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 *joining parts, and which they are obliged to send to New Orleans.

I had a letter from Dr. Brown, of Lexinton, for Mr. William Peter Anderson, a gentleman of the law at Nasheville, who received me in the most obliging manner; I am also indebted to him for the acquaintance of several other gentlemen; among others was a Mr. Fisk, of New England, president of the college, with whom I had the pleasure of travelling to Knoxville.[52] The inhabitants are very engaging in their manners, and use but little ceremony. {202} On my arrival, I had scarcely alighted when several of them who were at the inn invited me to their plantations.

All the inhabitants of the western country who go by the river to New Orleans, return by land, pass through Nasheville, which is the first town beyond the Natches. The interval that separates them is about six hundred miles, and entirely uninhabited; which obliges them to carry their provisions on horseback to supply them on the road. It is true they have two or three little towns to cross, inhabited by the Chicasaws; but instead of recruiting their stock there, the natives themselves are so indifferently supplied, that travellers are obliged to be very cautious lest they should wish to share with them. Several persons who have been this road assured me, that for a space of four or five hundred miles beyond the Natches the country is very irregular, that the soil is very sandy, in some parts covered with pines, and not much adapted to any kind of culture; but that the borders of