Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/132

 two brigs, and a schooner. A bank is established here, which began to issue notes on the 20th inst. Its capital is one hundred thousand dollars, in one thousand shares: Mr. Rufus Putnam is the president.[84]

The land on which Marietta is built, was purchased during the Indian war, from the United States, by some New England land speculators, who named themselves the Ohio Company. They chose the land facing the Ohio, with a depth from the river of only from twenty to thirty miles to the northward, thinking the proximity of the river would add to its value, but since the state of Ohio has began to be generally settled, the rich levels in the interior have been preferred, but not before the company had made large sales, particularly to settlers from New England, notwithstanding the greatest part of the tract {106} was broken and hilly, and the hills mostly poor, compared with those farther to the westward, on both sides of the river.

Marietta is principally inhabited by New Englanders, which accounts for the neat and handsome style of building displayed in it.

The Muskingum is about two hundred yards wide, and has a rapid current of from three to four miles an hour, by which a ferry boat is carried across in something more than a minute, by a very simple but ingenious piece of machinery. A rope of five or six inches in circumference is extended across from bank to bank, and hove taught by a windlass: two rollers play on it fixed in a box to each end of which the ends of two smaller ropes are fastened, whose other ends are led to the two extremities of the ferry flat, and taken round winches with iron cranks, on which the rope at the end of the flat which is to be foremost being wound up, presents the side of the flat to the current at an angle of