Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/216

 earth which covers the rock does not appear to be more than two or three feet thick. Virginia cedars are very common there. This tree, which is fond of lofty places where the chalky substance is very near to the superficies of the soil, thrives very well; but other trees, such as the black oak, the hickery, &c. are stinted, and assume a miserable appearance.

General Adair was absent when I arrived at his plantation. His lady received me in the most obliging manner, and for five or six days that I staid with her I received every mark of attention and hospitality, as though I had been intimately acquainted with the family.

A spacious and commodious house, a number of black servants, equipages, every thing announced the opulence of the General, which it is well known is not always, in America, the appendage of those honoured with that title. His plantation is situated {140} near Harrodsburgh in the county of Mercer. Magnificent peach orchards, immense fields of Indian wheat, surround the house. The soil there is extremely fertile, which shews itself by the largeness of the blades of corn, their extraordinary height, and the abundance of the crops, that yield annually thirty or forty hundred weight of corn per acre. The mass of the surrounding forests is composed of those species of trees that are found in the better sort of land, such as the gleditia acanthus, guilandina dioica, ulmus viscosa, morus-rubra, corylus, annona triloba. In short, for several miles round the surface of the ground is flat, which is very rare in that country.

As I could not defer my travels any longer, I did not accept of Mrs. Adair's invitation, who entreated me to stay till her husband's return; and on the 20th of August