Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/57



Different roads to Shippensburgh—Foxes—South mountain and pine woods—Shippensburgh—Strasburgh—North or Blue mountain—Horse valley and Skinner's tavern.

On the 25th January at 8 A.M. I left Carlisle, having previously taken an egg beat up in a glass of wine. There are two roads, one called the Mountrock road which goes from the north end of the town, and the other called the Walnut-bottom road, which leads from the south end. They run parallel to each other about three miles apart. I took the latter, which is the stage road, as the wagon with my baggage was to go that way, though I was informed that the first led through a better country. I found mile-stones on the right hand all the way to Shippensburgh, placed at the expence of the proprietors of the lands on this road, to prove it shorter than the other, they having before been computed at the equal length of twenty-one miles each; but now this one is marked only nineteen. The first five miles are through a very poor and stony country, thinly inhabited, and covered, except on the cultivated parts of the few miserable looking farms, with short, stunted, scrubby wood. The next seven miles are through a better improved country, and a better soil, with large farms {34} and good houses; then there are three miles over the northern skirt of the South mountain, through gloomy forests of tall pines, with here and there a log cabin surrounded by a few acres of cleared land, and abounding in children, pigs, and poultry. The last four miles improve gradually to Shippensburgh.

At eleven o'clock I stopt and breakfasted at a large tavern on the right, seven miles from Carlisle, I got coffee, bread and butter, eggs and excellent honey in the comb, for which I was charged only nineteen cents. My landlord presented