ders of rivers and navigable streams, are the theatres of business; and the Americans are too indolent to live on the high grounds, and to have the trouble of descending daily for the purpose of pursuing their avocations. They every moment see the consequences of this conduct; they see their friends fall off, their wives and children languish, and their own constitutions fail; still they persist; and prefer inactivity and disease to health and comfort, when the latter are to be purchased by exertion. Before I leave the subject of these two rivers, I must give you some few particulars of the manner in which their commerce is conducted. I do not conceive that I assert too much, though it may be surprising to you, in saying, that the entire business of these waters is conducted without the use of money. I have already enumerated the produce; consisting chiefly of flour, corn, salt, cyder, apples, live hogs, bacon, glass, earthenware, &c. I have also mentioned the little towns and settlements along them. To such places persons come from Baltimore and Philadelphia with British goods, which they exchange for the above productions; charging on their articles at least 300 per cent. and allowing the farmer and manufacturer but very low terms for theirs. Some of these prices are as follows: whiskey, two shillings a gallon; live hogs, two dollars and a half a hundredweight; bacon, three dollars a hundred weight; flour, three dollars a barrel; corn, a quarter-dollar a bushel; butter, an eighth of a dollar a pound; cyder, four dollars a barrel; native sugar, a sixteenth of a dollar a pound; and so on in proportion, for any other produce of the country. The storekeepers make two annual collections of these commodities; send them down the rivers to New Orleans; and there receive an immense profit in Spanish dollars, or bills on Philadelphia at a short date. They then purchase British and West India goods of all kinds; send them by waggons, over the mountains, to their stores in the western country, where they always keep clerks; and again make their distributions and collections; descend the waters; and return by the same circuitous mountainous route, of at least 5650 miles, as nearly as can be calculated on an average between the extreme head of the wa ters and Pittsburg, thus: Miles From each station to New Orleans 2300 From New Orleans to Philadelphia by sea 3000 From Philadelphia back to each station, by the 350 A few, on receiving their cash at New Orleans, return by land through the wilderness, Tennasee, and Kentucky, to their stations at and above Pittsburg; but this is seldom done. The distance which is thus performed is only 1300 miles. These storekeepers are obliged to keep every article which it is possible that the fariner and manufacturer may want. Each of their shops exhibits a complete medley; a magazine where are to be had both a needle and an anchor, a tin pot and a large copper boiler, a child's whistle and a pianoforte, a ring dial and a clerk, a skein of thread and trimmings of lace, a check frock and a muslin gown, a frieze coat and a superfine cloth, a glass of whiskey and a barrel of brandy, a gill of vinegar and hogshead of Madeira wine, &c. Hence you will perceive that money is not always necessary as a circulating medium: however, as farmers and manufacturers advance in business, and find their produce more than equal to the wants of their families, they contract with the storekeeper to receive the annual balance of the latter, either in cash, or in land to an equal amount; for though no person cultivates a tenth part of the land that he possesses, every one is animated with the rage of making further accessions. Thus the great landholders ultimately absorb all the hard money; and as they principally reside in the large towns in the Atlantic States, the money finds its way back to those, and leaves many places here without a single dollar. This is productive of distressing incidents to small farmers who supply the markets with provisions; for whatever they have to sell, whether trivial or important, they receive in return nothing but an order on a store for the value in goods; and as the wants of such persons are few, they seldom know what articles to take. The storekeepers turn this circumstance to advantage, and frequently force on the customer a thing for which he has no use; or, what is worse, when the order is trifling, tell him to sit down at the door and drink the amount if he chooses. As this is often complied with, a market day is mostly a scene of drunkenness and contention, fraud, cunning, and duplicity; the storekeeper denying the possession of a good article, till he fails in imposing a bad one. I have known a person ask for a pair of shoes, and receive for answer that there were no shoes in the store, but some capital gin that could be recommended to him. I have heard another ask for a rifle gun, and be answered that there were no rifles, but that he could be accommodated with the best Dutch looking glasses and German flutes in the western country. Another was directed by his wife to bring her a warming pau, smoothing irons, and scrubbing brushes; but these were denied; and a wooden cuckoo-clock, which the children would not take a week to demolish, was sent home in their stead. I could not help smiling at these absurdities, though I believe they deserve the name of impositions, till an incident reduced me to the condition of those whom I have just described. I rode an excellent horse to the head of the waters; and finding him of no further use from my having to take boat there, I proposed selling him to the best bidder. I was offered in exchange for him salt, flour, hogs, land, cast iron salt pans, Indian corn, whiskey-in short, every thing but what I wanted, which was money. The highest offer made, was cast iron salt pans to the amount of a hundred and thirty dollars. I asked the proprietor of this heavy commodity, how much cash he would allow me instead of such an incumbrance; his answer was, without any shame or hesitation, forty dollars at most. I preferred the pans; though they are to be exchanged again for glass bottles at Pittsburg, tobacco or hemp in Kentucky, and dollars in New Orleans. These various commercial processes may occupy twelve months; nor am I then certain of the amount, unless I give 30 per cent. to secure it. The words buy and sell are nearly unknown here; in business nothing is heard but the word trade. "Will you trade your watch, your gun, pistols, horses? &c." means, "Will you change your watch, gun, &c. for corn, pigs, cattle, Indian meal ? &c." But you must anticipate all this from the absence of money. LETTER VII. Traces of a general deluge. Other great natural phenomena, difficult to be accounted for. Peculiar wonders of the vegetable and of the fossil kingdom. List of native plants classed into medicinal, esculent, ornamental,and useful. Vegetable products of the earth. Important inquiries and suggestions concerning some of them. Abundance of vegetable and mineral productions here,which might be turned to great account if properly explored; American warriors; statesmen, and debates in Congress; divines, lawyers, physicians, and philosophers. Buffon's assertion correct, that both man and inferior animals degenerate in America. Pittsburg, January, 1806. BEFORE I leave this place, it may be interesting and profitable to take a general survey of the face of the coun-try, and to describe some of its primitive productions.. That Moses gave an account worthy of credit, of the primeval state of the globe, this part of the world fully demonstrates. It abounds in irresistible proofs of a general deluge, of a miraculous effusion of water from the clouds and from the great abyss; or such an effusion may, possibly have originated from the great. Southern Ocean; running, from interruptions,. a south east course, and driving every object before it to the north west; where it deposited remains now entirely unknown, or appertaining to regions at a distance of several thousand miles. Whether we inspect the plains, penetrate the cavernous mountains,. or climb their broken sides, the remnants of organized bo dies are every where found, buried in the various strata which form the external surface of the earth. Immense collections of shells lie scattered or sunk around,. and some on elevations of fifteen thousand feet above the present level of the sea. Fishes are frequently found in the veins of slate, and all kinds of vegetable impressions occur at heights and depths equally astonishing. Trees of different sorts, and various plants, are found in the greatest depths or on the loftiest mountains, mixed with marine remains. Trees have also been deposited on. the summits of mountaius, where, from the degree of cold which prevails there, they could not now possibly grow; therefore they must either have grown there at a time when the temperature of these summits was warmer by being less elevated above the sea, or have been deposited there by its inundations. It appears by the general face of the country, that the retreat of the sea was gradual. Large plains of different and successive elevations, a uniformity and regularity in the strata, and a variety of other circumstances, indicate the departure of the waters to have been governed by a cause whose action was regular, uniform, and long continued. Hence numerous objects which are now viewed as curious exotics, might have been indigenous at the period of a milder clime. This idea is justified by our knowledge of the effect of elementary conflicts in other situations. The country near Ararat is now unfit to bear the olive tree, as it did* when the Caspian and Euxine seas were joined; the soil having been since chilled by its distance from the sea, and having suffered from the absence of matter with which it was accustomed to be impregnated. Independently of the appearance given to this portion of the globe, by the progress of the invasion of the waters from the great abyss, and their subsequent retreat, it presents features which must have been the result of causes difficult to be accounted for. These features manifest themselves in the extraordinary character and form of the mountains; in the beds of the rivers, which are not excavated by the constant flow of their water, but seem rent asunder (as it were) to give them instant passage; and by other phenomena which must have proceeded from violent earthquakes; igneous fusion; or elementary fire (the principle of heat coeval with the creation of matter) acting upon metals, sulphur, carbonic and bituminous substances, and thus occasioning vast eruptions which split the face of the earth, and gave it eccentric and new characters. Huge rocks cast from off the summits of hills, make room for lakes; entire ridges of stony mountains separate, and yield a passage to the pressing floods; immense caverns resound beneath the feet; and Nature, in disorder, chaos, and confusion, seems pleased to exhibit Genesis, chapter 8, verse 11. |