Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/139

 the road; in almost all of them they speak German. My fellow travellers being continually thirsty, made the stage stop at every inn to drink a glass or two of grog. This beverage, which is generally used in the United States, is a mixture of brandy and water, or rum and water, the proportion of which depends upon the person's taste.

Lancaster is situated in a fertile and well-cultivated plain. The town is built upon a regular plan; the houses, elevated two stories, are all of brick; the two principal streets are paved as at Philadelphia. The population is from four to five thousand inhabitants, almost all of German origin, and various sects; each to his particular church; that of the Roman Catholics is the least numerous. The inhabitants are for the most part armourers, hatters, saddlers, and coopers; the armourers of Lancaster have been long esteemed for the manufacturing of rifle-barrelled guns, the only arms that are used by the inhabitants of the interior part of the country, and the Indian nations that border on the frontiers of the United States.

At Lancaster I formed acquaintance with Mr. Mulhenberg, a Lutheran minister, who, for twenty years past, had applied himself to botany. He shewed {28} me the manuscript concerning a Flora Lancastriensis. The number of the species described were upwards of twelve hundred. Mr. Mulhenberg is very communicative, and more than once he expressed to me the pleasure it would give him to be on terms of intimacy with the French botanists; he corresponds regularly with Messrs. Wildenow and Smith. I met at Lancaster Mr. W. Hamilton,*