Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/270

 and chiefly built of wood. Although founded eighteen or twenty years ago, this little town does not yet possess any kind of establishment or manufactory, except two or three tan yards. Trade, notwithstanding, is brisker here than at Nasheville. The shops, though very few in {221} number, are in general better stocked. The trades-*people get their provisions by land from Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Richmond in Virginia; and they send in return, by the same way, the produce of the country, which they buy of the cultivators, or take in barter for their goods. Baltimore and Richmond are the towns with which this part of the country does most business. The price of conveyance from Baltimore is six or seven dollars per hundred weight. They reckon seven hundred miles from this town to Knoxville, six hundred and forty from Philadelphia, and four hundred and twenty from Richmond.

They send flour, cotton and lime to New Orleans by the river Tennessea; but this way is not so much frequented by the trade, the navigation of this river being very much encumbered in two different places by shallows interspersed with rocks. They reckon about six hundred miles from Knoxville to the embouchure of the Tennessea in the Ohio, and thirty-eight miles thence to that of the Ohio in the Mississippi.

{222} We alighted at Knoxville at the house of one Haynes, the sign of the General Washington, the best inn in the town. Travellers and their horses are accommodated there at the rate of five shillings per day; though this is rather dear for a country where the situation is by no means favourable to the sale of provisions, which they are obliged to send to more remote parts. The reason of things being so dear proceeds from the desire of grow