Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/235

 *tensive view in every direction, of ridges beyond ridges covered with forests, to the most distant horizon; but though grand and extensive, it is dreary and cheerless, excepting to a mind which anticipates the great change which the astonishingly rapid settlement of this country will cause in the face of nature in a few revolving years. Such a mind will direct the eye ideally to the sides of hills covered with the most luxuriant gifts of Ceres; to valleys divested of their trees, and instead of the sombre forest, strengthening the vision with their verdant herbage, while the rivers and brooks, no {205} longer concealed by woods, meander through them in every direction in silvered curves, resplendent with the rays of a glowing sun, darting through an unclouded atmosphere; while the frequent comfortable and tasty farm house—the mills—the villages, and the towns marked by their smoke and distant spires, will cause the traveller to ask himself with astonishment, "So short a time since, could this have been an uninhabited wilderness?"

This lofty ridge continues with various elevations five miles and a half farther to Ensloe's tavern, and is well inhabited all the way, and well timbered, though the soil is rather light. I here stopped to await the stage and breakfast, after which I rode on through a hilly country, rather thinly inhabited, five miles, and then three more on a flat, of the most wretched road imaginable, from the frequency of sloughs of stiff mud and clay. Travellers have ironically nicknamed this part of the road Will's creek plains. It is really almost impassable for even the strong stage wagons which are used here.

After getting safely through the plains, and a mile further over a ridge, I came to Will's creek, which is a small muddy river with a very slow current. The banks are steep and the bottom muddy, so that it has to be crossed by a wooden bridge, which has become extremely dangerous, from some