Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/240

 over, and they travelled with much noise—some singing, some swearing, some quarrelling, some laughing, according to their different natural dispositions, which are always most manifest when in that unguarded situation.

I found Morristown, where I arrived just before dark, all in a bustle from the same cause, many of the country people remaining to a late hour, drinking and fighting.

My host Morrison who is a justice of the peace, and a major of the militia, had shut his house against them, but there was another tavern, where squire Morrison, while commanding the peace, during an affray, came in for his share of the blows, and had his shirt torn.

I got a very good supper—bathed my feet and went to bed in a room where a man and his wife, a young married couple, in another bed, acted over a {210} similar scene to what I had experienced at New Lancaster, keeping me awake chatting to me until a very late hour.

After a short but sound sleep, I awoke at an early hour well refreshed, and pushed on eleven miles to St. Clairsville, through a fine, well improved, and well inhabited country, which was still hilly, but the ridges were neither so steep nor so high, as they are in general at this side of Chilicothe.

I stopped at Thompson's stage inn, where Mrs. Thompson who was very civil, prepared me a good breakfast.

St. Clairsville, or Newelstown, as it is more frequently improperly called, is the capital of Belmont county, and is pleasantly situated on the point and top of the highest hill within sight, from whence twelve or fourteen miles of ridges and woods may be seen in every direction, some of them across the Ohio, which I was now again approaching. The town is only about four years old, and already contains eighty good houses, including several stores and taverns. It has a