Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/185

 though you, sir, think differently, are very kind and dutiful to their parents."

Sunday, 17th.—At Chilicothé to breakfast, where I rest for the day and night. This town is situated on the beautiful Sciota river, in a rich valley of plantations.[50] Its population is 3,000, and its age 20 years. Many houses and town lots are deserted for migration further west. The American has always something better in his eye, further west; he therefore lives and dies on hope, a {180} mere gypsey in this particular. The land is here very fine, of a dark, loamy, rich soil, inexhaustible, and apparently alluvial. The pasture, even during drought, is full of clover. It is worth 20 dollars an acre generally, if improved, that is, cleared. It costs ten dollars an acre to clear and enclose it, if all the trees are cut down and burnt, or otherwise removed. Log heaving, that is, rolling trees together for burning, is done by the neighbours in a body, invited for the purpose, as if to a feast or frolic. This custom is beneficial and fraternal, and none refuse their laborious attentions. Nine tenths of the adult population here own and cultivate land. A market, therefore, is not now so certain, nor will it be in days to come, as in the east, though some price is generally to be had for produce (says my informant), at New Orleans; but when much land becomes cleared and productive, the market every where, without foreign demand, must be glutted. This evil, however, will check itself; less produce will be raised when it cannot be sold. But as the farmers have little capital to employ in cultivation, the surplus produce will never be very superabundant. If, however, they had more capital they would not employ