Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/61

 from the banks of the Susquehannah below Harrisburgh to the S.W. as far as the eye can reach. Though extensive, it is however an uninteresting prospect, as though I saw many patches of cleared land, the town of Shippensburgh twelve miles distant, and Strasburgh directly under me;—wood with its (at this season) brown, sombre hue, is the prevailing feature. After ascending a mile and a half from Strasburgh, I came to the top of the mountain, and looked down on the other side into a dark narrow romantick vale called Horse valley, with the two Skinner's good farms, still house and mill, and Conodogwinnet {38} creek gliding through the middle towards the N.E.; while the middle mountain, rose immediately opposite me, from the other side of the valley, the summit of it apparently not a mile distant from where I stood, though in reality it is three miles, so much is the eye deceived by the depth of the intermediate vale.

At 4 o'clock, I stopped at Skinner's, where at my particular request, I was gratified with hasty pudding or mush, as it is called in this state, with plenty of good milk and apple pye for supper. My host was born near Woodbridge in Jersey, from whence his father had removed to this country many years ago. There are now about twenty families settled in the valley, which extends from the south end

an egg like the shark. There is no trace of a placenta nor umbilical vessels. The growth of this rudiment of a future bear is supposed to be promoted by licking; and the saliva of the dam, or some other fluid from her mouth, appears to afford it nourishment. In the course of time, and under such management, the limbs and organs are evolved, the surface covered with hair, and the young cub at length rendered capable of attending its parent. Thus far the inquiries of the hunters have gone. The facts are so curious, that the subject is highly worthy of further investigation. And when the entire history of the process of generation in this animal shall be known, new light will be shed upon one of the most obscure parts of physiology. It is to be hoped that gentlemen whose opportunities are favourable to the prosecution of this inquiry, will furnish the learned world shortly with the whole of these mysterious phenomena."—]
 * [Footnote: *posed to the open air, it has no connection with the teat like the opossum, nor with