Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 3).djvu/297

 landed property, and these different kinds of industry, did not amount annually to more than seven dollars; whilst under the presidency of J. Adams they had increased to fifty; at the same time his memory is not held in great veneration in Upper Carolina and the Western States, where the political opinion is strongly pronounced in the sense of opposition, and where nobody durst confess himself publicly attached to the federal party.

{270} In all the towns that I travelled through every tanner has his tan mill, which does not cost him above ten dollars to erect. The bark is put into a wooden arch, twelve or fourteen feet in diameter, the edges of which are about fifteen inches high, and it is crushed under the weight of a wheel, about one foot thick, which is turned by a horse, and fixed similar to a cyder-press. For this purpose they generally make use of an old mill-stone, or a wooden wheel, formed by several pieces joined together, and furnished in its circumference with three rows of teeth, also made of wool, about two inches long and twelve or fifteen wide.

From Lincolnton to Chester court house in the state of South Carolina, it is computed to be about seventy miles. For the whole of this space the earth is light and of an inferior quality to that situated between Morganton and Lincolnton, although the mass of the forests is composed of various species of oaks; in the mean time the pines are in such abundance there, that for several miles the ground is covered {271} with nothing else. Plantations are so little increased there, that we scarcely saw twenty where they cultivate cotton or Indian wheat. We passed by several that had been deserted by the owners as not sufficiently productive: for the inhabitants of Georgia and the two Carolinas, who plant nothing but