Travels Through North America 



place, the Honourable Colonel Byrd, and of another 

 gentleman* of my acquaintance, I got over these 

 difficulties; for the former, while I continued at 

 Winchester, accommodated me with his own apart- 

 ments in the fort, ordering his servants to attend and 

 wait upon me; and the latter sent a negro boy with 

 me as far as Colonel Washington's, eighty miles dis- 

 tant from this place. On the 4th of June, therefore, 

 I was enabled to leave Winchester, and I travelled 

 that night about eighteen miles, to Sniker'sf ferry 

 upon the Shenandoah. 



The next morning I repassed the Blue Ridge at 

 William's Gap, and proceeded on my journey about 

 forty miles. I this day fell into conversation with 

 a planter, who overtook me on the road, concerning 

 the rattle-snake, of which there are infinite numbers 

 in these parts; and he told me, that one day going 

 to a mill at some distance, he provoked one to such 

 a degree, as to make it strike a small vine which 

 grew close by, and that the vine presently drooped 

 and died.^ 



My accommodations this evening were extremely 



* Colonel Churchill. 



f Called in Fry and Jefferson's map, Williams's Ferry. 



J Several persons to whom I have mentioned this fact, have 

 seemed to doubt of the probability of it. But were it not true, a 

 question will naturally arise, how an idea of that nature should 

 occur to an ignorant planter, living remote from all cultivated 

 society; and, more particularly, how he should happen to fix upon 

 that tree; which, supposing the thing possible, is the most likely 

 to have been affected in the manner described. 



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