Great Sandy river is the boundary between the States of Ken. tucky and Virginia: the head waters of this river proceed from the vast chain of Apilachean mountains, on the opposite side of which are fountains which supply rivers that fall into the Mexican and Atlantic oceans. These head waters are guarded by a country nearly inaccessible to man, where bears and wolves enjoy an ample range: the former especially inhabit the head of this river in such numbers that their skins can be had by contract for one dollar each.

Mr. Ashe speaks in great disparagement of the far-famed state of Kentucky, and roundly asserts that "the authors" who have described it, either never saw it at all, or only that small portion of highly fertile Land which it contains in its centre, about 60 miles long, by 30 broad. He then describes it in forbidding terms; the body of eastern land as being entirely mountainous for 100 square miles west, a chain of mountains run 400 miles in length, and 50 on an average in breadth, from the Ohio bank. The south side, he says, is principally composed of the "Barrens," and the "Great Barren," terms which denote a country so sterile that neither man nor beast can reside there for want of water." After these facts," he continues, "which no person can deny or controvert, we are left to deplore that the public should so long have been abused by the dreams of enthusiasts and the falsehoods of knaves." Now the fact, we apprehend is, that Mr. Ashe never passed over these "Barrens," and knows no more about them than his printer's pressman.

Dr. Michaux, who travelled to the westward of the Alleghany mountains in the year 1802, for the

purpose of exploring the vegetable productions of the country, speaks from personal knowledge of the Barrens of Kentucky, in a very different manner*. He was told, as no doubt Mr. Ashe was, that they were bare and sterile tracts, unwa tered and unsheltered from the burning sun. Instead of finding a country such as had been described to me, says he, I was agreeably surprised to see a beautiful meadow, well covered with grass of two or three feet high, which is used to feed cattle. A great variety of plants grow there luxuriantly, many specimens of which I brought to France. In some parts of these meadows several species of wild creeping vines are met with and particularly that called by the inhabitants Summer Grapes. These grapes are as large and of as good a quality as those from the vineyards in the neighbourhood of Paris. Dr. Michaux conjectures that these vast Barrens or Meadows have resulted from a practice among the savages of setting fire to the grass every spring. The forests were originally consumed by conflagration, and the existing prevalence of the annual custom has prevented their reappearance.

Proceeding along the Ohio, Mr. Ashe acknowledges that the country increases in richness and fertility. Chilicothé is the principal town in the Ohio state, and the seat of government: it lies 60 miles up the Sciota. The town contains about 150 well built houses, and is in a flourishing state: Lexington was formerly the capital of Kentucky, and is one of the largest inland towns in the United States: it has an university, supported by voluntary contributions, and is furnished with professors of the Mathematics, of the Greek, Latin, and English

languages. It has a court-house, market, hall, and four churches, The business of the place consists in ordering immense quantities of British goods from Philadelphia and Baltimore, and in bartering them through the State for produce, which is forwarded to Frankfort and Lanesville by land, and thence to New Orleans by water. The produce taken in exchange consists of flour, corn, cotton, tobacco, ginseng, pork, &c. The Lexington merchants not only supply their own state, but that of Tenassee, which lies to the southward, and part of the Indian territory to the north. Provisions are plentiful and cheap; with regard to climate, the winter is mild, the spring dry, the summer temperate, and the autumn is a second summer: still Mr. Ashe asserts that healthy as the climate is in itself, such deleterious vapours are brought from the swamps and stagnant waters of the south and west as shed pestilence and disease over the devoted victims who are exposed to them. The soil round Lexington is from one foot to thirty feet deep, and the bottom through out the whole state, is a solid bed of limestone; the Kentucky river runs through a natural canal, whose perpendicular sides are 100 feet high entirely composed of it. Melons and cucumbers grow spontaneously in the open air, grapes cluster in the woods, (to use the poetic language of Mr. Ashe), and peaches and pomegranates flourish in the cornfields. Notwithstanding the various advantages which Lexington enjoys, the capital of the state has been transferred to Frankfort, si tuated on a navigable river of the same name. Frankfort is represented as much more unhealthy than Lexington. Cincinnati was once the capital of the north-western territory, and is now the largest town in the Ohio state; it is rapidly increasing in population, and the

neighbouring territory is in such repute, that at a land office in the town, for the sale of congress lands, there were made, in the year 1805, no fewer than 17,000 contracts with persons from Europe, and from all parts of the United States. The town stands on the site of an Indian settlement of great extent and antiquity. A gentleman in digging a well discovered at a depth of more than 60 feet from the surface, the stump of a tree, which appeared to have been cut down with an axe, as the incisions were perfectly visible and many chips lay scattered about its roots. Mr. Ashe obtained a bit of the precious stump, and an original chip, which he intends, of course, to preserve with all the devotion due to such remote and rare antiquity. The cautious and modest manner in which our traveller indulges his rage for theorizing is strikingly exemplified here. His first inference is "that the tree was undoubtedly antediluvian." Why, acording to this gentleman, half the peasants in Ireland and Scotland build their cots with antediluvian timber; for the rafters which they use are very commonly made from trees found buried many many feet under their turf bogs. Mark the sagacity of Mr. Ashe's secondary deductions: 1.The tree was antediluvian; therefore, 2. The Ohio did not exist before the deluge, because the stump was found rooted below the bed of the river. 3. America was peopled be fore the flood-for if there had been no people the tree would not have been cut down; and 4. The antediluvian Americans knew the use of iron, for this tree was cut with an axe, which axe was made of iron, which iron axe was made by man! This is no bad counterpart to the renowned history of the House that Jack built. This is the dog that worried the cat, that killed the rat, that eat the malt, that lay in the house that Jack built

Mr. Ashe made an excursion to the country of the Miamis, where he met with an Englishman, Mr. Digby, who had settled as a farmer. He speaks of the land as being a great deal too rich, "forcing every thing into a stalk like timber and making the hay so coarse that he often destroys the first growth. Indian corn produces 100 bushels per acre, and grows on a stem of such strength that cattle, when it spreads its tossel, and has shed and received its farinaceous impregnation, are allowed to rove among it without being capable of rendering it any injury!!!" The price of produce being very low, and that of labour very high, Mr. Digby was about to abandon his system and graze cattle, rear hogs, and breed horses for dis tant markets. At any rate, then, a man may farm in this wonderful country of the Miamis without fear of starving. One would have thought that Mr. Digby might more readily send his corn to New Orleans by some of the many rivers which fall into the Ohio from the Miami country, than he can drive cattle and horses over the mountains to the great eastern marts of Baltimore and Philadelphia. Facility of intercourse is the effect as well as the cause of commercial prosperity. Even in this country of commercial capitalists, roads and canals were very insufficiently distributed half a century ago, and their multiplication within that period has kept an even pace with the extension of external commerce and internal trade. The fertility of the Miami country, and indeed of the soil on both banks of the Ohio, for many hundred miles, might be brought against Mr. Malthus as a case where population does not press against the limits of food. The table which nature has here spread for her guests is nothing like full.

On the Mad River, which flows iuto the Great Miami, are numerous

ex

humming birds: the presence of which indicates fertility of soil and salubrity of climate, as they never inhabit swamps or countries posed to a severity of season. These prairies were once the favorite resort of buffaloes, but the wanton carnage committed among their droves has driven them to more tranquil coverts. Some few herds of deer still linger in their favorite haunts, and browse in safety under the protection of a pasture which effectually covers them from sight. Wild cattle and buffaloes, a few years back, abounded in the Tenassee country; they also have been driven away: on the east of the Mississippi scarcely a buffaloe is to be seen.

There are still two Indian tribes within the vicinity of this state, the Cherokees and the Chickasaws. An interesting account is given of a Shawanee village, to which our traveller paid a visit; it consists of about 30 families, and is the remnant of a warlike nation, numbering a few years back many thousand souls, and possessing an hundred square miles of territory. It was evening when Mr. Ashe entered the village; the men were repairing their canoes and fishing-tackle; the women were preparing their supper, and the children were exercising themselves with the bow and arrow. The entire village supped together at the same time; the prelude was a dance of an hour, the dancers chaunting singly their own exploits, and in chorus those of their ancestors. After supper the dance was renewed, and continued to a late hour. The Shawanees conduct their amours with great decency: were a young savage to tell his mistress that he loved her, before, the sun was set, she would flee from him with disdain. He is never permitted to waste the light of day in female dalliance, The doors of their huts are open day and night; the

lover takes advantage of this, lights his calumet, enters the cabin of his mistress, and presents it to her: if she extinguishes it, she admits him to her arms: if she suffers it to burn unnoticed there is no hope for the disappointed lover. It is considered disgraceful to have a child before marriage; and abortion is procured by the juice of some herb. "When one of the nation dies, he is washed and dressed with the utmost care possible, but no tears are shed over him. Parents, sisters, or brothers, in place of manifesting affliction, rejoice that their relative is beyond the power of suffering, and that he has left a world which is only considered as a passage to another and a better life. When dressed, he is placed on a mat or bear's skin, and addressed by all his relations in turn, who recount his exploits and those of his ancestors, and then shut him up for twenty hours in a small public building, called, "The Cabin of Death." During this period, the nation celebrate a dance and feast; and on its expiration, the Cabin of Death is opened, the corpse is put into a bark coffin, together with his hunting instruments and arms, and carried to the grave, followed by dancers, and the parents and friends chaunting hymns and

songs.

The marriages are so simple, that they hardly deserve the name. I witnessed no ceremony of the kind, but I understand from Adario, that when two young persons agree on the subject, they make known their intentions to their parents, who are not at liberty to refuse their consent, it being a Sha

wanee law that the father and mother have no dominion over the person of a child. All the friends assemble at the cabin of the most ancient branch of the family, without respect to nearness of kindred, and there dance and enjoy a feast of great profusion and extent. After this festival, all the friends of the party retire, except four of the oldest of each side, who require the couple to stand on a mat and there attend to a discourse on conjugal affection and the charms of a chaste and honest mind. On which the lovers

break a small stick in pieces and give the fragments to their friends, who keep them as evidence of the marriage, which cannot, while the stick can be put together, be denied. This ceremony is

followed by inviting the nation to dance, sing, and amuse themselves till a late conducted to her parent's home, where hour. The wedding over, the bride is she is visited by her husband till she bears a child; and if that event do not take place in the ordinary course of time, the parents assemble, collect the bits of broken sticks, see that they fit together, and then dissolve the marriage by committing the testimony to the flames. Independent of this cause of dissolution, both men and women are permitted to separate at any time they think proper, giving eight days notice, in order that the bits of sticks may be collected and consumed. lt is worthy of remark, that these kind of separations are attended with no kind of dispute, quarrel, or contradiction whatever. The women are at liberty as well as the men to re-marry whom they may think proper, but in general they seldom enter into a second engagement till after the expiration of three and six months. On separation the children are equally divided: if the number be odd the wife is allowed one more than the husband."

The confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi is at new Madrid; the latter river, the most magnificent in the world, has its source 3000 miles from the sea. odical inundations, from April. till Its periAugust, extend sometimes an hundred miles from the banks of the river. The largest tributary stream is the Missouri, above the mouth of which the Mississippi is as clear and gentle as the Ohio, and nearly as wide. Below its junction it is always muddy, and so rapid is the current that it can never be stemmed by the force of the wind alone acting on the sails. Alligators abound in the Mississippi: Mr. Ashe had a whimsical encounter with one which stole some of his geese and ducks; and afterwards he

shot another, which made for the shore and expired. It was a female with sixteen or seventeen young ones; some of which he took possession of and brought to England. The alligators of the Mississippi are from 12 to 24 feet long: they build their nests within a few yards of the river; the nest is an obtuse cone about four feet high, and from four to five feet in diameter at its base. It is constructed with a sort of mortar mixed with grass and herbage. The animal lays a floor of this composition, on which she deposits a layer of eggs; on these she lays another stratum of mortar seven or eight inches thick, then another layer of eggs, and so on nearly to the top she lays from 100 to 200 eggs, and carefully watches her nest till they are all hatched, when she leads her young about the shores as a hen does her chickens. Mr. Ashe asserts that the old ones feed on the

youngalligators till they become too large to be made a prey of the vulsure destroys multitudes.

:

On the Orkansas river which falls Into the Mississippi at about 600 miles from New Orleans is the village of Ozark. Mr. Ashe arrived there when it was filled with Indians and surrounded with their camp the number ofIndians was about 900, worshippers of the sun.

"The morning was propitious, the air serene, the horizon clear, the weather calm. The nations divided into classes; warriors, young men and women, and married women with their children. Each class stood in the form of a quadrant, that each individual might be hold the rising luminary, and each class held up a particular offering to the Sun the instant he rose in his glory. The warriors presented their arms, the young men and women offered ears of corn and branches of trees, and the married women held up to his light their infant children. These acts were per formed in silence, till the object of adoration visibly rose, when, with one impulse the nations burst into praise and sung an hymn in loud chorus.”

Immediately after this hymn of praise and propitiation, the four quadrants formed one immense circle of several deep, and danced, and sang hymns descriptive of the powers of the Sun, till near ten o'clock. They then amused and refreshed themselves in the village and camp, and assembled precisely at the hour of twelve by my chronometer, and formed a number of circles, commenced the adoration of the The following is the meridian Sun. literal translation of the mid-day address.

"Courage! Nations, courage! the Great Spirit looks down upon us from his highest seat, and by his lustre, appears content with the children of his own power and greatness.

"Grand Spirit! how great are his works, and how beautiful are they!

"He is good; is the Great Spirit, he 'Tis he who rides high to behold us. causes all things to augment and to act. He even now stands for a moment to bearken to us.

"Courage! nations, courage! The Great Spirit now above our heads, will make us vanquish our enemies; he will cover our fields with corn, and encrease the animals of our woods. He will see that the old be happy, and that the young augment. He will make the nations prosper, make them rejoice, and make them put up their voice to him while he rises and sets in their land, or while his heat and his light can thus gloriously shine out."

"This was followed by dancing and hymns, which continued from two to three hours, at the conclusion of which, dinners were served and eaten with great demonstrations of mirth and hilarity. I dined in a circle of chiefs on a barbecued hog and venison, very well stewed, and was perfectly pleased and gratified with the rural repast. The dinner and repose after it continued till the Sun was on the point of being set: On this being announced by several who had been on the watch, the nations assembled in haste, and formed themselves into segments of circles in the face of the Sun, presenting their offerings during the time of his descent, and crying aloud

"The nations must prosper; they have been beheld by the Great Spirit.