Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/167

 inhabitants who have formed settlements there export, as well as those of Monongahela, the produce of their culture by the way of the Ohio and Mississippi. On the banks of this river they begin to form a few small towns; among the most considerable are Meadville, situated two {67} hundred and thirty miles from Pittsburgh; Franklin, about two hundred; and Freeport, scarcely one; each of which does not contain above forty or fifty houses.

Let the weather be what it will, the stream of the Alleghany is clear and limped; that of the Monongahela, on the contrary, grows rather muddy with a few days incessant rain in that part of the Alleghany Mountains where it derives its source.

The sugar-maple is very common in every part of Pennsylvania which the Monongahela and Alleghany water. This tree thrives most in cold, wet, and mountainous countries, and its seed is always more abundant when the winter is most severe. The sugar extracted from it is generally very coarse, and is sold, after having been prepared in loaves of six, eight, and ten pounds each, at the rate of seven-pence per pound. The inhabitants manufacture none but for their own use; the greater part of them drink tea and coffee daily, but they use it just as it has passed the first evaporation, and never take the trouble to refine it, on account of the great waste occasioned by the operation.

{68}CHAP. VII

''Description of the Ohio.—Navigation of that river.—Mr. S. Craft.—The object of his travels.—Remarks upon the State of Vermont.''

The Ohio, formed by the union of the Monongahela and Alleghany rivers, appears to be rather a continuance