such circuinstaiices are not always to be depended on. The banks of the Ohio are high and solid ; its current is free froi i a thousand o])>t.'icles that render the navigation of the Mississippi difficult, and often dangerous, when they have not skiKul conductors. On the Ohio persons n)ay travel all night wiljiout the smallest danger ; instead of which, on the Missis- sippi prudence requires them to stoj) every evening, at least from the mouth of the Ohio to Naches, a space of nearly seven humlred and fifty miles. h. 71 ?.s. The rapldit^r of the Oliio's current is extreme iii spring; at the same time in this season there is no necessity for rowing. The excessive swiftness it would give, by that menu/;, to the boat would be more dangerous than usct'id, by turning it out of the current, and running it upon some island or other, where it might get entangled among a heap of dead trees that are half under water, and from which it would be very dililcult to extricate them ; for which reason tliey generally go with the current, which is always strong enough to advance with great celeiity, and is always more rapiti in the middle of the stream. The .nmazing rapidity of the Ohio has an influence on the shape oi the boats that navigate upon it, and that shape is not calculated to accelerate their progress, but to stem the current of the stream. All the boats or barges, whether those in the Kentucky or Mississippi trade, or tho,-e w hich convey the families that go into the eastern oi- west- ern states, are built in the same manner. I'lu^y are of a square form, some longer than others ; their sides are raised four feet and a half above the water ; their length is from fifteen to fifty feet ; the two ex- tremities are square, npon one of which is a kind of awning, under which the passengers shelter them- 72 il |;W It :) mi'- selves when it rains. I was alone upon the banks of the Monongahela, when I perceived, at a distance, live or six of these barges, which were going down the river. I could not conceive what these great square bo: o 7 '> > / M Photographic Sciences Corporation '^- .^ ^^f^ 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 873-4503 ^ ^ ►/^ i- 80 I,; I: ij! 1 1 If I'-'' V • I If! -I: M : • ! II' ' i>''l l< its tV I, \ many places from twenty-five to thirty feet, present several beds of coal from five to six feet thick, grow- ing horizontally. This substance is extremely com- mon in all that part of Pennsylvania and Virginia ; but as the country is nothing but one continued fo- rest, and its population scarce, these mines are of no account. On the other hand, were they situated in the eastern states, where they burn, in the great towns, coals imported from England, their value would be great. The trees that grow in this valley are very close together, and of large diameter, and their species more varied than in any country I had seen before. Wheeling, situated on one of the lofty banks of the Ohio, has not been above twelve years in existence : it consists of about seventy houses, built of wood, which, as in all the new towns of the United States, are separated by an interval of several fathoms. This little town is bounded by along hill, nearly two hun- dred fathoms high, the base of which is not more than two hundred fathoms from the river. In this space the hour es are built, forming but one street, in the middle of which is the main road, which follows the windings of the river for a distance of more than two hundred miles. From fifteen to twenty large it 81 shops, well stocked, supply the inhabitants twenty miles round with provisions. This little town also shares in the export trade that is carried on at Pitts- burgh with the western country. Numbers of the merchants at Philadelphia prefer sending their goods there, although the journey is a day longer : but this trifling inconvenience is well compensated by the ad- vantage gained in avoiding the long winding which the Ohio makes on leaving Pittsburgh, where the numerous shallows and the slow movement of the stream, in summer time, retard the navigation. We passed the night at Wheeling with Captain Reymer, who keeps the sign of the Waggon, and takes in boarders at the rate of two piastres a-week. The accommodation, on the whole, is very comfort- able, provisions in that part of the country being re- markably cheap. A dozen fowls could be bought for one piastre, and a hundred weight of flour was then only worth a piastre and a half. ■ '«• . ■i- •I H ■ '<* M If I (1 ii,^' 4, |!f ill; i. i'h \ V, 82 \\''^-' r CHAP. IX. Departure from Wheeling for Marietta. — Aspect of the Banks of the Ohio. — Nature of the Forests. — Extraordinary size of several kinds of Trees. ' ON the ] 8th of July in the morning we pur- chased a canoe, twenty-four feet long, eighteen inches wide, and about as many in depth. These canoes are always made with a single trunk of a tree ; the pine and tulip tree are preferred for that purpose, the wood being very soft. These canoes are too narrow to use well with oars, and in shallow water are generally forced along either with a paddle or a staff. Being obliged at times to shorten our journey by leaving the banks of the river, where one is under shade, to get into the current, or to pass from one point to another, and be exposed to the heat of a scorching sun, we covered our canoe a quarter of its length with a piece of cloth thrown :1 83 upon two hoops. In less than three quarters of an hour wc made up our minds to continue our journey by water ; notwithstanding we were obliged to defer our departure till the afternoon, to wait for provisions which we might have wanted by the way ; as the inhabitants who live in different parts upon the banks of the river are very badly supplied. We left Wheeling about five in the afternoon, made twelve miles that evening, and went to sleep on the right bank, of the Ohio, which forms the bound- ary of the government, described by the name of the North West territory of the Ohio, and which is now admitted in the union under the denomination of the State of Ohio. Although we had made no more than twelve miles we were exceedingly fatigued, not so much by continually paddlir g as by remaining constantly seated with our legs extended. Our ca- noe being very narrow at bottom, obliged us to keep that position ; the least motion would have exposed us to being overset. However, in the course of a few days custom made these inconveniences disap- pear, and we attained the art of travelling comfort- ably. We took three days and a half in going to Mari- etta, about a hundred miles from Wheeling. Our M2 li U^l m m M I','*. i 4 ■'■ •f m I ^;: '^it f ! 1 U"' ' ■'■ ' I, B M I 84 second day was thirty miles, the third forty, and on the fourth in the morning we reached this little town, situated at the mouth of the great Muskin- gum. The first day, wholly taken up with this mode of travellings so novel to us, and which did not ap- pear to me to be very safe, I did not bend my attention further ; but on the following day, better used to this kind of navigation, 1 observed more tranquilly from our canoe^ the aspect that the bor- ders of this magnificent river presented. Leaving Pittsburgh, the Ohio flows between two ridges, or lofty mountains, nearly of the same height, which we judged to be about two hundred fathoms. Frequently they appeared undulated at their summit, at other times it seemed as though they had been completely level. These hills continue uninterrupt- edly for the space of a mile or more, then a slight interval is observed, that sometimes affords a passage to the rivers that empty themselves into the Ohio ; but most commonly another hill of the same height begins at a very short distance from the place where the preceding one left ofl'. These mountains rise successively for the space of three hundred miles, and from our canoe we were enabled to observe them more distinctly, as they were more or less distant id on little iskin- mode )t ap- d itiy better more e bor- ;n two tieight, thorns, jmmit, i been errupt- slight passage Ohio; height where ns rise miles, re them distant 85 from the borders of the river. Their direction is parallel to the chain of the Alleghanies ; andaltliougli they are at times from forty to a hundred miles dis- tant from them, and that for an extent of two hundred miles, one cannot help looking upon them as belonging to these mountains. All that part of Virginia situated upon the left bank of the Ohio is excessively mountainous, covered with forests, and almost uninhabited ; where I have been told by those who live on the banks of the Ohio, they go every winter to hunt bears. They give the name of river-bottoms and flat- bottoms to the flat and woody ground between the footof these mountains and the banks of the river, the space of which is sometimes five or six miles broad. The major part of the rivers which empty themselves into the Ohio have also these river-bot- toms, which, as well as those in question, are of an easy culture, but nothing equal to the fertility of the banks of the Ohio. The soil is a true vegetable kumusy produced by the thick bed of leaves with which the earth is loaded every year, and which is speedily converted into mould by the humidity that reigns in these forests. But what adds still more to the thickness of these successive beds of \regetable I- 4 ^■MV\ >: i i-: '■■! 1 l ,■■■ ■i m 8(3 i ' J I earth are the trunks of enormoLis trees, tfirown down by time, with which the surface of the soil is be- strewed in every part, and which rapidly decays. In more than a thousand leagues of the country, over which I have travelled at different epochs, in North America, I do not remember having seen one to compare with the latter for the vegetative strength of the forests. The best sort of land in Kentucky and Tenessea, situated beyond the mountains of Cumberland, is much the same ; but the trees do not grow to such a size as on the borders of the Ohio. Thirty-six miles before our arrival at Marietta we stopped at the hut of one of the inhabitants of the right bank, who shewed us, about fifty yards from his door, a palm-tree, or platanus occidentalism the trunk of which was swelled to an amazing size ; we measured it four feet beyond the surface of the soil, and found it forty-seven feet in circumference. It appeared to keep the same dimensions for the height of fifteen or twenty feet, it then divided into several branches of a proportionate size. By its external appearance no one could tell that the tree was hol- low ; however I assured myself it was by striking it in several places with a billet. Our host told us that if we would spend the day with him he would 87 shew us others as large, in several parts of the wood, within two or three miles of the river. This circum- stance supports the observations which my father made, when travelling in that part of the country, that the poplar and palm are, of all the trees in North America, those that attain the greatest di;t- meter. '' About fifteen miles," said he, " up the river " Muskingum, in a small island of the Ohio, we " found a palm-tree, or platanns occidentalis, the " circumference of which, five feet from the surface " of the earth, where the trunk was most uniform, was forty feet four inches, which makes about " thirteen feet in diameter. Twenty years prior to " my tr£fvels, General Washington had measured " this same tree, and had found it nearly of the " same dimensions. I have also measured palms in " Kentucky, but I never met with any above fifteen " or sixteen feet in circumference. These trees generally grow in marshy places. " The largest tree in North America, after the palm, is the poplar, or liriodendron tulipifera, " Its circumfererce is sometimes fifteen, sixteen, *^ and even eighteen feet : Kentucky is their native " country ; between Beard Town and Louisville we a <( (f ■ -j- 14 :f ,;'i r ^^i , 11 ^ .,*■ .;. f i •JVjH ili ^J >A iii.i. . m J In lf*(! l\ "v 'f'- h {( a tc n (t « (t i( !:; I 96 diately above. The latter, in return, are overlooked by palms, poplars, beeches, magnolias of the highest elevation, the enormous branches of which, attracted by a more splendid light and easier expansion, ex- tend toward the borders, overshadowing the river, at the same time completely covering the trees situ- ated under them. This natural display, which reigns upon the two banks, affords on each side a regular arch, the shadow of which, reflected by the crystal stream, embellishes, in an extraordinary degree, this magnificent coz//) d'oeil. The Ohio at Marietta presents a perspective some- what similar, perhaps even more picturesque than the one I have just described, through the houses of this little town, that we perceived five or six miles ofl^ the situation of which is fronting the middle of the river, going up. The Great Kenhaway, more known in the country under that denomination than by that of the New River, which it bears in some charts,, takes its source at the foot of the Yellow Mountain in Tennessea, but the mass of its waters proceed from one part of the Alleghany Mountains. The falls and currents that are so frequently met with in this river, for up- mt 97 ward of four hundred miles, will always be an ob- stacle to the exportation, by the Ohio and the Mis- sissippi, of provisions from the part of Virginia which it waters. Its banks are inhabited, but less than those of the Ohio. 'I i t f> ^ m 99 CHAP. XI. ^S -M GaUipoU. — State of the French colony Scioto.—^ Alexandria at the month of the Great Scioto. — Arrival at Limeatone in Kentucky. > ^■v GALLIPOLI is situated four miles below Point Pleasant, on the right bank of the Ohio. At this place assembled nearly a fourth part of the French, who, in 1789 and J 790, left their country to go and settle at Scioto : but it was not till after a sojourn of fifteen months at Alexandria in Virginia, where they waited the termination of the war with the sa- vages, that they could take possession of the lands which they had bought so dearly. They were even on the point of being dispossessed of them, on ac- count of the disputes that arose between the Scioto Company and that of the Ohio, of whom the former had primitively purchased these estates ; but scarcely had they arrived upon the soil that was destined for i1 99 them when the war broke out afresh between the Americans and Irulians, and ended in the destruction of those unfortunate colonies. There is no doubt that, alone and destitute of support, they would have been all massacred, had it not been for the predilection which all the Indian nations round Ca- nada and Louisiana have for the PVench. Again, as long as they did not take an active part ia that war, they were not disturbed : but the American army having gained a signal advantage near the e/w- houchure of the Great Kenaway, and crossed the Ohio, the inhabitants of Gall ipoli were united to it. From that time they were no longer protected, nor could they stir out of the inclosure of their village. Out of two that had strayed not more than two hun- dred yards, one was scalped and murdered, and the other carried a prisoner a great distance into the in- terior. When I was at Gallipoli they had just heard from him. He gained his livelihood very comfort- ably by repairing guns, and exercising his trade as a goldsmith in the Indian village where he lived, and did not express the least wish ^to return with his countrymen. The war being terminated, the congress, in order to indemnify these unfortunate Frenchmen for the o'2 I f! ii m r..' » ■ a V * 5 loo successive losses which they had sustained, gave thein twenty thousand acres of land situated hetwecn the small rivers Sandy and Scioto, seventy miles lower than Gallipoli. These twenty thousand acres were at the rate of two hundred and ten acres to every family. Those among them who had neither strength nor resolution enough to go a second time, without any other support than that of their chil- dren, to isolate themselves amidst the woods, hew down, hurn, and root up the lower parts of trees, which are frequently more than five feet in diameter, and afterward split them to inclose their fields, sold their lots to the Americans or Frenchmen that were somewhat more enterprising. Thirty families only went to settle in their new possessions. Since the three or four years that they have resided there they have succeeded, by dint of labour, in forming for themselves tolerable establishments, where, by the help of a soil excessively fertile, they have an abun- dant supply of provisions ; at least I conceived so, when I was there. Gallipoli, situated on the borders of the Ohio, is composed solely of about sixty log-houses, most of which being uninhabited, are falling into ruins ; the rest are occupied by Frenchmen, who breathe out a '►• 101 miserable existence. Two only among them appear to enjoy the smallest ray of comfort : the one keeps an inn, and distills brandy from peaches, which he sends to Kentucky, or sells it at a tolerable advan- tage : the other, M. Burau, from Paris, by whom I was well entertained, though unacquainted with him. Nothing can equal the perseverance of this French • man, whom the nature of iiis commerce obliges con- tinually to travel over the banks of the Ohio, and to make, once or twice a year, a journey of four or five hundred miles through the woods, to go to the towns situated beyond the Alleghany Mountains. I learnt from him that the intermittent fevers, which at first had added to the calamities of the inhabitants of Gallipoli, had not shown itself for upwards of three years. That, however, did not prevent a dozen of them going lately to New Orleans in quest of a better fortune, but almost all of them died of the yellow fever the first year after their arrival. Such was the situation of the establishment of Scioto when I was there. Though they did not suc- ceed better, it is not that the French are less per- severing and industrious than the Americans and Germans ; it is that among those who departed for Scioto not a tenth part were fit for the toils they ':f h t'l :!; f •:' Si 'in M 1 H I- m m' !■ I 102 were destined to endure. However, it was not po- litic of the speculators, who sold land at five shil- lings an acre, which at that time was not worth one in America, to acquaint those whom they induced to purchase that they would be obliged, for the two first years, to have an axe in their hands nine hours a day ; or that a good wood-cutter, having nothing but his hands, would be sooner at his ease on those fertile borders, but which he must, in the first place, clear_, than he who, arriving there with two or three hundred guineas in his purse, is unaccustomed to such kind of labour. This cause, independent of the war with the natives, was more than sufficient to plunge the new colonists in misery, and stifle the co- lony in its birth. On the 23th of July we set out from Gallipoli for Alexandria, which is about a hundred and four miles distant, and arrived there in three days and a half. The ground designed for this town is at the mouth of the Great Scioto, and in the angle which the right bank of this river forms with the north west border of the Ohio. Although the plan of Alex- andria has been laid out these many years, nobody goes to settle there ; and the number of its houses is not more than twenty, the major part of which are X.;l 103 t pa- shil- 1 one ;ed to e two hours )thing those place, r three ned to lent of ;ient to he co- ir log-houses. Notwithstanding its situation is very favourable with regard to the numerous settlements . already formed beyond the new town upon the Great Scioto, whose banks, not so high, and more marshy, are, it is said, nearly as fertile as those of tlie Ohio. The population would be much more considerable, if the inhabitants were not subject, every autumn, to intermittent fevers, which seldom abate till the approach of winter. This part of the country is the most unwholesome of all those that compose the im- mense state of Ohio. The seat of government be- longing to this new state is at Chillicotha, which contains about a hundred and fifty houses, and is si- tuated sixty miles from the mouth of the Great Scioto. A weekly newspaper is published there^ At Alexandria, and the other little towns in the western country, which are situated upon a very rich soil, the space between every house is almost entirely covered with stramonium. This dangerous and dis- agreeable plant has propagated surprisingly in every part where the earth has been uncovered and culti- vated within twelve or fifteen years ; and let the inha- bitants do what they will, it spreads still wider every year. It is generally supposed to have made its ap- pjearance at James-Town in Virginia, whence it de- y.'\i i^^'^ I :rSI \ ■ JOI rived the name of James-tveed. Travellers use it to Ileal the wounds made on horses' backs occasioned by the rubbing of the saddle. Mullein is the second European plant that I found very abundant in the United States, although in a less proportion than the stramonium. It is very com- mon on the road leading from Philadelphia to Lan- caster, but less so past the town ; and I saw no more of it beyond the Alleghany Mountains. On the 1st of April we arrived at Limestone in Kentucky, fifty miles lower than Alexandria. There ended my travels on the Ohio. We had come three hundred and forty-eight miles in a canoe from Wheeling, and had taken ten days to perform the journey, during which we were incessantly obliged to paddle, on account of the slowness of the stream. This labour, although painful, at any rate, to those who are unaccustomed to it, was still more so on ac- count of the intense heat. We also suffered much from thirst, not being able to procure any thing to drink but by stopping at the plantations on the banks of the river ; for in summer the water of the Ohio acquires such a degree of heat, that it is not fit to be drank till it has been kept twenty-four hours. This excessive heat is occasioned, on the one hand, by the .,*^*r , ./■ ' it to Lid by found L in a com- Lan- ) more one in There e three I from rm the obliged stream, o those on ac- much ling to banks Ohio fit to be This , by the le le 105 extreme lioat of tlic climate in that season of the year, and on the other, by the slow movement of tlic stream . I had fixed on the 1st of October to be th<* fpoch of my return to Charleston in South Carolina, and I had nearly a thousand miles to go by land before I could arrive there, in executing the design I had formed of travTllin": throujjh the state of Ten- nessea, which lengthened my route considerably. Pressed for time, I relinquished the intention I had formed of going fiirther down the Ohio, and took leave of Mr. Samuel Craft, who pursued by himself, in a canoe, his journey to Louisville, whence, after having come down the Ohio and Mississippi, he was to proceed up the river Yazous to go to Natches, and then return bv land to the state of Vermont, where he expected to be about the middle of Novcmljer fol- lowing, after having made, in six months, a circuit of nearly four thousand miles. .:.4 .■-•>■ /^ !' Piil « ' ■ ..L 1^ 106 :. / CHAP. XII. Ush andslielfs of the Ohio — Inhabitants on the Banks of the river — JgricuJ^iire — American Emigrant — Commercial Intelligence relative to that part of the United States. _ . ., .. ,, j . .■ THE banks of the Ohio, although elevated from twenty to sixty feet, scarcely afford any strong sub- stances from Pittsburgh ; and except large detached stones of a greyish colour and very soft, that we ob- vserved in an extent of ten or twelve miles below Wheeling, the remainder part seems vegetable earth. A few miles before we reached Limestone we began lo observe a bank of a chalky nature, the thickness of which beirg very considerable, left no room to doubt but what it must be of a great extent. Two kinds of flint, roundish and of a middling size, furnished the bed of the Ohio abundantly, especially as we approached the isles, where they are accumu- 107 lated by the strength of the current ; some of a dark- ish hue, break easily ; others sniallci-, and in less quantities, are three parts white, and scarcely transpa- rent. - In the Ohio, as well as in the Alleghany, Morvan- gahela, and other rivers in the west, they find in abundance a species of Miilette which is fronn five to six inches in length. They do not eat it, but the mother-o'-pearl which is very thick in it, is used m making buttons. I have seen some at Lexinton which were as beautiful as those they make in Eu- rope. This new species which I brought over with me, has been described by Mr. Bosc, under the name of the Unio Ohiotensis, The Ohio abounds in fish of different kinds ; the most common is the cat-fish, or silurus felis, which is generally caught with a line, and weighs sometimes a hundred pounds. The first fold of the upper fins of this fish are strong and pointed, similar to those of a perch, which he makes use of to kill others of a lesser size. He swims several inches un- der the one he wishes to attack, then rising rapidly, he pierces him several times in the belly ; this we had an opportunity of observing twice in the course p2 ■ n ■ V ' I 11 1 \i\ ■ *i .'i ill 108 of our navigation. This fish is also taken with a kind of spear. - ; Till the years 17 96 and 1797 the banks of the Ohio were so little populated that they scarcely con- sisted of thirty families in the space of four hundred miles ; but since that epoch a great number of emi- grants havecome from the mountainous parts of Penn- sylvania and Virginia, and settled there ; in conse- quence of which the plantations now are so increased, that they are not farther than two or three miles dis- tant from each other, and when on the river we al- ways had a view of some of them. .-, The inhabitants on the borders of the Ohio, em- ploy the greatest part of their time in stag and bear hunting, for the sake of the skins, which they dispose of. The taste that they have contracted for this kind of life is prejudicial to the culture of their lands ; besides they have scarcely any time to me- liorate their new possessions, that usually consist of two or three hundred acres, of which not more than eight or ten are cleared. Nevertheless, the produce that they derive from them, with the milk of their cows, is sufficient for themselves and families, which are always very numerous. The houses that they in- 309 habit are built upon the borders of the river, gene- rally in a pleasant situation, whence they enjoy the most delightful prospects ; still their mode of build- ing does not correspond with the beauties of the spot, being nothing but miserable log houses, without windows, and so small that two beds occupy the greatest part of them. Notwithstanding two men may erect and finish, in less than three days, one of these habitations, which, by their diminutive size and sorry appearance, seem ralher to belong to a coun- try where timber is very scarce, instead of a place that abounds with forests. The inhabitants on the borox^rs of the Ohio do not hesitate to receive tra- vellers who claim their hospitality ; they give them a lodging, that is to say, they permit them to sleep upon the floor wrapped up in their rugs. They are accommodated with bread, Indian corn, dried ham, milk and butter, but seldom any thing else ; at the same time the price of provisions is very moderate in this part of the United States, and all through the western country. No attention is paid by the inhabitants to any thing else but the culture of Indian corn; and although it is brought to no great perfection, the soil being so full of roots, the stems are from ten to twelve feet >U ■H !l ""•I Wi ; If i 'I 1. 1 V- 1 ■■■. \ m Ill :' i ii no high, and produce from twenty to Uiirty-fi^e hundred weight of corn per acre. For the three first years after the ground is cleared, the corn spring* up too strong, and scatters before it ears, so that they can- not sow in it for four or five years after, when the ground is cleared of the stumps and roots that were left in at first. The Americans in the interior culti- vate corn rather through speculation to send the flour to the sea-ports, than for tiieir own consumption ; as nine tenths of them eat no other bread but that made from Indian corn ; they make loaves of it from eight to ten pounds, which they bake in ovens, or small cakes baked on a board before the fire. This bread is generally eaten hot, and is not very palatable to those who are not used to it. ■ The peach is the only fruit tree that they have as yet cultivated, which thrives so rapidly that it pro- duces fruit after the second year. ■ The price of the best land on the borders of the Ohio did not exceed three piastres per acre ; at the same time it is not so dear on the left bank in the States of Virginia and Kentucky, where the set- tlements are not looked upon as quite so good. * Tlte two banks of the Ohio, properly speaking, not having been inlTabited above eight or nine yeare^ in V. jaking, years^ nor the borders of the rivers that run into it, the Americans who arc settled there, share but very fee- bly in the commerce that is carried on through the channel of the Mississippi. This commerce consists at present in hams and salted pork, brandies distilled from com and peaches, butter, hemp, skins and va- rious sorts of flour. They send again cattle to the Atlantic States. Trades-people who supply them- selves at Pittsburgh and Wheeling, and go up and down the river in a canoe, convey them haberdashery goods, and more especially tea and coffee, taking some of their produce in return. - • ; . More than half of those who inhabit the borders of the Ohio, are again the first inhabitants, or as they are called in the United States, the ^first settlers, a kind of men who cannot settle upon the soil that they, have cleared, and who under pretence of finding a better land, a more wholesome country, a greater abundance of game, push forward, incline perpe- tually towards the most distant points of the Ameri- can population, and go and settle in the neighbour- hood of the savage nations, whom they brave even in their own country. Their ungenerous mode of treating them stirs up frequent broils, that brings on bloody wars, in which they generally fall victims; 1:5 ft il r. V ■i I '^^■iP M ; I ) ..! I ! I , i I 112 rather on nccoiiiit oF their hcing so few in number, than thrgiigh defect of courage. • .-- ' Prior to our arrival at Marietta, we met one of these settlers, an inhabitant of the environs of Wheel- ing, who accompanied us down the Ohio, and with uhom we travelled for two days. Alone In a canoe from eighteen to twenty feet long, and from twelve to fifteen inches broad, he was going to sur\'ey the borders of the Missouri* for a hundred and fifty miles beyond its embouchure. The excellent qua- lity of the land that is reckoned to be more fertile there than that on the borders of the Ohio, and which the Spanish government at that time ordered to be distributed gratis, the quantity of beavers, elks, and more especially bisons, were the motives that induced him to emigrate into this remote part of the country, whence after having determined on a suitable spot to settle there with his family, he was returning to fetch them from the borders of the Ohio, which obliged him to take a journey of fourteen or fifteen hundred • The banks of this river are now inhabit: d by the Americans, for forty miles beyond its emboucbure in the Mississippi ; the num- ber of thofe who are fettled there is computed to be about three thoufand, and it increafes daily by the repeated emigrations that are made from Kentucky and the Upper Carolinas. 113 miles, his costume, like that of all the American sportsmen, consisted of a waistcoat with sleeves, a pair of pantaloons, and a large red and yellow wor- sted sash. A carabine, a tomahawk or little axe, which the Indians make use of to cut wood and to terminate the existence of their enemies, two heaver- snares, and a large knife suspended at his side, con- stituted his sporting dress. A rug comprised the whole of his luggage. Every evening he encamped on the banks of the river, where, after having made a fire, he passed the night ; and whenever he con- ceived the place favourable for the chace, he re- mained in the woods for several days together, and with the produce of his sport, he gained the means of subsistence, and new ammunition with the skins of the animals that he had killed. Such were the first inhabitants of Kentucky and Tennessea, of whom there are now remaining but very few. It was they who began to clear those fer- tile countries, and wrested them from the savages who ferociously disputed their right ; it was they, in short, who made themselves masters of the possess- ., ions, after five or six years' bloody war : but the long habit of a wandering and idle life has prevented their enjoying the fruit of their labours, and profiting by ii* i " I \i^ 1^ V-. if-. n t I :'i* ; i ^fi im ,'! * '*{ 114 thcTcry price to which these lands have risen In so short a time. They have emigrated to rnore remc^te parts of the country, and formed new settlements. It will be the same with most of those who inhabit the borders of the Ohio. The same inclination that led them there will induce them to emigrate from it. To the latter will succeed fresh emigrants, coming also from the Atlantic states, who will desert their possessions to go in quest of a milder climate and a more fertile soil. The money that they will get for them will suffice to pay for their new acquisitions, the peaceful delight of which is assured by a numer- ous population. Tiic last comers instead of log- houses, with which tlje present inhabitants are con- tented, will build wooden ones, clear a greater quan- tity of the land, and be as industrious and persever- ing in the melioration of their new possessions as the former were indolent in every thing, being so fond of hunting. To the culture of Indian corn they will add that of other grain, hemp, and tobacco ; rich pasturages will nourish innumerable flocks, and an advantageous sale of all the country's produce will be assured them through the channel of the Ohio. The happy situation of this river entitles it to be looked upon as the centre of commercial activity be- 115 tvveen the eastern and western states. By it the latter receive the manufactured goods wliich Europe, India, and the Caribbees suj)ply the fbriner ; and it is the; only open communication with the cjcan, for the exportation of provisions from the immense and fertile part of the United States comprised between the .\lleghany Mountains, the lakes^ and the left ban'f s of the lyiississippi. All these advantages, l^lended with the salubrity of the climate and the beauty of the landscapes, en- livened in the spring by a group of boats which the current whirls along with an astonishing rapidity, and the uncommon number of sailing vessels that from the bosom of this vast continent go directly to the Caribbees ; all these advantages, I say, make me think that the banks of the Ohio, from Pittsburgh to Louisville inclusively, will, in the course of twenty years, be the most populous and commercial part of the United States, and where I should settle in pre- ference to any other. n ''4 i- 't'l q2 \ i -tS"-" ■ . '■■■ >-i^- 1 1 1 116 i'''' ii I ' f |i iiij ml'-'' m CHAP. XIII. Limestone, — Route from Limestone to Lexinton.^^ Washington. — Salt-ivorks at Mays-Lick. — Miller- burgh. — Paris. LIMESTONE, situated upon the left bank of the Ohio, consists only of about thirty or forty houses, constructed with wood. This little town, built upwards of fifteen years, one would imagine to be more extensive. It has long been the place W'lere all the emigrants landed who came from the North- ern States by the way of Pittsburgh, and is still the staple for all sorts of merchandize sent from Phila- delphia and Baltimore to Kentucky. The travellers who arrive at Limestone by the Ohio find great difficulty in procuring horses on hire, to go to the places of their destination. The inhabitants there, as well as at Shippensburgh, take this undue advantage, in order to sell them at an N*-. -o**^ n; enormous price. As I intended staying some time at Lexinton, which would greatly enhance my expenses, I resolved to travel there on foot ; upon which I left my portmanteau with the landlord of the inn where I stopped, which he undertook for a piaster to send me to Lexinton, and I set off the same day. It is reckoned from Limestone to Lex- inton to be sixty-five miles, which I went in two days and a half. The first town we came to was Washington, which was only four miles off. It is much larger tlian Limestone, and contains about two hundred houses, all of wood, and built on both sides of the road. Trade is very brisk there ; it consists principally in corn, which is exported to New Or- leans. There are several very fine plantations in' the environs, the land of which is as well cultivated and the enclosures as well constructed, as at Vir- ginia and Pennsylvania. I went seven miles the first evening,' and on the following day reached Spring- field, composed of five or six houses, among the number of which are two spacious inns, well built, where the inhabitants of the environs assemble to- gether. Thence I passed through Mays-Lick, where there is a salt-mine. I stopped there to examine the process pursued for the extraction of salt. The v. u'...** 118. ii ' wells that supply the salt water are ahout twenty feet ill depth, and not more than fifty or sixty, fathonns from the river Salt-Lick, the waters of which arc somewhat hrackish in summer timp. For evaporation they make use of brazen pots^ contain- ing about two hundred pints, and similar in form to those used in France for n^aking lye. They put ten or a dozen of them in a row on a pit four feet in depth, and a breadth proportion;ite to their diameter, so that the sides lay upon the edge of the pit, sup- ported by a few handfuls of white clay, which fill up but very imperfectly the spaces between the vessel^. The wood, which they cut in billets of about three f^et, is thrown in at the extremities of the pit. These sort of kilns are e>.travagant, and consume a prodigious quantity of woQd ; I made an observation of it to the people employed in the business, to which they made answer, that they did not knqw there was any preferable mode ; and they should follow their own till some person or other from the Old Country (meaning Europe) came and taught them to do bet- ter. The scarcity of hands for the cutting down and conveyance of th$ wood, and tlie few saline princi- ples that the wajtier contains when dissolved, occasions the salt to be very cjear ; they sell it at from four to U\<. \ ... j^ 119 five piasters per hundred weight. It is that scarcity which induces many of ihem to search for salt springs. They arc usually found in places described by the name of Tyicks, vvlure the bisons, elks, and stags that existed in Kentu ;ky before the arrival of the Europeans, went by hundreds to lick the saline particles with which the soil is impregnated. There are in this state and that of Tenessea a set of quacks, who by means of a hazle wand pretend to discover springs of salt and fresh water ; but they are only consulted by the more ignorant class of people, who never send for them but when they are induced by «ome circumstance or other to search over a spot of ground where they suspect one of those springs. The country we traversed ten miles on this side Klays-Lick, and eight miles beyond, did not afford the least vestige of a plantation. The soil is dry and sandy ; the road is covered with immense flat chalky stories, of a bluish cast inside, the edges of which are 'found. 'The only trees that we observed were the white oak, or quercus aE^a, and nut-tree, or juglans hickery, "but their stinted groVvth and wretched ap- pearance clearly indicated the sterility of the soil, occasioned, doubtless, by the salt mines that it contains. m m '( ^ } i I : ' '' > \ i (■■ 120 .u;^"... ... i' i! ' : From Mays-Lick I went to Millesburgli, com- posed of fifty houses ; I went there to visit Mr. Sa- vary, who had been very intimately acquainted with my father, and by his invitation I left my inn and went to lodge at his house. Mr. Savary is one of the greatest proprietors in that part of the country ; he possesses more than eighty thousand acres of land in Virginia^ Tenessea and Kentucky. The taxes that he pays, although moderate, are notwithstand- ing very burthensome to him ; more so, as it is with the greatest difficulty he can find purchasers for his land, as the emigrations of the eastern states, having taken a different direction, incline but very feebly towards Kentucky. Near Millesburgli flows a little river, from five to six fathoms broad, upon which two saw-mills are erected. The streaih was then so low that I crossed it upon large chalky stones, which comprised a part of its bottom, and which at that time were above water. In winter time, on the contraiy, it swells to such a degree that it can scarcely be passed by means of a bridge twenty-five feet in height. The bridges thrown over the small rivers, or creeks, that are met with frequently in the interior of the country, more especially in the eastern states, are all formed of the -.i. -• 'i 121 trunks of trees placed transversely by each other. These bridges have no railings ; and whenever a person travels on horseback, it is always prudent to alight in order to cross them. On this side Lexinton we passed through Paris, a manor-house for the county of Bourbon. This small town, in the year 179^, consisted of no more than eighteen houses, and now contains more than a hundred and fiftv, half of which are brick. It is situated on a delightful plain, and watered by a small river, near which are several corn mills. Every thing seems to announce the comfort of its inhabit- ants. Seven or eight were drinking whiskey at a respectable inn where I stopped to refresh myself on account of the excessive heat. After having replied to different questions which they asked me concern- ing the intent of my journey, one of them invited me to dine with him, wishing to introduce me to one of my fellow-countrymen arrived lately from Bengal. I yielded to his entreaties, and actually found a Frenchman who had left Calcutta to go and reside at Kentucky. He was settled at Paris, where he exercised the profession of a school-master. m "i 1' ■ R ■r VZ'2 9 > 1 II- CHAP. XIV. Lexinton. — Mayiufactones established there. — Com- merce. — Dr, Samuel Brown. LEXINTON, tlic nianor-liouse for the county of Fayette, is situated in the midst of a flat soil of about three hundred acres, like the rest of the small towns of the United States that are not upon the borders of the sea. This town is traced upon a regular plan, and its streets, sufficiently broad, cut each other at right angles. The want of pavement renders it very muddy in winter time, and rainy weather. The houses, most of which are brick, are disseminated upon an extent of eighty or a hundred acres, except those which form the main street, where they are contiguous to each other. This town, founded in 1780, is the oldest and most weahhy of the three new western states ; it contains about three thousand inhabitants. Frankfort, the seat of govern- ment in Kentucky, which is upwards of twenty 123 • >< miles distant from it, is not so populous. We mny attribute the rapid inrrease of Loxinton to its situa* tion in the centre of one of the most fertile parts of the country, comprised in a kind of semi-circle, formed by the Kentucky river. There are two printing-offices at Lexinton, in each of which a newspaper is published twice a week. Part of the paper is manufactured in the country, and is dearer by one-third than in France. That which they use for writing, originally imported from England,, comes by the way of Philadelphia and Balti- more. Two extensive rope walks, constantly in employ, supply the ships with rigging that are built upon the Ohio. On the borders of the little river that runs very near the town several tan-yards are established that supply the wants of the inhabitants. I observed at the gates of these lan-yards strong leathers of a yellowish cast, tanned with the black oak ; in consequence of which I saw that this tree grew in Kentucky, although I had not observed it between Limestone and Lexinton ; in fact, I had seen nothing but land either parched up or extremely fertile ; and, as I have since observed, this tree grows in neither, it is an inhabitant of the mountainous parts, where the soil is gravelly and rather moist. r2 t r" ]! ■ if?! :'% I I ~f* 124 The want of hands excites the industry of the inhabitants of this country. When I was at Lex- inton one of them had just obtained a patent for a nail machine, more complete and ex[)editious than the one made use of in the prisons at New York and Philadelphia ; and a second announced one for the grinding and cleaning of hemp and sawing wood and stones. This machine, moved by a horse or a current of water, is capable, according to what the inventor said, to break and clean eight thousand weight of hemp per day. The articles manufactured at Lexinton are very passable, and the speculators are ever said to make rapid fortunes, notwithstanding the extreme scarcity of hands. This scarcity proceeds from the inhabit- ants giving so decided a preference to agriculture, that there are very few of them who put their chil- dren to any trade, wanting their services in the field. The following comparison will more clearly prove this scarcity of artificers in the western states : At Charleston in Carolina, and at Savannah in Georgia, a cabinet-maker, carpenter, mason, tin- man, tailor, shoemaker, &c. earns two piastres a day, and cannot live for less than six per week ; at New York and Philadelphia he has but one piaster, and it 125 costs him four per week. At Marietta, Lexinton and Nasheville, in Tenessea, these workmen earn from one piaster to one and a half a day, and can subsist a week with the produce of one day's liibour. Another example may tend to give an idea of the low price of provisions in the western states. The boarding-house, where I lived during my stay at Lexinton, passes for one of the best in the town, and we were profusely served at the rate of two piastres per week. I am informed that living is equally cheap in the states of New England, which comprise Connecticut, Massachusets, and New Hampshire ; but the price of labour is not so high, and therefore more proportionate to the price of provisions. Independent of those manufactories which are established in Lexinton, there are several common potteries, and one uc two powder-mills, the produce of which is consumed in the country or exported to Upper Carolina and Low Louisiana. The sulphur is obtained from Philadelphia and the saltpetre is manufactured in the country ; the materials are ex- tracted from the grottos, or caverns, that r.re found on the declivity of lofty hills in the most mouvitain- ous part of the state. The soil there is extremc^Iy rich in nitrous particles, [which is evidently due to ■T>" Ft r. ' 1: f ; • I 'v, than a thousand by that river, without reckoning the passage by sea, although we have had repeated examples that the piissage tVom New Or- leans to riiiladelphia or New York is sometimes a? long as that from France to the United States. The current coin in the states oi' Kentucky and Tenncssea has the same divisions as in Virginia " They reckon six shillings to the dollar or piastre. The hundreds, which nearly correspond with our halfpence, although having a forced currency, do not appear in circulation. The quarters, eighths, and sixteenths of a piastre form the small white money. As it is extremely scarce, it is supplied by a very in- different method, but which appears necessary, and consists in cutting the dollars into pieces. As every body is entitled to make this division, there are people who do it for the sake of gain ; at the same time in the retail trade the seller will generally abate in his articles for a whole dollar, than have their full worth in six or eight pieces. I have heard from several persons very well in- formed, that during the last war, corn being kept up at an exorbitant rate, it was computed that the exportationf from Kentucky had balanced the price !.| \ . • If! I. ^!'i ISO of the importations of English goods from Philadel- phia and Baltimore, by the way of the Ohio : but Hince the peace, the demand for flour and salt pro- visions having ceased in. the Caribbees, corn has fallen considerably ; so that the balance of trade is wholly unfavourable to the country. During my stay at Lexinton I frequently saw Dr. Samuel Brown, from Virginia, a })hysician of the college of Edinburgh, and member of the Philoso- phical Society; to whom several members of that so. ciety had given me letters of recommendation. A merited reputation undeniably places Dr. S. Brown in the firsst rank of physicians settled in that part of the country. Receiving regularly the scientific journals from London, he i.s always in the channel of new discoveries, and turns them to the advantage of his fellow-citizens. It is to him that they are in- debted for the introduction of the cow-pox. He had at that time inoculated upward of five hundred persons in Kentucky, when they were making their iirst attempts in New York and Philadelphia. Dr. Brown also employs himself in collecting fossils and other natural productions, which abound in this in- teresting country. I have seen at his house several relics of very large unknown fish, caught in the ■a -j ::Bi''t -i m I'M Kentucky River, and which were remarkable for their singular forms. The analysis of the mineral waters at Mud-Lick, was to employ the first leisure time he had. Those waters are about sixty miles from Lexinton ; they arc held in great esteem, and the most distinguished personages in the country were drinking them when I was in the town. The Philosophical Transactions and the Monthly Review, published at New York by Dr. Mitchel, are the pe- riodical works wherein Dr. Brown inserts the fruit of his observation and research. I had alho the pleasure of forming an acquaint- ance with several French gentlemen settled in that part of the country : Mr. ]{obert, to whom I was recommended by Mr. Marbois, jun. then in the United States ; and Messrs. Duhamel and Mentelle, sons of the members of the National Institution of the same name. The two latter are settled in the environs of Lexinton ; the first as a physician, and the second as a farmer. I received from them that marked attention and respect so pleasing to a fo- reigner at a distance from his country and his friends ; in consequence of which I now feel my- self happy in having this means of publicly expressing my warmest gratitude. 's 2 11 l!' ' it ^}i I '2 I 382 ; t- III ^ 1 CHAP. XV. Lepnrture from Lexinlon. — Culture of the tine at Kentucky. — Passage over the Kentucky and Dick Rivers. — Departure for Nasheville. — Mulder Hill. — Passage over Green River, I SET out on the lOth of August from Lexinton to Nasheville. in the state of Teniicssea ; and as the establishment formed to naturalize the vine in Ken- tucky was but a few miles out of my road, I re- Folved to go and see it. There is no American but what takes the warmest interest in attempts of that kind, and several persons in the Atlantic states had spoken to me of the success which had crowned this undertaking. French vines I eing one of the princi- pal articles of our commerce with the United States, I wished to be satisfied respecting the degree of pro- sperity which this establishment might have acquired. 133 In the mean time, from the indifferent manner which I had heard it spoken of in the country I suspected beforehand that the lirst attempts had not been very fortunate. About fourteen miles from Lcxinton I quitted the Hickman Ferry road, turned on my left, and strolled into the woods, so that I did not reach the vineyard till the evening, when I was handsomely received by JVIr. Dufour, who superintends the busi- ness. He gave me an invitation to sleep, and spend the following day with him, which I accepted. There reigns in the United States a public spirit that makes them greedily sefzc hold of every plan that tends to enrich the country by agriculture and commerce. That of rearing the vine in Kentucky was eagerly embraced. Several individuals united together, and formed a society to put it in execution, and it was decreed that a fund should be established often thousand dollars, divided into two hundred shares of fifty dollars each. This fund was very soon accomplished. Mr. Dufour, the chief of a small Swiss colony which seven or eight years before had settled in Kentucky, and who had proposed this un- dertaking, was deputed to search for a proper soil, to procure vine plants, and to do every thing he r liiiil •t m 134 m might think necessary to insure success. The spot that he has chosen and cleared is on the Kentucky jiver, about twenty miles from Lexinton. The soil is excellent, and the vineyard is planted upon the declivity of a hill exposed to the south, and the base of which is aboitt two hundred fathoms from the river. Mr. Dufour intended to go to France to procure the vine plants,'and with that idea went to New York ; but the war, or other causes that I know not, pre- vented his setting out, and he contented himself with collecting, in this town and Philadelphia, slips of every species that he could find in the possession of individuals that had them in their gardens. After unremitted labour he made a collection of twenty- five different sorts, which he brought to Kentucky, where he employed himself in cultivating them. However the success did not answer the expectation ; only four or five various kinds survived, among which were those that he had described by the name of Burgundy and Madeira, but the former is far from being healthy. The grape generally decays before it is ripe. When I saw them the bunches were thin and poor, the berries small, and every thing an- nounced that the vintage of 1 802 would not be more ¥Aim 135 abundant than that of the preceding years. The Madeira vines appeared, on the contrary, to give some hopes. Out of a hundred and fifty or two hundred, there was a third loaded with very fine bunches. The whole of these vines do not occupy a space of more than six acres. They are planted and fixed with props similar to those in the environs of Paris. Such was then the situation of this establishment, in which the stockholders concerned themselves but very little. It was again about to experience ano- ther check by the division of Mr. Dufour*s family, one part of which was on the point of setting out to the banks of the Ohio, there to form a settlement. Tliese particulars are sufiicicnt to give, on the pre- tended flourishing state of the vines in Kentucky, an idea very different to that which might be formed from the pompous account of them which appeared some months since in our public papers. I profitetl by my stay with Mr. Dufour, to ask him in what part of Kentucky the numerous emigration of his countrymen had settled, which had been so much spoken of in our newspapers in J 793 and 1794. His reply was, that a great number of the J^wiss had actually formed an intention to settle tliere ; but •I ■'1 In. ■ i' ;•: :1 ^If' 136 just as tliey were setting out, the major part had changed their mind, and that the colony, was then reduced to his family and a lew friends^ forming, in the whole, eleven persons. I did not set out from the vincvard till the second day after my arrival. Mr. Dufour offered, in order to shorten my journey, to conduct me through the wood where they cross the Kentucky river. I ac- cepted his proposal, and although the distance was only four miles we took two hours to accomplish it, as we were obliged to alight either to climb up or descend the mountains, or to leap our horses over the trunks of old trees piled one upon another. The soil, as fertile as in the environs of Lexinton, will be difficult to cultivate, on account of the great in- equality of the ground. Beech, nut, and oak trees, form chiefly the mass of the forests. We crossed, in the mean time, the shallows of the river, covered excluFively with beautiful palms. A great number of people in the country dread the proximity of these palms ; they conceive that the down which grows on the reverse of the leaves, in spring, and which falls off in the course of the summer, brings on (jonsumptions, by producing an irritation of the lungs, almost insensible, but continued. 137 In this season of the year the Kentucky River is so low at Hickman Ferry that a person may ford it witli the greatest ease. I stopped a few minutes at the inn where the ferry- boat phes when tlie water is high, and while they were giving my horse some corn I went on the banks' of the river to survey it more attentively. Its bor- ders are formed by an enormous mass of chalky stones, remarkably peaked, about a hundred and fifty feet high, and which bear, from the bottom to the top, evident traces of the action of the waters, which have washed them away in several parts. A broad and long street where the houses are arranged in a right line, will an idea of the channel of this river at Hickman i^'erry. It swells amazingly in spring and autumn, and its waters rise at that time, in a few days, from sixty to seventy feet. I met, at this inn, aji inhabitant of the country who lived about sixty miles farther up. This gentle- man, with whom I entered into conversation, and who appeared to me to enjoy a comfortable exist- ence, gave me strong invitations to pass a week with him at his house ; and as he supposed that I was in quest of a spot to form a settlement, which is usually the intention of those who go to Kentucky, he of- ,1 I 4 I 1 iii i J38 fercd his services to shew nie a healthy soil, wishinp^ very much, he said, to have an inhabitant of the old country for a neighbour. It has often happened to me, in this state os well as in that of Tennessea, to refuse similar propositions by strangers whom I met at the inns or at the houses where I asked a lodging, and who invited me, after that, to s^end a few days in their family. About a mile from Kentucky I left the Danville road, and took that of Harrod's Burgh, to go to General Adair, to whom Dr. Ramsey of Charleston had given me a letter of recommendation. I arrived at his house the same day. I crossed Dick's River, which is not half so broad as the Kentucky, but is extremely pleasant at this season of the year. Its bed is uniformly hollowed out by nature, and seems cased with stone. Fart of the right bank, opposite to the place where they land, discovers a beautiful rock of a chalky substance, more than two hundred and fifty feet in height. The stratum forms one continued mass, which does not present the smallest interval, and which is only distinguished by zones and parallels of a bluish cast, the colour of wliich contrasts with the whiteness of the towering pile. On leaving its summit, numerous furrows, hollowed J3g in tlu' rock, very near together, and which seem to rijn ad iiijlnitum, are seen at different heights. These furrows have visibly been funned by the current of the river, whicli at distant epochs had its bed at these various levels. Dick's River, like the Ken- tucky, experiences, in the spring, an extraordinary increase of water. The stratum of vegetable earth which covers the rock does not appear to be more than two or three feet thick. Virginia cedars are very common there. This tree, which is fond of lofty places where the chalky substance is very near to the superficies of the soil, thrives very well ; but other trees, such as the black oak, the hickery, &c. are stinted, and assume a miserable appearance. General Adair was absent when I arrived at his plantation. His lady received me in the most obliging manner, and for five or six days that I staid with her I received every mark of attention and hos- pitality, as though I had been intimately acquainted with the family. A spacious and commodious house, a number of black servants, equipages, every thing aimounced the opulence of the General, which it is well known is not always, in America, the appendage of those ho- noured with that title. His plantation is situated t2 U •m 140 near Harrodsburgh in the county of Mci»:cr. Mag- nificent peach orchards, immense fields of Indian wheat, surround the house. Tlie soil there is ex- tremely fertile, which shews itself by the largeness of the blades of corn, their extraordinary height, and the abundance of the crops, that yield annually thirty or forty hundred weight of corn per acre. The mass of the surrounding forests is composed of those species of trees that are found in the better sort of land, such as the gleditia acanthus, gullandina di- oica, ulmus viscosa, morus-rubraj corylus, annona trilahn. In short, for several miles round the sur- face of the ground is flat, which is very rare in that country. As I could not defer my travels any longer, I did not accept of Mrs. Adair's invitation, who entreated me to stay till her husband's return ; atid on the 20th of August I set out in order to continue my route toward Nasheville, very much regretting not having had it . in my power to form an acquaintance with the General. My first day's journey was upward of twenty miles, and in the evening I put up at the house of one Hays, who keeps a kind of inn about fifty miles from Lexinton. Harrodsburgh, which I passed H 141 through that daV; at present consists only of about twenty liouoes, irregularly scattered, and built of wood. Twelve miles farther I regained, at Chaplain Fork, the road to Danville. In this space, which is uninhabited, the soil is excellent, but very unequal. The second day I went nearly thirty miles, and stopped at an inn kept by a person of the name of Skeggs. Ten miles on this side is Mulder-Hill, a steep and lofty mountain that forms a kind of amphi- theatre. From its summit the neighbouring country presents the aspect of an immense valley, covered with forests of an imperceptible extent, v\ hence, as far as the eye can reach, nothing but a gloomy verdant space is seen, formed by the tops of the close -connected trees, and through which not the vestige of a plantation can be discerned. The pro- found silence that reigns in these woods, uninhabit- ed by wild beasts, and the security of the place, forms an ensemble rarely to be met ^^'ith in other countries. At the summit of Mulder-Hill the road divides, to unite again a few miles farther on. I took the left, and the first plantation that 1 reached was that of Mr. Macmahon^ formerly professor of a coHege in Virginia, who came very lately to reside in this y)art of the country, where heofliciates as a clergyman. fl: ■■lU 142 Skeggs's inn, where I stopped after having left Mulder-Hill, was the worst station that I took from Limestone to Nasheville. It was destitute of every kind of provision, and I was obliged to sleep on the floor, wrapped up in my rug, without having been able to procure a supper. As there was no stable in this plantation, I turned my horse into a peach- orchard for pasture. The fences that inclosed it were broken down, and fearing he would escape in the night, I put a bell on his neck, such as travellers carry with them when compelled to sleep in the woods. The peaches at that time were in full per- fection, and I perceived that my horse had been feed- ing on them, from the immense quantity of kernels lying under three or four trees. This was very easy for him, as the branches, loaded with fruit, hung nearly to the ground. About eight miles hence I forded Green River, which flows into the Ohio, after innumerable wind- ings, and runs through a narrow valley not more than a mile in breadth. At the place where I crossed it it had not three of water in an extent from fifteen to twenty fathoms broad ; but in the spring, the only epoch when it is navigable, the water rises about eighteen feet, as may be judged by the roots of the J«..J 143 trees that adorn its banks, and which are stripped naked by the current Beyond the river we regain the road, which for the space of two miles serpentines in that part of the valley which is on the left bank. The soil of these shallows is marshy and very fruitful, where the beech tree, among others, flourishes in great perfection. Its diameter is usually in propor- tion to its height, and its massy trunk sometimes rises twenty-five or thirty feet from the earth divested of a single branch. The soil occupied by these trees is considered by the inhabitants as the most difficult to clear. I '$ i fc^l m ? •». . I' 14 4 CHAP. XVI. Passage over the Barrens, or Meadows. — Plantations Import the Road. — The View they present. — Plants discovered there. — Arrival at Nasheville. mM. ABOUT ten miles from Green River flows tlie Little Barren, a small river, from thirty to forty feet in breadth ; the ground in the environs is dry and barren, and produces nothing but a few Virginia cedars, two-leaved pines, and blnfck oaks. A little beyond this commence the Barrens, or Kentucky Meadows. I went the first day thirteen miles across these meadows, and put up at the house of Mr. Williamson, near Bears-Wallow. In the morning, before I left the place, I wanted to give my horse some water, upon which my host directed me to a spring about a quarter of a mile from the house, where his family was supplied ; I wan- s across 143 (Icred about for the space of two liours in search of tills, when I (liscovcred a plantation in a low and nar- row valley, where I learnt that I hnd mistaken the path, and was obliged to return to the place from whence I rnme. The. mistress of the house told mo that she had resided in the Barrens upwards of three years, and th: t for eighteeen months prior to my going there she had not seen an individual ; tiiat, weary of living thus isolated, her husband had been more thnn two months from home in {)uest of another spot, towards the mouth of the Ohio. Such \A'as the pretence for this removal, which made the third since the family left Virginia. A daughter about fourteen years of age, and two children Considerably younger, were all the company she had ; her house, on the » other hand, was stocked abundantly with vegetables and corn. t This part of the Barrens that chance occasioned me to stroll over, was precisely similar to that I had traversed the day before. I found a spring in a ca- vity of an orbicular form^ where it took me upwards of an hour to get half a pail of water for my horse. The time that 1 had thus employed, that which 1 had lost in wandering about, added to the intense heat, obliged u III ii I it '>f NO m ,0 7* me to shorten my route : in consequence of which I put up at Dripping Spring, about ten miles from Bears- Wallow. On the following day, the 26th, I went twenty- eight milci, and stopped at the house of Mr. Jacob Kesly, belonging to the Dunkor sect, which I disco- vered by his long beard. About ten miles from Dripping Spring 1 fi^rdcd Big-Barren River, which appeared to me one third broader than Green River, the plantation of one Macfiddit, who plies a ferry- boat when the waters are high; and another, belong- ing to one Chapman. About three miles farther are the two oldest settlements on the road, both of them having been built upwards ot fourteen years. When 1 was at this place, a boat laden with salt arrived trom St. Genevieve, a French village situated upon the riglit bank of the MissivSsippi, about a hundred Hiiles beyond the mouth of the Ohio. My landlord's house was as miserably furnished as thovSe I had lodged at for several days preceding, and I was again obliged to sleep on the floor. The major partof the inhabitants of Kentucky have been there too short a time to make any great improve- ments ; they have a very indifterent supply of any thing except Indian corn and forage !i 147 On the 27th of August I set off very early in the morning ; and about thirteen miles from Mr. Kes- ley's I crofssed the line lluit separates the State of Tennessea from that of Kentucky. There also ter- minates the Barrens ; and to my great sitisfaetion I got into the woods. Nothing can be more tiresome than the doleful uniformity of these immense mea- dows where there is nobody to be n)et with ; and where, except a great number of partridges, we nei- ther see nor hear any species of living beings, and are still more isolated than in the middle of the forests. The first plantation that I reached on entering Tennessea belonged to a person of the name of Checks, of whom I entertained a very indifferent opinion, by the conversation that he was holding with seven or eiglit of liis neighbours, with whom he was drinking whiskey. Fearing lest I should witness some murdering scene cr other, which among the inhabitants of this part of the country is frequently the end of intoxication, ])roduced by this kind of spi- rits, I quickly took my leave, and put up at an inn about three miles farther off, where I found ev. y accommodation. The late Duke ofOrleaiit,' son lodged at this house a few years before. On the n 3 ■'.-li^ ^Iji' 148 day following I arrivrd at Nashcville, after havintr travelled twenty-seven miles. The Barrens, or Kentucky Meadows, comprise an extent from sixty to seventy miles in length, by sixty rniles in breadth. According to the signification of this word, [conceived I should have had to cross over ii naked space, sown here and there with a few jjlants. I was confirmed in mv opinion by that which someol the country people had given me of these meadows before I reached them. Thev told me that in this season I should [)erish with heat and thirst, and that I should not ijiid the least shade the whole of the way, as the major part of the Americans who live in tlie woods have r.ot the least idea that there is any part of the country entirely open, and still less that they could inhabit it. Instead of finding a country as it had been depicted to me, I was agreeably sur- prised to see a beautiful meadow, where the grass was from two to three I'ect high. Amidst these pasture lands I discovered a great variety of plants, among which were the gerardia fava, or gall of the earth; the giiaphaliiim. dioic?i?Ti, or white ])lan- tain ; and the rvdbekia purpurea.' 1 observed that the roots of the latter plant participated in some degree with the sharp taste of the leaves of the spi* 119 ianihus okracca. When I crossed these meadows the flower season was over with three parts of the plants, but the time lor most of the seeds to ripen was still at a great distance ; nevertheless I gathered about ninety different species of them which I took with me to France. In sonic parts of the meadows we observed several species of the wild vine, and in particular that called by the inhabitants summer grapes, the bunches arc as large, and the grapes of as good a quality as those in the vineyards round Paris, with this difference, that the berries are not quite so close together. It seems to me that the attempts which have been made in Kentucky to establish the culture of the vine would have been more successful in the Barrens, the soil of which appears to me more adapted for this kind of culture than that on the banks of the Kentucky ; the latter is richer it is true, at the same time the nature of the country, and the prox- imity of the forests render it much damper. This was also my father's opinion ; he thought that the ditferent parts of North America that he had tra- velled through, during a sojourn of twelve years, the Slates of Kentucky and Tennessea, and particularly the Barrens, were the parts in which the vine might I N ' ;'' '■ 'f } \ i I '■: i ; t ]it h 1 1 M « ;*■: J60 be cultivated with the greatest success. His opinion was founded in a great measure upon the certainty that the vegetable slratum in the above states lies upon a chalky mass. The Barrens are circumscribed by a wood about three miles broad, which in some parts joins to sur- rounding forests. The trees are in general very straggling, and at a greater distance from each other as they a]}proach the meadows. On the side of Tennessea this border is exclusively composed of post oaks, or quercus oblu,si/oba, the wood of which being very hard, and not liable to rot, is, in preference to any other, used for fences. This serviceable tree would be easy to naturalize in France, as it grows among the pines in the worst of soil. We observed again, here and there, in the meadow, several black oaks, or quercus ni^rn ; and nut trees, or jug' Inns h'lchcrij^ which rise about twelve or iiftcen feet. Somctinics they formed small arbours, but always far enough apart from each other so as not to inter- <'ept the surrounding view. With the exception of small willows, about two feet high, sclix lons;irostriSj and a few shumacs, there i.s not the least appearance of a shrub. The surface of these meadows is gene- rally very even : tow.nrds Dripping S[)ring I observ(;d ;l.P a lofty eminence, sliglilly adornetl witli trees, and bestrewed with enormous rocks, which hang jutting over the main road. It appears there are a great number of subterraneous caverns in the Barrens, some of which are very near the surface. A short time before I was there, several pieces of the rocks that were decayed, fell with a tremendous crash into the road near Bears-Wallow, as a traveller was passing, who, by the greatest mira- cle escaped. We may easily conceive with what consequences such accidents must be attended in a country where the plantations are so distant from each other, and where, perhaps, a t»'aveller does not pass for several days. We remarked in these meadows several holes, widened at the top in the shape of funnels, the breadth of which varies according to their depth. In some of these holes, about five or six feet from the bottom, flows a small vein of water, which, in the same pro- portion as it fdls, loses itself through another part. These kind of springs never fail ; in consequence of which several of the inhabitants have been induced to settle in their vicinity; for, except the river Big- Barren, I did not see the smallest rivulet or creek ; nor did T het^r that they have ever attempted to di^ t- ■ I •Ml > 1 t ]5'2 wells ; but were they to m;ike the essay, I have no doubt of their success. According to the observa- tions we have just made, the want of water, and wood adapted to make fences, will be long an obstacle to the increase of settlements in this part of Kentucky. Notwithstanding, one of these two inconveniences might be obviated, by changing the present mode of enclosing land, and substituting hedges, upon which the s^/editsin triacantlios, one of the most common trees in tlie country, might be used with success. The Barrens at present are very thinly populated, considering their extent ; for on the road where the plantations are closest together we counted but eighteen in a space of sixty or seventy miles. Some of the inhabitants divide land of the Barrens in Kentucky into three classes, according to its qua- lity. That which I crossed, where the soil is yel- lowish and rather gravelly, ay)peared to me the besl adapted for the culture of corn. That of Indian wlieat is almost the only thing to which the inhabi- tants apply themselves ; but as the settlements are of a fresh date, the land has not been able to acquire that degree of ]irosperity that is obscrwd on this side Mulder Hill. Most of the inhabitants who go to settle in the country, incline upon the skirts, or along 11,1' 153 tlieLittlo and Bipr Barren rivers, w'nere tliey are nt- tracted l)y the advnntage tliat the. meadows offer as ]).'Kstnre for the cattle, an advantage which, in a great measurev the inh^ihitants of tlie most fertile districts are deprived of, tl»e country hcin'g so very woody, that there is scarcely any grass land to be seen. Every year, in the course of tlie months of March or April, the inhabitants set fire to the grass, which at that time is dried up, and through its extreme length, would conceal from the cattle a fortnight or three weeks longer the new grass, which then begins to spring up. This custom is nevertheless generally censured ; as being set on fire too early, the new grass is stripped of the covering that ought to shelter it from the spring and frosts, and in conse- quence of which its vegetation is retarded. The custom of burning the mearlows was formerly ])rac- tised by the natives, who came in this ])art of the country to hunt ; in fact, they do it now in the other parts of' North America, where there are sa- vannas of an immense extent. Their aim in setting lire to it is to allure the stags, bisons, &c. into the parts which are burnt, where they can discern them at a greater distance. Unless a person has seen these dreadful conflagratinos, it is impossible to form the X =.'•1 if'. H K.,ii J 54 the least idea of them. The flames that occupy generally an extent of several miles, are sometimes driven by the wind with such rapidity, that the inha- bitants, even on horseback, have become a prey to them. The American sportsmen and the savages preserve themselves from this danger by a very inge nious method ; they immediately set fire to the part of the meadow where they are, and then retire into the space that is burnt, where the flame that threat- ened them stops for the want of nourishment. 155 <:''l!| CHAP. XVII. General observations iipon Kentucky. — Nature of the soil. — First settlements in the state. -^ Right of property uncertain. — Population. THE state of Kentucky is situated 36 deg. 30 min. and 39 deg. 30 min. north latitude, and 28 deg. and 89 deg. west longitude ; its boundaries to tlie north- west are the Ohio, for an extent of about seven hun- dred and sixty miles, to the east of Virginia, and to the south of Tennessea ; it is separated from Vir- ginia by the river Sandy and the Laurel Mountains, one of the principal links of the Alleghanies. The greatest length of this state is about four hundred miles, and its greatest breadth about two hundred. This vast extent appears to lie upon a bank of chalky stone, identic in its nature, and covered with a stra- tum of vegetable earth, which varies in its compo- sition, and is from ten to fifteen feet thick. The X 1 - ^^ ;r W io6 boundaries of this immense bank are not yet pre- scribed in any txirrect manner, but ils thiekness must be very considerable, to judge of it by the rivers in tlie country, the borders of which, and particularly those of the Kcnlucky and Di.-k rivers, which i*^ one branch of it, rise, in some parts, three liundred feet perpendicular, \vhei"e the chalky stone is seen cjuite bare. The soil in Kentucky, although irregular, is not mountainous, if we except some parts contiguous to the Ohio and on this side A'irginia. The chalky stone, and abundant coal mines which lie useless, are the only mineral substances worthy of notice. Iron mines are very scarce there, and, to the best of my remembrance, but one was worked, which is far from being sufficient for the wants of the country. The Kentucky and Green rivers empty themselves into the Ohio, after a course of three hundred miles ; they fall so low in summer time, that they are forded a hundred and fifty miles from their embouchure; but in the winter and spring they experience such sudden and strong increases that the waters of the Kentucky rise about forty feet in four-and-twenty hours. This variation is still more remarkable in the secondary rivers which run into it ; the latter, J 57 though frequently from ten to fifteen fathoms broad, preserve such httle water in summer, that there is scarcely one of them which caimot be crossed without wetting the feet ; and the stream of water that serpentines upon the bed of chalky rock is at that time reduced to a few inches in depth ; in con- sequence of which we may look upon the Kentucky as an immense bason, which, independent of the natural illapse of its waters through the channel of the . rivers, loses a great part of them by interior openings. The Atlantic part of the United States in that respect affords a perfect constrast with Kentucky, as on the other side of the Alleghanies not the least vestige of chalky stone is seen. The rivers, great and small, however distant from their source, are subject to no other change in the volume of their waters but what results from a more or less rainy season ; and their springs, which are very numerous, always supply water in abundance ; tliis applies more particularly to the southern states, with which I am perfectly acquainted. According to the succinct idea that we have just given of Kentucky, it is easy to judge that the in- habitants are exposed to a very serious inconveni- *!' '« li 158 ence, that of wanting water in the buinmer; still we must except those in the vicinity of great rivers and their principal channels, that always preserve water enough to supply their domestic wants ; thence it results that many estates, even among the most fertile, are not cleared, and that the owners cannot get rid of them without the greatest difficulty, as the emigrants, better informed now a days, make no purchases before they have a correct statement of localities. Kentucky is that of the three states situated west of the Alleghanies which was first populated. This country was discovered in 1770, by some Virginia sportsmen, when the favourable accounts they gave of it induced others to go there. No fixed establish- yient, however, was formed there before 1780. At tl^at time this immense country was not occupied by any Indian nation ; they went there to hunt, but all with one common assent made a war of exter- nwnation against those who wished to settle there. Thence this country derives the name of Kentucky, which signifies, in the language of the natives, the Land of Blood. When the whites made their ap- pearance there, the natives showed still more oppo- sition to their'establishment ; they parried for a long 1 159 time death and desolation, and dispatched, after thei^ usual mode, their prisoners in the most cruel tor- ments. This state of things lasted till 1783, at which time the American population having he- come too strong for them to penetrate to the cen- tre of the establishment, they were reduced to the necessity of attacking the emigrants on their route ; and, on the other hand, they were deserted by the English in Canada, who had abetted and supported them in the war. In 1 782 they began to open roads for carriages in the interior of the country; prior to this there were only paths practicable for persons on foot and horseback. Till 1788 those who emigrated from the eastern states travelled by way of Virginia. In the first place, they went to Block House, situated in Holston, westward of the mountains ; and as the government of the United States did not furnish them with an escort, they waited at this place till they were sufficiently numerous to pass in safety through the Wilderness, an uninhabited space of a hundred and thirty miles, which they had to travel over before they arrived at Crab Orchard, the first post occupied by the whites. The enthusiasm for emigrating to Kentucky was at that time carried iO > \ i ii I Go such a degree in tlic UniUxl States, that s.*>irje years upwards of twenty tlionsand have hctn known to pass, and many of them IkkI even de 1 pi I ffPii ]62 the validity of his own right but what seemed dubi- ous of his neighbour's. Among the numerous causes which have produced this incredible confusion with respect to property, one of tlie principal may be attributed to the igno- rance of the surveyors, or rather to the difficulty they experienced, in the early stage of things, in following their professions. The continual state of war in which this country was at that time obliged them frequently to suspend their business, in order to avoid being shot by the natives, who were watch- ing for them in the woods. The danger they ran was extreme, as it is v*? , known a native will go upwards of a hundred miles to kill a single enemy ; he stays for several days in the hollow of a tree to take him by surprise, and when he has killed him, he scalps him, and returns with the same rapidity. From this state of things, the result was that the same lot has not only been measured several times by dilFereiit surveyors, but more frequently it has been crossed by different lines, which distinguish particular parts of that lot from the lots adjacent, which, in return, are in the same situation with re- gard to those that are contiguous to them ; in short, there are lots qf a thousand acres where a hundred Kaji I' 163 of them are not reclaimed. Military rights are still looked upon as the most assured. One very re- markable thing is, that many of the inliabitants find a guarantee for their estates that are thus confused ; as the law, being always on the side of agriculture, enacts that all imj)rovemonts shall be reimbursed by the person who comes forwanl to declare himself the first possessor ; and as the estimation, on account of the high price of labour, is always made in favour of the cultivators, it follows that many people dare not claim their rights through fear of considerable indemnifications being awarded against them, and of being in return expelled by others, who might attack them at the moment when they least expected it. This incertitude in the right of property is an inex- haustible source of tedious and expensive law-suits, which serve to enrich the professional gentlemen of the country. I I'll! y 2 ](14 '. fl 1 CILVP. XVIII. Distinction of Estates.— Species of Trees peculiar to each of them. — Gitise)ig- — yluimah in Ken- iuchj. IN Kentucky, as well as in Pennsylvania, Virgi- nia and Carolina, the estates are divided into three classes, for the better assessment of the taxes. This division with respect to tlie fertility of the land is relative to each of these states; thus in Kentucky, fur example, they would put in the second class estates, which, east of the mountains, would be ranked in the first, and in the third, those wtiich in Georgia and I>ow Carolina would be the second. 1 do not mcr.*i, liowever, to say by tliis that there arc not some possessions in the eastern states as fertile as in the western ; but they arc seldom found ex- cept along tlie rivers and in the vallies, and do not embrace so considerable a tract of country as in 111 % l65 Kentucky, and tliat part of Tcnncssca situate wc^t ot' the Cumberland Mouiilains. In these two states they a})|)reciatc the fertility of the land by the different species of trees that grow there ; thus when they announce the sale of an estate, they take care to specify tlie particular species of trees peculiar to its various parts, which is a suf- ficient index for the purchaser. This rule, however, suffers an exception to the Barrens, the soil of which, as I ha^^e remarked, is fertile enough, and where there are notwithstanding licre and there Scroby oaks, or quercus nigra, shell-barked hickeries, or juglans hichery^ which in forests characterise the worst of soil. In support of this mode of appreci- ating in America the fecundity of the soil by the nature of the trees it produces, I shall impart a re- markable observation that I made on my entering this state. In Kentucky and Cumberland *, inde- pendent »f a few trees natives of tliis j)art of these countries, the mass of the forests, in estates of the first class, is composed of the same species wliich ill! » In the United States Ihcy give the nanne of Cumberland to that part ofTennessea situated to the west oi the mountains of the «ame name. I V t n:'i pi- |;f 16G are found, but very rarely, cast of the mountains, in the most fertile soil ; these species are the following, cerasus f'lrginia, or cherry-tree; juglaiis oblovga, or white walnut ; pavia luiea, buck-eye ; fraximm alba, nigra, cerulea, or white, black, and blue ash ; reltisjoliis viUosis, or ack berry ; ulmus viacosa, or slippery chn ; qucrcus imbricartOy or black-jack oak; guilandina clisica, or coffee tree ; gleditsia triacan- ihoSjOT honey locust; and the annona triloba, or papaw, which grows thirty feet in height. These three latter species denote the richest lands^ In the cool and mountainous parts, and along the rivers where the banks are not very steep, we observed again the quercus macrocarpa, or over-cup white oak, the acorns of which arc as large as a hen's egg ; the acer sacharinum, or sugar-maple ; the fagiis sylva^ tica, or beech ; together with the />/anw5occ/rfew^rt/M, or plane : the Uriodendrum tulipifera, or white and yellow poplar; and the magnolia acuminata, or cucumber-tree, all three of which measure from eighteen to twenty feet in circumference r the plane, as I have before observed, attains a greater diameter. The two species of poplar, i. e. the white and yellow wood, have not the least external character, neither in their leaves nor flowers, by which they may be ¥ 1 67 m I ' tlistinguished from each otlier ; and as the species of the yellow wood is of a much greater use, before they fell a tree they satisfy themselves by a notch that it is of that species. In estates of the second class are ihefaf^iis casta- nea^ or chesnut tree ; quercus rubra, or red oak ; (juercus linctoria, or black oak ; laurus sassafras, or sassafras ; diospiios Virginia, or pcrsimon ; iKiuidam- bar styracijlua, or sweet gum ; mjssa villoma, or gum tree, a tree which, in direct opposition to its name, affords neither gum nor resin. Those of the third class, which commonly arc dry and mountain- ous, produce very little except black and red oaks, chesnut oaks of the mountains, quercus prinus mon- tana, or rocky oak pines, and a few Virginia cedars. The juglans pacane is found beyond the emlnu- chure of the rivers Cumberland and Tonncssea, whence they sometimes bring it to the markets at Lexinton. This tree does not grow east of the Alleghany Mountains. The lobelia cardinalis grows abundantly in all the cool and marshy places, as well as the lobelia sphilitica. The latter is more com- mon in Kentucky than in the other parts of the United States that I travelled over. The laurus l()H bensoin^ or spice wood, is also very numoroiis there. Tlie two kinds of rflcrm//;7w and cnidromeila, wliieh form a series of more than tliirty spex'ies, all very abundant in tiie eastern states, t-eem in some mea- sure excluded from those of the western and the chalky reo-ion, where we found none but the andro- meda arborea. In all the fertile parts covered by the forests the soil is completely barren ; no kind ofherbage is seen except a few phiiUs, scattered here and there ; and the trees are alwa}s far enough apart that a stag may be seen a iiundred or a hundred and fifty fa- thoms oir. Prior to the Euroj)eans settling, the wliole of this space, now bare, was covered with a species of the gieat articulated reed, called ariuull- naria niacrospcrvia, or cane, which is in the woods from threti to four inches diameter, and grows seven or eight feet hi' if e, , < r. the contrary, they begin gathering of ginseng in the spring, and end at the decline of autumn. Its root, then soft and watery, wrinkles in drying, terminates in being extremely hard, and loses thus a third of its bulk, and nearly half its weight. These causes have contributed in lowering its value. It is only gathered in America by the inhabitants whose usual occupations afford them leisure, and by the sportsmen, who, with their carabine, provide themselves, for this purpose, with ] a bag and a pickaxe. The merchants settled in the interior of the countiy purchase dried ginseng at the rate of ten pence per pound, and sell it again from eighteen pence to two shillings, at the sea- ports. I havenever heard particularly what quantity z2 I r 1^^, »' ' I .,i! 172 V'.'.i 5*1 i'l ^' of it was exported nnnually to China, but I think it must exceed twenty-five to tliirty thousand pounds weight. Witiiin these four or five years this trade has hecn very hrisk. Several |)ersons begin even to employ tlie means made use of by the Chinese to make the root transparent. This process, long since described in several works, is still a secret which is sold for four hundred dollars in Kentucky. The ginseng thus prepared is purchased at six or seven dollars per pound, by the mcrcha)its at Phila- dclj'hia, and is, they say, sold again at Canton for fifty or a hundred, according to the quality of the roots. Again, the profits must be very considerable, since there are people who export it themselves from Kentucky to China, They have again, in Kentucky, and the western country, the same iinimals that inhabit those parts cast of the mountains, and even Canada : but a short time after the settling of the Europeans several spe- cies of them wholly disappeared, particularly the elks and bisons. The latter, notwithstanding, were more common there than in any other part of North Ame- rica. The non-occupation of the country, the quantity o( rushes and wild peas, which supplied them abundantly with food the whole year round ; and !'■ .' The immense quantity of peaches which they gather are converted in brandy, of which there is a great consumption in the country, and the rest is ex- ported, A few only of the inhabitants have stills ; the others carry their peaches to them, and bring back a quantity of brandy proportionate to the num- ber of peaches they carried, except a part that is left for the expense of distilling. Peach brandy sells B B r H " I JSFTE^ w\ 186 for a dollar a gallon, which is equal to four English quarts. In Kentucky the taxes are assessed in the follow- ing manner : they pay a sum equivalent to one shil- ling and eight-pence for every white servant, six- pence halfpenny for every negro, three-pence for a horse, two shillings per hundred acres of land of the first class, cultivated or not, seventeen-pence per hundred of the second class, and sixpence halfpenny per hundred of the third class. Although these taxes are, as we must suppose, very moderate, and though nobody complains of them, still a great number of those taxable are much in arrears. This is what I perceived by the numerous advertisements of the collectors that I have seen pasted up in differ- ent parts of the town of Lexinton. Again, these de- lays are not peculiar to the state of Kentucky, as I have made the same remark in those of the east. ^1- I*! [J ' H\ 187 CHAP. XX. Particulars relative to the manners of the inhabit- ants of Kentucky. — Horses and Cattle. — Necessity of giving them sail. — fFild Horses caught in the Plains of New Mexico. — Exportation of salt provisions. FOR some tim past the inhabitants of Kentucky have taken to the rearing and training horses ; and by this lucrative branch of trade they derive consi- derable profit, on account of the superfluous quan- tity of Indian corn, oats, and other forage, of which they are deficient at New Orleans. Of all the states belonging to the union, Virginia is said to have the finest coach and saddle-horses, and those they have in this country proceed origin- ally from them, the greatest part of which was brought by the emigrants who came from Virginia BB 2 188 3'; I • ■(■ • fi to settle In this state. The number of horses, now very considerable, increases daily. Almost all the » inhabitants employ themselves in training and melio- rating the breed of these animals ; and so great a degree of importance is attached to the melioration, that the owners of fine stallions charge from fifteen to twenty dollars for the covering of a mare. These stallions come from Virginia, and, as I have been told, some were at different times imported frpm England. The horses that proceed from ihem have slim legs, a well proportioned head, and are elegantly formed. With draught-horses it is quite different. The in- habitants pay no attention with res{)ect to improving this breed ; in consequence of which they are small, wretched in appearance, and similar to those made use of by the peasantry in France. They appeared to me still worse in Georgia and Upper Carolina. In short, I must say that throughout the United States there is not a single draught-horse that can be in any wise compared with the poorest race of horses that I have seen in England. This is an assertion which many Americans may probably not believe, but still it is correct. , < ; '< Many individuals profess to treat sick horses, but none of them have any rejralar notions of the veteri- ^■■' 189 nary art ; an art which would be so necessary in a breeding country, and which has, within these few years, acquired so high a degree of perfection in England and France. In Kentucky, as well as in the southern states, the horses are generally fed with Indian corn. Its nutri- tive quality is esteemed double to that of oats ; not- withstanding sometimes they are mixed together. In this state horses are not limited as to food. In most of the plantations the manger is filled with corn, they eat of it when they please, leave the stable to go to grass, and retui n at pleasure to feed on the Indian wheat. The stables are nothing but log- houses, where the light penetrates on all sides, the interval that separates the trunks of the trees with which they are constructed not being filled up with clay. The southern states, and in particular South Caro- lina, are the principal places destined for the sale of Kentucky horses. They are taken there in droves of fifteen, twenty and thirty at a time, in the early part of winter, an epoch when the most business is transacted at Carolina, and when the drivers are in no fear of the yellow fever, of which the inhabitants of the interior have the greatest apprehension. V '•■■■ I, -HI J go They iisufilly take eighteen or twenty days to go from Lexinton to Charleston. Tiiis distance, which is about seven hundred miles, makes a difference of twenty-five or thirty per cent in the price of horses. A fine saddle-horse in Kentucky costs about a hun- dred and thirty to a hundred and forty dollars. During my sojourn in this state I had an opportu- nity of seeing those wild horses that are caught in the plains of New Mexico, and which descend from those that the Spaniards introduced there formerly. To catch them they make use of tame horses that run much swifter, and with which they approach them near enough to halter them. They take them to New Orleans and Natches, where they fetch about fifty dollars. The crews belonging to the boats that return by land to Kentucky frequently purchase some of them. The two that I saw and made a trial of were roan coloured, of a middling size, the head large, and not proportionate with the neck, the limbs thick, and the mane rather full and handsome. These horses have a very unpleasant gait, are capricious, difficult to govern^ and even frequently throw the rider and take flight. The number of homed cattle is very considerable in Kentucky ; those who deal in tfiem purchase them the Tl ah an^ rail att lean, and drive them in dro\ es of from two to three hundred to Virginia, along th(2 river Potomack, where they sell them to graziers, who fatten them in order to supply the markets of Balcimore and Philadelphia. The price of a good milch C(j\v is, at Kentucky, from ten to twelve dollars. The milk in a great intasure comprises the chief sustenance of the inhabitants. The butter that is not consumed in the country is put into barrels, and exported by the river to the Carribbees. They bring up very few Jiheep in these parts ; for, although I went upwards of two hundred miles in this state, I saw them only in four plantations. 1'heir flesh is not much esteemed, and their wool is of the same quality as that of the sheep in the eastern states. The most that I e\er observed was in Rhode Island. Of all domestic animals hogs are the most numer- ous ; they are kept by all the inhabitants, several of them feed a hundred and fifty or two hundred. These animals never leave the woods, where they always find a sufficiency of food, especially in autumn and winter. They grow extremely wild, and gene- rally go in herds. Whenever they are surprised, or attacked by a dog . c any other animal, they either 1: 'P ■Si^i I HI *■■ il I i'V ]gi Iff r ii;- iil Ii 1 1 i» I. III.: |JM:.:.::| ^1 i make tlicir escape^ or flock together in the form of a circle to defend themselves. They are of a bulky shape, middling size, and straight eared. Every in- habitant recognizes those that belong to him by the particular manner in which their ears are cut. They stray sometimes in the forests, and do not make their appearance again for several months ; they accustom them, notwithstanding, to return every now and then to the plantation, by throwing them Indian com once or twice a week. It is surprising that in so vast a country, covered with forests, so thinly populated, comparatively to its immense extent, and where there are so few destructive animals, pigs have not in- creased so far as to grow completely wild. In all the western states, and even to the east of the Alleghanies, two hundred miles of the sea coast, they are obliged to give salt to the cattle. Were it not for that, the food they give them would never make them look well ; in fact, they are so fond of it that they go of their own accord to implore it at the doors of the houses every week or ten days, and spend hours together in licking the trough into which they have scattered a small quantity for them. This want manifests itself most among the horses j 1()3 but it may he on account of tiieir having it given them more frequently. Salt provisions form another important article of the Kentucky trade. The quantity exported in the first six months of the year 1802 was seventy-two thousand barrels of dried pork, and two thousand four hundred and eighty-five of salt. Notwitlistanding the superfluity of corn that grows in this part of the country, there is scarcely any of the inhabitants that keep poultry. This branch of domestic economy would not increase their expense, but add a pleasing variety in their food. Two rea- sons may be assigned for this neglect ; the first is, that the use of salt provisions, (a use to which the prevalence of tlie scurvy among them may be attri- buted,) renders these delicacies too insipid ; the second, that the fields of Indian corn contiguous to the plantations would be exposed to considerable damage, the fences with which they are inclosed being only sufficient to prevent the cattle and pigs from trespassing. The inhabitants of Kentucky, as we have before stated, are nearly all natives of Virginia, and particu- larly the remotest parts of that state ; and exclusive of the gentlemen of the law, physicians, and a small il \ c c I > 19^ W I pi I w :t. ^-4 number of citizens who have received an education suitable to their professions in the Atlantic states, they have preserved the manners of the Virginians. With them the passion for gaming and spirituous liquors is carried to excess, which frequently termi- nates in quarrels degrading to human nature. The public-houses are always crowded, more especially during the sittings of the courts of justice. Horses and law-suits comprise the usual topic of their con- versation. If a traveller happens to pass by, his horse is appreciated ; if he stops, he is presented with a glass of whiskey, and then asked a thousand ques- tions, such as. Where do you come from ? where Are you going ? what is your name ? where do you live ? what profession ? were there any fevers in the different parts of the country you came through ? These questions, which are frequently repeated in the course of a journey, become tedious, but it is easy to give a check to their inquiries by a little address ; their only object being the gratification of that curiosity so natural to people who live isolated in the woods, and seldom see a stranger. They are never dictated by mistrust ; for from whatever part of the globe a person comes, he may visit all the ports and principal towns of the United States, stay if:' IQS there as long as he pleases, and travel in any part of the country without ever being interrogated by a pub- lic officer. The inhabitants of Kentucky eagerly recommend to strangers the country they inhabit as the best part of the United States, as that where the soil is most fertile, the climate most salubrious, and where all the inhabitants were brought through the love of liberty and independence ! In the interior of their houses they are generally very neat ; which induced me, whenever an opportunity offered, to prefer lodg- ing in a private family rather than at a public house, where the accommodation is inferior, although the charges are considerably higher. The women seldom assist in the labours of the field ; they are very attentive to their domestic con- cerns, and the spinning of hemp or cotton, which they convert into linen for the use of their family. This employment alone is truly laborious, as there are few houses which contain less than four or five children. Among the various sects that exist in Kentucky, those of the Methodists and Anabaptists are the most numerous. The spirit of religion has acquired a. fresh degree of strength within these seven or eight t CC 2 'i. kl r": i 'J r 19^ m ■I •! 'ill )< p. sfM^ years among the country inhabitants, since, inde- pendent of Sundays, which are scrupulously observed, they assemble, during the summer, in the course of the week, to hear sermons. Tlicse meetings, which frequently consist of two or three thousand persons who come from all parts of the country within fifteen or twenty miles, take place in the woods, and con- tinue for several days. Each brings his provisions, and spends the night round a fire. The clergymen are very vehement in their discourses. Often in the midst of the sermons the heads are lifted up, the imaginations exalted, and the inspired fall backwards, exclaiming, " Glory ! glory I" This species of in- fatuation happens chiefly among the women, who are carried out of the crowd, and put under a tree, where they lie a long time extended, heaving the most lamentable sighs. < . There have been instances of two or three hun- dred of the congregation being thus affected during the performance of divine service ; so that one-third of the hearers were engaged in recovering the rest. Whilst I was at Lexinton I was present at one of these meetings. The better informed people do not share the opinion of the multitude with regard to this state, of ecstacy, and on this account they are I ^ ill! 197 Dranded with the appellation of had folks. Except during the continuance of this preaching, religion is very seldom the topic of conversation. Although divided into several sects, they live in the greatest harmony ; and whenever there is an alliance between the families, the difference of religion is never con- sidered as an obstacle ; the husband and wife pursue whatever kind of worship they like best, and their children, when they grow up, dojust the same, with- out the interference of their parents. Throughout the western country the children are kept punctually at school, where they learn reading, writing, and the elements of arithmetic. These schools are supported at the expense of the inhabit- ants, who send for masters as soon as the population and their circumstances permit ; in consequence of which it is very rare to find an American who does not know how to read and write. Upon the Oiiio, and in the Barrens, where the settlements are farther apart, the inhabitants have not yet been able to pro- cure this advantage, which is the object of solicitude in every family. « lys CHAP. XXI. m NashevillC'-'Coviniercial details, -^Settlement of the Natches, NASHEVILLE, the principal and the oldest town in this part of Tennessea, is situate upon the river Cumberland, the borders of which, in this part, are formed by a mass of chalky stone upwards of sixty feet in height. Except seven or eight houses that are built of brick, the rest, to the number of about a hundred and twenty, are constructed of wood, and distributed upon a surface of twenty-five or thirty acres, where the rock appears almost bare in every part. They cannot procure water in the town without going a considerable way about to reach the banks of the river, or descending by a deep and dangerous path. When I was at Nasheville one of the inhabitants was endeavouring to pierce the rock, in order to make a well ; but at that time he 199 had only dug a few feet, on account of the stone be- ing so amazingly hard. This little town, although built upwards of fifteen years, contains no kind of manufactory or public establishment ; but there is a printing-office which publishes a newspaper once a week. They havi- also began to found a college, which has been pre- sented with several benefactions for its endowment, but this establishment was only in its infancy, having but seven or eight students and one professor. The price of labour is higher in this town than at Lexinton, and the same disproportion exists between this price and that of provisions. There appeared to be from fifteen to twenty shops, which are suppliecl from Philadelphia and Baltimore, but they did not seem so well stocked as those at Lexinton, and the articles, though dearer, are of an inferior quality. The cause of their being so dear may be in some measure attributed to the expense of carriage, which is much greater on account of the amazing distance the boats destined for Tennessea have to go up the Ohio. In fact, after having passed by Limestone, the place where they unload for Kentucky, and which is four hundred and twenty miles from Pittsburgh, they have still to make a passage up the river of six ^ < iii 200 m !=!'£ If ... ir m t .,1^ {■' -f P: I .,.. hundred and nineteen miles to reach the mouth of the river Cumberland, (md a hundred and eighty miles to arrive at Nasheville, vvliich, in the whole, comprises a space of one thoutiand five hundred and twenty-one miles from Philadelphia, of which twelve hundred ate by water. Some merchants get their goods also from New Orleans, whence the boats go up the Mississippi, the Ohio, and Cumberland. This last distance is about twelve hundred and forty-three miles ; viz. a thousand miles from New Orleans to the einhouchure of the Ohio, sixty-three miles from thence to Cumberland, and a hundred and eighty from this river to Nasheville. There are very few cultivators who take upon themselves to export the produce of their labour, consisting chiefly of cotton ; the major part of them sell it to the tradespeople at Nasheville, who send it by the river to New Orleans, where it is expedited to New York and Philadelphia, or exported direct to Europe. These tradesmen, like those of Lexinton, do not pay always in cash for the cotton they pur- chase, but make the cultivators take goods in ex- change, which adds considerably to their profit. A great quantity of it is also sent by land to Ken- tucky, where each family is supplied with it to manu- facture articles for their domestic wants. 201 When I was there in 1802 they made the first attempt to send cottons hy the Ohio to Pitts- burgh, in order to be thence conveyed to the remote parts of PennsyKania. I met several barges laden with them near Marietta ; tliey were going up the river with a staff, and making about twenty miles a day. Thus are the remotest parts of the western states united by commercial interests, of which cot- ton is the basis, and the Ohio the tie of communica- tion, the results of which must give a high degree of prosperity to this ^art of Tennessea, and insure its inhabitants a signal advantage over those of the Ohio and Kentucky, the territorial produce of which is not of a nature to meet with a great sale in the country or the adjoining parts, and which they are obliged to send to New Orleans. I had a letter from Dr. Brown, of Lexinton, for Mr. William Peter Anderson, a gentleman of the law at Nasheville, who received me in the most obliging manner ; I am also indebted to him for the acquaintance of several other gentlemen ; among others was a Mr. Fisk, of New England, president of the college, with whom I had the pleasure of tra- velling to Knoxville. The inhabitants are very en- gaging in their manners, and use but little ceremony. D D 111 i'lj t| :1^ * I T .,JI .1^ ,. t 202 On my arrival, I had scarcely alighted when several of them who were at the inn invited me to their plantations. All the inhahitants of the western country who go by the river to New Orleans, retain by land, pass through Nasheville, which is the first town beyond the Natches. The interval that separates them is about six Imndred miles, and entirely uninhabited ; whicli obliges them to cany their |)rovisions on horseback to supply them on the road. It is true they have two or three litlle towns to cross, iniiabited by the Chica- saws; but instead of recruiting their stock there, the natives themselves are so indifferently supplied, that travellers are obliged to be very cautious lest they shoultl wish to share with them. Several per- sons who have been this road assured me, that for a space of four or five hundred miles beyond the Natches the country is very irregular, that the soil is very sandy, in some parts covered with pines, and not much adapted to any kind of culture ; but that the borders of the river Tennessea are, on the con- trary, very fertile, and even superior to the richest counties in Kentucky and Tennessea. The settlement of the Natches, which is described by the name of the Mississippi Territory, daily ac- 203 quires a fresh degree of prosperity, notwithstanding the unhealthiness of the climate, which is such that three-fourths of the inhabitants are every year ex- posed to intermittent fevers during the summer and autumn ; nevertheless, the great profits derived from the cotton entice an immense number of foreigners into that part. The population now amounts to five thousand whites and three thousand negro slaves. The road that leads to the Natch es was only a path that serpentined through these boundless fo- rests, but the federal government have just opened a road, which is on the point of being finished, and will be one of the finest in the United States, both on account of its breadth and the solidity of the bridges constructed over the small rivers that cut through it ; to which advantages it will unite that of being shorter than the other by a hundred miles. Thus we may henceforth, on crossing the western country, go in a carriage from Boston to New Or- leans, a distance of more than two thousand miles. 5 I ^ r i '; m Dl> 2 204 CHAP. XXII. i. : 1 •n ■ ^^f.; ,■- .! M '■ i ' 1 1 i \V'' ■ ■ : ,-^ w :' -'■ %'\ Departure for Knoxville. — Arrival at Fort Blounl, — Remarks upon the drying up of the Rivers in the Summer. — Plantations on the I\oad. — Fertility of the Soil. — Excursions in a Canoe on the River Cumberland. , ON the 5th of September I set out from Nashe- ville for Knoxville, with Mr. Fisk, sent by the state of Tenncssea to determine in a more correct manner, in concert with the commissaries of Virginia, the boundaries between the two states. We did not arrive till the Qth at Fort Blount, built upon the river Cumberland, about sixty miles from Nasbeville ; we stopped on the road with different friends of Mr. Fisk, among others, at the house of General Smith, one of the oldest inhabitants in the country, where he has resided sixteen or seventeen years. It is to him they are indebted for the best map of this state, which IS found in the Geographical Atlas, published by Matthew Carey, bookseller, at Philadelphia. He confessed to me, notwithstanding, that this map, Nashe- tlie state mannerj, ;inia, the 3 did not upon the isheville ; Js of Mr. Ell Smith, where he is to him te, which ished by lia. He lis map, 205 tal^en several years ago, was in many respects im- perfect. The General has a beautiful plaiitation cul- tivated in Indian wheat and cotton ; he has also a neat distillery for peach brandy, which he sells at five shillings per gallon. In his leisure hours he busies himself in chemistry. I have seen at his house English tran.^Iations of the works of Lavoisier and Fourcroy. We likewise saw, en passant ^ General Winchester, who was at a stone house that was buil(ling for him on the road; this mansion, considering the country, bore the external marks of grandeur ; it consisted of four large rooms on the ground floor, one story, and a garret. The workmen employed tc^ finish the in- side came from Baltimore, a distance of nearly seven hundred miles. The stones are of a chalky nature ; there are no others in all that part of Tennessea except round flints, which are found in the beds of some of the rivers which come originally from the moun- tainous region, whence they have been hurried by the force of the torrents. On the other hand there are so very few of the inhabitants that build in this man- ner, on account of the price of workmanship, masons being still scarcer than carpenters and joiners. Not far from the General's house runs a river, K'ii 206 i II m. ■•■ \ ' m-'^t:^ h - from forty to fifty feet wide, whicli we crossed dry- footed. Its banks ifi' certain places are upwards of twenty-five feet high, the bottom of its bed is formed with flag stones, furrowed by small grooves, about three or four inches broad, and as many deep, through which the water flowed ; but on the con- trary the tide is so high in winter, that by means of a lock, they stop a sufficient quantity to turn a mill, situated more than thirty feet in height. We had now passed several of these rivers that we could have sti ided over, but which, during the season, are crossed by means of ferry-boats. A few miles from General Winchester's plantation, and at a short distance from the road, is situated a small town, founded within these few years, and to which they have given the name of Cairo, in memory of the taking of Cairo by the French. Between Nasheville and Fort Blount the plantati- ons, although always isolated in the woods, are never- theless, upon the road, within two or three miles of each other. The inhabitants live in comfortable log houses ; the major part keep negroes, and appear to live happy and in abundance. For the whole of this space the soil is but slightly undulated at times very even, and in general excellent ; in consequence ot f:;l 207 which the forests look very beautiful. It is in parti- cular, at DU'oii's Spfuig, fifty miles from Nasheville, and a few miles on this side Major Dixon's, where I sojourned a day and a half, that wc remarked this great fertility. We saw again in the environs a con- siderable mass of forests, filled with those canes or reeds I have before mentioned, and which grow so close to each other, that at the distance of ten or twelve feet a man could not be perceived was he con- cealed there. Their tufted foliage presents a mass of verdure that diverts the sight amid these still and gloomy forests. I have before remarked that, in pro- portion as new plantations are formed, these canes in a few years disappear, as the cattle prefer the leaves of them to any other kind of vegetables, and destroy them still more by breaking the body of the plant while browzing on the top of the stalks. The pigs contribute also to this destruction, by raking up the ground in order to search for the young roots. Fort Blount was constructed about eighteen years ago, to protect the emigrants who came at that time to settle in Cumberland^ against the attacks of the natives, who declared a perpetual war against them, in order to drive them out ; but peace having been concluded with them, and the population being nil 'i08 r i!!^f $ > if, 1: . - ■ ^ ■ 1 t •*■; t. ■"I'i *i 'ii ' •■ /i^;. K ■ ■ ' t ■ l'^ : • much increased, Uiey have hcen reduced to tfie im- possibility of doing them farther harm, and the Fort has been destroyed. There now exists on this spot a beautiful plantation, belonging to Captain William Samson, with whom Mr. Fisk usually resides. Dur- ing the two days that we stopped at his house, I went in a canoe up the river Cumberland for several miles. This mode of reconnoitring the natural productions still more various upon the bank of the rivers, is pre- ferable to any other, especially when the rivers are like the latter, bounded by enormous rocks, which are so very steep, that scarcely any person ventures to ascend their ^? fty heights. In these excursions I enriched my collections with several seeds of trees and plants peculiar to the country, and divers other objects of natural history. 4' IE * [3 > Ii ;•;« 'log . < CHAP. XXIIl. Depar lure from Fort Blount to JVe-H Pointy through the JVilderness. — Botanical excursions upon Roar- ing River, -^Description of its Banks. — Saline pro-- duct ions found there, — Indian Cherokees. — Arrival at Knoxvillc. ON the ] Itli of September we went from Fort Blount to the lioiise of a Mr. Blackborn, whose plan- tation, situated fifteen miles from this fortress, is the last that the whites possess on this side the line, that separates the territory of the United States from that of the Indian Cherokees. This line presents, as far as West Point upon the Clinch, a country uninhabited upward of eighty miles in breadth, to which they give the name of the JVilderness, and of which the mountains of Cumberland occupy a great part. As Mr. Fisk was obliged to go to the court of justice, which is held a few miles from thence in the county K E J A-* r-' t$\ 1.3.' V-' •<"■• ■ ■ 210 of Jackson ; we deferred crossing llic Wilderness for a few days, and I profited 1-y his absence to go and see Koaring River, one of the l)ranclies of the Cumber- land. This river, from ten to fifteen fathoms l)road, received its name from the confused noise that is heard a mile distant, and which is occasioned by falls of water produced by the sudden laj)se of its bed, formed by large flat stones contiguous to each other. These falls, from six, eight, to ten feet high, are so near together, that several of them are to be seen within the space of lifty to a lumdred fathoms. We observed in the middle of this river, great stones, from five to six feet in diameter, comj^lctely round, and of which nobody could form the least idea how they could have been conveyed there. The right bank of Roaring River rises *ii some places from eighty to a hundred feet, and surmounted at this height by rocks that jet out fifteen or twenty feet, and which cover again thick beds of ferrugi- nous schisie, situated horizontally. The flakes they consist of are so soft and brittle, that as soon as they are touched, they break ofl'in pieces of afoot long, and fall into a kind of dust, which, in the course of time, imperceptibly undermines the rocks. Upon the flakes of schist e that are least exposed to the air 211 mid water, wo observed a kind ofwiiitc cfHorescence, extremely thin, and very similar to snow. There exists again upon the banks of tiiis river, and in other parts ofCunjberland, immense eaverns, where there are masses ol'aluminoussnbstanees, with- in so small a degree of the purity necessary to be employed in dying, that the inhabitants not only go to fetch it for their own use, but export it to Ken- tucky. They cut it into pieces with an axe ; but nobody is acquainted there with the process used on the Old Continent to prepare the different substances^ as it is found in trade. Large rivulets, after having serpentined in the forests, terminate their windings at the steep banks of this river, whence they fall murmuring into its bed, and form magnificent cascades several fathoms wide. The perpetual humidity that these cascades preserve in these places gives birth to a multitude of plants which grow in the midst of a thick moss, with which the rock is covered, and which forms tlie most beau- tiful verdant carpet. • All these circumstances give the borders of Roaring River a cool and pleasing aspect, which I had never witnessed before on the banks of other rivers. A : : • ' E E 2 , :,, %i\ m M> 1 8fc ■> 212 cliarming variety of trees and shrubs are also seen there, which are to be met with no where else. We observed the magnolia auriculata, fnacrophi/laj cor- data, acuminata, and tripetala. The fruit of those trees, so remarkable for the beauty of their flowers and superb foliage, were in the higliest perfi?ction. I gathered a few seeds to multiply them in France, and to add to the embellishment of our gardens. These seeds grow rancid very soon. I endeavoured to remedy this inconvenience by putting them into fresh moss, which I renewed every fortnight till my return to Carolina, where I continued the same pre- cautions till the epoch of my embarking for Europe. I have since had the satisfaction to see that my pains were not fruitless, and that I succeeded by this means in preserving their germinative faculty. Major Russel, with whom I went to lodge after I had taken my leave of Mr. Blackborn, and where Mr. Fisk rejoined me, furnished us very obligingly with necessary provisions for the two days journey through the territory of the Cherokees. Notwithstanding the harmony that at present subsists between the whites and these Indians, it is always more prudent to travel five or six in a party. Nevertheless as we were at a considerable distance from the usual place of roidezvousj where the travellers put up, we re- \ 213 ' >i so seen We a, ror- )f those Ikjvvcrs Action. France, gardens, avourcd em into : till my no pre- Europe. rjy pains s means e after I lere Mr. ^ly with through itanding 3en the prudent 58 as we al place we re- fiolvcd to set out alone, and we arrived happily at West Point. This country«is exceedingly mountainous, we could not make above forty-five miles the first day, although we travellc' i , ■ ■ *-'■,'■ , ' ; • i 1 • / ' 1 * J. J ■f ' * ' ■ ' i 'i ■'V ;'■ i J J ;,.? :. - !"! . .-: , M. .-,. »* , ». » l^]} ! ■'-h ': J : f :.' ;i. ^ F P2 1 y • ! i -1 /I 220 •'1 1 CHAP. XXIV. ' ji Knoxvillc. — Commercial intelligence. — Trees that grow in the environs. — Converting some parts oj the' Meadows into Forests. — River Nolachuhy.—' Greensville. — Arrival at Jonesborough* KNOXVILLE, the seat of government belong- ing to the state of Tennessea, is situate upon the river Holston, in this part nearly a hundred and fifty fathoms broad. The houses that compose it are about two hundred in number, and chiefly built of wood. Although founded eighteen or twenty years ago, this little town does not yet possess any kind of establishment or manufactory, except two or three lanyards. Trade, notwithstanding, is brisker here than at Nasheville. The shops, though very few in 221 number, are in general better stocked. The trades- people get their provisions by land from Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Richmond in Virginia; and they send in return, by the same way, the produce of the country, which they buy of the cultivators, or take in barter for their goods. Baltimore and Richmond are the towns with which this part of the country does most business- The price of conveyance from Baltimore is six or seven dollars per hundred weight. They reckon seven hundred miles from this town to Knoxville, six hundred and forty from Philadelphia, and four hundred and twenty from Richmond. They send flour, cotton and lime to New Orleans by the river Tennessea ; but this way is not so much frequented by the trade, the navigation of this river being very much encumbered in two different places by shallows interspersed with rocks. They reckon about six hundred miles from Knoxville to the em- houchure of the Tennessea in the Ohio, and thirty- eight miles thence to that of the Ohio in the Missis- ) i ■H'! fli* fill sippu "!:« In 222 We aliglitcd at Knoxvillo at the house of one Haynes, the sign of tlie General Washington, the best inn in the town. Travellers and their horses are accommodated there at the rate of five shillings per day ; though this is rather dear for a country where the situation is by no means favourable to the sale of provisions, which they are obliged to send to more remote parts. The reason of things being so dear proceeds from the desire of growing rich in a short time, a general desire in the United States, where every man who exercises a profession or art wishes to get a great deal by it, and does not content himself with a moderate profit, as they do in Eu- rope. ■ ' There is a newspaper printed 'ait Knoxville which comes out twice a week, and written and published by Mr. Roulstone, a fellow-countryman and friend of my travelling companion, Mr. Fisk. It is very remarkable that most of the emigrants from Nev/ England have an ascendancy over the others in point of morals, industry, and knowledge. 223 On the 17th of September I took, leave of Mr. Fisk, and proceeded towards Jouesboroiigli, about a hundred miles from Knoxvijle, , and situate at the foot of the lofty mountains that separate North Carolina from the state of Tennessea. On leaving Knoxville the soil is uneveji, stony and very indiiTereut, of which it is an easy thing to judge by the quantity of p'mas, or pi nus mitts f that are in the forests. Wo also found there an abundance of Chinquapin oak,^, or qutrcus prinus Chinquapin, that seldom grow above three feet, high, some of which were that year so, loaded with acorns that they were bent to the ground. The sorel-tree, or andromcda arhorea, is also very common. This tree, that rises about forty feet in the mountains, would be one of the most splendid ornaments for our gardens, on account of its opening clusters of white flowers. Its leaves arc very acid, and many of the inhabitants prefer them toshumacfor dying cottons. - !• I crossed the river Holston at Mac by, about fifteen miles from Knoxville ; here the soil grows better. ?t 3 /■'h ,' n.|- ii %l wWi Il' 17 ! [ U' i I 4 ' fl ?*> "' I 224 and the plantations are nearer together, although not immeiliately within sight of each other. At some distance from Macby the road, for the space of two miles, runs by the side of a copse, extremely full of young suckers, the highest of which was not above twenty feet. As 1 had never seen any part of a forest so composed before, I made an observation of it to the inhabitants of the country, who told me that this place was formerly part of a barren, or meadow, which had naturally clothed itself again with trees, that fifteen years since they had been totally destroyed by fire, in order to clear the land, which is a common practice in all the southern states. This example appears to demonstrate that the spacious meadow s in Kentuckv and Tennessea owe their birth to some ^eat conflagration that has consumed the forests, and that they are kept up as meadows by the custom that is still practised of annually setting them on fire. In these conflagrations, when chance preserves any part from the ravages of the flame, for a certain number of years they are re-stocked with trees ; but m 225 as it is then extremely thick, the fire burns them completely clown, and reduces them again to a sort of meadow. We may thence conclude, that in these parts of the country the meadows encroach continually upon the forests. The same has proba- bly taken place in Upper Louisiana and New Mex- ico, which are only immense plains, burnt annually by the natives^ and where there is not a tree to be found. J stopped the first day at a place where most of the inhabitants are Quakers, who came fifteen or eighteen years since from Pennsylvania. The one with whom I lodged had an excellent plantation, and his log- house was divided into two rooms, which is very un- common in that part of the country. Around the house magnificent apple-trees were planted, which, although produced from pips, bore fruit of an extra- ordinary size and luxuriance in taste, which proves how well this country is adapted for the culture of fruit trees. Here, as well as in Kentucky, they give the preference to the peach, on account of their G G |i 226 n\ makinp^ brandy with it. At the same house where I stopped there were two emigrant families, forming together ten or twelve persons, who were going to settle in Tennessea. Their ragged clothes, and tlie miserable appearance of their children, who were bare-footed and in their shirts, was a plain indication of their i)overty, a circumstance by no means un- common in the United States. At the same time it is not in the western country that the riches of the inhabitants consist in specie ; for I am persuaded that not one in ten of them are in possession of a single dollar ; still each enjoys himself at home with the produce of his estate, and the money arising from the sale of a horse or a few cows is always more than sufficient to procure him the secondary articles that come from England. * The following day I passed by the iron-works, situate about thirty miles from Knoxville, where I stopped some time to get a sample of the native ore. The iron that proceeds from it they say is of an ex- cellent quality. The road at this place divides into S'^ 127 two branches, both of which load to Jonesborongh ; but as I wanted to survey the banks of the rivcf Nolachuky, so renowned in that part of the country for their fertility, 1 took, the riglit, although it was rather longer, and not so much frccjuentcd. About six or seven miles from the iron-works we found upon the road small rock crystals, two or three inches long, and beautifully transparent. The facets of the pyramids that terminate the two extremities of the prism are perfectly equal with respect to size, they are loose, and disseminated in a reddish kind of earth, and rather clayey. In less than ten minutes I picked up forty. Arrived on the boundaries of the river Nolachuky, I did not observe any species of trees or plants that I had not seen elsewhere, except a few ^plars and horse-chesnuts, which bore a yellow blossom. Some of these poplars were five or six feet in diameter, perfectly straight, and free from branches for thirty or forty feet from the earth. On the 2 1 st 1 arrived at Greenville, which con- tains scarcely forty houses, constructed with square GG 2 in 1!' /; j'l ' I i J \ fl ii ill 228 If ,11 . < [lit 1' m^v- I I \ beams something like the log-houses. They reckon twenty-five miles from this place to Jonesborough. In this space the country is slightly mountainous, the soil more adapted to the culture of corn than that of Indian wheat, and the plantations are situ- ated upon tlie road, two or three miles distant from each other. • . Jonesborough, the last town in Tennessea, is com- posed of about a hundred and fifty houses, built of wood, and disposed on both sides the road. Four or five respectable shops arc established there, and the tradespeople who keep them have their goods from Richmond and Baltimore. Ail kinds of Eng- lish-manufactured goods are as dear here as at Knox- ville. A new j^paper in folio is published at this town twice a week. Periodical sheets are the only works that have ever been printed in the towns or villages situate west of the AUeghanies. ^- r 4' 2-29 ) . - : ♦ ; 1 ' ■ 1 ' i 1 -•'^J . "i -.(-■ CHAP. XXV. ■ J I * ^ |, ;; {-;■ '■ .it } W" .';■.( ;r" •'■ I *• ' '. H ' ' ' •!? Vf ^f'jl'' General observations on the Slate of Tennessea,'^ Rivers Cumberland and Tennessea. — fVIiat is , meant by East Tennessea or Holston, and West , Tennessea or Cumberland, — First settlements in : IVest Tennessea, — Trees natives of that country. Hi... /* .' I' , ':!' '^4\'\ THE state of Tennessea is situated between 35 and 36 deg. 30 min. latitude, and 80 and QO deg. 30 min. longitude. It is bounded north by Ken- tucky, south by the territories belonging to the In- dian Cherokees and Chactaws, west by the Ohio, and east by the Alleghany Mountains, which sepa- rate it from Virginia and North Carolina. Its ex- tent in breadth is nearly a hundred and three miles Ml IM f *i fi 230 Ui I I' 1 » ,* . « ! i by three hundred and sixty in length. Prior to the year 1796, the epoch of its being admitted into the Union, this country comprised a part of North Ca- rolina. The two principal rivers are the Cumber- land and Tennessea, which flow into the Ohio eleven miles distant from each other, and are sepa- rated by the chain of mountains in Cumberland. ~ The Tiver Cumberland, khown to the French Ca- nadians by the name of the river Shavanon, derives its source in Kentucky, amidst the mountains that separate it from Virginia. Its course is about four hundred and fifty miles. It is navigable, in winter and spring, for three hundred and fifty miles from its embouchure; but in summer, npt above fifty miles from Nasheville, The river Tennessea, naianed ^by .the French Canadians the Cherokee River, is the mosi (X)nsiderable of all those that empty themselves into the Ohio. It begins at West Point, where it is -formed by the junction of the rivers Clinch and Hol- -ston, which derive their source in tliat part of the Alleghany Mountains situated in yirginia, each of 231 which are more than a hundred fathoms broad at their embouchure. Both are navigable to an im- mense distance, and particularly the Holston, which is so for two hundred miles. The river French Broad, one of the principal branches of the Holston, receives its waters from the Nolachuky, is about twenty fathoms broad, and is navigable in the spring. Thus the Tennessea, with the Holston, has, in the whole, a navigable course for near eight hun- dred miles : but this navigation is interrupted six months in the year by the muscle shoals, a kind of shallows u V ^-si^rsed with rocks, which are met with in its bed ,o nundred miles from its embouchure in the Ohio. From West Point the borders of this great river are yet almost entirely uninhabited. The signification of the name of Tennessea, which it bears, is unknown to the Cherokees and Chactaws that occupied this country before the whites. Mr. Fisk, who has had several conversations with these Indians, never heard any precise account ; in conse- quence of which it is most likely thjit this name Itl* liii -.1 1 \i f I il i H i -i 232 r & % t been given to it by the nation that the Cherokees succeeded. * i ' The Cumberland Mountains are but a continua- tion of Laurel Mountain, which itself is one of the principal links of the Alleghanies. These moun- tains, on the confines of Virginia, incline more to- ward the west, and by the direction which they take, cut obliquely in two the state of Tennessea, which, in consequence, divides East and West Tennessea into two parts, both primitively known by the names of the Holston and Cumberland settlements, and which afford each a different aspect, both by the na- ture of the country, and by the productions that grow there. - .. . ^ -, ' West Tennessea comprises two-thirds of this state. The greater part of it reposes upon a bank of chalky substance of the same nature, the beds of which are horizontal. The stratum of vegetable earth with which it is covered appears generally not so thick as in Kentucky, and participates less of the clayey nature. It is usually, in point of colour, of ■ 233 a dark brown, without the least mixture of itony substances. The forests that cover the country clearly imlicate how favourable the soil is for vegeta- tion, as most of the trees acquire a very large diame- ter. Iron mines are also as scarce there as in hlan- tucky ; and provided any new ones were discovered, they would have been worked immediately, since the iron that is imported from Pennsylvania is at such an enormous price. The secondary rivers which in this part of Ten- nessea run into Cumberland are almost completely dry during the summer ; and it is probable enough, that when the population grows more numerous, and the plantations are formed farther from their banks, the want of water will be more severely felt in this part than in Kentucky. There are, notwithstanding, several large rivulets or creeks that issue from exca- vations that are found at the foot of the mountains, in different parts of the country : at -the same time it has been remarked that these kiid of sources never fail, although the water is not so deep in summer. HH 1 iM ki- r I I 1- I > -I 234 /I • 11 ! r Just at the mouth of these subterraneous passages they are sometimes accompanied with a current of air strong enough to extinguish a light. I observed this particularly myself at the spring of the rivulet called Dixon's Spring, and of another situated about four miles from Nasheville. It was in 1780 that the whites first made the at- tempt to travel over the Cumberland Mountains, and to settle in the environs of Nasheville ; but the emi- grants were not very numerous there till the year 1789. They had to support, for several years, a bloody war against the Indian Cherokees, and till 1795 the settlements atHolston and Kentucky com- municated with those in Cumberland by caravans, for the sake of travelling in safety over so extensive a tract of uninhabited country that separated them ; but for these five or six years past, since peace has been made with the natives, the communications formed between the countries are perfectly establish- ed ; and although not much frequented, they travel there with as much safety as in any other part of the Atlantic states, < I 233 This country having been populated after that of Kentucky, every measure was taken at the com- mencement to avoid the great confusion that exists concerning the right of property in the latter state ; at the same time the titles are looked upon as more valid, and not so subject to dispute. This reason, the extraordinary fertility of the soil, and a more healthy climate, are such great inducements to the emigrants of the Atlantic states, that most of them prefer settling in West Tennessea than in Kentucky. They reckon there, at present, thirty thousand inha* bitants, and five or six thousand negro slaves. With a few exceptions the various species of trees and shrubs that form the mass of the forests are the same as those that I observed in the most fertile parts of Kentucky. The gleditsia triacanthos is still more common there. Of this wood the Indians made their bows, before they adopted the use of fire-arms. We found particularly, in these forests, a tree which, by the shape of its fruit and the disposition of its leaves, appears to have great affinity with the H H 2 ^ t « 4 HI i 236 i .ft' ' Il'!> 1 sophora Japonica, the wood of which is used by the Chinese for dying yellot('. My father, who discovered this tree in 1796, thought that it might be employed for the same use, and become an important object of traffic for the country. He imparted his conjec- tures to Mr. Blount, then governor of this state, and his letter was inserted in the Gazette at Knox- ville on the 15th of March 1796. Several persons in the country having a great desire to know whether it were possible to fix the beautiful yellow which the wood of this tree communicated to the water by the simple infusion, cold, I profited by my stay at Nasheville to send twenty pounds of it to New York, the half of which was remitted to Dr. Mitchell, pro- fessor of chemistry, and the other addressed to Paris, to the Board of Agriculture, attached to the Mini- ster of the Interior, in order to verify the degree of utility that might be derived from it. This tree very seldom rises above forty feet, and grows, in pre- ference, on the knobs, species of little hills, where the soil is very rich. Several of the inhabitants have 237 remarked thtit there is not in the country a single species of tree that prothiccs so great an abundance of sap. The quantity that it su[)plies exceeds even that of the sugar maplcj although the latter is twice its bulk. The epoch of my stay at Nasheville being that when tlie seeds of this tree were ripe, I gathered a small quantity of them, which I brought over with me, and which have all come up. Several of the plants are at the present moment ten or fifteen inches high. It is very probable that this tree may be reared in France, and that it will endure the cold of our winters, and more so, as, according to what I have been told, the winters arc as severe in Tennessea as in any parts of France. West Tennessea is not so salubrious as Holston and Kentucky. A warmer and damper climate is the cause of intemiittent fevers being more common there. Emigrants, for the first year of their settling there, and even travellers, are, during that season, subject to an exanthemetic affection similar to the itch. Tliis malady, with \\'hich I began to be at- ■!« N^ 238 tacked before I reached Fort Blount, yielded to a cooling regimen, and repeated bathings in the rivers Cumberland and Roaring. This disorder is very appropriately called in the country the Tennessean itch. 239 CKAP. XXVI. Different hinds of produce of JVest Tennessea. — 2)o- mestic manufactories for cottons encouraged by the legislature of this state. — Mode oj letting out «- tates hy some of the emigrants. m WEST Tennessea, or Cumberland, being situ- ated under a more southerly latitude than Kentucky, is particularly favourable to the growth of cotton ; in consequence of which the inhabitants give them- selves up almost entirely to it, and cultivate but little more corn, hemp, and tobacco than what is ne- cessary for their own consumption. The soil, which is fat and clayey, appears to be a recent dissolving of vegetable substances, and seems. ■I hi A 240 I.' U.Vi I till now, less adapted for the culture of corn than that of Indian wheat. The harvests of this grain arc as plentiful as in Kentucky ; the blades run up ten or twelve feet high ; and the ears, which grow six or seven feet from the earth, are from nine to ten inches in length, and proportionate in size. It is cultivated in the sanjc manner as in other parts of the western eountr}-. ' The crows, which are a true plague in the Atlan- tic states, where they ravage, at thiee diflerent pc- « riods, the fields of Indian wheat, which are obliged to he sown again as many times, have not yet made their appearance in Tennessea ; but it is very proba- ble that this visit is only deferred, as they do, annu- ally, great damage in Kentucky. I must also observe here that the grey European rats have not yet penetrated into Cumberland, though they are very numerous in other parts of the country, particularly in those settlements belonging to the whites. The culture of cotton, infinitely more lucrative 'H 241 thnn that of corn and tobacco, is, as before observed, the most adhered to in WeU Tennessea. There is scarcely a single emigrant but what begins to plant his cotate with it the third vear a!tcr his settlincr in the country. Tlio^e who have no negroes cultivate it with the plough, nearly in the same manner as In- dian wheat, taking particular care to weed anil throw new earth upon it several times in the course of the season. Others lay out their fields in parallel fur- rows, made with the hoe, from twelve to fifteeii inches high. It is computed that one man, who employs himself with this alone, is sufficient to cul- tivate eight or nine acres, but not to gather in the harvest. A man and a woman, with two or three children, may, notwithstanding, cultivate four acres with the greatest ease, independent of the Indian wheat necessary for their subsistence ; and calculat- ing upon a harvest of three hundred and fife ;.ounds weight per acre, which is very moderate according to the extreme fertility of the soil, thcv will have, in four acres, a produce of fourteen hundred pounds of I I •1 ii^ i 1 1 % w t .1 242 [if" I HI cotton. Valuing it at the rate of eighteen dollars per hundred weight, the lowest price to which it had fallen at the epoch of the last peace, when 1 was in the country, gives two hundred and fifty-two dol- lars ; from which deducting forty dollars for the ex- penses of culture, they will have a net produce of two hundred and twelve dollars ; while the same number of acres, planted with Indian wheat, or sown with corn, would only yield at the rate of fifty bushels per acre ; and twenty-five bushels of corn, about fifty dollars, reckoning the Indian vvlieat at thirteen pence, and the corn at two shillings and two pence per bushel ; under the supposition that they can sell it at that price, which is not .always the case. This light sketch demonstrates with what facility a poor family may acquire speedily, in West Tennes- sea, a certain degree of independence, particularly after having been settled five or six years, as they procure the means of purchasing one or two negroes, and of annually increasing their number. The species of cotton which they cultivate here is 243 somewhat more esteemed than that described by the name of green-seed cotton, in which there is a tri- fling distinction in point of colour. The cottons that are manufactured in West Ten- nessea are exceedingly fine, and superior in quality to those I saw in the course of my travels. The le- gislature of this state, appreciating the advantage of encouraging this kind of industry, and of diminish- ing, by that means, the importation of English goods of the same nature, has given, for these two years past, a premium of ten dollars to the female inha- bitant who, in every county, presents the best ma- nufactured piece ; for in this part, as well as in Ken- tucky, the higher circles wear, in summer time, as much from patriotism as from economy, dresses made of the cottons manufactured in the country. At the same time they are convinced that it is the only means of preserving the little specie that is in the country, and of preventing its going to England. The price of the best land does not yet exceed five dollars per acre in the environs of Nasheville, and ■W 244 P I Ml I ^ n Vi '■ thirty or ibrty luilcs from the town tliey arc not even worth three dollars. Tiicy ean at that price pur- ehase a plantation completely formed, composed of two to three hundred acres, of which fifrecn to twenty arc cleared, and a log-house. The taxes in this siate are also not so high as in Kentucky. x\n:iong the emigrants that arrive annually from the eastern country at Tennessea there are always some who have not the means of purchasing estates ; still there is no difficulty in procuring them at a certain rent ; for the speculators who possess many thousand acres arc very happy to get tenants for their land, as it induces others to come and settle in the environs ; since the speculation of estates in Kentucky and 'I'ennessea is so profitable to the owners, who reside upon the spot, and who, on the arrival of the emi- grants, know how to give directions in cultivation, which speedily enhances the value of their possession*. The conditions imposed upon the renter are to clear and inclose eight or nine acres, to build a log- house, and to pay to the owner eight or ten bushels 245 of Indian wheat for every acre cleared. These con- tracts are kept up for seven or eight years. The second year after the price of two hundred acres of land belonging to a new settlement of tl^is kind in- creases nearly thirty per cent. ; and this "Ante is pur- chased in preference by a new emigrant, who is sure of gathering corn enough for the supplies of his fami- ly and cattle. In this state they are not so famed for rearing horses as in Kentucky ; yet the greatest care is taken to improve their breed, by rearing them vtith those of the latter state, vyh'^nce they send for the finest mare foals that can be procured. Although this country abounds with saline springs, none are yet worked, as the scarcity of hands would render the salt dearer than what is imported from the salt-pits of St. Genevieve, which supply all Cumberland. It is sold at two dollars per bushel, about sixty pounds weight. It' 'I' i iImi I :l jf< \ii 246 CHAP. XXVII. East TenuesseOy or Hulston. — Agriculture. — Popu- lation. — Co7nmercc. K,' I ii i P : EAST Tennessea, or Holston, is situated be- tween the loftiest of the Alleghany and Cumberland Mountains. It comprises, in length, an extent of nearly a hundred and forty miles, and differs chiefly from West Tennessea in point of the earth's being not so chalky, and better watered by the small rivers issuing from the adjacent mountains, which cross it in every part . The best land is upon their borders. The remainder of the territory, almost cvery\vherc interspersed with hills, is of a middling quality, and produces nothing but white, red, black, chincapin. Ukli 247 and mountain oaks, &c. intermixed with pines ; and, as wc have before observed, except the quercus ma- crocarpa, the rest never grow, even in the most fertile places. Indian wheat forms here also one of the principal branches of agriculture ; but it very seldom comes up above seven or eight feet high, and a produce of thirty bushels per acre passes for an extraordinary harvest. The nature of the soil, somewhat gravelly, appears more adapted for the culture of wheat, rye, and oats ; in consequence of which it is more ad- hered to than in Cumberland. That of cotton is little noticed, on account of the cold weather, which sets in very early. One may judge, according to this, that Holston is in every point inferior in ferti- lity to Cumberland and Kentucky. To consume the superfluity of their corn the in- habitants rear a great number of cattle, which they take four or five hundred miles to the seaports be- longing to the southern states. They lose very few of these animals by the way, although they liave to I ■ . i m 9<48 i 1 ¥: i I' 1 :ri ■J' I ■ cross several rivers, nnd travel through an uiiintcr- rnptcd forest, with this disadvantage, of the cattle being extremely wild. This part of Tennessea hegaii to be inhabited in 1775, and the population is so much increased, that there is now computed to be about seventy thou- sand inhabitants, including three or four thousand negro slaves. In J7&7 they attempted to form themselves into an independent state, under the name of the Franklin State ; but this project was abandoned. It is still very probable, and has already been in question, that East and West Tennessea will ultimately form two distinct states, which will each enlarge itself by a new addition of part of the territory belonging to the Cherokee Indians. The natives, it is true, will not hear the least mention of ?. '"ession being made, objecting that their tract of country is barely sufficient to furnish, by hunting, a subsistence for their families. However, sooner or later they will be obliged to yield. The division of Tennessea cannot be long before it takes place, whether under 249 the consideration of convenience, or the enterprising disposition of the Americans. It is commanded, on tlie one hand^ by the boundaries that Nature herself has prescribed between the two countries, in sepa- rating them by the Cumberland Mountains ; and on the other, by their commerce, which is wholly dif- ferent, since Cumberland carries on its trade by the Ohio and Mississippi, while Holston does most by land with the seaports belonging to the Atlantic states, and has very little to do with New Orleans by the river Tennessea, and scarcely any with Cum- berland and Kentucky. Under this consideration, Holston is, of all parts in the United States that are now inhabited, the most unfavourably situated, being on every side circumscribed by considerable tracts of country that produce the same provisions, and which are either more fertile or nearer to the borders of the sea. What has been said relative to the manners of the ir.habitants of Kentucky will apply, in a great mea- sure to Tennessea, since they come, as the former K K i J i m 250 do, from North Carolina and Virginia : still the in- habitants of Tennossea do not yet enjoy that degree of independence which is remarked among those of Kentucky. They appear also not so religious, al- though, in the mean time, they are very strict ob- ser\xrs of Sundays. We found but very few churches in Tennessea. Itinerant preachers wander, in sum- mer, through the different countries, and preach in the woods, where the people collect together* . ' 7 Q\: '• 1 :!-"'<•;::)/ >:i'M:':M:;r^ : >: .' .' , • i. ti' i^f".' i'.") ; <:>? "■■'.I ■ 1 251 .,i. CHAP. XXVIII. ' . • . ' 'Hi if M '«: I' Departure from Jonedoruugh for Morganton in Norh Carolina. — Journey over Iron Mountams.-^^ Sojourn on the mountains, — Journey over the Blue Ridges and Linneville Mountains. — Arrival at Morganton, r,\tt •. r) ■ • i' ON the 21st of September 1802 I set out from Jonesborough to cross the Alleghanies for North Carolina. About nine miles from Jonesborough the road divides into two branches, which unite again fifty-six miles beyond the mountains. The left, which is principally for carriages, cuts through Yellow Mountain, and the other through Iron K K 2 ;ii ') " 252 Mountain. I took the latter, as I had been in- formed it was much the shortest. I only made nine- teen miles tliat day, and put up at one Cayerd's, at the Limestone Cow, where I arrived benumbed with cold by the thick fog that reigns almost habitually in the vallies of these enormous mountains. Seven miles on this side Cayerd's plantation, the road, or rather the path, begins to be so little cut that one can scarce discern the track for plants of all kinds that cover the superficies of it ; it is also en- cumbered by forests of rhododoidnim, shrubs from eighteen to twenty feet in height, the branches of which, twisting and interwoven with each other, impede the traveller every moment, insomuch that he is obliged to use an axe to clear his way. The tor- rents that we had continually to cross added to the difficulty and danger of the journey, the horses being exposed to fall on account of the loose round flints, concealed by the ebullition of the waters with which the bottom of these torrents are filled. I had the day following twenty-three miles to 253 make without meeting with the least kind of a planta- tion. After having made the most minute inquiry with regard to the path I hud to take, I set out about eight o'clock in the morning from the Limestone Cow, and after a journey of three hours I reached the summit of the mountain, which I recognized by several trees with ^' the roacV marked on each, and in the same direction to indicate the line of demarcation that separates the state of Tennessea from that of North Carolina. The distance from the Limestone Cow to the summit of the mountain is computed to be about two miles and a half, and three miles thence to the other side. The declivity of the two sides is very steep, insomuch that it is with great difficulty ti person can sit upon his horse, and that half the time he is obliged to go on foot. Arrived at the bot- tom of the mountain, I had again, as the evening before, to cross through forests of rhododendrum, and a large torrent called Rocky Creek, the winding course of which cut the path in twelve or fifteen directions ; every time I was obliged to alight, or go I'M •: ) H 1:1 254 •I -(■ 1 ii» up the torrent by walking into ilic middle for the space of ten or fifteen fathoms, in ordliged to make a tire, which is not the case npun any of those in Virginia, although they are situated more northerly by several degrees : and besides I have since seen in my f.ither's notes that he had observed trees andsiirubs upon tlie Yellow and Grandfather Mountains that he did not meet with again till he reached Low Canada. As the only ideas given concerning the height of the AUeghanics are the result of observations taken in Virginia, we see, according to that short exposition, that we have but an inaccurate account ; this induced me to point out the highest mountains where their true elevation might be ascertained. They are about three Irundred and sixty miles from Charleston, in m 261 South Carolina, and five hundred and fifty from Philadelphia. The mineral kingdom is very little diversified in these mountains. The mines which have hitherto been found are chiifly those of iron. They are worked with success, and the iron which they derive from it is of an excellent quality. In the mountainous parts of Pennsylvania and Virginia the land, frequently dry and flinty, is of an indifferent nature. Here, on the contrary, the soil far from being flinty, is perpetually moist, and very fertile. We may judge of it by the vegetable strength of the trees, among which we observed the red and black oak, the sugar-maple, the ash, the yellow-blossomed chesnut, or the magnolia acumi- nata and auriculata, and the common chesnut, which grows to a prodigious height. The side of these mountains that looks north is sometimes covered exclusively with the kalmia latifolia, or calico-tree, from twelve to fifteen feet high. They frequently occupy spaces of from two to three hundred acres, \\fii\ r 'l&l k ■ i. ■i' ' I':' 1! t >,»'■ which at a distance afFo^'ds the aspect of a charming Dicadow. It is well known that this shrub excels every other in point of blossom. In the great woods the superficitjs of the soil is covered with a species of wild peas, that rises about three feet from the earth, and serves as excellent fodder for the cattle. They prefer this pasturage to any other, and whenever they are driven from it they pine away, or make their escape to get to it again. Iliesc mountains begin to be [copulated rapidly. The salubrity of the air, the excellence of the water, and more especially the j)asturage of these wild peas for the cattle, arc so many causes that induce new inhabitants to settle there. Estates of the first class are sold at the rate of two dollars, and the taxes are not more than a half- peimy per acre. Indian corn, wheat, rye, oats, and peach trees, are the sole objects of culture. In the torrents we found a species of salamander, called by the inhabitants the mountain alligator ; A- I 2()3 many of which are upwards of two feet in Icnptli. It was in Doc river tliiit my father caught tlie one which is described in The New Dictioiiarij nf Natu- ral History, published by IX'terville. The inliabitants of these mountains are famed for being excellent hunters. Towards the middle of autumn most of them go in pursuit of bears, of which they sell the skins, and the flesh, which is very good, serves tliem in a great measure for food diw- ing that season. They prefer it to all other kinds of meat, and look upon it as the only tiling they can eat without being indispc^ed by it. They make also of their hind legs the most delicious hams. In au- tumn and winter the bears grow excessively fat ; some of them weigh upward of four hundred weight. Their grease is consumed in the country instead of oil. They hunt them with great dog3, which, witli- out going near them, bark, teaze, and oblige them to climb up a tree, when the hunter kills them with a carabine. A beautiful skin sells for a dollar and a half or two dollars. The black bear of North 1 1 ir :] Hi ^ 'iO'l I America lives chiefly on routs, acorns and chcsnuts. In order to procure a greater (quantity of them, he gets up into the trees, and as his weight does not permit him to climb to any height, he breaks off the branch where he has observed the most fruit by hugging it with one of his fore paws. I have seen branches of such a diameter that these animals must be endowed with an uncommon strength to have been able to break them by setting about it in this man- ner. In the summer, when they arc most exposed to want victuals, they fall upon pigs, and sometimes even upon men. 265 CHAP. XXX. { ■ I .• < J J i Morganton, — Departure for Charleston. — Lincoln'- ton.- ■ C\cxter< — Wineshoruugh. Columbia. — jispect of the Country on the Road, — /Agriculture, Il) I-, MORG ANTON, the principal town ofthc county of Burke, contains about fifty houses built of wood, and almost all inhabited by tradesmen. One ware- house only, supported by a commercial house at Charleston, is established in this little town, where the inhabitants, for twenty miles round, come and purchase mercery and jewellery goods from Eng- land, cr give in exchange a part of their produce, which consists chiefly of dried hams, butter, tallow, M M ?■: ! I i 1C)6 bear and stng skins, and ginseng, nliich they bring from the mountains. From Morganton to Charleston it is computed to be two hundred and eighty-five miles. There ;ire several roads to if, whieh do not vai-y in point ofdis- tance above twenty miles. Travellers take that where they think of iinding the best houses for accom- modation : I to(jk the one that leads through Lin- colnton, Chester, and Columbia. The distance from Morganton to Lincolnton is forty-five miles. For the whole of this space the soil is extremely bad, and the j)lantations^ straggling five or six miles from each other, have but a middling appearance. The woods are in a great measure compos(;d of different kinds of oaks, and the surface of the ground is covered with grass, intermixed with plants. Linrohiion, the principal town of the county of Lincoln, is formed by the junction of forty houses, surrounded by tlie woods like all the small towns of the interior. Two or tliree la'*ge shops, that do the same kind of business as that at Morganton, are esta- 267 blislicd there. Tlie tradesmen who keep them send the produje uf their eountry to Charleston, but they find it sometimes answer their purpose better to stoek themselves with goods from Pliiladelphia, although farther by six. hundred miles. Some expedite them by sea to Carolina, whenee they go by land to Lin- colnton. The freight, a little higher fiom England to Charleston, and the enormous advance which the merchants lay on their goods, appear the only mo- tives that make them give the preference to those of Philadelphia. At Lincolnton they print a newspaper in folio, that comes out twice a week. The price of subscription is two dollars per year ; but the printer, who is his own editor, t:ikes, by way of payment, for the case of his country subscribers, flour, rye, wax, &c. at the market price. The advertisements inserted for the inluibitants of the country are generally the surest profit to the printers. The foreign news is extracted from the papers that are published at the sea ports. The federal government, of which the constant aim is M M 2 ^^ ^> %:^. .^j IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 !Si^ III I.I •4£ 1^ £ us. 2.5 2.2 1.8 1.25 1.4 1.6 ^5 ■• 6" - ► V] <^ /i ^i. /A 'm '/ Photographic Sciences Corporation ^ V s >v \\ ^^ V "% o."^^ 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 ^^>. ^^^%S 6^ ^^^!^^ '^ % ^.^ u 268 to propogate among the people instruction, the know- ledge of the laws, grants the editors of periodical papers, throughout the whole extent of the United States, the right to receive, free of postage, the news- papers that they wish to exchange among themselves, or those which are addressed to them. The county of Lincoln is populated, in a great measure, hy Germans from Pennsylvania. Their plantations are kept in the greatest order, and their lands well cultivated. Almost all have negro slaves, and there reigns much more independance among them than in the families of English origin. One iTfiay form a correct idea of the industry of some of them by the appearance of the plantation where I stopped, situated upon a branch of the Catabaw River. In eight hundred acres, of which it is com- posed, a hundred and fifty are cultivated in cotton, Indian corn, wheat, and oats, and dunged annually, which is a great degree of perfection in the present state of the agriculture of this part of the country. Independent of this, he has built in his yard several ■\ :.t-- 2(59 machines, that the same current of water puts in motion ; they consist of a corn mill, a saw mill, another to separate the cotton seeds, a tan-house, a tan-mill, a distillery to make peach brandy, and a small forge, where the inhabitants of the country go to have their horses shod. Seven or eight negro slaves are employed in the different departments, some of which are only occupied at certain periods of the year. Tlieir wives are employed under the direction of the mistress in manufacturing cotton and linen for the use of the family. The whole of my landlord's taxes, assessed upon his landed property, and these different kinds of industry, did not amount annually to more than seven dollars ; whilst under the presidency of J. Adams they had increased to fifty ; at the same time his memory is not held in great veneration in Upper Carolina and the Western States, where the political opinion is strongly pronounced in the sense of opposition, and where no- body durst confess himself publicly attached to the federal party, li I %i if. : ll !'l ^ 4. fl 270 H, i Kf-^ i| jj"7 J In all the towns that I travelled through every tanner has his tan mill, which does not cost him above ten dollars to erect. The bark is put into a wooden arch, twelve or fourteen feet in diameter, the edges of which are about fifteen inches high, and it is crushed under the weight of a wheel, about one foot thick, which is turned by a horse, and fixed similar to a cyder- press. For this purpose they gene- rally make use of an old mill-stone, or a wooden wheel, formed by several pieces joined together, and furnished in its circumference Vyith three rows of teeth, also made of wood, about two inches long and twelve or fifteen wide. From Lincolnton to Chester court house in the state of South Carolina, it is computed to be about seventy miles. For the whole of this space the earth is light and of an inferior quality to that situated be- tween Morganton and Lincolnton, although the mass of the forests is composed of various species of oaks ; in the mean time the pines are in such abundance there, that for several miles the ground is covered ii: 271 with nothing else. Plantations arc so little increased there, that we scarcely saw twenty where they culti- vate cotton or Indian wheat. We passed by several that had been deserted by the owners as not suffici- ently productive : for the inhabitants of Georgia and the two Carolinas, who plant nothing but rice, choose frequently rather to make new clearings than to keep their land in a state of producing annually, by regular tillage, as they do in Europe, and even in New England and Pennsylvania. The considerable extent of this country, compared with the trifling population, gives rise to these changes which take place after fifteen or twenty successive harvests. Chester contains about thirty houses, built of wood ; among the number are two inns and two re- spectable shops. In the principal county towns of the Western and Southern States, they have neither fairs nor markets. Tiic inhabitants sell the produce of their culture to shopkeepers settled in the small towns, or what is more usual in the south, they convey them in waggons to the sea ports. Hi" . in il IJl ' t'i : • HI 272 :.' W 'iK u 1 From Chester the country grows worse in every respect. The traveller no longer meet§ reception at plantations ; he is obliged to put up at inns, where he is badly accommodated both in point of board and lodging, and pays dearer than in any other part of the United States. The reputation of these inns is esteemed according to the quantity and different kinds of spirits that they sell, among which French brandies hold always the first rank, although they are often mixed with water for the third or fourth time. They reckon fifty-five miles from Chester to Co- lumbia ; twenty-five miles on this side we passed through Winesborough, composed of about a hun- dred and fifty houses. This place is one of the oldest inhabited in Carolina, and several planters of the low country go and spend the summer and autumn there. Fifteen miles on this side Winesborough thej&me barrens begin, and thence to the sea side the country is one continued forest composed of pines. Columbia, founded within these twenty years, is the seat of government for the state of South Caro- rej is 273 lina. It is built about two hundred fathoms from the Catabaw River, upon an uniform spot of ground. The number of its houses does not exceed two hun- dred ; they are almost all built of wood, and painted grey and yellow ; and although there are very few of them more than two stories high, they have a very respectable appearance. The legislature, formed by the union of the delegates of different counties that send them in a number proportionate to their popula- tion, meet there annually on the first of December, and all the business is transacted in the same month ; it then dissolves, and, except at that time, the towq derives no particular advantage from being the seat of government. The inhabitants of the upper country, who do not approve of sending their provisions to Charleston, stop at Columbia, where they dispose of them at several respectable shops established in the town. The river Catabaw, about twenty fathoms broad, is only navigable during the winter ; the rest of the yim- its navigation is stopped by large rocks that inter- N N n ; ' i.P* I' " *K ill: ;i :. :^ il; ' ''I: It 274 I/' cept its course. They have been^ nevertheless, at work for these several years past in forming a canal to faci- litate the descent of the boats, but the work goes on very slowly for the want of hands, although the work- men are paid at the rate of a dollar per day. Columbia is about a hundred and twenty miles from Charleston ; for the whole of this space, and particularly from Orangeburgh, composed of twenty houses, the road crosses an even country, sandy and dry during the summer ; whilst in the autunin and winter it is so covered with water that in several places, for the space of eight or ten miles, the horses are up to their middles. Every two or three miles we meet with a miserable log-house upon the road, sur- rounded with little fields of Indian corn, the slender stalks of which are very seldom more than five or six feet high, and which, from the second harvest, do not yield more than four or five bushels per acre. In the mean time^ notwithstanding their sterility, this land is sold at the rate of t^^'o dollars per acre. The extreme unwholesomcness of the climate is 275 clearly demonstrated by the pale and livid counte- nances of the inhabitants, who, during the months of September and October, are almost all affected with tertian fevers, insomuch that at this period of the year Georgia and the Lower Carolinas resemble, in some measure, an extensive hospital. Very few persons take any remedy, but wait the approach of the first frosts, which, provided they live so long, gener- ally effect a cure. The negroes are much less sub- ject to intermittent fevers then the whites ; and it is seldom that in the great rice plantations there is more than one fifth of them disabled on this account. P '» "^-♦-„ I i i; 'I Ml t. N N 2 r h 276 CHAP. XXXI. p. i 4 ' General observations on the Carolinas and Georgia. — Agriculture and produce peculiar to the upper pari of these states. ^/^W^i «;<^*^ ' f \* ■-^ A h >•- / THE two Carolinas and Georgia are naturally di- vided intp the upper a^ lower country, but the upper embraces a greater extent. Ju8t at the point where the maritime part is terminated the soil rises gradually till it reaches the Alleghany Mountains, and presents, upon the whole, a ground rather irre- gular than mountainous, and interspersed with little hills as far as the mountains. The Alleghanies give birth to a great number of creeks or small rivers, the junction of which forms the rivers Pidea Santea, 277 Savannah, and Alatamaha, which are liardly naviga- ble above two hundred miles fruin their embouchurt. In the upper country the most fertile lands are situ- ated upon the borders of these creeks. Those that occupy the intermediate spaces are much less so. The latter are not much cultivated ; and even those who occupy them are obliged to be perpetually clear- ing them, in order to obtain more abundant har- vests ; in consequence of which a great number of K*<. ^-; ^ S. 1 the inhabitants emigrate into the western country, where they are attraqted by the extreme fertility of the soil and low price of land ; since that of the first class may be purchased for the same mo^ey as that of the second in Upper Carolina ; and, as we have already said, the latter is scarcely to be compared to that which in Kentucky and Cumberland is ranked in the third. In the upper country the mass of the forests is chiefly composed of oaks, nut trees, maples, and poplars. Chesnut trees do not begin to appear in these states for sixty miles on this side the moun- '\\ 1 ' '■■? 1 .r 278 MP ft* ■' P^l'.. tains. It is only in the remote parts that the inha- bitants manufacture maple sugar for their use. Through the whole of the country the nature of the soil is adapted for the growth of wheat, rye, and Indian corn. Good land produces upward of twenty bushels of Indian wheat per acre, which is commonly worth about half a dollar per bushel. A general consumption is made of it for the support of the inhabitants since, except those who are of Ger- man origin, there are very few, as we have before remarked, that make use of wheaten bread. The growth of corn is very circumscribed, and the small quantity of flour that is exported to Charleston and Savannah is sold fifteen per cent, cheaper than that imported from Philadelphia. "' - The low price to which tobacco is fallen in Eu- rope, within these few years, has made them give up the culture of it in this part of the country. That of green-seed cotton has resumed its place, to the great advantage of the inhabitants, many of whom have since made their fortunes by it. The separar 279 tion of the seed from the felt that envelopes them Is a tedious operation, and which requires many hands, is now simplified by a machine for which the in- ventor has obtained a patent from the federal go- vernment. The legislature of South Carolina paid him, three years since, the sum of a hundred thou- sand dollars, for all the inhabitants belonging to the state to have the privilege of erecting one. This machine, very simple, and the price of which does not exceed sixty dollars, is put in motion by a horse or by a current of water, and separates from the seed three or four hundred pounds of cotton per day ; while by the usual method, a man is not able to se- parate above thirty pounds. This machine, it is true, has the inconvenience of shortening by hag- gling it ; the wool, on that account, is rather infe- rior in point of quality, but this inconvenience is, they say, well compensated by the saving of time, and more particularly workmanship.- It is very probable that the various species of fruit trees that we have in France would succeed very well ■ I f r ' 1 II 280 1'. i- . i'i rt in Upj)er Carolina. About two hundred miles from the sea-coast the apple trees are magnificent^ and in the county of Lincoln several Germans make cyder. But here, as well as in Tennessea, and the greatest part of Kentucky, they cultivate no other but the peach. The other kinds of trees, such as pears, apricots, plumbs, cherries, almonds, mul- berries, nuts, and gooseberries, are very little known, except by name. Many of the inhabitants who are independent would be happy to procure some of them, but the distance from the sea-ports renders it very difficult. The major part of the inhabitants do not even cultivate vegetables ; and out of twenty there is scarcely one of them that plants a small bed of cabbages ; and when they do, it is in the same field as the Indian wheat. In Upper Carolina the surface of the soil is co- vered with a kind of grass, which grows in greater abundance as the forests arc more open. The woods are also like a common, where the inhabitants turn out their cattle, which they know again by their 281 private mark.' Several persons have in their flocks a variety of poll. oxen, which are not more esteemed than those of the common species. In the whole course of my travels I never saw any tliat coald be compared to those 1 have seen in England, which beyond doubt proceeds from the little ca^e that the inhabitants take of them, and from what these ani- mals sufter during the summer, when they are cru- elly tormented by an innumerable multitude of ticks and muskitos, and in the winter, through the want of grass, which dries up through the effect of the first frosts. These inconveniencies aic still more sensi- ble, during the ^ummer, in the low country, through tlie extreme heat of tlie climate. I'he result is, that the covvs give but little milk, and are dry at the end of three or four months. In the environs of Philadelphia and New York, where they bestow the same care upon them as in England, they are, on the contrary, as fine, and give as great a quantity of milk. The horses that they rear in this part of the o o I '( !! t il / :\ I ti f! 'Mjjjj.,'- 282 fc pi southern states are inferior to those of the western. The inhabitants keep but very few sheep, and those who have a dozen are accounted to have a great number. The commercial intercourse of the Upper Caro- lines and Georgia is carried on, in a great measure, with Charleston, which is not much farther than Wilmington and Savannah. The inhabitants go there in preference, because the commerce is more active, and the sales more easy. The articles they carry- there consists chiefly in short cotton, tobacco, hams, salt butter, • wax, stag, and bear skins, and cattle. They take, in return, coarse iron ware, tea, coffee, powder sugar, coarse cloths, and fine linen, but no bar iron, the upper country abounding in mines of that metal, and those which are worked sufficing the wants of the inhabitants. They also bring salt from the sea-ports, since there are no salt pits in any part of the Atlantic states. The carriage of these goods is made in large waggons with four wheels, drawn by four or six horses, that travel ass ye v.. ,--^-. 283 about twenty-four miles a day, and encamp every evening in tlie woods. The price of conveyance is about three shillings and four-pence per hundred weight for every hundred miles. Although the climate of the Upper Carollnas is infinitely more wholesome than that of the lower parts, it is not, in the mean time, at two hundred miles, and even two hundred and fifty, from the ocean, that a person is safe from the yellow fever. Eight-tenths of the inhabitants of this part of the country are in the same situation as those of Tennes- sea and Kentucky. They reside, like the latter, in log-houses isolated in the woods, which are left open in the night as well as the day. They live in the same manner with regard to their domestic af- fairs, and follow the same plans of agriculture. Not- withstanding there are many of them whose moral characters, perhaps, are not so unspotted as those of the western inhabitants, it is probably altered by associating with the Scotch and Irish who come every year in great numbers to settle in the country, and o o 'i ■f. { 284 who teach them a part of their vices and defects, the usual attendants on a great population. The major part of these new adventurers go into the upper country, where they engage to serve, for a year or two, those persons who have paid the captain of the ship for their passage, ' i-' ' ■ I, \ •i > i , *, ^f % P \v, •'H' \'~ ^-yWu im 'iV.Vj \i..wy\ '■-■ ' 1 •i!Ji. ■■ ! i 1 . i 285 CHAP. XXXII. *; 9i.-% , 1 H M J i Low part of the Carolines and Georgia. — Agricul" " .^ ture. — Population. — Arrival at Charleston. r THE low country of the two Carolinas extends from the borders of the sea for a hundred and twenty or a hundred and fifty miles, widening as it gets towards the south. The space that this extent embraces presents an even and regular soil, formed by a blackish sand, rather deep in parts, in which there are neither stones nor flints ; in consequence of which they seldom shoe their horses in that part of the United States. Seven-tenths of the country are 286 Hh covered with pines of one species, or pinus paltistris, which, as the soil is drier and lighter, grow loftier and not so branchy. These trees, frequently twenty feet distant from each other, are not damaged by the fire that they make here annually in the woods, at the commencement of spring, to bum the grass and other plants that the frost has killed. These pines, encumbered with very few branches, and which split even, are preferred to other trees to form fences for plantations. Notwithstanding the sterility of the land where they grow, they are sometimes interspersed with three kinds of oaks; viz. the quer- cus nigra, the quercus catnsbcei, and the quercus ohtusiloha. The wood of the two first is only fit to burn, whilst that of the other is of an excellent use, as I have before remarked. The Pine Barrens are crossed by little swamps, in the midst of which generally flows a rivulet. These swamps, from ten to forty fathoms broad, are some- times more than a mile in length, and border on others, more Spacious and marshy, near the rivers. 2S7 Each have diflferent degrees of fertility, clearly indi- cated by the trees that grow there exclusively, and which are not to be found in the upper countr}\ Thus the chcsnat oak, or quercus primis palttstris, the magnolia graridijlora, the magnolia tripetala, the nyssa bifloraj &c. flourish only in swamps where the soil is of a good quality, and continually codl, moist, and shady. In some parts of these same swamps, that are half the year submerged^ where the earth is black, muddy, and reposes upon a clayey bottom, the acacia-leaved cypress, the gleditsia monosperme, -the lyric oak, and the bunchy nut-tree, the nuts of which are small, and break easily between the fingers. The aquatic oak, the red maple, the magnolia glauca, the liquidamhar stiracy^flua, the nyssa villosa, the Gordo- nia lasyanthusy and the laurus Carolmiensis, cover, on the contrary, exclusively the narrow swamps of the Pine Barrens. The Spanish beard, tillandsia asneoidesj a kind of moss of a greyish colour, which is several feet in length, and which grows in abundance upon the fl ■k ,f-»V<'* — ^, V^«U< . (i >;J' J 5^ i^* - - M ■yn ^^^" SHURY, PRINTER.J «... '«) 'l^ r- if. /-^1 >* ^ -«>»' •< f -A •1. . * I 1 t j-y-t <^ jr- • t I. * -^ •"••/t •i«*5,i .-r*"' rolina ^v' em- •":;|^ had .-v,;^' and i- j^^ - . >; ' - f ' ;^::