my journey towards the Great Miami, and travelled for four hours over the finest tract of wood land I ever beheld. It was nearly a level, but healthy and dry, in consequence of being intersected by a number of rapid little streams, which carried off rains, and left no ponds for the creation of noxious and putriscent matter. The soil was deep and black, and the following timber grew in great magnitude, beauty, and abund

Besides these there were nine species of bark, spice, and leather wood bushes; the judus tree, the dog wood, and many others whose names and properties I had not capacity to ascertain. The land in every direction produced vast quan tities of grapes of various sorts, and cotton, growing in great perfection, shewed itself to be the natural production of the country. The sugar maple is the most valuable tree for an inland state. One tree can yield about ten pounds of sugar a year, and the labor is very trifling. The sap, which is extracted about February and March, is received in a vessel placed at the foot of a tree, under an incision made for the

purpose, and into which a piece of cane is inserted, and through which the sap, on a warm day after a frosty night, often flows in a continued stream for several hours. The collected sap of several trees tapped on the same day, is granulated, by the simple operation of boiling, to a sugar very near equal in flavor and whiteness to the best muscovado.

This valuable tree, like every other valuable gift of nature to this Western world, is hastening to dissolution and decline. In the spring of the year sugar camps extend through the whole country; and the persons employed give the trees such great and unnecessary wounds that their whole virtue runs out, and they perish perhaps in a season, So violent has been the prodigality of the people of Kentucky, that they have nearly annihilated the maple altogether, by hacking the trees with an axe and

never closing the wounds from which they drew the sap, though they well knew that the timber would perish from such treatment. Persons of better regulated minds tap the trees with an augur, insert a cane, draw off the liquor, and then stop up the flowing and the wound, by which means the trees recover their vigour, and afford fresh supplies from three to twelve years.

I soon came up to a small Indian camp of three tents, and a fire already prepared. I alighted, and advanced with affability and confidence to the oldest man of the party, who gave me his hand with much courtesy, and afterwards offered me his pipe with an expression of great kindness. I received it as the calumet of peace, and entered into an alliance of friendship, the violation of which on either side, according to the Indian's own rule, "would be deserving the wrath of the Good

Spirit, and the immediate punishment of Heaven."

Having fallen into such excellent company, I resolved to remain among them for the night, and, with permission, I pitched my tent and made my fire immediately in the vicinity of the spring which the Indians had chosen for their camp. I soon discovered that the party I fell in with was a family of the Mingoes a nation formerly powerful, inhabiting the banks of the Scioto, and now attached to that river, though reduced to the small number of forty-five! The family consisted of a father, a married son and daughter and five of their children, one of which was at the breast, and another but three years old. They manifested no manner of surprise on my arrival, and expressed no curiosity at the sight of the objects with which I was furnished, though they differed so entirely from any they had