- nually several thousand hogsheads, from a thousand to
twelve hundred pounds each. The price of it is from two to three dollars per hundred weight.
{184} Hemp, both raw and manufactured, is also an article of exportation. In the same year, 1802, there has been sent out of the country, raw 42,048 pounds, and 2402 hundred weight, converted into cables and various sorts of cordage.
Many of the inhabitants cultivate flax. The women manufacture linen of it for their families, and exchange the surplus with the trades-people for articles imported from Europe. These linens, though coarse, are of a good quality; yet none but the inferior inhabitants use them, the others giving a preference to Irish linens, which comprise a considerable share of their commerce. Although whiter, they are not so good as our linens of Bretagne. The latter would have found a great sale in the western states, had it not been for yielding Louisiana; since it is now clearly demonstrated that the expense of conveying goods which go up the river again from New Orleans to Louisville is not so great as that from Philadelphia to Limestone.
Although the temperature of the climate in Kentucky and other western states is favourable to the culture of fruit trees, these parts have not been populated long enough for them to be brought to any great perfection. Beside, the Americans are by no means so industrious or interested in this kind of {185} culture as the European states. They have confined themselves, at present, to the planting of peach and apple trees.
The former are very numerous, and come to the greatest perfection. There are five or six species of them, some forward, and others late, of an oval form, and much larger than our garden peaches. All the peaches grow
