ALEXANDER WILSON. 
lxvii 
afford you and my friends some amusement, I kept a 
particular account of the various occurrences, and shall 
transcribe some of the most interesting, omitting every 
thing relative to my ornithological excursions and disco- 
veries, 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 imme- 
diately 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 ( Satur- 
day) 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 Tennesee. 
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, 
