civ LIFE OF WILSON. 



" The towns of Chambersburg and Shippensburg produced 

 me nothing. On Sunday, the llth, I left the former of these 

 places in the 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 decli- 

 vities, covered with woods; and, the weather being fine, such 

 a profound silence prevailed among these aerial solitudes, as im- 

 pressed the soul with awe, and a kind of fearful sublimity. 

 Something 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 Greensburg, thirty-two miles 

 from Pittsburg; thence the country is nothing but an assem- 

 blage of steep hills, and deep vallies, descending rapidly till 

 you reach within seven miles of this place, where I arrived on 

 the 15th instant. We were within two miles of Pittsburg, 

 when suddenly the road descends a long and very steep hill, 

 where the Alleghany river is seen at hand, on the right, 

 stretching 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 Pittsburg. On arriving at the town, which 

 stands on a low flat, and looks like a collection of Blacksmith's 

 shops, Glasshouses, Breweries, Forges and Furnaces, the Mo- 

 nongahela opened to the view, on the left, running along the 

 bottom of a range of hills so high that the sun, at this season, 

 sets to the town of Pittsburg 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 the Monongahela, and came 

 down in vast bodies for the three following days. It has now 

 begun 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 

 mountainous and hilly region. The Monongahela is lined 

 with arks, usually called Kentucky-boats, waiting for the rising 

 of the river, and the absence of the ice, to descend. A per- 



