ALEXANDER WILSON. xc iJi 
mile from town, I observed a poor negro with two wooden legs, 
building himself a cabin in the woods. Supposing that this journey 
might afford you and my friends some amusement, I kept a parti- 
cular account of the various occurrences, and shall transcribe some 
of the most interesting, omitting every thing relative to my orni- 
thological excursions and discoveries, as more suitable for another 
occasion. Eleven miles from Nashville, I came to the Great 
Harpath, a stream of about fifty yards wide, which was running 
with great violence. I could not discover the entrance of the ford, 
owing to the rains and inundations. There was no time to be lost ; 
I plunged in, and almost immediately my horse was swimming. I 
set his head aslant the current, and, being strong, he soon landed 
me on the other side. As the weather was warm, I rode in my 
wet clothes without any inconvenience. The country to-day was 
a perpetual succession of steep hills and low bottoms ; I crossed 
ten or twelve large creeks, one of which I swam with my horse, 
where he was near being entangled among some bad drift wood. 
Now and then a solitary farm opened from the woods, where the 
negro children were running naked about the yards. I also passed 
along the north side of a high hill, where the whole timber had 
been prostrated by some terrible hurricane. I lodged this night in 
a miner’s, who told me he had been engaged in forming no less 
than thirteen companies for hunting mines, all of whom had left 
him. I advised him to follow his farm, as the surest vein of ore he 
could work. Next day (Saturday) I first observed the cane 
growing, which increased until the whole woods were full of it. 
The road this day winded along the high ridges of mountains that 
divide the waters of the Cumberland from those of the Tennessee. 
I passed few houses to-day ; but met several parties of boatmen 
returning from Natchez and New Orleans, who gave me such an 
account of the road, and the difficulties they had met with, as 
served to stiffen my resolution to be prepared for every thing. 
These men were as dirty as Hottentots ; their dress, a shirt and 
trousers of canvass, black, greasy, and sometimes in tatters ; the 
skin burnt wherever exposed to the sun ; each with a budget, 
wrapt up in an old blanket ; their beards, eighteen days old, added 
to the singularity of their appearance, which was altogether savage. 
These people came from the various tributary streams of the Ohio, 
