Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/209

 articles for a whole dollar, than have their full worth in six or eight pieces.

I have heard from several persons very well informed, that during the last war, corn being kept up at an exorbitant rate, it was computed that the exportations from Kentucky had balanced the price {130} of the importations of English goods from Philadelphia and Baltimore, by the way of the Ohio: but since the peace, the demand for flour and salt provisions having ceased in the Caribbees, corn has fallen considerably; so that the balance of trade is wholly unfavourable to the country.

During my stay at Lexinton I frequently saw Dr. Samuel Brown, from Virginia, a physician of the college of Edinburgh, and member of the Philosophical Society, to whom several members of that society had given me letters of recommendation. A merited reputation undeniably places Dr. S. Brown in the first rank of physicians settled in that part of the country. Receiving regularly the scientific journals from London, he is always in the channel of new discoveries, and turns them to the advantage of his fellow-citizens. It is to him that they are indebted for the introduction of the cow-pox. He had at that time inoculated upward of five hundred persons in Kentucky, when they were making their first attempts in New York and Philadelphia. Dr. Brown also employs himself in collecting fossils and other natural productions, which abound in this interesting country. I have seen at his house several relics of very large unknown fish, caught in the {131} Kentucky River, and which were remarkable for their singular forms. The analysis of the mineral waters at Mud-Lick was to employ the first leisure time he had. These waters are about sixty miles from Lexinton; they are held in great esteem, and the