LIFE OF WILSON. cxiii 



and look like moving skeletons; their own houses worse than 

 pig-sties; their clothes an assemblage of rags; their faces yel- 

 low, and lank with disease; and their persons covered with 

 filth, and frequently garnished with the humours of the 

 Scotch fiddle; from which dreadful disease, by the mercy 

 of God, I have been most miraculously preserved. All this is 

 the effect of laziness. The corn is thrown into the ground in 

 the Spring, and the pigs turned into the woods, where they 

 multiply like rabbits. The labour of the squatter is now over 

 till Autumn, and he spends the Winter in eating pork, cabbage 

 and hoe-cakes. What a contrast to the neat farm, and snug 

 cleanly habitation, of the industrious settler, that opens his 

 green fields, his stately barns, gardens and orchards, to the 

 gladdened eye of the delighted stranger! 



" At a place called Salt Lick I went ashore to see the salt 

 works, and to learn whether the people had found any further 

 remains of an animal of the ox kind, one of whose horns, of a 

 prodigious size, was discovered here some years ago, and is in 

 the possession of Mr. Peale. They make here about one thou- 

 sand bushels weekly, which sells at one dollar and seventy- 

 five cents per bushel. The wells are from thirty to fifty feet 

 deep, but nothing curious has lately been dug up. I landed at 

 Maysville, or Limestone, where a considerable deal of business 

 is done in importation for the interior of Kentucky. It stands 

 on a high narrow plain between the mountains and the river, 

 which is fast devouring the bank, and encroaching on the town; 

 part of the front street is gone already, and unless some ef- 

 fectual means are soon taken, the whole must go by piecemeal. 

 This town contains about one hundred houses, chiefly log and 

 frames. From this place I set out on foot for Washington. 

 On the road, at the height of several hundred feet above the 

 present surface of the river, I found prodigious quantities of 

 petrified shells, of the small cockle and fan-shaped kind, but 

 whether marine remains or not am uncertain. I have since 

 found these petrified concretions of shells universal all over 

 Kentucky, wherever I have been. The rocks look as if one 



VOL. i. p 



