Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/244

 *herd's mill, and elegant house of cut stone.[149] Here the creek forks and the road also, one of the forks called Big Wheeling coming from the S. E. and the right hand road leading along it to Morgantown; the left fork called Little Wheeling, which forms Mr. Shepherd's mill race, coming from the eastward, and my road towards Washington leading along it, through a narrow valley with small farms, wherever a bottom or an easy declivity of the hills would permit.

I was here overtaken by a man on horseback, who very courteously insisted on my riding his horse, while he walked above a mile. He was a county Tyrone man in the north of Ireland, settled twelve years in America, the last six of which has been in this neighbourhood, where he cultivated a farm with good success. Indeed industry and sobriety is all {214} that is necessary in any part of the United States, to the westward of the mountains, to insure a comfortable independence in a very few years.

My companion stopping at a house on the road, I again proceeded alone to M'Kinley's tavern, four miles from Shepherd's. I here left the creek on the left, crossing a smaller one which falls into it from the right, and I then ascended a steep and high hill, called Roney's point, from its being the point of a ridge, and first owned by one Roney. It was above half a mile to the top of hill, from whence a fine, thickly settled and well cultivated, but very hilly country broke on my view, beautifully variegated with cornfields in tassel—wheat and oat stubble—meadows—orchards—cottages—and stacks of grain and hay innumerable, with a small coppice of wood between every plantation.