34 



and unimpeded navigation for large keels and 

 ©ther craft of four feet draught of water. It con- 

 tinues navigable for smaller boats and batteaux 

 upwards of one hundred miles above the town 

 towards its source to the northward, gliding 

 gently through a natural, rich, level, and rapidly 

 improving country. The situation of the town is 

 on, an elevated and extensive plain of nearly ten 

 thousand acres of as fine a soil as any in America, 

 partly in cultivation, and partly covered with its 

 native forests. This plain is nearly surrounded 

 by the Scioto, which turning suddenly to the 

 northeast from its generally southerly course, 

 leaves the town to the southward of it, and then 

 forms a great bend to the eastward and southward. 

 Water street which runs about east by north 

 parallel to the Scioto, is half a mile long, and con- 

 tains ninety houses. It is 84 feet wide and would 

 be a fine street, had not the river floods caved in 

 the bank in one place near the middle, almost into 

 the centre of it. There is now a lottery on foot 

 to raise money for securing the bank against any 

 further encroachments of the river. Main street 

 parallel to water street, one hundred feet wide, as 

 is market street, which crosses both at right an- 

 gles, and in which is the market house, a neat 

 brick building, eighty feet long. The court house 

 in the same street, is neatly built of free stone 

 on an area of 45 by 42 feet, with a semicircular 

 projection in the rear, in which is the benches of 

 the judges* It has. an octagonal belfry rising from 



