ALEXANDER WILSON. l x i 



Jerusalem. Here I found the river swelled to such an extraordinary 

 height, that the oldest inhabitant had never seen the like. 



" After passing along the bridge, I was conveyed in a boat, 

 termed a flat, a mile and three quarters through the wood, where 

 the torrent, sweeping along in many places, rendered this sort of 

 navigation rather disagreeable. I proceeded on my journey, passing 

 through solitary pine woods, perpetually interrupted by swamps, 

 that covered the road with water two and three feet deep, frequently 

 half a mile at a time, looking like a long river or pond. These, in 

 the afternoon, were surmountable ; but the weather being exceed- 

 ingly severe, they were covered every morning with a sheet of ice, 

 from half an inch to an inch thick, that cut my horse's legs and 

 breast. After passing a bridge, I had many times to wade, and 

 twice to swim my horse, to get to the shore. I attempted to cross 

 the Roanoke at three different ferries, thirty-five miles apart, and at 

 last succeeded at a place about fifteen miles below Halifax. A 

 violent snow storm made the roads still more execrable. 



" The productions of these parts of North Carolina are hogs, tur- 

 pentine, tar, and apple brandy. A tumbler of toddy is usually the 

 morning's beverage of the inhabitants, as soon as they get out of 

 bed. So universal is the practice, that the first thing you find them 

 engaged in, after rising, is preparing the brandy toddy. You can 

 scarcely meet a man whose lips are not parched and chopped, or 

 blistered with drinking this poison. Those who do not drink it, 

 they say, are sure of the ague ; I, however, escaped. The pine 

 woods have a singular appearance, every tree being stripped, on one 

 or more sides, of the bark, for six or seven feet up. The turpentine 

 covers these parts in thick masses. I saw the people, in different 

 parts of the woods, mounted on benches, chopping down the sides 

 of the trees, leaving a trough or box for the turpentine to run into. 

 Of hogs they have immense multitudes ; one person will sometimes 

 own five hundred. The leaders have bells round their necks ; and 

 every drove knows its particular call, whether it be a conch shell, or 

 the bawling of a negro, though half a mile off. Their owners will 

 sometimes drive them, for four or five days, to a market, without 

 once feeding them. 



" The taverns are the most desolate and beggarly imaginable, — 

 bare, bleak and dirty walls : one or two old broken chairs, and a 



