{194} The situation of the town, which is the capital of the state,[140] is on an elevated and extensive plain of nearly ten thousand acres of as fine a soil as any in America, partly in cultivation and partly covered with its native forests.
This plain is nearly surrounded by the Scioto, which turning suddenly to the N. E. from its general southerly course, leaves the town to the southward of it, and then forms a great bend to the eastward and southward.
Water street which runs about E. by N. parallel to the Scioto, is half a mile long, and contains ninety houses. It is eighty-four feet wide, and would be a fine street, had not the river floods caved in the bank in one place near the middle, almost into the centre of it. There is now a lottery on foot, to raise money for securing the bank against any further encroachments of the river. Main street, parallel to Water street, is one hundred feet wide, as is Market street which crosses both at right angles, and in which is the market-house, a neat brick building eighty feet long. The court-house in the same street is neatly built of freestone, on an area of forty-five by forty-two feet, with a semicircular projection in the rear, in which is the bench for the judges. It has an octangular belfry rising from the roof, painted white with green lattices, which is an ornament to the town, as is the small plain belfry of the Presbyterian meeting-house, a handsome brick building in Main street; in which street also is a small brick Methodist meeting-house. These are the only places of publick worship in the town, if I except the court-house, which is used occasionally by the Episcopalians and other sects.
{195} The whole number of dwelling houses in Chilicothe, as I counted them, is two hundred and two, besides four
