them haberdashery goods, and more especially tea and coffee, taking some of their produce in return.
More than half of those who inhabit the borders of the Ohio, are again the first inhabitants, or as they are called in the United States, the first settlers, a kind of men who cannot settle upon the soil that they have cleared, and who under pretence of finding a better land, a more wholesome country, a greater abundance of game, push forward, incline perpetually towards the most distant points of the American population, and go and settle in the neighbourhood of the savage nations, whom they brave even in their own country. Their ungenerous mode of treating them stirs up frequent broils, that brings on bloody wars, in which they generally fall victims; {112} rather on account of their being so few in number, than through defect of courage.
Prior to our arrival at Marietta, we met one of these settlers, an inhabitant of the environs of Wheeling, who accompanied us down the Ohio, and with whom we travelled for two days. Alone in a canoe from eighteen to twenty feet long, and from twelve to fifteen inches broad, he was going to survey the borders of the Missouri[36]] for a hundred and fifty miles beyond its embouchure. The excellent quality of the land that is reckoned to be more fertile there than that on the borders of the Ohio, and which the Spanish government at that time ordered to be distributed gratis, the quantity of beavers, elks, and more especially bisons, were the motives that induced him to emigrate into this remote part of the country,
