24 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



fairly broad ; narrow reaches of green bottom-land bor- 

 dered by gentle hills ; neat country-houses scattered here 

 and there, the buildings forsaken and half-ruined ; and 

 as background for the whole, a range of mountains. 

 Colonel Steward's house, on a rising ground by the 

 road, like so many others in America is thinly built of 

 wood, but after a tasteful plan. The construction of a 

 house, if the appearance is pleasing, need not worry 

 the traveller, since it is the owner who must contrive 

 how to offset the rude northwester streaming through, 

 and making cold quarters for winter. 



Two miles from Brunswick we again crossed the 

 Rariton, over a wooden bridge, and after a few miles 

 down that stream reached Boundbrook and Middle- 

 brook. The whole region about Brunswick consists 

 of a red earth, but towards the mountains the soil 

 changes. At Boundbrook we visited Dr. Griffith, a 

 practicing physician whose skill and upright character 

 made him free of the general persecution which other 

 royalists were exposed to. 



Beyond Boundbrook appears the first of those chains 

 of rather high mountains which in Jersey lie inwards 

 from the sea. In the company of Dr. Griffith and a few 

 other gentlemen we made an excursion towards the 

 mountain country where formerly Captain Mosengail 

 and Mr. Riibsaamen had establishments for smelting 

 copper, the first in America. In this region the stone 

 is a species of dense, grey, quarrystone, very similar 

 to that used in New York for tombstones. The road to 

 the old smelting-house is through a wide gap in the 

 first chain of mountains, the range being made up of 

 several chains one behind the other. Here, as farther 

 on in the winding valley, I saw what I took to be sure 



