Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/213

 *cal botanist was here much wanted. An immense quantity of land in the neighbouring state of Illinois, is here, I see, posted up in this town for sale or lease, for a term of years, at one peck of corn per acre, per annum. But who will hire, when nearly all can buy? I passed away my 20 dollar note of the rotten bank of Harmony, Pennsylvania, for five dollars only! so losing 3l. 7s. 6d. sterling. I was indebted five dollars to my faithful driver, who was now to leave me behind and press on to St. Louis, Missouri. I said, "Now, driver, which will you have; five silver dollars, or the 20 dollar note; or what more than your demand will you give for the said note?" "Nothing." "Then take it, and bless banks and banking for ever." Bank paper is here an especial nuisance, an ever fruitful source of evil, and ever very unfriendly to honesty, peace, and good will amongst hosts and travellers, who meet and part, cheating and cheated, cursed and cursing, continually. My landlord here is very obliging, and puts me into the best room and bed in the Vincennes hotel, where I am sleeping with a sick traveller from St. Louis, who states that many die daily, and his doctor there had 150 patients to visit every day, or oftener. So much for the healthiness of the ever-tempting Missouri.

{214} Sunday, 31st.—The town of Vincennes is more than 200 years old; older than Philadelphia; but being of French origin, and in the neighbourhood of the Indians, ever hostile to the inhabitants and settlers round it, has grown but slowly, and is an antique lump of deformity. Although long the capital and mother town of the state, it looks like an old, worn out, dirty village of wooden frame houses, which a fire might much improve, for improvement generally has to travel through flames. Here is no