unoffending travellers, while the rest of the company bivouacked near their wagons, and reposed themselves, like veteran soldiers, in their tents and wagons.
We gladly departed from the inhospitable Alleghany or Apalachian mountains, which extended from the river St. Lawrence to the confines of Georgia, [17] and which run nearly parallel to the sea-shore and dividing the rivers, which flow into the Atlantic on the east, from those that run into the lakes and into the Mississippi on the west. The part we passed was in the state of Pennsylvania. Our next stretch was for the river Monongahela, where we took the steam-boat for Pittsburg.[1] This town has grown in size and wealth, in a few years, surprisingly. It is two hundred and thirty miles from Baltimore; three hundred form Philadelphia. It is built on a point of land jutting out towards the river Ohio, and washed on each side by the Alleghany and Monongahela, which rivers uniting are lost in the noble Ohio. It was originally a fortress built by the French, called Fort du Quesne; being afterwards taken by the English in 1759, it was called fort Pitt, in honor of the famous William Pitt, afterward Earl of Chatham, under whose administration it was taken from the French, together with all Canada.[2] On this spot a city has been reared by the Americans, bearing the name Pittsburg, which has thriven in a surprising manner by its numerous manufactories in glass, as well as in all the metals in common use. To call it the Birmingham of American is to underrate its various
- ↑ The expedition proceeded by way of Brownsville, and arrived at Pittsburg on April 8, 1832. Pittsburg, as the point of departure for the West, is described by most early travelers. In particular, consult Cuming's Tour, in our volume iv, pp. 242-255.—Ed.
- ↑ For Fort Duquesne, see F. A. Michaux's Travels, in our volume iii, p. 156, note 20; for Fort Pitt, Post's Journals, in our volume i, p. 281, note 107, and A. Michaux's Travels, volume iii, p. 32, note 11.—Ed.
