whose magnificent garden I had an opportunity of seeing near Philadelphia. This amateur was very intimate with my father; and I can never forget the marks of benevolence that I received from him and Mr. Mulhenberg, as well as the concern they both expressed for the success of the long journey I had undertaken.
On the 27th of June I set out from Lancaster for Shippensburgh. There were only four of us in the stage, which was fitted up to hold twelve passengers. Columbia, situated upon the Susquehannah, is the first town that we arrived at; it is composed of about fifty houses, scattered here and there, and almost all built with wood; at this place ends the turnpike road.
It is not useless to observe here, that in the United States they give often the name of town to a group of seven or eight houses, and that the mode of constructing them is not the same everywhere. At {29} Philadelphia the houses are built with brick. In the other towns and country places that surround them, the half, and even frequently the whole, is built with wood; but at places within seventy or eighty miles of the sea, in the central and southern states, and again more particularly in those situated to the Westward of the Alleghany Mountains, one third of the inhabitants reside in log houses. These dwellings are made with the trunks of trees, from twenty to thirty feet in length, about five inches diameter, placed one upon another, and kept up by notches cut at their extremities. The roof is formed with pieces of similar length to those that compose the body of the house, but not quite so thick, and gradually sloped on each side.
- [Footnote: remained until his death in 1807. He was much interested in botany, and
devoted all his leisure to that pursuit, being a member of the American Philosophical Society, and, as Michaux notes, in correspondence with many scientists.—Ed.]
