profits. All the specie collected in the course of trade is sent by land to Philadelphia; I have seen convoys of this kind that consisted of fifteen or twenty horses.[42] The trouble of conveyance is so great that they give the preference to Bank bills of the United States, which bear a discount of two per cent. The merchants in all parts take them, but the inhabitants of the country will not, through fear of their being forged. I must again remark, that there is not a single species of colonial produce in Kentucky, except gensing, that will bear the expense of carriage by land from that state to Philadelphia; as it is demonstrated that twenty-five pounds weight {129} would cost more expediting that way, even going up the Ohio, than a thousand by that river, without reckoning the passage by sea, although we have had repeated examples that the passage from New Orleans to Philadelphia or New York is sometimes as long as that from France to the United States.
The current coin in the states of Kentucky and Tennessea has the same divisions as in Virginia. They reckon six shillings to the dollar or piastre. The hundreds which nearly correspond with our halfpence, although having a forced currency, do not appear in circulation. The quarters, eighths, and sixteenths of a piastre form the small white money. As it is extremely scarce, it is supplied by a very indifferent method, but which appears necessary, and consists in cutting the dollars into pieces. As every body is entitled to make this division, there are people who do it for the sake of gain; at the same time in the retail trade the seller will generally abate in his
