LIFE OF WILSON. cxiii 
and look like moving skeletons; their own houses worse than 
pig-sties; their clothes an assemblage of rags; their faces yel-^ 
low, and lank with disease; and their persons covered with 
filth, and frequently garnished with the 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, cabbage 
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 further 
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 thou- 
sand bushels weekly, which sells at one dollar and seventy- 
five cents per bushel. The wells are from thirty to fifty feet 
deep, but nothing curious has lately been dug up. I landed at 
Maysville, or Limestone, where a considerable deal of business 
is done in importation for the interior of Kentucky. It stands 
on a high narrow plain between the mountains and the river, 
which is fast devouring the bank, and encroaching on the town; 
part of the front street is gone already, and unless some ef- 
fectual means are soon taken, the whole must go by piecemeal. 
This town contains about one hundred houses, chiefly log and 
frames. From this place I set out on foot for Washington. 
On the road, at the height of several hundred feet above the 
present surface of the river, I found prodigious quantities of 
petrified shells, of the small cockle and fan-shaped kind, but 
whether marine remains or not am uncertain. I have since 
found these petrified concretions of shells universal all over 
Kentucky, wherever I have been. The rocks look as if one 
VOL. I. — P 
