Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 9).djvu/86

 A majority of the people in the neighbourhood of Adamsburg are Germans, or their descendants. Although most of them can speak in English, their conversation with one another is in German, and a clergyman in the neighbourhood preaches in that language.

Resumed my journey; called at L—r's tavern, eleven miles from Greensburg. The hostess, after promising to give me breakfast, shewed me into a front room. After waiting about twenty-five minutes, two ladies on horseback, apparently turned of forty, alighted before the window; the hostess ran forward, embraced and kissed them. Her salute was the loudest articulation of the kind that I have heard. She came into the room, and told {57} me, she had got so much engaged, that she could not be troubled with my breakfast, and that there is a tavern only half a mile forward where I would be attended to. The good lady will be freed from every imputation of unkindness, since I have related how cordially she welcomed her female friends who engrossed all her attention.

Met with a man who asked me if I knew of "any traveller who would rest himself and thrash for a few days?" To-day I begin to find the estimate formed of foot travellers in this country of equality. It is an undoubted truth that the rider is two steps higher than the footman.

Saw a drove of large cattle on their way from the State of Ohio for Philadelphia. Their condition is good, the length of the journey taken into consideration. In size and even fat, they are much superior to the Pennsylvanian stock by the sides of the road. Indeed, it is somewhat surprising to see such bad cattle on the rich lands of this State. The causes merit the strictest inquiry.

Every where the wheat stubble is so much overgrown with annual weeds, that the verdure at a distance is apt