Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/129

 on the left, the projecting points on the right, and the forest covered and unequal hills on each side, form a most beautiful coup d'œil.

Four miles and a half lower, we had passed Williamson's island, which is above two miles long, and we stopped just below it on the left bank, at Charles Wells's, the sign of the buck. He is father to John Wells, at whose house we had supped last night: He has a fine farm, good buildings and a large tract of land which he bought from a Mr. Caldwell two or three years ago. We here got a good dinner, the charge was reasonable, and the family obliging.

Mr. Wells shewed us a remarkable petrifaction of part of a beech tree, found about twenty miles from his house, at the other side of the river in the state of Ohio, in a northerly direction. The tree was found torn up by the root, which with part of the trunk, was covered by a pool of stagnate water, and completely petrified, while the part of the trunk and the limbs which were out of the water, were still in their original state of wood, but dry, and partly rotten. We wished to purchase this petrification from Mr. Wells, but he was too much of a naturalist himself to part {103} with such a curiosity for a sum which would have been a temptation to a person of a different taste.[82]*