Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/130

 Passing Pursley's, Wilson's and Williamson's islands, none of them exceeding a mile in length, we came to the end of Long reach, eleven miles below Wells's, where in a charming situation on the left, is {104} a fine settlement, commanding a view of the reach and its islands upwards.[83]

Little and Rat islands joined by a sand bar, are only half a mile long each, and just below them, and three miles from Long reach, is the beginning of Middle island, which is two miles and a half long, with three families settled on it. Middle island creek, after running some distance from its source in Virginia, turns some mills and falls into the Ohio at the back of the island. We went to the right of those islands, and two miles below Middle island, we landed at squire Green's tavern on the right, and got supper and beds.

The squire who derives his title from being a magistrate, came here from Rhode Island about nine years ago. He has a fine farm, on an extensive bottom, and he has two sons settled about a mile back from the river, where they have a horse-mill and a distillery. Two younger sons and a daughter, a sensible pleasing young woman, live at home with their parents. One of the sons was suffering under a fever and

nearly alike that they seemed to have been fashioned in the same mould, and have not been discovered in any other place.
 * [Footnote: by estimation, to fill a bushel. And what was very remarkable, they were so

"The latter of these rarities is from Kentucky. One of them had been received several years ago from Dr. S. Brown, of Lexington, now of Orleans; and several others since from Professor Woodhouse. They have a remote resemblance to a small acorn. At the larger end is a small projection resembling a broken foot-stock. At the smaller extremity are six indentations, or orifices, which may be imagined to be the decayed pistils or stigmata of a former blossom. And on the sides are figured fine sharp-pointed surfaces, having a similitude to the quinque-*partite calyx of a plant. It may be doubted whether this is of animal or vegetable origin. It also may be reasonably supposed to be a species of echinus.

"Both the specimens are silicious and insoluble in acids."—]