Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 9).djvu/120



Leave Portsmouth—Digression on economical Travelling—Salt-springs—Piketon—Chillicothe—Progress of a Scotch Family—Game—Forest Trees and Shrubs—Rolled pieces of Primitive Rocks dispersed over a Country of the Secondary Formation—Agricultural Implements—Antiquities—Bainbridge—Middletown—Organic Remains—Town of Limestone—Washington—Mayé Lick—Licking River—Millersburg—Paris—Notice of the Missouri and Illinois Countries—Paper Currency—Cut Coin—Remarks interspersed.

Lexington, Kentucky, Nov. 29, 1818.

On the 18th current I left Portsmouth, on the north bank of the Ohio, for Chillicothe, which is situated on the Great Scioto river, forty-five miles from Portsmouth by land, and about seventy by following the meanders of the Scioto.

The Scotsman twice alluded to in my last letter, was also bound for Chillicothe, and we set out together. He gave me the following account of his economy in travelling. The owner of the boat which we had just left, engaged him to work his passage from Pittsburg to Portsmouth without wages, except having his trunk carried to the latter place, artfully telling, that the passage would be completed in nine days. It turned out that twenty-one days elapsed, before the boat reached her destination. Had he, in the first place, hired himself as a boatman, he might have got seventy-five cents per day, and might have had his trunk carried for a dollar; and thus a profit of fourteen dollars and {91} seventy-five cents would have been made. On his journey from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, he managed better. He travelled along with the waggon that carried his trunk; the waggon also carrying his provisions. In this way he was never obliged to enter a tavern except at