who keeps a respectable inn. What pleased me most was my having accomplished my journey, as I began to be fatigued with travelling over so mountainous a country; for during an extent of about a hundred and eighty miles, which I had travelled almost entirely on foot, I do not think I walked fifty fathoms without either ascending or descending.
{58} CHAP. VI
Description of Pittsburgh.—Commerce of the Town and adjacent Countries with New Orleans.—Construction of large Vessels.—Description of the Rivers Monongahela and Alleghany.—Towns situated on their Banks.—Agriculture.—Maple Sugar.
Pittsburgh is situated at the conflux of the rivers
Monongahela and Alleghany, the uniting of which forms
the Ohio. The even soil upon which it is built is not
more than forty or fifty acres in extent. It is in the form
of an angle, the three sides of which are enclosed either
by the bed of the two rivers or by stupendous mountains.
The houses are principally brick, they are computed to be
about four hundred, most of which are built upon the
Monongahela; that side is considered the most commercial
part of the town. As a great number of the houses
are separated from each other by large spaces, the {59}
whole surface of the angle is completely taken up. On
the summit of the angle the French built Fort Duquesne,
which is now entirely destroyed, and nothing more is
seen than the vestige of the ditches that surrounded it.[20]
