Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/154

 who has a mill and other valuables of his own, might live in the greatest comfort; yet he resides in a miserable log-house about twenty feet long, subject to the inclemency of the weather. Four large beds, two of which are very low, are placed underneath the others in the day-time, and drawn out of an evening {49} into the middle of the room, receive the whole family, composed of ten persons, and at times strangers, who casually entreat to have a bed. This mode of living, which would announce poverty in Europe, is by no means the sign of it with them; for in an extent of two thousand miles and upward that I have travelled, there is not a single family but has milk, butter, salted or dried meat, and Indian corn generally in the house; the poorest man has always one or more horses, and an inhabitant very rarely goes on foot to see his neighbour.

The day after my arrival I went into the woods, and in my first excursion I found the shrub which was at that moment the object of my researches. I knew it to be the same that my father had discovered fifteen years before in the mountains of South Carolina, and which, in despite of all the attention he bestowed, he could not bring to any perfection in his garden.[15] Mr. W. Hamilton, who had received a few seeds and plants of it from that part of Pensylvania where I then was, had not been more successful. The seeds grow so soon rancid, that in the course of a few days they lose their germinative faculty, and contract an uncommon sharpness. This shrub, which seldom rises above five feet in {50} height is diocal. It grows exclusively on the mountains, and is only found in cool and shady places, and where the soil is very fertile.