Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 12).djvu/97

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ON BRADDOCK'S ROAD
93

before he was fairly done with it, and that I presume was the only kind of cleaning it ever got. While the dodgers were baking, the bear meat was frying, and what he called coffee was also making, which was composed of an article that grew some hundred or one thousand miles north of where the coffee tree ever did grow. You now have the bill of fare that we sat down to, and the manner in which it was prepared; but you must guess how much of it we ate, and how long we were at it. As soon as we were done we called for our bill, and here follows the items: breakfast fifty cents each, horses twenty-five each, half pint of whisky fifty cents. Mr. Harness, who had prevailed on us to stop, often heard of the wilderness hotel, and whenever mentioned, he always had some term of reproach ready to apply to the host and the dirty breakfast, though we often afterwards met with fare somewhat similar in all respects.

"We camped two nights in the woods, and next day got to Marietta where the land office was then kept by general Putnam, and from his office we obtained maps