Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/73

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towards which point is a long vista, so that it has not unaptly been compared to a barber's bason, with the rim cut out on one side for the chin. It was considered as a frontier only about twenty years ago; when some of the stoccado which had defended it when it had a garrison, was still to be seen.[19] It now contains about 80 houses, of brick, stone and logs. It has a court-house, a gaol, and school-house, and I was informed that a house is used as a place of worship for any Christian sect, and that sometimes a travelling minister of one or other of the various divisions into which, to its disgrace, Christianity is split, stops to remind the inhabitants of their religious duties.[20]

{50} Apropos of religion.—Asking for a book last night, my landlord sent me Richard Brother's prophecies, with which farrago of enthusiastick madness, I read myself to sleep. The town is supplied with water from a spring half a mile distant, by means of wooden pipes, which conduct it to a reservoir in the centre: And some chalybeate springs strongly impregnated with sulphur, have lately been discovered in the neighbourhood; to which, according to custom, whether with justice or otherwise, great medicinal virtues are attributed.[21] This town was incorporated in*