Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/273



Scuffletown—A good military position—Green River—Scarcity of stone—A hospitable Scotchman—Town of Henderson—Cotton machine—Diamond island—Banditti and their extermination—Former dangers in descending the rivers.

We continued to float down the river the remainder of the 14th and all night, fifty miles—passing Deer creek, Windy creek, Anderson's river and Crooked creek, and some islands—the banks having settlements at every mile or two. The shores of the river now became low, the hills being lost in the distance on each side.

May 15th.—Having passed two more islands, and some new farms, in nine miles and a half, we came to a string of six or seven good looking settlements, called Scuffletown, on the left, and two miles and a half farther on the right, we observed two new settlements, a small creek, and a bluff rock, serving as a base to an elevated conick promontory, terminating a wide reach, and narrowing the river so by its projection, as to make it an eligible situation for a fortified post. Seven miles from hence we came to Green river on the left, about two hundred yards wide. It falls into the Ohio from the eastward, and at the junction the latter river, changing its direction from S. W. to west, the view of it upwards is lost, {241} and looking back to the eastward, Green river appears to be a continuation of the Ohio. Several new settlements are forming on the banks of Green river, the climate and soil being well adapted to the culture of cotton, but the former is esteemed unhealthy, the inhabitants being very subject to intermittent fevers. A skiff boarded us here from an ark astern, which was bound to the mouth of the Ohio, from whence the people on board were to proceed in a keel up the Mississippi to St. Genevieve