Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/241

 court-house and gaol, and altogether it has the greatest appearance of wealth and business of any town between Chilicothe and itself. There are several Quakers, settled in the neighbourhood, who are a snug, wealthy and industrious people, and who enhance the value of real property in a wide extent around the focus of their settlements.

Leaving St. Clairsville at eleven o'clock, I joined a footman named Musgrave, who was going to Morgantown in Virginia, to collect money to pay off some incumbrances on his lands below Limestone. He was a plain man, but an intelligent, expeditious and economical traveller, whose company shortened the road to Wheeling. It is a well settled country and a fine road, the first six miles from St. Clairsville. We then descended a long hill into the river bottom of Indian Wheeling, where we came to a good grist {211} and saw mill. Keeping down that fine little mill river five miles to its confluence with the Ohio, we forded it five times in that distance.

On the banks of the Ohio is a new town called Canton, laid out by Mr. Zane last year, which has now thirteen houses. We here crossed a ferry of a quarter of a mile to Zane's island, which we walked across, upwards of half a mile, through a fertile, extensive, and well cultivated farm, the property of Mr. Zane, some of whose apples, pulled from the orchard in passing, were very refreshing to us, while we sat on the bank nearly an hour awaiting the ferry boat. At last the boat came, and we crossed the second ferry of another quarter of a mile to Wheeling.

Here my fellow traveller took leave of me, purposing to go five or six miles further ere night, though it was now five o'clock, and we had already walked upwards of thirty miles since morning.