Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/186

 together, that {157} about the salt licks and springs they frequented, they pressed down and destroyed the soil to a depth of three or four feet, as was conspicuous yet in the neighbourhood of the Blue Lick, where all the old trees have their roots bare of soil to that depth.—Those harmless and unsuspecting animals, used to stand gazing with apparent curiosity at their destroyer, until he was sometimes within twenty yards of them, when he made it a rule to select the leader, which was always an old and fat female. When she was killed, which rarely failed from the great dexterity of the hunter, the rest of the herd would not desert her, until he had shot as many as he thought proper. If one of the common herd was the first victim of the rifle, the rest would immediately fly. The males sometimes exceeded a thousand pounds weight, but the females were seldom heavier than five hundred. He said that the whole country was then an entire cane brake, which sometimes grew to forty feet high, but that the domestick stock introduced by the settlers have eradicated the cane, except in some remote and unsettled parts of the state. He described that plant, as springing up with a tender shoot, like asparagus, which cattle are very fond of.

Millerstown has been settled about ten years, but it is not thriving, though it seems well calculated for a manufacturing town, from its situation on the bank of Hinckson's fork of the Licking, which is a good mill stream, and over which there is a wooden bridge.

Several strata of lead ore, parallel to the surface, and from three inches to a foot in thickness, have been discovered in the town, and neighbourhood; and about a year ago, a Mr. Elliot, erected a furnace and made sixteen tons of pure lead, but for want of funds to prosecute the business to effect, he was obliged to cease exertions, which, with proper encouragement, might have been a source of very