Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/164

 15th.—In the Michigan territory, on the borders of the lakes, in July last, flies, thick as swarms of bees on a bough, covered the face of the earth, and for six days darkened the sun, moon, and stars, making the air noisome and pestilential. The sides and ends of houses on which the sun shone not, were blackened by them. They seemed to lose their skin daily and die by millions every minute: cattle, swine, and the Indians, feed on them luxuriously. Their length is three inches, with the feelers which protrude from both head and tail. Corn fields and large boughs of trees were broken down by their weight. Mr. Adams, two years before, saw the same phenomenon. They are nondescripts in natural history, but {155} called by the French settlers of the neighbourhood Mosquito Hawks, as they feed upon mosquitoes and drive them away.

Intending on the morrow to leave this city, on a tour through some of the northern states bordering on the lakes, and from thence by the falls of the Niagara to the western country, I advertised in the National Intelligencer for a travelling companion, but not finding any offers agreeable to me, I determined on starting unaccompanied. Two or three kind introductory letters were put into my hands by Messrs. Adams, Elliott, and Dunn, to his Excellency Jonathan Jennings, governor of the state of Indiana,[35] Major Hooper of Hamilton, N. Y., and Jacob Lowndes, Esq., the prison philanthropist, the Howard of America.

16th.—At six, a. m., I started for Philadelphia and New York; and in the Delaware river, passed a packet-*ship from London, brimful of emigrants.