lxvi LIFE OF 



general such a pitiful, squabbling, political mob — so split up, and 

 justling about the mere formalities of legislation, without knowing 

 anything of its realities, — that I abandoned them in disgust. I 

 must, however, except from this censure a few intelligent indi- 

 viduals, friends to science, and possessed of taste, who treated me 

 with great kindness. I crossed the Susquehannah on Sunday fore- 

 noon with some difficulty, having to cut our way through the ice 

 for several hundred yards ; and, passing on to York, paid my 

 respects to all the literati of that place without success. Five 

 miles north of this town lives a very extraordinary character, be- 

 tween eighty and ninety years of age, who has lived by trapping 



birds and quadrupeds these thirty years. Dr F carried me 



out in a sleigh to see him ; he has also promised to transmit to me 

 such a collection of facts relating to this singular original, as will 

 enable me to draw up an interesting narrative of him for the Port- 

 folio. I carried him half a pound of snuff, of which he is insatiably 

 fond, taking it by handfuls. I was much diverted with the 

 astonishment he expressed on looking at the plates of my work : 

 he could tell me anecdotes of the greater part of the subjects of the 

 first volume, and some of the second. One of his traps, which he 

 says he invented himself, is remarkable for ingenuity, and extremely 

 simple. Having a letter from Dr Muhlenburg to a clergyman in 

 Hanover, I passed on through a well-cultivated country, chiefly 

 inhabited by Germans, to that place, where a certain judge took 

 upon himself to say, that such a book as mine ought not to be 

 encouraged, as it was not within the reach of the commonalty, and 

 therefore inconsistent with our republican institutions ! By the 

 same mode of reasoning, which I did not dispute, I undertook to 

 prove him a greater culprit than myself, in erecting a large, elegant, 

 three-story brickjhouse, so much beyond the reach of the commonalty, 

 as he called them, and consequently grossly contrary to our repub- 

 lican institutions. I harangued this Solomon of the bench more 

 seriously afterwards, pointing out to him the great influence of 

 science on a young rising nation like ours, and particularly the 

 science of natural history, till he began to shew such symptoms of 

 intellect as to seem ashamed of what he had said. 



" From Hanover I passed through a thinly inhabited country, 

 and, crossing the North Mountain at a pass called Newman's Leap, 



