nongahela and Alleghany rivers. Pittsburgh, in the month of July, At this junction Pittsburg is built, 1802, there was a three-mast veswhich was the site of Fort Du- sel of two-hundred and fifty tons, quesne, and the key of the western and a smaller one of ninety, which country. It is no longer of im- was on the point of being finished. portance in a military view, but it These ships were to go in the is the connecting medium of the spring following to New Orleans, eastern and western states, and, as loaded with the produce of the a commercial depôt, of peculiar country, after having made a pasvalue. Corn, hams, dried pork, sage of two thousand two hundred bar iron, coarse linen, bottles, miles before they got into the whiskey, and salt butter, from its Ocean. There is no doubt but dependencies, are embarked on they can, by the same rule, build the Ohio for the Caribbees, ships two hundred leagues beyond through New Orleans. At the the mouth of the Missouri, fifty latter port, they receive in ex- from that of the river Illinois, and change cotton, raw sugar, and in- even in the Mississippi, two hunddigo. These are sent by sea to red beyond the place whence these Philadelphia and Baltimore ; and rivers flow; that is to say, six the bargemen return to these hundred and fifty leagues from ports, from which they go again the sea ; as their bed in the ap. by land to Pittsburgh. pointed space is as deep as that of the Ohio at Pittsburgh. In con, “What many perhaps are igno- sequence of which it must be a rant of in Europe, is, that they wrong conjecture to suppose that build large vessels on the Ohio, the immense tract of country, waand at the town of Pittsburgh. tered by these rivers, cannot be One of the principal ship-yards is populous enough to execute such upon the Monongahela, about two undertakings. The rapid populahundred fathoms beyond the last tion of the three new western houses in the town. The timber states, under less favourable cirthey make use of is the white oak, cumstances, proves this assertion or quercus alba ; the red oak, or to be true. Those states, where quercus rubra ; the black oak, or thirty years ago there was scarce. quercus tinctoria ; a kind of nut ly three hundred inhabitants, are tree, or juglans minima : the Vir- now computed to contain upwards ginia cherry-tree, or cerasus Vir- of a hundred thousand ; and ginia ; and a kind of pine which though the plantations on the they use for masting, as well as roads are scarcely four miles disfor the sides of the vessels, which tant from each other, it is very require a slighter wood. The rare to find one, even among the whole of this timber being near most flourishing, where one can. at hand, the expenses of building is not with confidence ask the owner, not so great as in the ports of the whence he has emigrated ; or, ac, Atlantick states. The cordage is cording to the trivial manner of manufactured at Redstone and the Americans, " what part of the Lexington, where there are two world do you come from ?" as if extensive rope-walks, which also these immense and fertile regions supply ships with rigging that were to be the asylum common to are built at Marietta, and Lou- all the inhabitants of the globe. isville. On my journey to Pitts. Now if we consider these astonishe ing and rapid ameliorations, what ideas must we not form of the height 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." P. 63-65. When it is recollected, that the distance from Pittsburgh to New Orleans exceeds 2,000 miles, and that the Ohio, before its junction with the Mississippi, runs through half this space, what must our ideas be in contemplating vessels of more than 200 tons seeking the ocean through such devious tracts, and in so extensive a course! Let us improve our acquaintance with the means by which this intercourse is facilitated: "The Ohio, formed by the union of the Monongahela 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 southwesterly direction, in the latitude of 36° 46", about eleven hundred miles from Pittsburgh, and nearly the same distance from Orleans. This river runs so extremely serpentine, that, in going down it, you appear following a tract directly opposite to the one you mean to take. Its breadth varies from two hundred to a thousand fathoms. The islands that are to be met with in its current are very numerous. We counted upwards of fifty in the space of three hundred and eighty miles. Some contain but a few acres, and others more than a thousand in length. Their banks are very low, and must be subject to inundations. These islands are a great impediment to the naviga tion 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 difficulty that they are got afloat; notwithstanding which there is at all times a sufficiency of water for a skiff or a canoe. As these little boats are very light, when they strike upon the sands it is very easy to push them off 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 one hundred and twenty miles from Pittsburg. During these two seasons the water rises to such a height, that vessels of three hundred tons, piloted by men who are acquainted with the river, may go down in the greatest safety. The spring season begins at the end of February, and lasts three months; the autumn begins in October, and only lasts till the first of December. In the meantime these two epochs fall sooner or later, 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 course of the summer, heavy and incessant rains fall in the Alleghany mountains, which suddenly swell the Ohio : at that time persons excessively mountainous, covered may go down it with the greatest with forests, and almost uninhâbsafety ; but such circumstances ited ; where, I have been told by are not always to be depended on.” those who live on the banks of the P. 68-70. Ohio, they go every winter to hunt The Mississippi is interspersed bears." P. 84. with numerous shoals and islands, so that its navigation is far more The flat woody ground between dangerous than that of the Ohio, the river and these mountains conat least from Natches to New Or- sists of a vegetable mould, from deleans, a course of more than 700 caying leaves, and even from the miles. The rapidity of the Ohio decayed trunks of trees. The best is very considerable, and rowing is land in Kentucky and Tennessee unnecessary. The appearance of is of the same kind, and its vegethe banks of the river, on leaving tative quality peculiarly strong. Pittsburgh, merits our attention : The plane-tree grows to an im mense size ; and the next in bulk “ Leaving Pittsburgh, the Ohio is the liriodendron tulipifera. Othflows between two ridges, or lofty er trees, which adorn and diversify mountains, nearly of the same the forests of the country, are the height, which we judged to be beech, magnolia acuminata, the about two hundred fathoms. Fre- celtis occidentalis, the acacia, the quently they appeared undulated sugar and red maple, the black at their summit, at other times it poplar, &c. seemed as though they had been In this tract our author falls in completely level. These hills with towns, consisting of from 70 continue uninterruptedly for the to 200 houses, which till within a space of a mile or more, then a very few years had no existence, slight interval is observed, that and are generally placed on the sometimes affords a passage to the Ohio, or some of its tributary rivrivers that empty themselves into ers, where the receding mountains the Ohio ; but most commonly leave a vacant and level spot. Beanother hill of the same height low Marietta, a town on the Muskbegins at a very short distance ingum, at its conflux with the Ofrom the place where the preceding hio, the mountains recede still farone left off. These mountains rise ther, and offer the following beausuccessively for the space of three tiful prospect : hundred miles, and from our canoe we were enabled to observe them « On the 23d of July, about ten more distinctly, as they were more in the morning, we discovered or less distant from the borders of Point Pleasant, situated a little the river. Their direction is par- above the mouth of the great Kenallel to the chain of the Allegha- hawa, at the extremity of a point nies ; and although they are at formed by the right bank of this times from forty to a hundred river, which runs nearly in a direct miles distant from them, and that line as far as the middle of the 0. for an extent of two hundred miles, hio. What makes the situation one cannot help looking upon them more beautiful, is, that for four as belonging to these mountains. ' or five miles on this side the point, All that part of Virginia, situated the Ohio, four hundred fathoms upon the left bank of the Ohio, is broad, continues the same breadth the whole of that extent, and presents on every side the most perfect line. Its borders, sloping and elevated from twenty-five to forty feet, are, as in the whole of its windings, planted at their base with willows from fifteen to eighteen feet in height, the drooping branches and foliage of which form a pleasing contrast to the sugar maples, red maples, and ash trees, situated immediately above. The latter, in return, are overlooked by palms, poplars, beeches, magnolias of the highest elevation, the - enormous branches of which, at tracted by a more splendid light and easier expansion, extend toward the borders, overshadowing the river, at the same time completely covering the trees situated 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 chrystal stream, embellishes, in an extraordinary degree, this magnificent coup d'œil." P.95,96. The banks of the Ohio are alluvial, and, where not covered with -vegetable mould, are of a calcare-ous nature. The stones are flinty, -and chiefly from the separation of the limestone masses. A species of mulette is chiefly employed in making buttons, as the pearly nacre is very thick. It is arranged by Bosc under the genus Unio, with the trivial name of Ohiotensis. The tyrant of the river is the cat fish, silurus felis: its upper fins are strong and pointed, and, by swimming under his prey, he is enabled to wound it where the skin is thinnest. The inhabitants of the banks are chiefly hunters, for the sake of the skins: a few acres only are cultivated for their cows, whose milk they greatly depend on. Plantations occur every three or four miles, and travellers are accommodated, in their miserable log-houses, with bread, Indian corn, dried ham, milk and butter. They themselves feed only on Indian corn: the wheat which is cultivated is exported in the form of flour. The peach and apple are their only fruit trees: the former is preferred, as hogs are fed, and brandy distilled from the fruit. The price of the best land does not exceed 158. per acre. The sellers are seldom constant in their attachments, and few of those who first clear the ground, or who immediately succeed them, remain on it. The same restless principle urges them forward, and the Americans have now penetrated to the banks of the Missouri, forty miles above its union with the Mississippi. There are, it is said, more than 3,000 inhabitants on its banks, allured by a fertile soil, the numerous herds of beavers, elks, and bisons. Our author leaves the banks of the Ohio, to direct his course south and south-west, towards Charleston. He stops in this journey at a salt-mine. In this elevated region there are many strata of rock salt, and salt springs often rise to the surface, leaving, in consequence of the evaporation, a saline efflorescence. To these spots, the original inhabitants of the forest, the wild beasts, usually repaired. Salt seems to numerous animals a condiment almost essential to their existence; and we find, in these spots, the remains of some species at present unknown, probably extinct. The soil round these "licks" is dry and sandy; the stones are flat and chalky, rounded at the edges, and of a bluish cast inside. The soil is barren, and the few trees thin and stinted. Frankfort is the seat of govern ment in Kentucky, but Lexing- and has been securely settled only ton, in consequence of some ad- since 1783. About ten years afvantages of situation, is the larger terwards it was admitted into the and more populous town. It sup- union as an independent state. plies the shipping with rigging, Ginseng first appears in Kentucky, and has several tan-yards, where though more common in a more leather is prepared with the bark southern climate. Our author of the black oak. Industry and suspects that from twenty-five to ingenuity go hand in hand to add thirty thousand weight is annually to the prosperity of the town and exported, and more care is now taneighbourhood. Nitre, which is ken to prepare it in the state best afound in the neighbouring caverns, dapted to the China market. The supplies the material for the man- bisons have deserted this part of ufacture of powder, and two mills the country, and migrated to the have been erected. A pottery al- right side of the Mississippi. so, as in some other villages, is Deers, bears, wolves, red and grey established. Various circumstan- foxes, wild cats,racoons, opossums, ces relative to the commerce of and some squirrels, are the princithis part of America are added, pal animals that remain. . Turbut the balance of trade with Eu- keys, in a wild state, are still nurope is apparently unfavorable to it. merous. The cultivated produce The attempt to plant vineyards in tion of Kentucky are tobacco, Kentucky has succeeded very im- hemp, European grain, chiefly perfectly. wheat, and Indian corn. The last On the southern limits of Ken- yields from forty to seventy-five tucky the “ barrens” commence. bushels per acre. Eighty-five thou. These are open grounds, dry, and sand five hundred and seventy barsometimes sterile, where little is rels of flour went, from the 1st of met with but partridges ; and January, 1802, to the 30th of June where one woman told the author following, from Louisville to low that she had not seen a single per- Louisiana : more than two-thirds son for eighteen months. In of which was from Kentucky. A some of these meadows, however, barrel contains the four of five the grass is high, and marks of bushels of wheat corn,about ninetyfertility appear. Trees of different six pounds. The culture of tokinds, and flowering shrubs, are bacco has been greatly extended. also scattered around. In this dis- Hemp also is an increasing article trict, our author thinks that the of commerce. In 1802 more than vineyards should have been plant- 42,000 pounds of raw hemp, and ed, and he supposes that springs about 24,000 cwt. converted into are at no great distance from the cables, were exported. Flax is surface. The “barrens” are sur- cultivated by many families. rounded with a wood about three Rearing and taming horses is a miles broad, which terminates in business now eagerly and advantaan impenetrable or, at least, unpen- geously followed, and horned catetrated forest. tle are bred in great abundance. A general description of Ken- These, driven to the back settletucky follows, for the greater partments of Pennsylvania and Virginia, of which we must refer to the supply the markets on the coast. work. This state is about 400 Few sheep are fed or fattened ; miles in length and 200 in breadth; but the hogs are very numerous ; Vol. III. No. 7. 3A |