1XX1V LIFE OF 



frontiers, advancing as the tide of civilised population approaches. 

 They are the immediate successors of the savages, and far below 

 them in good sense and good manners, as well as comfortable 

 accommodations. 



" Nothing adds more to the savage grandeur and picturesque 

 effect of the scenery along the Ohio, than these miserable huts of 

 human beings, lurking at the bottom of a gigantic growth of timber, 

 that I have not seen equalled in any other part of the United 

 States. And it is truly amusing to observe how dear and how 

 familiar habit has rendered these privations, which must have been 

 first the offspring of necessity ; yet none pride themselves more on 

 their possessions. The inhabitants of those forlorn sheds will talk 

 to you with pride of the richness of their soil — of the excellence 

 and abundance of their country — of the healthiness of their climate, 

 and the purity of their waters ; while the only bread you find 

 among them is of Indian corn, coarsely ground in a horse mill, with 

 half of the grains unbroken - } even their cattle are destitute of 

 stables and hay, and look like moving skeletons ; their own houses 

 worse than pig-styes ; their clothes an assemblage of rags ; their 

 faces yellow and lank with disease, and their persons covered with 

 filth, and frequently garnished with humours of the Scotch fiddle, 

 from which dreadful disease, by the mercy of God, I have been 

 most miraculously preserved. All this is the effect of laziness. 

 The corn is thrown into the ground in the spring, and the pigs 

 turned into the woods, where they multiply like rabbits. The 

 labour of the squatter is now over till autumn, and he spends the 

 winter in eating pork, cabbages, and hoe-cakes. What a contrast 

 to the neat farm, and snug cleanly habitation, of the industrious 

 settler, that opens his green fields, his stately barns, gardens and 

 orchards, to the gladdened eye of the delighted stranger ! 



" At a place called Salt Lick I went ashore to see the salt works, 

 and to learn whether the people had found any farther remains of 

 an animal of the ox kind, one of whose horns, of a prodigious size, 

 was discovered here some years ago, and is in the possession of Mr 

 Peale. They make here about one thousand bushels weekly, which 

 sell at one dollar and seventy-five cents per bushel. The wells are 

 from thirty to fifty feet deep, but nothing very curious has lately 

 been dug up. I landed at Maysville, or Limestone, where a con- 



