Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/151

 enormous stones. We attained the summit after two hours painful journey. It is truly astonishing how the vehicles of conveyance pass over so easily, and with so few accidents this multitude of steep hills or ridges, that uninterruptedly follow in succession from Shippensburgh to Pittsburgh, and where the spaces between each are filled up with an infinity of small mountains of a less elevation.

{44} Alleghany Ridge is the most elevated link in Pensylvania; on its summit are two log-houses, very indifferently constructed, about three miles distant from each other, which serve as public houses. These were the only habitations we met with on the road from Bedford; the remaining part of the country is uninhabited. We stopped at the second, kept by one Chatlers, tolerably well supplied with provisions for the country, as they served us up for dinner slices of ham and venison fried on the hearth, with a kind of muffins made of flour, which they baked before the fire upon a little board.

Notwithstanding a very heavy fall of rain, we went to sleep that day at Stanley Town, a small place, which, like all those in that part of Pensylvania, is built upon a hill. It is composed of about fifty houses, the half of which are log-houses; among the rest are a few inns, and two or three shops, supplied from Philadelphia; the distance is about seven miles from Chatler's; the country that separates them is very fertile, and abounds with trees of the highest elevation; those most prevalent in the woods are the white, red, and black oaks, the beech, tulip, and magnolia acuminata.

The horse we bought at Shippensburgh, and which {45} we rode alternately, was very much fatigued, in consequence of which we travelled but very little farther than