SW_GH1804_022

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