Alexander Wilson. 



205 



enable me to draw up an interesting narra- 

 tive of him for the Portfolio. I carried 

 him half a pound of snuff of which he is 

 insatiably fond, taking it by handfuls. I 

 was much diverted with the astonishment 

 he expressed on looking at the plates of 

 my work; he could tell me anecdotes of 

 the greater part of the subjects of the first 

 volume, and some of the second. One of 

 his traps, which he says he invented him- 

 self, is remarkable for ingenuity and ex- 

 tremely simple. 



" Having a letter from Dr. Muhlenberg 

 to a clergyman in Hanover, I passed on 

 through a well-cultivated country chiefly 

 inhabited by Germans to that place, where 

 a certain judge took upon himself to say, 

 that such a book as mine ought not to be 

 encouraged, as it was not within the reach 

 of the commonalty, and therefore inconsis- 

 tent with our republican institutions ! By 

 the same mode of reasoning which I did 

 not dispute, I undertook to prove him a 

 greater culprit than myself in erecting a 

 large, elegant, three-story brick house, so 

 much beyond the reach of the commonalty 

 as he called them, and consequently grossly 

 contrary to our republican institutions. I 

 harangued this Solomon of the bench more 

 seriously afterward, pointing out to him 

 the great influence of science on a young 

 rising nation like ours, and particularly the 

 science of natural history, till he began to 

 show such symptoms of intellect, as to 

 seem ashamed of what he had said. 



" From Hanover I passed through a 

 thinly inhabited country, and crossing the 

 North Mountain at a pass called Newman's 

 Leap, arrived at Chambersburgh, whence 

 I next morning returned to Carlisle, to 

 visit the reverend doctors of the college. 



" The towns of Chambersburgh and 

 Shippensburgh produced me nothing. On 

 Sunday the nth I left the former of these 

 places in a stage coach, and in fifteen 

 miles began to ascend the alpine regions of 

 the Alleghany mountains, where above, 



around and below us, nothing appeared 

 but prodigious declivities covered with 

 woods; and the weather being fine, such a 

 profound silence prevailed among these 

 aerial solitudes, as impressed the soul with 

 awe and a kind of fearful sublimity. Some- 

 thing of this arose from my being alone, 

 having left the coach several miles below. 

 These high ranges continued for more than 

 one hundred miles to Greensburgh, thirty- 

 two miles from Pittsburgh. Thence the 

 country is nothing but an assemblage of 

 steep hills and deep valleys, descending 

 rapidly till you reach within seven miles of 

 this place, where I arrived on the 15th inst. 

 We were within two miles of Pittsburgh 

 when suddenly the road descends a very 

 long and steep hill, where the Alleghany 

 River is seen at hand, on the right, stretch- 

 ing along a rich bottom, and bounded by 

 a high ridge of hills on the west. After 

 following this road parallel with the river, 

 and about a quarter of a mile from it, 

 through a rich low valley, a cloud of black 

 smoke at its extremity announced the town 

 of Pittsburgh. On arriving at the town 

 which stands on a low flat, and looks like 

 a collection of blacksmiths' shops, glass- 

 houses, breweries, forgeries, and furnaces, 

 the Monongahela opened to the view, on 

 the left running along the bottom of the 

 range of hills, so high that the sun at this 

 season sets to the town of Pittsburgh at a 

 little past four. This range continues along 

 the Ohio as far as the view reaches. The 

 ice had just begun to give way in Monon- 

 gahela and came down in vast bodies for 

 the three following days. It has now be- 

 gun in the Alleghany and at the moment 

 I write the river presents a white mass of 

 rushing ice. 



" The country beyond the Ohio to the 

 west appears a monotonous and hilly 

 region. The Monongahela is lined with 

 arks usually called Kentucky boats, waiting 

 for the rising of the river, and the absence 

 of ice to descend. 



