SW_JC1796_041

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 Pennsylvanian 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 reaching 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