Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/127

 nine young men who had been reaping for Wells during the day, were stretched out at their ease on the ground, round the door of the cabin, listening to the vocal performance of one of their comrades, who well merited their attention, from the goodness of his voice, his taste, execution, variety and humour. We enjoyed a rural supper, while listening to the rustick chorister, then resisting our friendly host's invitation to accept of a bed, and provided with a light and some milk for next morning's breakfast, we retired to our skiff, threw out a night line to fish, and endeavoured to compose ourselves to sleep under our awning. We were much disturbed throughout the night by gnats and musquitoes, attracted probably by our light, before extinguishing of which, we killed a winged animal of the fly kind, the largest of the species I had ever seen. It was about three inches long, with four gauzy wings, and a most formidable display of forceps on each side the mouth, like those of a scorpion, for which reason it might be named not improperly a winged scorpion, though it is probably not venomous like it.

Wells and his wife are a young couple who removed last spring to this place, from his father's, an opulent farmer, eighteen miles lower down the river. They are kind and obliging, and better informed than one might expect, from their limited opportunities of acquiring knowledge in so remote a situation. Mrs. Wells, though a delicately formed woman, and with {101} twin boys only six weeks old, both of whom she nurses, seemed neither to have, nor to require any assistance in her domestick employments, yet both plenty and order were observable throughout her cabin. Though we were much incommoded here by musquitoes, yet I must observe, that comparatively with the country to the eastward of the Allegheny mountains, particularly near the sea coast, in the vicinity of salt marshes, we found