however I assured myself it was by striking it in several places with a billet. Our host told us that if we would spend the day with him he would {87} shew us others as large, in several parts of the wood, within two or three miles of the river. This circumstance supports the observations which my father made, when travelling in that part of the country, that the poplar and palm are, of all the trees in North America, those that attain the greatest diameter.
"About fifteen miles," said he, "up the river Muskingum, in a small island of the Ohio, we found a palm-tree, or platanus occidentalis, the circumference of which, five feet from the surface of the earth, where the trunk was most uniform, was forty feet four inches, which makes about thirteen feet in diameter. Twenty years prior to my travels, General Washington had measured this same tree, and had found it nearly of the same dimensions. I have also measured palms in Kentucky, but I never met with any above fifteen or sixteen feet in circumference. These trees generally grow in marshy places.
"The largest tree in North America, after the palm, is the poplar, or liriodendron tulipifera. Its circumference is sometimes fifteen, sixteen, and even eighteen feet: Kentucky is their native country; between Beard Town and Louisville we {88} saw several parts of the wood which were exclusively composed of them. The soil is clayey, cold and marshy; but never inundated.
"The trees that are usually found in the forests that border the Ohio are the palm, or platanus occidentalis; the poplar, the beach-tree, the magnolia acuminata, the celtis occidentalis, the acacia, the sugar-maple, the red maple, the populus nigra, and several species of nut-trees; the most common shrubs are, the annona triloba, the evonimus latifolius, and the laurus bensoin."
