small attendance in the woods, where they breed and maintain themselves all the year round. Before the winter, Mr. Digby proposes taking a drove of cattle and horses over the mountains, to the great Eastern marts of Baltimore and Philadelphia. Thus, from the nature of the country, and the tyranny of circumstances, we find an industrious, intelligent, active man, abandons a heavy course of agriculture, and turn his views to a system of farming, from which immense wealth is to be derived, though his nearest market, Baltimore, is at the distance of eleven hundred miles; and New Orleans from sixteen to seventeen hundred! He did not consider the spot he was on unhealthy, but there were swamps in the rear of his plantation which emitted infectious smells, and caused a nausea when he had occasion to remain in or near them. His fine meadows were wood-swamps till he cleared off the trees and drained them into creeks communicating with the low country and with the river. He has no other fault with the land than that it is too richforcing every thing into a stalk like timber, and making the hay so course, that he often destroys the first growth; and only saves the after-grass when a foot high or under. The Indian corn produces one hundred bushels per acre, and grows on a stem of such strength, that cattle, when it spreads its tossel, and has shed and received its farinacious impregnation, are allowed to rove among it without being capable of rendering it any injury. The land must be weakened and reduced by successive and heavy crops of corn, before it be fit for wheat. Put into unreduced land, wheat rambles ten or twelve feet high, and bears little fruit. Fifty and sixty bushis a common crop ! els to an acre Vegetables succeed remarkably well, and fruit-trees bear at times in too great profusion, and at other times do not bear at all. The depth of the soil was never ascertained. Where drains were made twelve feet deep, nothing but a rich black mould appeared-a compost of decayed vegetable substance, accumulating some thousand years! Furnished with this information, and refreshed with a good breakfast, I took leave of Mr. D. and pursued my journey, the particulars of which you will have in my next. LETTER XXVI. Dayton town, its fine situation-A snake or snapping tortoise-Timber of this country -The sugar maple-An Indian camp. Cincinnati, August, 1806. ON leaving Mr. Digby's, I continued my journey up the Little Miami for about ten miles, when I arrived at some hilly and broken land, which deterred me from pursuing a northern route any longer, especially as I understood that the ground held similar features as high up as the Pickawee Plains, and other prairies with the locality and nature of which I was previously acquainted. Accordingly I bent a west by north course by compass, which I judged would strike the Great Miami near Dayton, a small town lately built on the confluence of that and the Mad River. The distance from the Little Miami, from whence I turned to that part of the Great Miami, for which I made, I conjectured to be between forty-five and sixty miles. The surface in the first instance, swelled into the hills, and sunk into dales of great fertility and richness, and was much more sound and less noxious than that I traversed the preceding day. One particular part contained a greater variety of advantage and beauty than I ever beheld embraced in the same compass. Entering an opening between the feet of two hills, through which rushed a rapid transparent stream, I had a view of a circular piece of ground so thinly wooded, that the hill by which it was girt was distinctly seen crowned with sumptuous trees, representing a fine amphi |