Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/199

 A fine road, through a more level country than we had came through last evening, brought us in two hours, eleven miles, to the hill above Frankfort, which from thence was seen to advantage, with Kentucky river flowing past it, through a deep and narrow valley, confined by steep and rather stony hills, which afford a variety, after the fine plains, luxuriant forests and rich farms, within twenty miles in every direction of Lexington.

We descended the hill, into the capital of Kentucky, and stopped at Weiseger's, the sign of the Golden Eagle, where we sat down to a sumptuous breakfast, with two green silk air fans kept in motion over our heads, by a little negro girl with a string from the ceiling, in a room seventy-two feet long.[129]

After breakfast I accompanied Mr. A to examine a shallow stratum of sand, on the bank of the river, near a mineral spring about half a mile below {170} the town, and he got a negro who was fishing, to wade to an island opposite, and bring some from thence, which had probably accumulated there by floods.—He pronounced both kinds proper for the manufacture of glass, which was what he had in view, but it did [not] seem as if a sufficient quantity could be procured for an extensive manufactury.

We then returned to town, walked through it, and entered the state house, from the cupola of which we could distinctly count every house, the number of which was exactly ninety, most of them well built with brick, and some with rough but good marble of a dusky cream colour, veined with both blue and red, and capable of a good polish, which is abun-*