CXXxiv LIFE OF WILSON. 



was near being entangled among some bad drift wood. Now 

 and then a solitary farm opened from the woods, where the 

 negro children were running naked about the yards. I also 

 passed along the north side of a high hill, where the whole 

 timber had been prostrated by some terrible hurricane. I 

 lodged this night in a miner's, who told me he had been engaged 

 in forming no less than thirteen companies for hunting mines, 

 all of whom had left him. I advised him to follow his farm, 

 as the surest vein of ore he could work. Next day (Saturday) 

 I first observed the cane growing, which increased until the 

 whole woods were full of it. The road this day winded along 

 the high ridges of mountains that divide the waters of the Cum- 

 berland from those of the Tennessee. I passed few houses to- 

 day; but met several parties of boatmen returning from Natchez 

 and New Orleans; who gave me such an account of the road, 

 and the difficulties they had met with, as served to stiffen my 

 resolution to be prepared for every thing. These men were 

 as dirty as Hottentots; their dress a shirt and trowsers of can- 

 vass, black, greasy, and sometimes in tatters; the skin burnt 

 wherever exposed to the sun; each with a budget, wrapt up in 

 an old blanket; their beards, eighteen days old, added to the 

 singularity of their appearance, which was altogether savage. 

 These people came from the various tributary streams of the 

 Ohio, hired at forty or fifty dollars a trip, to return balk on 

 their own expenses. Some had upwards of eight hundred 

 miles to travel. When they come to a stream that is unforda- 

 ble, they coast it for a fallen tree: if that cannot be had, they 

 enter with their budget on their head, and when they lose 

 bottom, drop it on their shoulders, and take to swimming. 

 They have sometimes fourteen or fifteen of such streams to 

 pass in a day, and morasses of several miles in length, that I 

 have never seen equalled in any country. I lodged this night 

 at one Dobbins's, where ten or twelve of these men lay on the 

 floor. As they scrambled up in the morning, they very gene- 

 rally complained of being unwell, for which they gave an odd 

 reason, lying within doors, it being the first of fifteen nights 



