Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/214

 summer, brings on consumptions, by producing an irritation of the lungs, almost insensible, but continued.

{137} In this season of the year the Kentucky River is so low at Hickman Ferry that a person may ford it with the greatest ease.

I stopped a few minutes at the inn where the ferry-boat plies when the water is high, and while they were giving my horse some corn I went on the banks of the river to survey it more attentively. Its borders are formed by an enormous mass of chalky stones, remarkably peaked, about a hundred and fifty feet high, and which bear, from the bottom to the top, evident traces of the action of the waters, which have washed them away in several parts. A broad and long street, where the houses are arranged in a right line, will give an idea of the channel of this river at Hickman Ferry. It swells amazingly in spring and autumn, and its waters rise at that time, in a few days, from sixty to seventy feet.

I met, at this inn, an inhabitant of the country who lived about sixty miles farther up. This gentleman, with whom I entered into conversation, and who appeared to me to enjoy a comfortable existence, gave me strong invitations to pass a week with him at his house; and as he supposed that I was in quest of a spot to form a settlement, which is usually the intention of those who go to Kentucky, he offered {138} his services to shew me a healthy soil, wishing very much, he said, to have an inhabitant of the old country for a neighbour. It has often happened to me, in this state as well as in that of Tennessea, to refuse similar propositions by strangers whom I met at the inns or at the houses where I asked a lodging, and who invited me, after that, to spend a few days in their family.