Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/58

 me one of the largest and finest apples I had ever seen: it was the produce of his own orchard, where he had several trees of the same species, raised by himself from the pippin, and neither grafted nor budded. He had the manners of a New Englandman, being desirous both of receiving and of communicating information, but I soon gathered from him that he was a native of that part of Pennsylvania, and of English extraction. On my entrance he had laid down a book, which taking up afterwards, I found to be a volume of Robertson's Charles V.

As I proceeded from hence, two very beautiful red foxes playfully crossed the road about a hundred yards before me; they then recrossed it, and seeing me, made up a hill to the right with incredible swiftness, leaping with ease a Virginia worm fence above six feet high.

At half past four I arrived at Shippensburgh, which was laid out for a town, about fifty years ago, and named after the first proprietor and settler, the father of judge Shippen of Philadelphia.[15] It contains between 150 and 200 straggling houses, in one street, nearly a mile in length: with nothing else interesting to recommend it to notice. I stopt at Raume's, a German house about the middle of the town, and apparently the best tavern in it. I bathed my feet in cold water, and dressed the left one which was {35} much blistered and very painful: Soon after which, my wagonner Jordan, with three others in his company arriving, we all sat down together, according to the custom of the country, to a plentiful and good supper; after which, the wagonners spread their mattresses and blankets round the stove in the bar room, and I retired to a good bed, but without an upper sheet.