with wooden pins. Nails are rarely to be found
in any part of the house. Their floors are hewn
out of the timber, and pinned to the sleepers
with wooden pins. They clear their land by
killing the timber, which is done by girdling the
trees, that is by cutting the bark around the
trees to the wood. They then proceed to the
cultivation of the soil, which produces them abun-
dant crops.

It is a common practice with them to sow
small grain upon the original surface, which is
harrowed in, and such is the looseness and light-
ness of the soil, there seems but little necessity
for the plough in raising the first crop of grain.

Our road led us across a water of the Ohio
called Captena; also several streams belonging to
a river called Stillwater; thus named from its
slow, silent progress to the Muskingum.

13th.

This day we travelled twenty-five miles
and reached Beathe's Ordinary

. We have had
a very disagreeable day's ride. A continued fall
of rain, hail, and snow, and the road very miry
and fatiguing to our horses. The land through
which we have passed not quite so good gene-
rally as that noted yesterday. We, however,
saw considerable bodies of excellent land, parti-
cularly of bottoms. Some of them were of far
greater extent than any we have heretofore met
with, being heavily timbered and very rich.
Scarcely a settlement has yet been made in this