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 rain, we pursued our journey, having first paid Marshon fully as much for our simple and coarse accommodations, as the best on the road would have cost, but our host I suppose thought his stories and his son's musick were equivalent for all other deficiencies.

The land was poor, and no house on the road until we arrived at Heistant's tavern, four miles from Marshon's, where we met the Lexington stage.

My morning walk had given me an appetite for breakfast, which my fellow traveller not being willing to be at the expence of, declined, and saying that as I walked so much faster than him I would soon overtake him, he went on, intending to satisfy his stomach occasionally with some bread and cheese from his knapsack, and a drop of whiskey from his tin canteen, from which he had made a libation at first setting out, and had seemed surprised at my refusal of his invitation to partake.

Heistant is a Pennsylvania German, and has a good and plentiful house, in a very pleasant situation, called the Sinking springs, from a great natural curiosity near it. On the side of a low hill, now in cultivation, are three large holes, each about twenty feet deep and twenty feet diameter, about sixty paces apart, with a subterraneous communication by which the water is conveyed from one to the other, and issues in a fine rivulet at a fourth opening near the {188} house, where Heistant's milk house is placed very judiciously. The spring is copious and the water very fine.[137]

After a good breakfast I walked on alone, and at about a mile, I entered on a dreary forest having first passed Irwin's tavern, a pleasant situation where the stage sleeps going towards the S. westward. Three miles from Irwin's, is over very broken, but well timbered hills, to the left of which