Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/192

 *tility; river-bottom land, just such as must fascinate a Lincolnshire farmer, who seeks for pleasure and profit united. Here I lost my gay, graceful, jovial fellow-traveller, who, tired of his journey, wanted to luxuriate awhile in all-accommodating Maisville. At six o'clock, p. m., we stopped to rest, sup, and sleep, at Washington, K. Y.,[55] having a population of 1,000 souls, but little or no good land to sell, by forced or other sales yet. It is generally cleared and enclosed, and worth, with all improvements, from 40 to 50 dollars an acre, in a fine country.

This is the third or fourth town of Washington which I have passed since I quitted the metropolis of Uncle Sam.

20th.—Welcomed to breakfast fifteen miles from Washington, by a sensible, shrewd, old rustic landlord, and farmer, who knows of little or no land to sell, by forced sales yet; the improved value is from 30 to 40 dollars an acre. He has hitherto been always able to sell produce at some price. The only market is Orleans, which is attended with difficulty, some expense, and much risk of health, and loss of time, as some one or two of the farmers must go with the produce.

{189} Here was on a sick bed a stranger farmer, out of funds, returning from New Orleans and Natches, on foot. In the dismal swamps of the Mississipi, he caught the bilious fever, and then the jaundice and ague. "I left," said he, "the folks of the two latter cities, dying faster than graves could be dug to receive them. No papers have been received from either city for some weeks past. The printing-offices and presses, it is supposed, are stopped, because the cities are deserted. No animal food is allowed to be brought in or sold." This sick moneyless