Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/115

 At a little before eight o'clock we stopped at Steubenville, the capital of Jefferson county in Ohio, seven miles from Brown's. This town has been settled about eight years, chiefly by emigrants from the state of Jersey. It contains one hundred and sixty houses, including a new gaol of hewn stone, a court house of square logs (which it is said is to be soon replaced by a new one[66] of better materials), and a brick presbyterian church. There are four or five different sects of Christians in this town, but no established minister, except a Mr. Snodgrass to the presbyterians, and a Mr. Doddridge, who comes from {90} Charlestown in Virginia, every other Sunday, to officiate to the episcopalians in the court house, which is occasionally used for the same purpose by the other sects.

There is a land office here for the sale of the publick lands, from which large sums in Spanish dollars are sent annually to the treasury of the United States in Washington. Perhaps this is one cause of the town having increased so rapidly. Another may be its very handsome situation. The first street, which is parallel to the river, is on a narrow flat, sufficiently raised above the river floods; while the rest of the town is about twenty feet perpendicular above it, on an extensive plain, rising gradually with a gentle slope to the foot of the hills which surround it in a semicircle like an amphitheatre, about a mile distant. On one of those a Mr. Smith has a house and farm which seems to impend over the south end of the town, from an elevation of four hundred feet perpendicular from the bed of the river. Mr. Bazil. Wells, who is joint proprietor of the soil with Mr. James Ross of Pittsburgh, has a handsome house and finely