Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/270

 The river hills, which are generally a considerable distance behind the banks below Louisville, now approached quite close on each side.

On each side of Blue river is a settlement, the uppermost one three years old, but very little advanced, has a large family of children and their mother almost naked. Nothing apparently flourishing except a large garden of onions, for a few of which with a pound or two of Indian meal to make leaven, the woman would fix no price, but thinking herself badly paid with a quarter of a dollar, I gave her an eighth more to satisfy her. The lower settlement was began two years ago by one Thomas Davidson, from Carlisle, in Pennsylvania, and must become a fine property if Mr. Harrison, the present governour of Indiana, succeeds in establishing, according to his intentions, a ship yard on Blue river, which is a most eligible situation for it. He has already erected a grist and saw mill about eight miles up it,[173] where it is joined by a rivulet, which rising suddenly from a spring in a prairie seventeen miles above the mill, tinges the water from its source to its discharge into the Ohio with a clear blue colour, which however {238} does not effect its goodness, it being of an excellent quality.

Blue river itself is navigable for batteaux forty miles.

An old Indian trace, now the post road from Louisville to Vincennes, crosses it at twenty-five miles from its mouth.

The distance from the governour's mills to Vincennes, is about one hundred miles.