Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/232

 being the half way house between Lancaster and Zanesville. Here an old father, two sons and three daughters, (spruce, well formed girls, with a most wonderful volubility of tongue) worried we with questions, until I excused myself from further gratifying their inexhaustible curiosity by pleading fatigue, and throwing myself on a bed, I awaited the arrival of the stage, about an hour, when we got an excellent breakfast, every article of which served as a topick for conversation to our garrulous entertainers, who affected to know a little of every thing and of every body.

Nine miles from Babb's, through a similar country and very bad road with houses and taverns as in the morning, brought me to Jonathan's creek, a handsome little river, about twenty yards wide, which I forded. The road was now generally level seven miles to Springfield, mostly through pleasant and rich little bottoms, with the creek close on the right more than half the way, and the country so thickly {202} inhabited, that was it not for the dead girdled[146] trees every where in the corn and wheat fields and meadows, it would have the appearance of an old settlement.

About a mile from Springfield I passed through a fine plain of a light sandy soil very proper for small grain, such as wheat, rye and oats, which has been cleared previous to this country being known to the whites. It is now covered with dwarf oak, hazle, and other copse wood, and contains probably fifteen hundred acres.

Springfield is a long straggling village, on a fine flat, sheltered on the north by a small chain of low but abrupt hills, and bounded on the south by the beautiful river Muskingum. The road or street is of clean gravel, and the