Part 14

The inhabitants on the borders of the Ohio, employ 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 meliorate 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 inhabit {109} are built upon the borders of the river, generally in a pleasant situation, whence they enjoy the most delightful prospects; still their mode of building 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 rather to belong to a country where timber is very scarce, instead of a place that abounds with forests. The inhabitants on the borders of the Ohio do not hesitate to receive travellers 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 {110} high, and produce from twenty to thirty-five hundred weight of corn per acre. For the three first years after the ground is cleared, the corn springs up too strong, and scatters before it ears, so that they cannot 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 cultivate corn rather through speculation to send the flour to the sea-ports, than for their 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 produces 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 settlements are not looked upon as quite so good.

The two banks of the Ohio, properly speaking, not having been inhabited above eight or nine years, {111} nor the borders of the rivers that run into it, the Americans who are settled there, share but very feebly 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 corn and peaches, butter, hemp, skins and various sorts of flour. They send again cattle to the Atlantic States. Tradespeople who supply themselves 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 perpetually towards the most distant points of the American population, and go and settle in the neighbourhood 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; {112} rather on account of their being so few in number, than through defect of courage.

Prior to our arrival at Marietta, we met one of these _settlers_, an inhabitant of the environs of Wheeling, who accompanied us down the Ohio, and with whom 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 survey the borders of the Missouri[36] for a hundred and fifty miles beyond its _embouchure_. The excellent quality 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 {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 worsted 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 beaver-snares, and a large knife suspended at his side, constituted 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 conceived the place favourable for the chace, he remained 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 fertile countries, and wrested them from the savages who ferociously disputed their right; it was they, in short, who made themselves masters of the possessions, 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 {114} the very price to which these lands have risen in so short a time. They have emigrated to more remote 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 numerous population. The last comers instead of log-houses, with which the present inhabitants are contented, will build wooden ones, clear a greater quantity of the land, and be as industrious and persevering 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 between {115} the eastern and western states. By it the latter receive the manufactured goods which Europe, India, and the Caribbees supply the former; and it is the only open communication with the ocean, for the exportation of provisions from the immense and fertile part of the United States comprised between the Alleghany Mountains, the lakes, and the left banks of the Mississippi.

All these advantages, blended with the salubrity of the climate and the beauty of the landscapes, enlivened 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 preference to any other.

{116} CHAP. XIII

_Limestone.--Route from Limestone to Lexinton.--Washington.-- Salt-works at Mays-Lick.--Millesburgh.--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 where all the emigrants landed who came from the Northern States by the way of Pittsburgh, and is still the staple for all sorts of merchandize sent from Philadelphia 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 {117} 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 Lexinton 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.[37] It is much larger than 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 Orleans. 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 Virginia and Pennsylvania. I went seven miles the first evening, and on the following day reached Springfield, composed of five or six houses, among the number of which are two spacious inns, well built, where the inhabitants of the environs assemble together. 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 {118} wells that supply the salt water are about twenty feet in depth, and not more than fifty or sixty fathoms from the river Salt-Lick, the waters of which are somewhat brackish in summer time. For evaporation they make use of brazen pots, containing about two hundred pints, and similar in form to those used in France for making lye. They put ten or a dozen of them in a row on a pit four feet in depth, and a breadth proportionate to their diameter, so that the sides lay upon the edge of the pit, supported by a few handfuls of white clay, which fill up but very imperfectly the spaces between the vessels. The wood, which they cut in billets of about three feet, is thrown in at the extremities of the pit. These sort of kilns are extravagant, and consume a prodigious quantity of wood; I made an observation of it to the people employed in the business, to which they made answer, that they did not know 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 better. The scarcity of hands for the cutting down and conveyance of the wood, and the few saline principles that the water contains when dissolved, occasions the salt to be very dear; they sell it at from four to {119} five piasters per hundred weight. It is that scarcity which induces many of them to search for salt springs. They are usually found in places described by the name of Licks where the bisons, elks, and stags that existed in Kentucky 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 some 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 Mays-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 stones, of a bluish cast inside, the edges of which are round. The only trees that we observed were the white oak, or _quercus alba_, and nut-tree, or _juglans hickery_, but their stinted growth and wretched appearance clearly indicated the sterility of the soil, occasioned, doubtless, by the salt mines that it contains.

{120} From Mays-Lick I went to Millesburgh, composed of fifty houses; I went there to visit Mr. Savary, who had been very intimately acquainted with my father, and by his invitation I left my inn and went to lodge at his house.[38] 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 notwithstanding 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 Millesburgh flows a little river, from five to six fathoms broad, upon which two saw-mills are erected. The stream 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 contrary, 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 {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 1796, consisted of no more than eighteen houses, and now contains more than a hundred and fifty, 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 inhabitants. 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 concerning 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.

{122} CHAP. XIV

_Lexinton.--Manufactories established there.--Commerce.--Dr. Samuel Brown_

Lexinton, the manor-house 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 wealthy of the three new western states; it contains about three thousand inhabitants. Frankfort, the seat of government in Kentucky, which is upwards of twenty {123} miles distant from it, is not so populous.[39] We may attribute the rapid increase of Lexinton to its situation in the centre of one of the most fertile parts of the country, comprised in a kind of semicircle, 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.[40] That which they use for writing, originally imported from England, comes by the way of Philadelphia and Baltimore. 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 tan-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.

{124} The want of hands excites the industry of the inhabitants of this country. When I was at Lexinton one of them had just obtained a patent for a nail machine, more complete and expeditious 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 inhabitants giving so decided a preference to agriculture, that there are very few of them who put their children 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, tinman, 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 labour. 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 or 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 extracted from the grottos, or caverns, that are found on the declivity of lofty hills in the most mountainous part of the state. The soil there is extremely rich in nitrous particles, which is evidently due to {126} the chalky rock, at the expense of which all these excavations are formed, as well as for vegetable substances, which are casually thrust into their interior. This appears to demonstrate that the assimilation of animal matters is not absolutely necessary, even in the formation of artificial nitrous veins, to produce a higher degree of nitrification. Saltpetre of the first preparation is sold at about sixpence halfpenny per pound. Among the various samples I have seen, I never observed the least appearance of marine salt. The process that is used is as defective as their preparation of salt; I only speak relative to the extraction of the saltpetre, not having seen the powder-mills. I shall conclude by observing, that it is only in Kentucky and Tenessea that saltpetre is manufactured, and not in the Atlantic States.

The majority of the inhabitants of Lexinton trade with Kentucky;[41] they receive their merchandize from Philadelphia and Baltimore in thirty-five or forty days, including the journey of two days and a half from Limestone, where they land all the goods destined for Kentucky. The price of carriage is from seven to eight piastres per hundred weight. Seven-tenths of the manufactured articles consumed in Kentucky, as well as in the other parts of the {127} United States, are imported from England; they consist chiefly in coarse and fine jewellery, cutlery, ironmongery, and tin ware; in short, drapery, mercery, drugs, and fine earthenware, muslins, nankeens, tea, &c. are imported directly from India to the United States by the American vessels; and they get from the Carribbees coffee, and various kinds of raw sugar, as none but the poorer class of the inhabitants make use of maple sugar.

The French goods that are sent into this part of the country are reduced to a few articles in the silk line, such as taffetas, silk stockings, &c. also brandies and millstones, notwithstanding their enormous weight, and the distance from the sea ports.