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Beyond Penn's Treaty

Journal of a Journey

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17th.

A fine day. Joshua

appearing some better,
eighteen or twenty of the Indians came to see us and
bade us farewell. About one o'clock we set off, Hal-
liday Jackson
bearing us company. We took an
affectionate farewell of our other two friends, after
an uniting opportunity just before parting. Rode
about four miles up the river through middling good
land to the house of one of the old chiefs who was
with us yesterday, and who had his horse standing
hitched ready to pilot us up the river to a small set-
tlement of Indians. On riding along we discovered
they had the day before opened and cut the path
wider and better for several miles just on our ac-
count; and on our way we passed a new settlement,
made this summer by Halftown, on some most excel-
lent land. Where he lives he has cleared and fenced
two or three acres and got it in with corn and vines.
After crossing the river we rode to another chief's
house where there are several cabins, and pitched our
tent and lodged on the river bank. They were kind
to us in their way, and gave us two very good squir-
rels. This being ten miles up the river.

18th.

Being a rainy morning, we set off having
Sunfish

and Halliday Jackson for our guides, which
we found to be very useful to use before night, it be-
ing a very wet day and much of the way so swampy
and difficult that we should have been much beset
without them. Abundance of the way through, the
wilderness is so stopped up with wind falls of timber,
many of which are so large in low ground and fallen
one on another for a mile together, that to a stranger
it would seem altogether impassable. Many of these
with great difficulty we have to jump our horses over,
and perhaps in mud half leg deep; and many of
them were so large no horse could leap them. We
went up the river three miles and then took up a
valley about twelve miles, down which a creek of
about the size of our branch of Brandywine runs.
Excellent good land all the way up, there being
abundance of sugar maple, beech, ash, birch, and
bass. I have seen sugar maple in abundance that
were three feet over and near one hundred feet high;
the other timber in proportion. We then ascended
a very high mountain; good land up it, and on the
top still good, being covered with very heavy, lofty
timber some of which is white pine, some poplar,
and the other as before mentioned. Before we as-
cended the mountain we came to the heads of springs
within a few perches of each other, some of which
run into the Allegheny and some into the Cattarau-
gus. The former empties into the Ohio; the latter
into Lake Erie and so down the river St. Lawrence.
In some places, abundance of wild cherry three and
four feet in diameter, perhaps sixty and some eighty
feet to the first limb. But as I do not intend to give
a minute description of the land, water, and timber,
only to give a sketch of what appeared remarkable,
suffice it to say that in this day's ride, (which was a
very wet one through abundance of swampy land), I
think the land was generally good and heavy loaded
with timber. This day's ride, twenty-four miles.
Pitched our tent by a spring amongst lofty timber,
and just after we got our fire made and tent raised, it
began to rain very fast, and was an exceeding wet
night, accompanied with a great wind or storm inso-
much that we heard the tree falling almost all
around us. Our situation appeared to be somewhat
trying; but as we had no alternative, soon composed
oursevles and went to sleep.

[To be Continued.]