Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/220

 the day before. I found a spring in a cavity of an orbicular form, where it took me upwards of an hour to get half a pail of water for my horse. The time that I had thus employed, that which I had lost in wandering about, added to the intense heat, obliged {146} me to shorten my route: in consequence of which I put up at Dripping Spring, about ten miles from Bears-Wallow.

On the following day, the 26th, I went twenty-eight miles, and stopped at the house of Mr. Jacob Kesly, belonging to the Dunker sect, which I discovered by his long beard. About ten miles from Dripping Spring I forded Big-Barren River, which appeared to me one third broader than Green River, the plantation of one Macfiddit, who plies a ferry-boat when the waters are high; and another, belonging to one Chapman. About three miles farther are the two oldest settlements on the road, both of them having been built upwards of fourteen years. When I was at this place, a boat laden with salt arrived from St. Genevieve, a French village situated upon the right bank of the Mississippi, about a hundred miles beyond the mouth of the Ohio.

My landlord's house was as miserably furnished as those I had lodged at for several days preceding, and I was again obliged to sleep on the floor. The major part of the inhabitants of Kentucky have been there too short a time to make any great improvements; they have a very indifferent supply of any thing except Indian corn and forage.

{147} On the 27th of August I set off very early in the morning; and about thirteen miles from Mr. Kesley's I crossed the line that separates the State of Tennessea from that of Kentucky. There also terminates the Bar