- shon's farm house, ten miles from Brush creek, where finding
that we could be accommodated for the night, we agreed to stay, and were regaled with boiled corn, wheaten griddle cake, butter and milk for supper, which our exercise through the day gave us good appetites for, but I did not enjoy my bed so {186} much as my supper, notwithstanding it was the second best in the house, for besides that it was not remarkable for its cleanliness, I was obliged to share it with my old companion; fatigue however soon reconciled me to it, and I slept as well as if I had lain on down between lawn sheets.
Marshon is from the Jerseys, he has a numerous family grown up, and is now building a large log house on which he means to keep a tavern. Three of his sons play the violin by ear—they had two shocking bad violins, one of which was of their own manufacture, on which they scraped away without mercy to entertain us, which I would most gladly have excused, though I attempted to seem pleased, and I believe succeeded in making them think I was so.
The land is here the worst I had seen since I had left the banks of the Ohio; it had been gradually worse from about two miles behind squire Leadham's, and for the last two miles before we come to Marshon's it had degenerated into natural prairies or savannas, with very little wood, and none deserving the name of timber, but well clothed with brush and low coarse vegetation.
{187} CHAPTER XXX
Heistant's—Lashley goes on before—Sinking springs—Fatiguing
road—Broadley's—Musical shoemaker—Talbot's—Dashing
travellers—Bainbridge—Platter's—Irish
schoolmaster—Reeves's—Paint creek—Cattail
swamp—Rogers's North fork of Paint—Arrival
at Chilicothe—Meeker's.
On Tuesday morning the 11th August, we arose with the dawn, and notwithstanding there was a steady small
