Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/152

 if we had been on foot; in the mean time the American officer, my companion, was in haste to arrive at Pittsburgh, to be present at the fête of the 4th of July in commemoration of the American independence. In order to gain a day, he hired a horse at Stanley Town, with which we crossed Laurel Hill, a distance of four miles. The direction of this ridge is parallel with those we had left behind us; the woods which cover it are more tufted, and the vegetation appears more lively. The name given to this mountain I have no doubt proceeds from the great quantity of calmia latifolia, from eight to ten feet high, which grows exclusively in all the vacant places, and that of the rhododendrum maximum, which enamel the borders of the torrents; for the inhabitants call the rhododendrum laurel as frequently as the calmia latifolia. Some describe the latter shrub by the name of the colico-tree, the leaves of which, they say, are a very subtle poison to sheep, who die almost instantaneously after eating them. At the foot of Laurel Hill begins the valley of Ligonier, in which is situated, about a quarter of a mile from the mountain, West Liberty Town, composed {46} of eighteen or twenty log-houses. The soil of this valley appears extremely fertile. It is very near this place that the French, formerly masters of Canada, built Fort Ligonier, as every part of the United States west of the Alleghany Mountains depended on Canada or Louisiana.[14]