Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/269

 frequent journies among the Cherokees that within these few years they take to the cultivating of their possessions, and that they make a rapid progress. Some of them have good plantations, and even negro slaves. Several of the women spin and manufacture cotton stuffs. The federal government devotes annually a sum to supply them with instruments necessary for agriculture and different trades. Being pressed for time I could not penetrate farther into the interior of the country, as I had intended, and I did not profit by the letters of recommendation that Mr. W. P. Anderson had given me for that purpose to the garrison-officers in the fort.

They reckon thirty-five miles from West Point to Knoxville. About a mile from West Point we passed through Kingstown, composed of thirty or forty log houses; after that the road runs upwards of eighteen {219} miles through a rugged and flinty soil, although covered with a kind of grass. The trees that occupy this extent grow within twenty or thirty yards of each other, which makes it seem as though this district changes from the appearance of a meadow to that of a forest. After this the soil grows better, and the plantations are not so far apart.

{220} CHAP. XXIV

Knoxville.—Commercial intelligence.—Trees that grow in the environs.—Converting some parts of the Meadows into Forests.—River Nolachuky.—Greensville.—Arrival at Jonesborough.

Knoxville, the seat of government belonging to the state of Tennessea, is situate upon the river Holston, in this part nearly a hundred and fifty fathoms broad. The houses that compose it are about two hundred in number,