and furnaces, not nearly however so productive as these. The Salt Lick springs, which are the strongest in this western country, are not half so strongly impregnated with salt, as the water of the ocean, yielding only about one pound of salt, from sixty pounds of water.
{145} What a subject of admiration does it not afford to the moralizing philosopher, that such a provision should be made by all bountiful nature, or rather by nature's God, for supplying both the intellectual and brute creation, with an article so necessary to both, in the heart of an immense continent, so remote from any ocean.
There are three or four houses at the landing, which was intended as the scite of the county town, but the seat of the courts has been established four miles lower down the Ohio.[111]
We breakfasted on good coffee, biscuit, meat and cheese, at the house of one M'Bride, an Irishman, who has a fine family of ten children all living.
CHAPTER XXIII
Graham's station—Brush Creek—A family travelling on
a visit—Fine scenery—Massey's island—Manchester—Brookes's—Madison—Maysville—Failure
of three
towns, and an intended glass house.
At eight o'clock we proceeded to drop down the river. The hills on each side still continued broken, separate, and pointed, and the bottoms narrow. The appearance of the timber since we passed Little Sandy, indicated the soil to be not so rich as above that river, it being of a much smaller growth.
About eight miles from Salt Lick we passed on the left a fine settlement of several large farms and good farm
