ALEXANDER WILSON. Ixvii 



arrived at Chambersburgh, whence I next morning returned to 

 Carlisle, to visit the reverend doctors of the college. 



" The town of Chambersburgh and Shippensburgh produced me 

 nothing. On Sunday the 11th, I left the former of these places in 

 a stage coach, and, in fifteen miles, began to ascend the alpine 

 regions of the Alleghany Mountains, where above, around, and 

 below us, nothing appeared but prodigious declivities covered with 

 woods ; and the weather being fine, such a profound silence pre- 

 vailed among these aerial solitudes, as impressed the soul with awe 

 and a kind of fearful sublimity. Something of this arose from my 

 being alone, having left the coach several miles below. These high 

 ranges continued for more than one hundred miles, to Greensburgh, 

 thirty-two miles from Pittsburgh. Thence the country is nothing 

 but an assemblage of steep hills and deep valleys, descending rapidly 

 till you reach within seven miles of this place, where I arrived on 

 the 15th instant. We were within two miles of Pittsburgh, when 

 suddenly the road descends a long and very steep hill, where the 

 Alleghany river is seen at hand, on the right, stretching along a 

 rich bottom, and bounded by a high ridge of hills on the west. 

 After following this road parallel with the river, and about a quarter 

 of a mile from it, through a rich low valley, a cloud of black smoke 

 at its extremity announced the town of Pittsburgh. On arriving at 

 the town, which stands on a low flat, and looks like a collection of 

 blacksmiths' shops, glass-houses, breweries, forges, and furnaces, the 

 Monongahela opened to the view, on the left, running along the 

 bottom of the range of hills, so high, that the sun, at this season, 

 sets to the town of Pittsburgh at a little past four. This range 

 continues along the Ohio, as far as the view reaches. The ice had 

 just begun to give way in Monongahela, and came down in vast 

 bodies for the three following days. It has now begun in the 

 Alleghany, and, at the moment I write, the river presents a white 

 mass of rushing ice. 



" The country beyond the Ohio, to the west, appears a mono- 

 tonous and hilly region. The Monongahela is lined with v arks, 

 usually called Kentucky boats, waiting for the rising of the river, 

 and the absence of the ice, to descend. A perspective view of the 

 town of Pittsburgh at this season, with the numerous arks and 

 covered keel-boats preparing to descend the Ohio — its hills, its great 



