Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 V13.djvu/66

 lowest stage of the water we perceive horizontal ledges of calcareous rock filled with terebratulites, &c. The salt at Adamsville appears to be made from water issuing out of the alluvial argillaceous soil near to the outlet of Salt Creek, but in many parts of the Western country coring for salt water is frequently continued some hundreds of feet, (sometimes as much as 400 feet) below the surface, through calcareous and sand-stone rocks, and occasionally through beds of coal.

11th.] We proceeded seven miles below the thriving town of Maysville, formerly called Limestone from the rock in its neighbourhood, and experienced heavy rains during the whole day, which in our open skiff proved very unpleasant, and, to augment our uncomfortable situation, we encamped at a late hour on a very disagreeable muddy shore, where it was not possible to kindle a fire.

The farmers along the river for many miles down appear to be in thriving circumstances. Their houses are very decent in external appearance, but so badly finished and furnished that many of the rooms are unoccupied, or merely serve the purposes of a barn, and the family are commonly found living in the kitchen. Most of these ostentatious shells of frame houses are the work of the New-England settlers, who are very industrious, and not without more or less of their usual economy and sagacity.

12th.] We were again retarded by the south-west wind. The shore on which we landed was thickly strewed with fragments of calcareous rock filled with terebratulites, alcyonites, flustras, encrinal vertebrae, &c. &c. Some specimens which I here collected of the encrinal vertebrae were coated with a cellular epidermis, in appearance resembling a millepore; they are also remarkably dichotomous. In