io6 The Winning of the West 



humbler people of the border seem churlish to trav 

 elers. When Federal garrisons were established 

 along the Ohio the officers were largely dependent 

 for their social pleasures on the gentle-folk of the 

 neighborhood. One of them in his journal gives 

 several rather curious glimpses of the life of the 

 time. 26 He mentions being entertained by Clark at 

 "a very elegant dinner," 27 a number of gentlemen 

 being present. After dinner the guests adjourned 

 to the dancing school, "where there were twelve or 

 fifteen young misses, some of whom had made con 

 siderable improvement in that polite accomplish 

 ment, and indeed were middling neatly dressed con 

 sidering the distance from where luxuries are to be 

 bought and the expense attending the purchase of 

 them here" for though beef and flour were cheap, 

 all imported goods sold for at least five times as 

 much as they cost in Philadelphia or New York. 

 The officers sometimes gave dances in the forts, the 

 ladies and their escorts coming in to spend the night ; 

 and they attended the great barbecues to which the 

 people rode from far and near, many of the men 

 carrying their wives or sweethearts behind them on 

 the saddle. At such a barbecue an ox or a sheep, a 

 bear, an elk, or a deer, was split in two and roasted 

 over the coals; dinner was eaten under the trees; 

 and there was every kind of amusement from horse- 

 racing to dancing. 



56 Major Erkuries Beattie. In the "Magazine of Am. 

 Hist.," I, p. 175. 

 27 Aug. 25, 1786. 



