settlement from M. Carpenters where we breakfasted. Rode about
twenty seven and an half Miles when if we had kept
the common road we should not have rode no more than
Twenty. ThereforeAt this ferry the keeper John Harris

from
Harrisburg in Pennsylvania, we found a very convenient boat in which
the ferryman said he had carried thirty head of Cattle
at a time. There was seven of Us in Company with Horses
who all got into the wind being fair we were just twenty
Minutes by my watch from the time we started from
one shore untill we got out on the opposite one the distance
by measurement we were inform'd had been taken when
the waters were frozen one & a quarter miles & some
perch. Now on this shore we met with another Pennsylvan
ian of the name of James Bennit near Harrisburg his wife of
the family of the Richardsons who were at the Valley forge have
been settled here six years. This ferry appears to be a place
of much business as its the alone passage by land to the Western
country, the lake forty miles in length & in some places
four in Breadth. Here we Bated our horses on hay &
got dinner, having in our company the Post who
rides from Whites town to Canadockway thought it best
to keep his Company notwithstanding it rain'd, having
began since our getting over the ferry, he proposing reach
ing Geneva this afternoon which should was in distance
fourteen miles; therefore mounted our horses in the rain and
as we rode the rain increased so that it may be said we
had indeed a very Rainy Ride all the way till we got
to port. This land between the two lakes call'd the Military Tract unsettled except a
very few new beginnings, of a good fertile appearance Timbered
not unlike our best land the land in our Country of the best
Quallity