hv_coatesi_account_1798_020

place there is a cut road from Pittsburg, but wenow enter the wilderness where a number ofmarked trees were to be our guides. Our journey this day was trulywild and romantic, and a tedious day's ride; sometimes we had a blind path and some-times none; indeed our way for badness almostsurpasses description. To delineate the bushes,logs, trees, stones, roots, and bogs through andover which we passed would require great in-genuity. The woods were very thick, with muchunderbrush and a succession of logs to crosssome of which we jumped our horses over, andothers with difficulty we got round; in otherplaces we were in frequent danger of getting ourhorses legs fast or broken in the cavities betweenthe rocks; and sometimes had to descendbanks almost perpendicular into swamps, in which we found the roots of the firs and hemlocksvery troublesome travelling over. This stage calledtwenty four miles, appeared to us very long taking(12) twelve hours to get through, and for twenty milesof the way there was not one house. The rocks, stones, old logs and the whole surface of the ground under the forest ofpine trees, were covered with moss, resem-bling for thickness a fleece of wool. Some of the large rocks more than