Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 9).djvu/285

 is of the first rate quality, and covered with luxuriant crops of Indian corn. The crops of wheat are what you would call a second rate crop, and several fields of oats, which I saw, were headed out, and were as bulky as any that I have seen in Mid-Lothian; but, for a reason formerly stated, the grain cannot be expected to arrive at fine quality. The banks of Fourteen-Mile-Creek, (which joins the Ohio at the distance of fourteen miles above the falls,) are cliffs of limestone that are overtopped by tall woods, and form, by their windings, many romantic scenes, of which I can convey no adequate idea. The stream is at present almost entirely dried up, but the extent of its bed, and the marks of inundation by its margin, convince me that its floods are nearly equal to those of the Clyde at Glasgow. Some salt springs that percolate through the rocks in the bottom, have been discovered during the present dry season: the existence of these were first surmised by an ingenious gentleman, with whom I am well acquainted. He proceeded by introducing a small tube into a {254} deep and still part of the river, and drew water from the bottom that was perceptibly saline. He has now some people engaged in boring, by which means the discharge of water has been considerably augmented, and has commenced evaporating on a small scale. This process is usually performed by filling a number of iron kettles, of about three feet in diameter, and six inches deep, with the water, and placing them on loose stones, or over a trench that is dug in the ground for receiving the fuel. Boring for salt water is a work that is occasionally accompanied with a considerable degree of difficulty. Where the bore communicates with a fresh water spring, on a higher level than the saline one, a tube of tinned iron is let down to exclude the former. At