Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/232

 the cultivators, it follows that many people dare not claim their rights through fear of considerable indemnifications being awarded against them, and of being in turn expelled by others, who might attack them at the moment when they least expected it. This incertitude in the right of property is an inexhaustible source of tedious and expensive law-suits, which serve to enrich the professional gentlemen of the country.

{164} CHAP. XVIII

Distinction of Estates.—Species of Trees peculiar to each of them.—Ginseng.—Animals in Kentucky.

In Kentucky, as well as in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Carolina, the estates are divided into three classes, for the better assessment of the taxes. This division with respect to the fertility of the land is relative to each of these states; thus in Kentucky, for example, they would put in the second class estates, which, east of the mountains, would be ranked in the first, and in the third, those which in Georgia and Low Carolina would be the second. I do not mean, however, to say by this that there are not some possessions in the eastern states as fertile as in the western; but they are seldom found except along the rivers and in the vallies, and do not embrace so considerable a tract of country as in {165} Kentucky, and that part of Tennessea situate west of the Cumberland Mountains.

In these two states they appreciate the fertility of the land by the different species of trees that grow there; thus when they announce the sale of an estate, they take care to specify the particular species of trees peculiar to its various parts, which is a sufficient index for the purchaser. This rule, however, suffers an exception