Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/113

 river hill, occasioned by a large piece of the hill having broken off and fallen down.

Four miles below Croxton's we passed Brown's island, containing three hundred and fifty acres of first rate land, on the right, and opposite the lower end of it on the left we stopped for the night at Brown's, who is a magistrate, and has a noble farm and a house very pleasantly situated on a high bank, with a steep slope to the river.

We found the squire weighing sugar, which he had sold to Mr. Sumrall of Pittsburgh, who owns some regular freighting keel boats, who with one of them was now on his return from Cumberland river, and had also stopped here for the night.

The negroes, cattle, offices, and the appearance of every thing here, indicated the greatest abundance of the produce of this plentiful country. Neither the old squire nor his wife, ever knew confinement by accident or bad health, until about two months ago, when by a fall from her horse, she dislocated her hip, and broke one of her knees. Her son restored the limbs to their places, and she employed no surgeon, but is curing herself gradually, though slowly, by an embrocation of camphorated spirit.

After supping with the old gentleman, near his old wife's bed side, on apple pye, bread, butter and milk, he kissed her, and then shewed us to a room {88} with four beds in it, one of which he occupied himself, and gave us possession of another, which we were not allowed to possess in peace, as its indigenous inhabitants, indignant at our intrusion, assailed us all night with such fury, as to drive us from their quarters at the first dawn of day. The old man had entertained us until a late hour, by narrating to us his situation, and that of his family. His children have all good farms, and he intends making no will, that they may inherit equally, (according to the very equitable law of this country