I was now in the town of Tarleton, as there was but one other house besides the tavern; three or four more were however just going to be built, and our landlord had no doubt of its soon becoming a smart town. The lots were sold at from sixteen to twenty-five dollars each.
Lybrant's is one of the best and most reasonable inns I had met with in my tour. At one o'clock we set down to a most excellent breakfast of good coffee, roast fowls, chicken pie, potatoes, bread and butter, and cucumbers both sliced and pickled, all not only good, but delicate and fine even to the pastry, which is very uncommon in this country, and our charge was only a quarter of a dollar.
For eight miles from Tarleton, the road runs through low, rich and miry black oak woods, and now and then a small prairie, and settlements not {199} nearer each other than every two miles. The country then rising into hills the road improves, but it continues equally thinly inhabited, the settlements being mostly on what is called the old county road, which runs parallel to the state road about a mile and a half to the northward of it, and is better and shorter by a mile between Chilicothe and New Lancaster.
After riding a mile among the hills I passed Stukey's tavern, for six miles beyond which the face of the country is very picturesque; the tops of the hills terminating in rocks, some impending and some perpendicular, while the road leads through a defile winding round their bottoms. The whole country is covered with dwarf oak, and other low shrubs and bushes and some thinly scattered black oaks of stunted growth. This scarcity of timber is partly owing to the poverty of the soil, and partly to the effect of fire, which must have gone through this whole district of six or seven miles, and that at no very distant period back, from many evident marks still remaining. What a grand yet awful scene must have been such a tract of woods in flames!
