Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/150

 purpose of assisting each other in finishing some domestick or farming {123} business, which generally conclude with feasting and dancing, which sometimes lasts two or three days, and is not seldom the fruitful source of many a tender and lasting connexion.

Near this we perceived a stratum of slate over one of coal, but the latter too much under the level of the river to be wrought. The slate stratum extends several rods, and is topped and squared as if done by art.

It may not be amiss to remark that all strata throughout the whole of this western country, have been hitherto found to be horizontal.

The banks from hence four miles to Point Pleasant are apparently rich with good bottoms on both sides, yet but thinly inhabited.

Point Pleasant, where we arrived at seven o'clock in the evening, is beautifully situated on a bank, at least forty feet above the common level of the Ohio, at the conflux of the Great Kenhawa with that river. It contains twenty-one indifferent houses, including a court house of square logs, this being the seat of justice of Mason county. The town does not thrive on account of the adjacent country not settling so fast as the opposite side in the state of Ohio, where lands can be bought in small tracts for farms, by real settlers, at a reasonable rate, whereas the Virginia lands belonging mostly to wealthy and great landholders, are held at four or five times the Ohio price.

The river Ohio is here six hundred yards wide, and the Kenhawa is two hundred and twenty-five, the latter navigable about eighty miles to the falls.

On the 10th of October, 1774, a battle was fought here by the Virginia and Pennsylvania militia under general Lewis, against the Indians, who had attacked them in great force, but were defeated and compelled to retreat across the Ohio,