Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/289

 he had effected so desirable an object. Here was liberty, with a vengeance! This poor fellow, a victim to popular prejudice, had the liberty to travel 3,000 miles on foot, twice, to this state, for a settlement; and no sooner was he in it, than the inhabitants had the liberty to whip him out again. He left behind him an account of his journey, and of the treatment he here received. In walking through Kentucky, he found the people very inhospitable towards him, because he was a walking, working Yankee man, on a journey, and, therefore, considered as nothing better than, or below, a nigger.

Thieving, it must be observed, at all times, and in all places, thought to be most inexcusable, is here deemed worse than murder, in consequence of the very great facility of living.

30th.—Introduced last night to, and slept at the farm log-house of the Rev. Mr. Devan, the {306} minister of a congregation, and one of the members of a convention to form the government of this state.[98] He is a self-taught man of considerable intelligence, originality, and amusing anecdote, living on a quarter section of the richest land I ever saw, bearing Indian corn, fifteen feet high, yielding 80 bushels an acre. He has more land than he occupies. His family is numerous; his hogs almost innumerable, 400 in the wood, many wild, and breeding faster in a wild, than in a tame state. From these, the squatters supply themselves, in defiance of a strict law against the act. Then the wolves, wild cats, and bears, destroy, annually, a great number. Until pigs are weaned, the wild animals