day-break, we recommenced our journey with crossing the river already
mentioned up to our waists in water, no very pleasing task. Both on this
and the subsequent day we had to wade through several other considerable
streams.
A few squirrels were the only wild animals which we met with in our
journey through the woods, and the most solemn silence imaginable
reigned throughout, except where a woodpecker was heard now and then
tapping with its bill against a hollow tree. The birds in general flock
towards the settlements, and it is a very rare circumstance to meet with
them in the depth of the forest.
[Sidenote: MISTAKEN SETTLERS.]
The third evening we encamped as usual. No sooner had we come to our
resting place, than the Indians threw off their clothes, and rolled
themselves on the grass just as horses would do, to refresh themselves,
the day having proved very hot, notwithstanding the frost the preceding
night. We were joined this evening by another party of the Seneka
Indians, who were going to a village situated on the Genesee River, and
in the morning we all set out together. Early in the day we came to
several plains similar to those we had before met with, but not so
extended, on the borders of one of which we saw, for the first time, a
bark hut apparently inhabited. On going up to it, our surprise was not a
little to find two men, whose appearance and manners at once bespoke
them not to be Americans. After some conversation we discovered them to
be two Englishmen, who had formerly lived in London as _valets de
chambre_, and having scraped together a little money, had set out for
New York, where they expected at once to become great men; however they
soon found to their cost, that the expence of living in that city was
not suited to their pockets, and they determined to go and settle in the
back country. They were at no loss to find persons who had land to
dispose of, and happening to fall in with a jobber who owned some of
these plains, and who painted to them in lively colours the advantage
they would derive from settling on good land already cleared to their
hand, they immediately purchased a considerable track of this barren
ground at a round price, and set out to fix themselves upon it. From the
neighbouring settlements, which were about ten miles off, they procured
the assistance of two men, who after having built for them the bark hut
in which we found them left them with a promise of returning in a short
time to erect a log house. They had not, however, been punctual to their
word, and unable to wield an axe, or to do any one thing for themselves,
these unfortunate wretches sat moping in their hut, supporting
themselves on some salt provisions they had brought with them, but which
were now nearly exhausted. The people in the settlements, whom, on
arriving there, we asked some few questions respecting these poor
creatures, turned them into the greatest ridicule imaginable for being
so helpless; and indeed they did present a most striking picture of the
folly of any man’s attempting to settle in America without being well
acquainted with the country previously, and competent to do every sort
of country work for himself.
[Sidenote: DRUNKEN INDIANS.]
It was not without very great vexation that we perceived, shortly after
leaving this hut, evident symptoms of drunkenness in one of the Indians,
and on examining our brandy cask it was but too plain that it had been
pillaged. During the preceding part of our journey we had kept a
watchful eye upon it, but drawing towards the end of our expedition, and
having had every reason to be satisfied with the conduct of the Indians,
we had not paid sufficient attention to it this day; and though it could
not have been much more than five minutes out of our sight, yet in that
short space of time the screw had been forced, and the cask drained to
the last drop. The Indian, whom we discovered to be drunk, was advanced
a little before the others. He went on for some time staggering about
from side to side, but at last, stopping and laying hold of his scalping
knife, which they always carry with them by their sides, he began to
brandish it with a threatening air. There is but one line of conduct to
be pursued when you have to deal with Indians in such a situation, and
that is, to act with the most determined resolution. If you betray the
smallest symptoms of fear, or appear at all wavering in your conduct, it
only serves to render them more ungovernable and furious. I accordingly
took him by the shoulder, pushed him forward, and presenting my piece,
gave him to underhand that I would shoot him if he did not behave
himself properly. My companions, whilst I was taking care of him, went
back to see in what state the other Indians were. Luckily the liquor,
though there was reason to apprehend they had all had a share of it, had
not made the same impression upon them. One of them, indeed, was
beginning to be refractory, and absolutely threw down his load, and
refused to go farther; but a few words from _China-breast-plate_ induced
him to resume it, and to go on. On coming up to the first Indian, and
seeing the sad state he was in, they shook their heads, and crying, “No
good Indian,” “No good Indian,” endeavoured by signs to inform us that
it was he who had pillaged the cask, and drank all the brandy; but as it
was another Indian who carried the cask, no doubt remained but that they
must all have had a share of the plunder; that the first fellow,
however, had drank more than the rest was apparent; for in a few minutes
he dropped down speechless under his load; the others hastened to take
it off from his back, and having divided it amongst themselves, they
drew him aside from the path, and threw him under some bushes, where he
was left to sleep till he should come again to his senses.
[Sidenote: GENESEE RIVER.]
About noon we reached the Genesee River, at the opposite side of which
was situated the village where we expected to procure horses. We crossed
the river in canoes, and took up our quarters at a house at the
uppermost end of the village, where we were very glad to find our Indian
friends could get no accommodation, for we knew well that the first use
they would make of the money we were going to give them would be to buy
liquor, and intoxicate themselves, in which state they would not fail of
becoming very troublesome companions; it was scarcely dark indeed when
news was brought us from a house near the river, that they went to after
we had discharged them, that they were grown quite outrageous with the
quantity of spirits they had drank, and were fighting and cutting each
other in a most dreadful manner. They never resent the injuries they
receive from any person that is evidently intoxicated, but attribute
their wounds entirely to the liquor, on which they vent their
execrations for all the mischief it has committed.
Before I dismiss the subject entirely, I must observe to you, that the
Indians did not seem to think the carrying of our baggage was in any
manner degrading to them; and after having received their due, they
shook hands with us, and parted from us, not as from employers who had
hired them, but as from friends whom they had been assisting, and were
now sorry to leave.
The village where we stopped consisted of about eight or nine straggling
houses; the best built one among them was that in which we lodged. It
belonged to a family from New England, who about six years before had
penetrated to this spot, then covered with woods, and one hundred and
fifty miles distant from any other settlement. Settlements are now
scattered over the whole of the country which they had to pass through
in coming to it. The house was commodious and well built, and the people
decent, civil, and reputable. It is a very rare circumstance to meet
with such people amongst the first settlers on the frontiers; in general
they are men of a morose and savage disposition, and the very outcasts
of society, who bury themselves in the woods, as if desirous to shun the
face of their fellow creatures; there they build a rude habitation, and
clear perhaps three or four acres of land, just as much as they find
sufficient to provide their families with corn: for the greater part of
their food they depend on their rifle guns. These people, as the
settlements advance, are succeeded in general by a second set of men,
less savage than the first, who clear more land, and do not depend so
much upon hunting as upon agriculture for their subsistence. A third set
succeed these in turn, who build good houses, and bring the land into a
more improved state. The first settlers, as soon as they have disposed
of their miserable dwellings to advantage, immediately penetrate farther
back into the woods, in order to gain a place of abode suited to their
rude mode of life. These are the lawless people who encroach, as I have
before mentioned, on the Indian territory, and are the occasion of the
bitter animosities between the whites and the Indians. The second
settlers, likewise, when displaced, seek for similar places to what
those that they have left were when they first took them. I found, as I
proceeded through this part of the country, that there was scarcely a
man who had not changed his place of abode seven or eight different
times.
As none but very miserable horses were to be procured at this village on
the Genesee River, and as our expedition through the woods had given us
a relish for walking, we determined to proceed on foot, and merely to
hire horses to carry our baggage; accordingly, having engaged a pair,
and a boy to conduct them, we set off early on the second morning from
that of our arrival at the village, for the town of Bath.
[Sidenote: PICTURESQUE VIEWS.]
The country between these two places is most agreeably diversified with
hill and dale, and as the traveller passes over the hills which overlook
the Genesee River and the flats bordering upon it, he is entertained
with a variety of noble and picturesque views. We were particularly
struck with the prospect from a large, and indeed very handsome house in
its kind, belonging to a Major Wadsworth, built on one of these hills.
The Genesee River, bordered with the richest woods imaginable, might be
seen from it for many miles, meandering through a fertile country; and
beyond the flats, on each side of the river, appeared several ranges of
blue hills rising up one behind another in a most fanciful manner, the
whole together forming a most beautiful landscape. Here, however, in the
true American taste, the greatest pains were taking to diminish, and,
indeed, to shut out all the beauties of the prospect; every tree in the
neighbourhood of the house was felled to the ground; instead of a neat
lawn, for which the ground seemed to be singularly well disposed, a
wheat field was laid down in front of it; and at the bottom of the
slope, at the distance of two hundred yards from the house, a town was
building by the major, which, when completed, would effectually screen
from the dwelling house every sight of the river and mountains. The
Americans, as I before observed, seem to be totally dead to the beauties
of nature, and only to admire a spot of ground as it appears to be more
or less calculated to enrich the occupier by its produce.
The Genesee River takes its name from a lofty hill in the Indian
territory, near to which it passes, called by the Indians Genesee, a
word signifying, in their language, a grand extensive prospect.
[Sidenote: GENESEE RIVER.]
The flats bordering upon the Genesee River are amongst the richest lands
that are to be met with in North America, to the east of the Ohio.
Wheat, as I told you in a former letter, will not grow upon them; and it
is not found that the soil is impoverished by the successive crops of
Indian corn and hemp that are raised upon them year after year. The
great fertility of these flats is to be ascribed to the regular annual
overflowing of the Genesee River, whose waters are extremely muddy, and
leave no small quantity of slime behind them before they return to their
natural channel. That river empties itself into Lake Ontario: it is
somewhat more than one hundred miles in length, but only navigable for
the last forty miles of its course, except at the time of the
inundations; and even then the navigation is not uninterrupted the whole
way down to the lake, there being three considerable falls in the river
about ten miles above its mouth: the greatest of these falls is said to
be ninety feet in perpendicular height. The high lands in the
neighbourhood of the Genesee River are stony, and are not distinguished
for their fertility, but the valleys are all extremely fruitful, and
abound with rich timber.
The summers in this part of the country are by no means so hot as
towards the Atlantic, and the winters are moderate; it is seldom,
indeed, that the snow lies on the ground much longer than six or seven
weeks; but notwithstanding this circumstance, and that the face of the
country is so much diversified with rising grounds, yet the whole of it
is dreadfully unhealthy; scarcely a family escapes the baneful effects
of the fevers that rage here during the autumn season. I was informed by
the inhabitants, that much fewer persons had been attacked by the fever
the last season than during former years, and of these few a very small
number died, the fever having proved much less malignant than it was
ever known to be before. This circumstance led the inhabitants to hope,
that as the country became more cleared it would become much more
healthy. It is well known, indeed, that many parts of the country, which
were extremely healthy while they remained covered with wood, and which
also proved healthy after they had been generally cleared and settled,
were very much otherwise when the trees were first cut down: this has
been imputed to the vapours arising from the newly cleared lands on
their being first exposed to the burning rays of the sun, and which,
whilst the newly cleared spots remain surrounded by woods, there is not
a sufficient circulation of air to dispel. The unhealthiness of the
country at present does not deter numbers of people from coming to
settle here every year, and few parts of North America can boast of a
more rapid improvement than the Genesee country during the last four
years.
[Sidenote: SMALL TOWNS.]
In our way to Bath we passed through several small towns that had been
lately begun, and in these the houses were comfortable and neatly built;
but the greater part of those of the farmers were wretched indeed; one
at which we stopped for the night, in the course of our journey, had not
even a chimney or window to it; a large hole at the end of the roof
supplied the deficiency of both; the door was of such a nature, also, as
to make up in some measure for the want of a window, as it admitted
light on all sides. A heavy fall of snow happened to take place whilst
we were at this house, and as we lay stretched on our skins beside the
fire, at night, the snow was blown, in no small quantities, through the
crevices of the door, under our very ears.
At some of these houses we got plenty of venison, and good butter, milk,
and bread; but at others we could get nothing whatsoever to eat. At one
little village, consisting of three or four houses, the people told us,
that they had not even sufficient bread and milk for themselves; and,
indeed, the scantiness of the meal to which we saw them sitting down
confirmed the truth of what they said. We were under the necessity of
walking on for nine miles beyond this village before we could get any
thing to satisfy our appetites.
The fall of snow, which I have mentioned, interrupted our progress
through the woods very considerably the subsequent morning; it all
disappeared, however, before the next night, and in the course of the
third day from that on which we left the banks of the Genesee River we
reached the place of our destination.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_LETTER _ XXXVII.
_Account of Bath.—Of the Neighbourhood.—Singular Method taken to improve
it.—Speculators.—Description of one, in a Letter from an
American Farmer.—Conhorton Creek.—View of the Navigation
from Bath downwards.—Leave Bath for Newtown.—Embark in
Canoes.—Stranded in the Night.—Seek for Shelter in a neighbouring
House.—Difficulty of procuring Provisions.—Resume our
Voyage.—Lochartsburgh.—Description of the eastern Branch of the
Susquehannah River.—French Town.—French and Americans ill suited to
each other.—Wilkes-barré.—Mountains in the Neighbourhood.—Country
thinly settled towards Philadelphia.—Description of the Wind-Gap in
the Blue Mountains.—Summary Account of the Moravian Settlement at
Bethlehem.—Return to Philadelphia._
Philadelphia, November.
[Sidenote: BATH.]
BATH is a post town, and the principal town in the western parts of the
state of New York. Though laid out only three years ago, yet it already
contains about thirty houses, and is increasing very fast. Amongst the
houses are several stores or shops well furnished with goods, and a
tavern that would not be thought meanly of in any part of America. This
town was founded by a gentleman who formerly bore the rank of captain in
his Majesty’s service; he has likewise been the founder of Williamsburgh
and Falkner’s Town; and indeed to his exertions, joined to those of a
few other individuals, may be ascribed the improvement of the whole of
this part of the country, best known in America by the name of the
Genesee Country, or the County of the Lakes, from its being watered by
that river, and a great number of small lakes.
[Sidenote: LAND SPECULATION.]
The landed property of which this gentleman, who founded Bath, &c. has
had the active management, is said to have amounted originally to no
less than six millions of acres, the greater part of which belonged to
an individual in England. The method he has taken to improve this
property has been, by granting land in small portions and on long
credits to individuals who would immediately improve it, and in larger
portions and on a shorter credit to others who purchased on speculation,
the lands in both cases being mortgaged for the payment of the purchase
money; thus, should the money not be paid at the appointed time, he
could not be a loser, as the lands were to be returned to him, and
should they happen to be at all improved, as was most likely to be the
case, he would be a considerable gainer even by having them returned on
his hands; moreover, if a poor man, willing to settle on his land, had
not money sufficient to build a house and to go on with the necessary
improvements, he has at once supplied him, having had a large capital
himself, with what money he wanted for that purpose, or sent his own
workmen, of whom he keeps a prodigious number employed, to build a house
for him, at the same time taking the man’s note at three, four, or five
years, for the cost of the house, &c. with interest. If the man should
be unable to pay at the appointed time, the house, mortgaged like the
lands, must revert to the original proprietor, and the money arising
from its sale, and that of the farm adjoining, partly improved, will in
all probability be found to amount to more than what the poor man had
promised to pay for it: but a man taking up land in America in this
manner, at a moderate price, cannot fail, if industrious, of making
money sufficient to pay for it, as well as for a house, at the appointed
time.
The numbers that have been induced by these temptations, not to be met
with elsewhere in the States, to settle in the Genesee County, is
astonishing; and numbers are still flocking to it every year, as not one
third of the lands are yet disposed of. It was currently reported in the
county, as I passed through it, that this gentleman, of whom I have been
speaking, had, in the notes of the people to whom he had sold land
payable at the end of three, or four, or five years, the immense sum of
two millions of dollars. The original cost of the land was not more than
a few pence per acre; what therefore must be the profits!
It may readily be imagined, that the granting of land on such very easy
terms could not fail to draw crowds of speculators (a sort of gentry
with which America abounds in every quarter) to this part of the
country; and indeed we found, as we passed along, that every little town
and village throughout the country abounded with them, and each place,
in consequence, exhibited a picture of idleness and dissipation. The
following letter, supposed to come from a farmer, though somewhat
ludicrous, does not give an inaccurate description of one of these young
speculators, and of what is going on in this neighbourhood. It appeared
in a news-paper published at Wilkes-barré, on the Susquehannah, and I
give it to you verbatim, because, being written by an American, it will
perhaps carry more weight with it than any thing I could say on the same
subject.
[Sidenote: METHOD OF IMPROVING PROPERTY.]
“To the Printers of the Wilkes-barré Gazette.
“Gentlemen,
“It is painful to reflect, that speculation has raged to such a
degree of late, that honest industry, and all the humble virtues
that walk in her train, are discouraged and rendered
unfashionable.
“It is to be lamented too, that dissipation is sooner introduced
in new settlements than industry and economy.
“I have been led to these reflections by conversing with my son,
who has just returned from the Lakes or Genesee, though he has
neither been to the one or the other;—in short, he has been to
Bath, the celebrated Bath, and has returned both a speculator
and a gentleman; having spent his money, swopped away my horse,
caught the fever and ague, and, what is infinitely worse, that
horrid disorder which some call the terra-phobia[18].”
Footnote 18:
Our farmer does not seem to have well understood the import of
this word, but we may readily guess at his meaning.
“We can hear nothing from the poor creature now (in his ravings)
but of the captain and Billy—of ranges—townships—
numbers—thousands—hundreds—acres—Bath—
fairs—races—heats—bets—purses—silk
stockings—fortunes—fevers—agues, &c. &c. &c. My son has part of
a township for sale, and it is diverting enough to hear him
narrate its pedigree, qualities, and situation. In fine, it lies
near Bath, and the captain himself once owned, and for a long
time reserved it. It cost my son but five dollars per acre; he
was offered six in half a minute after his purchase; but he is
positively determined to have eight, besides some precious
reserves. One thing is very much in my boy’s favour—he has six
years credit. Another thing is still more so—he is not worth a
sous, nor ever will be at this rate. Previous to his late
excursion the lad worked well, and was contented at home on my
farm; but now work is out of the question with him. There is no
managing my boy at home; these golden dreams still beckon him
back to Bath, where, as he says, no one need either work or
starve; where, though a man may have the ague nine months in the
year, he may console himself in spending the other three
fashionably at the races.
“_A Farmer._”
“_Hanover, October 25th, 1796._”
The town of Bath stands on a plain, surrounded on three sides by hills
of a moderate height. The plain is almost wholly divested of its trees;
but the hills are still uncleared, and have a very pleasing appearance
from the town. At the foot of the hills runs a stream of pure water,
over a bed of gravel, which is called Conhocton Creek. There is a very
considerable fall in this creek just above the town, which affords one
of the finest seats for mills possible. Extensive saw and flour mills
have already been erected upon it, the principal saw in the former of
which gave, when we visited the mill, one hundred and twenty strokes in
a minute, sufficient to cut, in the same space of time, seven square
feet, superficial measure, of oak timber; yet the miller informed us,
that when the water was high it would cut much faster.
[Sidenote: CONHOCTON CREEK.]