Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/146

 *tations that surround them are about twenty in number, each of which is composed of from two to three hundred acres of woody land, of which, from the scarcity of hands, there are seldom more than a few acres cleared. In this part of Pensylvania every individual is content with cultivating a sufficiency for himself and family; and according as that is more or less numerous the parts so cleared are more or less extensive; whence it follows, that the larger family a man has capable of assisting him, the greater independence he enjoys; this is one of the principal {37} causes of the rapid progress that population makes in the United States.

This day we travelled only six-and-twenty miles, and slept at Fort Littleton, about six miles from Strasburg, at the house of one Colonel Bird, who keeps a good inn. From Shippensburgh the mountains are very flinty, and the soil extremely bad; the trees of an indifferent growth, and particularly the white oak that grows upon the summit, and the calmia latifolia on the other parts.

The next day we set out very early in the morning to go to Bedford Court House. From Fort Littleton to the river Juniata we found very few plantations; nothing but a succession of ridges, the spaces between which were filled up with a number of little hills. Being on the summit of one of these lofty ridges, the inequality of this group of mountains, crowned with innumerable woods, and over-*shadowing the earth, it afforded nearly the same picture that the troubled sea presents after a dreadful storm.

Two miles before you come to the river Juniata, the road is divided into two branches, which meet again at the river side. The right leads across the mountains, and the left, which we took, appeared to {38} have been, and may be still the bed of a deep torrent, the ground