50 EXPEDITION TO THE 



globe, have acquired for him, not only in America, but also 

 in England, a temporary reputation. The partial insanity 

 of this man is of a singular nature. It has caused him to 

 pervert, to the support of an evidently absurd doctrine, all 

 the facts, which, by close study, he has been enabled to collect 

 from a vast number of authorities. He appears conversant 

 w^ith every work of travels from Hearne's to Humboldt's, 

 and there is not a fact to be found in these which he does not 

 manage with considerable ingenuity, to bring to the sup- 

 port of his favourite doctrine. Upon other subjects he talks 

 sensibly, and as a well-informed man. In listening to his 

 expositions of his views of the concavity of our globe, we 

 felt that interest which is inevitably awakened by the 

 aberrations of an unregulated mind, possessed probably of 

 a capacity too great for the narrow sphere in which it was 

 doomed to live ; and which has consumed itself with the 

 fire, which if properly applied, would doubless have illu- 

 mined some obscure point in the science which it so strongly 

 atfects. In another point of view. Captain Symes has a claim 

 to our best sympathies for the gallantry with which he serv- 

 ed his country during the war. 



From Newark to Columbus the road passes through a 

 moist and heavily-wooded country, well calculated for the 

 growth of the beach tree, which was found here superior 

 in size to any previously observed. This part of the route 

 lying remote from any navigable streams, is almost des- 

 titute of population ; and it was only when we came to the 

 immediate vicinity of Columbus, that we again found our- 

 selves in the midst of civilization. 



The spot upon which the metropolis of Ohio now stands, 

 presents a remarkable instance of those rapid changes which 

 are so often to be met with in our western states. In 1812 a 

 tjingle log cabin only could be observed, where now a popu- 



