Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/260

 exceeding two miles, and is delivered in the town at six cents a bushel.

Boyd's hill was formerly named Ayre's hill, from a British engineer of that name who wished to have it fortified, but it changed its appellation about twenty years ago in consequence of one Boyd, a printer, hanging himself there on a tree. It was first cleared and cultivated by a Highland regiment, which built huts on it, no remains of which now exist.

The view from Boyd's hill exclusive of the Allegheny, which is veiled by Grant's and the Quarry hills, is as fine as that from the Quarry hill exclusive of the Monongahela, shut out from it by Boyd's, and is more uninterrupted down the Ohio to Robinson's point and Brunot's island, almost three miles.

The Monongahela is then the next object to the right of Boyd's hill. It is four hundred and fifty yards wide, and is seen to the N. E. in a vista of about two miles, when it takes a sudden bend to the eastward, and disappears behind the hills, at the extremity {229} of this vista, at the Two mile run, Mr. Anthony Beelen, a respectable merchant, has a neat ornamented cottage, opposite the bend, on the left bank, which commands a view of the reach above, as well as of that below to the town. The intermediate bank between Mr. Beelen's country seat and Pittsburgh, has a pleasant road along it, which is one of the principal avenues to the town, and which is surmounted by the ridge, of which Boyd's hill is the termination, whose round regular bluff verges into a bare rock, crowned with trees, impending romantically over the road in the whole distance from Two mile run.

Still turning to the right the opposite bank of the Monongahela presents to the eye a fine level bottom well cultivated and settled, with a ridge of hills half a mile behind it, which