Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/139

 {112} nearly seventy miles, a little above which highest point of navigation, is situated the flourishing town of New Lancaster.

Two miles and a half below Hockhocking a rivulet called Lee's creek, puts in from the Virginia side, and half a mile further on the same side, is the village of Belleville, or Belle-prè, finely situated on a high bank, commanding a good view of the river both ways. There are here only four or five cabins occupied by hunters and labourers, and a tolerably good wooden house owned by a Mr. Avery from New-London in Connecticut, who purchased a tract here of five miles front on the river, and commenced this settlement about eleven years ago, but going largely into ship building, he was so unfortunate in that business, that in consequence he is now confined for debt in Wood county gaol.

A Mr. Wild, from Durham in Connecticut, who has been five years here, resides in Mr. Avery's house, and cultivates the farm, which is on a handsome plain running back from the river, on which he has this season seventy acres of corn and fifty of wheat, besides a large proportion of meadow. He was very civil to us, insisting with much hospitality on our taking some refreshment.

Last fall Mr. Avery's barn with two thousand bushels of grain, several stacks of grain, and a horse, grist and saw mills, were burnt by incendiaries, who, though known, could not be brought to justice for want of positive proof.

From Little Hockhocking the right bank is hilly and broken, and the left an extensive bottom; both sides very thinly inhabited, to ten miles below Belleville, in the last seven we not having observed a single {113} cabin, though the land is level and rich. I cannot account for the right shore not being settled, as it is part of the Ohio Company's purchase; but the reason on the Virginia side is, that the