and that the work can soon be reduced to practice by subsequent application. The progress already made in several branches of manufacture tend to inspire a strong hope as to future attainments. The fabrication of coarse cotton cloths, called domestics, which now undersell British goods of similar quality; the making of iron articles, of leather-hats, paper, types, engravings, the construction of steamboats, and the building of ships, are mentioned as flattering examples.
As the disposition to promote American manufactures is progressive, and as popular opinion dictates the measures of the government, it may be safe to infer that commerce with England is now in a deep decline, and that the erection of workshops (though it should be on a moderate scale) may be hailed as the liberation of the United States from foreign monopoly.
{251} LETTER XXI
Circuit Court of Indiana—Lawyers—Presiding Judge—Trial
and Whipping of a Thief—Lands—Crops—Fourteen-Mile-Creek—Salt
Springs—Town of Corydon—Drought-Barrens-Caves-Effects
of a Tornado—Formation
of the Higher Alluvial Bottom Lands
of the Ohio—More Barrens—Salt River—Large
Trees—Wild Vines—Steam-Boats—The Falls of the
Ohio—Prevalence of Bilious and Intermittent Fevers—Taciturnity—Americanisms.
Jeffersonville, (Indiana,) Sept. 8, 1820.
Since writing my last letter to you, I have made several short excursions into the country.—I was at Charlestown, the seat of justice in Clark county,[134] while the circuit
