Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 8).djvu/63

 altered in appearance since my former visit here; instead of a few log huts as before, there were forty or {33} fifty shanties, or temporary log houses, built up, and completely filled with men, women and children, household furniture thrown up in piles; and a great number of horses, waggons, sleighs, &c., &c. These people were emigrants from the eastern States, principally from the State of Maine,[14] and bound to different States down the Ohio river. Two gentlemen undertook to take a number of these people, and found it to be about twelve hundred, of all ages and sexes. They had a large number of flat-*bottomed boats built for their conveyance; these were boarded up at the sides, and roofs over them, with chimneys suitable for cooking, and were secure from the weather. There were also many rafts of boards and shingles, timber and saw logs, which would find a ready market at different places on the Ohio river. There are many saw-mills on the streams above this place, where these articles are manufactured from the fine timber which grows in vast quantities in this vicinity. The river at this time had risen full bank, and I should suppose was navigable for vessels of fifty tons burden; but was frozen over to the depth of ten or twelve inches; this was the cause of so many people being assembled here at this time, as many of them had been here two months waiting an opportunity to descend the river. I waited about ten days, which brought it nearly to the close of March. On Saturday night sat up late, heard some cracking of

dormant, until the development of the oil interests in southwestern New York gave it new life.—]
 * [Footnote: Erie Canal, the Allegheny route to the West was abandoned and Olean lay