Part 15

From Lexinton the different kinds of merchandize are despatched into the interior of the state, and the overplus is sent by land into Tenessea. It is an easy thing for merchants to make their fortunes; in the first place, they usually have a twelvemonth’s credit from the houses at Philadelphia and Baltimore, and in the next, as there are so few, they are always able to fix in their favour the course of colonial produce, which they take in exchange for their goods: as, through the extreme scarcity of specie, most of these transactions are done by way of barter; the merchants, {128} however, use every exertion in their power to get into their possession the little specie in circulation; it is only particular articles that are sold for money, or in exchange for produce the sale of which is always certain, such as the linen of the country, or hemp. Payments in money always bear a difference of fifteen or twenty per cent to the merchant’s profits. All the specie collected in the course of trade is sent by land to Philadelphia; I have seen convoys of this kind that consisted of fifteen or twenty horses.[42] The trouble of conveyance is so great that they give the preference to Bank bills of the United States, which bear a discount of two per cent. The merchants in all parts take them, but the inhabitants of the country will not, through fear of their being forged. I must again remark, that there is not a single species of colonial produce in Kentucky, except _gensing_, that will bear the expense of carriage by land from that state to Philadelphia; as it is demonstrated that twenty-five pounds weight {129} would cost more expediting that way, even going up the Ohio, than a thousand by that river, without reckoning the passage by sea, although we have had repeated examples that the passage from New Orleans to Philadelphia or New York is sometimes as long as that from France to the United States.

The current coin in the states of Kentucky and Tennessea 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 indifferent 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 informed, that during the last war, corn being kept up at an exorbitant rate, it was computed that the exportations from Kentucky had balanced the price {130} of the importations of English goods from Philadelphia and Baltimore, by the way of the Ohio: but since the peace, the demand for flour and salt provisions 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 physician of the college of Edinburgh, and member of the Philosophical Society, to whom several members of that society had given me letters of recommendation. A merited reputation undeniably places Dr. S. Brown in the first rank of physicians settled in that part of the country. Receiving regularly the scientific journals from London, he is always in the channel of new discoveries, and turns them to the advantage of his fellow-citizens. It is to him that they are indebted 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 first attempts in New York and Philadelphia. Dr. Brown also employs himself in collecting fossils and other natural productions, which abound in this interesting country. I have seen at his house several relics of very large unknown fish, caught in the {131} 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. These waters are about sixty miles from Lexinton; they are 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 periodical works wherein Dr. Brown inserts the fruit of his observation and research.[43]

I had also the pleasure of forming an acquaintance with several French gentlemen settled in that part of the country: Mr. Robert, 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 foreigner at a distance from his country and his friends; in consequence of which I now feel myself happy in having this means of publicly expressing my warmest gratitude.

{132} CHAP. XV

_Departure from Lexinton.--Culture of the vine at Kentucky.-- Passage over the Kentucky and Dick Rivers.--Departure for Nasheville.--Mulder Hill.--Passage over Green River._

I set out on the 10th of August from Lexinton to Nasheville, in the state of Tennessea; and as the establishment formed to naturalize the vine in Kentucky was but a few miles out of my road, I resolved 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 wines being one of the principal articles of our commerce with the United States, I wished to be satisfied respecting the degree of prosperity 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 first attempts had not been very fortunate.

About fourteen miles from Lexinton 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 Mr. Dufour, who superintends the business. 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 seize 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 of ten 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 undertaking, was deputed to search for a proper soil, to procure vine plants, and to do every thing he {134} might think necessary to insure success. The spot that he has chosen and cleared is on the Kentucky river, 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 about 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, prevented 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 announced that the vintage of 1802 would not be more {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 another 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. These particulars are sufficient to give, on the pretended 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 profited 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 1793 and 1794. His reply was, that a great number of the Swiss had actually formed an intention to settle there; but {136} just as they were setting out, the major part had changed their mind, and that the colony was then reduced to his family and a few friends, forming, in the whole, eleven persons.

I did not set out from the vineyard 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 accepted 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 inequality 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 exclusively 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 consumptions, 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 with the greatest ease.

I stopped a few minutes at the inn where the ferry-boat plies when the 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 borders 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 give an idea of the channel of this river at Hickman Ferry. 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, an inhabitant of the country who lived about sixty miles farther up. This gentleman, with whom I entered into conversation, and who appeared to me to enjoy a comfortable existence, 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 offered {138} his services to shew me a healthy soil, wishing very much, he said, to have an inhabitant of the old country for a neighbour. It has often happened to me, in this state as 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 spend a few days in their family.

About a mile from Kentucky I left the Danville road, and took that of Harrod’s Burgh,[44] to go to General Adair,[45] 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. Part 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 which contrasts with the whiteness of the towering pile. On leaving its summit, numerous furrows, hollowed {139} in the rock, very near together, and which seem to run _ad infinitum_, are seen at different heights. These furrows have visibly been formed by the current of the river, which at distant epochs had its bed at these various levels. Dick’s River, like the Kentucky, 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 hospitality, as though I had been intimately acquainted with the family.

A spacious and commodious house, a number of black servants, equipages, every thing announced the opulence of the General, which it is well known is not always, in America, the appendage of those honoured with that title. His plantation is situated {140} near Harrodsburgh in the county of Mercer. Magnificent peach orchards, immense fields of Indian wheat, surround the house. The soil there is extremely 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_, _guilandina dioica_, _ulmus viscosa_, _morus-rubra_, _corylus_, _annona triloba_. In short, for several miles round the surface 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; and 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 {141} through that day, at present consists only of about twenty houses, 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 amphitheatre. From its summit the neighbouring country presents the aspect of an immense valley, covered with forests of an imperceptible extent, whence, 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 profound silence that reigns in these woods, uninhabited by wild beasts, and the security of the place, forms an _ensemble_ rarely to be met with 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 I reached was that of Mr. Macmahon, formerly professor of a college in Virginia, who came very lately to reside in this part of the country, where he officiates as a clergyman.

{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 perfection, and I perceived that my horse had been feeding 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 windings, and runs through a narrow valley not more than a mile in breadth. At the place where I crossed it it had not three [feet?] 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 {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 proportion 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.

{144} CHAP. XVI

_Passage over the Barrens, or Meadows.--Plantations upon the Road.--The View they present.--Plants discovered there.-- Arrival at Nasheville._

About ten miles from Green River flows the 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 black 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 wandered {145} about for the space of two hours in search of this, when I discovered a plantation in a low and narrow valley, where I learnt that I had mistaken the path, and was obliged to return to the place from whence I came. The mistress of the house told me that she had resided in the Barrens upwards of three years, and that for eighteen months prior to my going there she had not seen an individual; that, weary of living thus isolated, her husband had been more than two months from home in quest of another spot, towards the mouth of the Ohio. Such was 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.

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 cavity 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 I had thus employed, that which I had lost in wandering about, added to the intense heat, obliged {146} 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 miles, and stopped at the house of Mr. Jacob Kesly, belonging to the Dunker sect, which I discovered by his long beard. About ten miles from Dripping Spring I forded 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, belonging to one Chapman. About three miles farther are the two oldest settlements on the road, both of them having been built upwards of fourteen years. When I was at this place, a boat laden with salt arrived from St. Genevieve, a French village situated upon the right bank of the Mississippi, about a hundred miles beyond the mouth of the Ohio.

My landlord’s house was as miserably furnished as those I had lodged at for several days preceding, and I was again obliged to sleep on the floor. The major part of the inhabitants of Kentucky have been there too short a time to make any great improvements; they have a very indifferent supply of any thing except Indian corn and forage.