Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/164

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  • the remains of a floating mill carried away last winter by the

floods.

Half a mile below this is a remarkable point, and fine beach of coarse gravel on the right, and a delightfully situated farm almost opposite.

Judge Boon has a good house on the left about three miles further down,[104] opposite to which on the Ohio side is the beginning of French Grant.

{137} The Ohio which had ran generally between the south and west, (except for about thirty miles near Le Tart's falls where it takes a northerly course) had altered its direction to the north westward, from the confluence of Big Sandy river.



CHAPTER XXI


French Grant—Dreadful epidemick disorder—Distressing scene occasioned by it—Mons Gervais and Burrsburgh—Greenupsburgh—Power of hunger proved—Little Sciota river—Portsmouth—Paroquets.


A little below judge Boon's we were hailed by a man on the Ohio shore. We landed and found him to be a Mr. White, who had put a box of medicines into our boat at Marietta, for doctor Merrit, and having travelled on horseback had arrived here before us.

We now delivered it to White, who, hearing A—— call me Doctor, he requested me to stop and visit a Mr. Hunt, who with two of his men and his housekeeper, were suffering under a most severe epidemick malady, which was then raging in and about French Grant, and which doctor Merrit, the only medical man in the settlement, had been attacked with yesterday. Prompted by humanity, we walked to