Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/217

 I set out in order to continue my route toward Nasheville, very much regretting not having had it in my power to form an acquaintance with the General.

My first day's journey was upward of twenty miles, and in the evening I put up at the house of one Hays, who keeps a kind of inn about fifty miles from Lexinton. Harrodsburgh, which I passed {141} through that day, at present consists only of about twenty houses, irregularly scattered, and built of wood. Twelve miles farther I regained, at Chaplain Fork, the road to Danville. In this space, which is uninhabited, the soil is excellent, but very unequal.

The second day I went nearly thirty miles, and stopped at an inn kept by a person of the name of Skeggs. Ten miles on this side is Mulder-Hill, a steep and lofty mountain that forms a kind of amphitheatre. From its summit the neighbouring country presents the aspect of an immense valley, covered with forests of an imperceptible extent, whence, as far as the eye can reach, nothing but a gloomy verdant space is seen, formed by the tops of the close-connected trees, and through which not the vestige of a plantation can be discerned. The profound silence that reigns in these woods, uninhabited by wild beasts, and the security of the place, forms an ensemble rarely to be met with in other countries. At the summit of Mulder-Hill the road divides, to unite again a few miles farther on. I took the left, and the first plantation that I reached was that of Mr. Macmahon, formerly professor of a college in Virginia, who came very lately to reside in this part of the country, where he officiates as a clergyman.

{142} Skeggs's inn, where I stopped after having left