Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/266

 which is from eighty to a hundred yards wide. This is the capital of Gallatin county, and contains twenty-one houses, many of which are of brick, but all rather in a state of decay.[169] The lands appear good, but probably the country is not in a sufficient state of improvement to admit of a town here yet. Frankfort the capital of the state, is on the Kentucky, only sixty miles above Port William.

{234} At four we gave our boats to the stream, and after floating all night seventy-eight miles, past some islands and some thinly scattering settlements, we rowed into Bear Grass creek, which forms a commodious little harbour without current for Louisville, May 10th, at 9 A. M.

Louisville is most delightfully situated on an elevated plain to which the ascent from the creek and river is gradual, being just slope enough to admit of hanging gardens with terraces, which doctor Gault at the upper, and two Messrs. Buttets at the lower end of the town have availed themselves of, in laying out their gardens very handsomely and with taste. From the latter, the view both up and down the river is truly delightful. Looking upwards, a reach of five or six miles presents itself, and turning the eye to the left, Jeffersonville, a neat village of thirty houses, in Indiana, about a mile distant, is next seen. The eye still turning a little more to the left, next rests upon a high point where general Clark first encamped his little army, about thirty years ago, when he descended the river to make a campaign against the Indians, at which time Louisville, and almost the whole of Kentucky was a wilderness covered with forests. The rapids or falls (as they are called) of the Ohio, are the next objects which strike the observer. They are formed by a range of rocks and low islands, which extend across the