Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/263

 language. Then at Mr. Hunt's, who is deaf and dumb, (the brother of Henry Hunt,[87] the Champion of Reform), who with his nephew, a son of Henry, came here, about a year since, to three quarter sections of land; of which they have cultivated only six acres. They live in a little one-*room miserable log-cabin, doing all the labour of the house and land themselves, and without any female. We found them half-naked and in rags, busily greasing a cart, or mending a plough. They appeared only as labourers, but, on being introduced to them by Mr. Flower, their best friend, good sense and breeding shone through the gloom of their forlorn situation. We entered their cabin, and took some boiled beef on a board, and sat on their bed and boxes, having no chairs, stools, or tables, and only the mean clothes they then wore; a fire having recently destroyed their first cabin with all its contents. Being disappointed in English remittances, and unable to get letters from thence, which they thought had been intercepted, they were out of funds, and their land was uncultivated, unsown, and selling for the payment of taxes. To prevent this, Mr. Flower called this day. Mr. Hunt has a fine, animated, rather agitated countenance. He converses in writing, with {275} great ease and rapidity, on any subject interesting to him; and his nephew, the orator's son, aged 20, is a fine, tall, active, kind-hearted youth, pretty well reconciled to his situation. I offered to bear any commands, or render them any services in my power, on returning to England; an offer which they gratefully embraced. I rode on towards the plantation of Mr. Lewis; but losing our way, we returned without seeing him. He spent much of his capital idly in Philadelphia, and now,