Page:A Topographical Description of the State of Ohio, Indiana Territory, and Louisiana.djvu/36

30 the situation of the town exceedingly pleasant and agreeable. It contains perhaps about an hundred houses, built in a very neat manner, with hewn timber, and principally on one street. It has an handsome brick court-house, four stores of goods, and four taverns. The town and the adjacent country is settled mostly with Germans, from the vicinity of Lancaster, in Pennsylvania. It is the seat of justice for the county of Fairfield.

From New-Lancaster to Chilecothe is thirty-eight miles, and the face of the country, excepting near Lancaster, where are a few moderate hills, is very much a continued plain. It has a thin soil and is badly watered. The growth small, consisting mostly of black and white oak and some hickory. The soil inclines to clay, which is considered indifferent for farming land. On the southern extremity of this glade of land commence the chains of hills which extend on the Ohio and its branches for several hundred miles. On the northern extremity of this glade, the land is very flat and low, and much of it too wet for cultivation; but where the swells are so high as not to be overflowed in the winter and spring, the soil is rich, and produces large timber. At the distance of 28 miles from Lancaster, about three miles north of the State road, the Pickawa plains begin and extend to the Scioto river. They are several miles in width, not entirely level, but interspersed with gentle swells, which render the prospect the more agreeable. This tract is