Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/257

 make excellent wine. Their orchards, too, are of un-*common size and fertility; and in a large pleasure {267} garden is a curious labyrinth, out of which none but those who formed it, or are well acquainted with it, can find their way.

Their granary is superb and large, and the barns and farm-yards are singularly capacious, as well as their cloth and other manufactories. It is the wise policy of this people to buy nothing which it is possible for them to make or raise, and their industry and ingenuity are irresistible. They have much to sell, at their own price, of almost every thing domestic and foreign. They cannot make shoes half so fast as they could sell them. It is not doubted but they are immensely rich, beginning in Pennsylvania with only 4,000l., and being now worth 500,000l. They keep no accounts, and all business is done and every thing possessed in Frederick Rapp's name. They have been in this Harmony five years only; they bought a huge territory of the richest land, which is all paid for, and keep an immense quantity in high cultivation, and continue to buy out bordering settlers, thus ever enlarging their boundaries. An American widower, with ten children, joined them some time ago, in distress for his children; all are well off now.

They work very gently, but constantly. At eleven I left Harmony, wishing to see more of this singular community. Rapp came hither a poor, unlettered weaver from Germany.

I entered the woods again, on the banks of the fine river, the Big Wabash, wider than the Thames {268} at London. There are no regular roads; but, over creeks and swamps, and the Black River, now dry, we took our way, and met six bastard Indian-like horsemen, drinking