Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/199

 course of twenty years, be the most populous and commercial part of the United States, and where I should settle in preference to any other.

{116} CHAP. XIII

Limestone.—Route from Limestone to Lexinton.—Washington.—Salt-works at Mays-Lick.—Millesburgh.—Paris.

Limestone, situated upon the left bank of the Ohio, consists only of about thirty or forty houses constructed with wood. This little town, built upwards of fifteen years, one would imagine to be more extensive. It has long been the place where all the emigrants landed who came from the Northern States by the way of Pittsburgh, and is still the staple for all sorts of merchandize sent from Philadelphia and Baltimore to Kentucky.

The travellers who arrive at Limestone by the Ohio find great difficulty in procuring horses on hire, to go to the places of their destination. The inhabitants there, as well as at Shippensburgh, take this undue advantage, in order to sell them at an {117} enormous price. As I intended staying some time at Lexinton, which would greatly enhance my expenses, I resolved to travel there on foot; upon which I left my portmanteau with the landlord of the inn where I stopped, which he undertook for a piaster to send me to Lexinton, and I set off the same day. It is reckoned from Limestone to Lexinton to be sixty-five miles, which I went in two days and a half. The first town we came to was Washington, which was only four miles off.[37] It is much larger than Limestone,*