Or this discourse it is but justice to observe, that it is decidedly superiour to the majority of productions of its class. It is particularly free from the common-place cant of our anniversary effusions, and discovers occasionally some symptoms of eloquence. The history of Hezekiah, at the period that he was invaded by the king of Assyria, is a fortunate text-matter for the orator of 1806, and his manner of maneuvering it for the edification of his countrymen remarkably creditable to his understanding and heart. The only quarrel that we have with Mr. Kendall comes from his making use of shakened instead of shaken, and his introduction of two rhetorical beings of the colossal order within the narrow compass of his pages. Now, one giant, in all conscience, is sufficient for a sermon, unless the preacher is desirable of reminding us of Gog and his partner.

ART. 37.

ral History at Paris, Correspondent of the Agricultural Society in the Department of the Seine and Oise. 8vo. pp. 306.

THIS is a work which steals on the world without any splendid promises or pompous pretensions, yet, at a future era, it may attract the attention of the historian, as one of the intermediate links which connect a prosperous empire with the laborious efforts of industrious emigrants and infant colonists. It is, indeed, of importance to mark the gradual, the insensible progress of an enterThe men prising population. who shot woodcocks in the forests where Philadelphia now stands, have been known by many yet alive; and half a million of persons now inhabit countries, where, twenty years since, the foot only of the heard. wandering savage was Vast is the object that thus fills the mind! immense the prospect offered to future ages! We can only notice, in a few pages, this link which connects the past with the future, which leads to events the most astonishing and important; in which the imagination can neither be guided or corrected by reason. It is now time to change the language which partial views and temporary information occasioned. What was styled the northern portion of the American continent, was not confined on the west by the chain of mountains which pervades that vast mass of land, and which, resisting the ocean on either side, divides America like an insect, at the Isthmus of Panama, but by the Alleghanies, which separate the low alluvial lands left, apparently at a late period, by the ocean, from the higher

regions. The northern states have been styled the eastern, as they project farther into the Atlantick, while those below Pennsylvania obtained the appellation of southern. In our present view both are eastern, and the truly west country is beyond the Alleghany mountains or their continuation, which are lost as they approach Georgia, or the Floridas. On the north, immediately below Lake Erie, the Alleghany and Fayette counties disappear in the Ohio country, and Kentucky; this last is again succeeded by the Tenessee, which, on the west and south, is followed by Louisiana and the Floridas.

We have, as usual, to regret, in our author's tour, the want of a map. It is sufficient for us to remark, that the author proceeds from Philadelphia westward, till he falls in with the vast streams of the Ohio. These he follows, with some deviations, in a southwestern course, till he returns by low Carolina to Charleston.

To follow our author minutely over mountains and "barrens ;" through forests, and across the deserted beds of winter torrents, would be useless. We have pointed out this work as the link for the future historian, and it is our business to trace only the more prominent features. M. Michaux is a man of science and observation. He is not a speculator, recommending the purchase of lands in the western country; though we suspect he does not explain all the difficulties of the situation; but he offers, on the whole, the fruits of attentive investigation. We are sorry to add, that he appears in disadvantageous colours, from the very numerous faults of his printer, and the gallicisms of his transla

entifick reader, these are only slight impediments: to others they may be serious obstacles. While we wander through countries often visited and as frequently described, we have little temptation to enlarge: yet we may remark, from a professed naturalist, the son of a man who had travelled, with similar views, through some of the most inaccessible regions of the United States, the numerous and valuable species of oaks which he had occasion to notice, and the various nut-trees, which might form an useful and interesting monography, though peculiarly intricate and of difficult discrimi nation.

Log-houses is a term often employed, and though generally used, the ideas of their construction are not very precise and discriminate. We shall select, therefore, a short sketch of their form.

"It is not useless to observe here, that in the United States they give often the name of town to a group of seven or eight houses, and that the mode of constructing them is not the same every where. At Philadelphia the houses are built with brick. In the other towns and country places that surround them, the half, and even frequently the whole, is built with wood; but at places within seventy or eighty miles of the sea, in the central and southern states, and again more particularly in those situated to the westward of the Alleghany Mountains, onethird of the inhabitants reside in log-houses. These dwellings are made with the trunks of trees, from twenty to thirty feet in length, about five inches diameter, placed one upon another, and kept up by notches, cut at their extremities, The roof is formed with pieces of

similar length to those that compose the body of the house, but not quite so thick, and gradually sloped on each side. Two doors, which often supply the place of windows, are made by sawing away a part of the trunks that form the body of the house. The chimney, always placed at one of the extremities, is likewise made with the trunks of trees of a suitable length; the back of the chim ney is made of clay about six inches thick, which separates the fire from the wooden walls. Not withstanding this want of precaution, fires very seldom happen in the country places. The space between these trunks of trees is filled up with clay, but so very carelessly, that the light may be seen through in every part; in consequence of which these huts are exceedingly cold in winter, notwithstanding the amazing quantity of wood that is burnt. The doors move upon wooden hinges, and the greater part of them have no locks. In the night time they only push them to, or fasten them with a wooden peg. Four or five days are sufficient for two men to finish one of these houses, in which not a nail is used. Two great family. It frequently happens that in the summer the children sleep upon the ground, in a kind of rug. The floor is raised from one to two feet above the surface of the ground, and boarded. They generally make use of feather beds, or feathers alone, and not mattresses. Sheep being very scarce, the wool is very dear; at the same time they reserve it to make stockings. The clothes belonging to the family are hung up round the room, or suspended upon a long pole." P. 28-30.

beds receive the whole

Our author had not yet crossed the Alleghanies, or extended his course beyond the confines of Philadelphia, when we find the singular remark, that during the war, in the time of the French revolution, the inhabitants of the neighborhood of Bedford found it more to their advantage to send their corn to Pittsburgh, and from thence to New Orleans, by the Ohio and Mississippi, a course of more than 2,000 miles, than to Philadelphia or Baltimore, not exceeding 200 or 250 miles. If this be generally true, what a prospect does it afford of the future prosperity of the western-country!

The passage of the Alleghanies offers few remarks of interest or importance. On these mountains our author searched for a species of the Azalea, a plant of singular importance, since to the valuable qualities of the olive tree, it adds the power of bearing the cold of the most northern climates. He found it, and recognised it to be the same plant which his father had discovered; but the seeds had failed, in consequence of their soon growing rancid. We trust our author has been more fortunate, though of his success we have no information. It is a dicecious plant, not above five feet in height: its roots spread horizontally, and give birth to several shoots. The plant grows only in cool shady places, and in a fertile soil; the roots are of a citron colour. On these high grounds coal is not uncommon, but little attended to, as it is necessary to clear the ground from the trees. Labour is, however, dear, and the contest between expense and convenience, of course, frequent.

The vast river, the Ohio, is formed by the conflux of the Mo

nongahela and Alleghany rivers. At this junction Pittsburg is built, which was the site of Fort Duquesne, and the key of the western country. It is no longer of importance in a military view, but it is the connecting medium of the eastern and western states, and, as a commercial depôt, of peculiar value. Corn, hams, dried pork, bar iron, coarse linen, bottles, whiskey, and salt butter, from its dependencies, are embarked on the Ohio for the Caribbees, through New Orleans. At the latter port, they receive in change cotton, raw sugar, and indigo. These are sent by sea to Philadelphia and Baltimore; and the bargemen return to these ports, from which they go again by land to Pittsburgh.

ex

"What many perhaps are ignorant of in Europe, is, that they build large vessels on the Ohio, and at the town of Pittsburgh. One of the principal ship-yards is upon the Monongahela, about two hundred fathoms beyond the last houses in the town. The timber they make use of is the white oak, or quercus alba; the red oak, or quercus rubra; the black oak, or quercus tinctoria; a kind of nut tree, or juglans minima: the Virginia cherry-tree, or cerasus Virginia; and a kind of pine which they use for masting, as well as for the sides of the vessels, which require a slighter wood. The whole of this timber being near at hand,the expenses of building is not so great as in the ports of the Atlantick states. The cordage is manufactured at Redstone and Lexington, where there are two extensive rope-walks, which also supply ships with rigging that are built at Marietta, and Louisville. On my journey to Pitts

Pittsburgh, in the month of July, 1802, there was a three-mast vessel of two-hundred and fifty tons, and a smaller one of ninety, which was on the point of being finished. These ships were to go in the spring following to New Orleans, loaded with the produce of the country, after having made a passage of two thousand two hundred miles before they got into the Ocean.

There is no doubt but they can, by the same rule, buildships two hundred leagues beyond the mouth of the Missouri, fifty from that of the river Illinois, and even in the Mississippi, two hundred beyond the place whence these rivers flow; that is to say, six hundred and fifty leagues from the sca; as their bed in the appointed space is as deep as that of the Ohio at Pittsburgh. In consequence of which it must be a wrong conjecture to suppose that the immense tract of country, watered by these rivers, cannot be populous enough to execute such undertakings. The rapid population of the three new western states, under less favourable circumstances, proves this assertion to be true.

Those states, where thirty years ago there was scarcely three hundred inhabitants, are now computed to contain upwards of a hundred thousand; and though the plantations on the roads are scarcely four miles distant from each other, it is very rare to find one, even among the most flourishing, where one cannot with confidence ask the owner, whence he has emigrated; or, according to the trivial manner of the Americans," what part of the world do you come from?" as if these immense and fertile regions were to be the asylum common to all the inhabitants of the globe. Now if we consider these astonish

ing and rapid ameliorations, what ideas must we not form of the height of prosperity to which the western country is rising, and of the recent spring that the commerce, population, and culture of the country is taking, by uniting Louisiana to the American territory." P. 63-65,

When it is recollected, that the distance from Pittsburgh to New Orleans exceeds 2,000 miles, and that the Ohio, before its junction with the Mississippi, runs through half this space, what must our ideas be in contemplating vessels of more than 200 tons seeking the ocean through such devious tracts, and in so extensive a course! Let

us improve our acquaintance with the means by which this inter course is facilitated:

"The Ohio, formed by the u nion of the Monongahela and Alleghany rivers, appears to be rather a continuance of the former than the latter, which only happens obliquely at the conflux. The Ohio may be at Pittsburgh two hundred fathoms broad. The current of this immense and magnificent river inclines at first north-west for about twenty miles, then bends gradually west south-west. It follows that direction for about the space of five hundred miles; turns thence south-west a hundred and sixty miles; then west two hundred and seventy-five; at length runs into the Mississippi,in a south westerly direction, in the latitude. of 36° 46", about eleven hundred miles from Pittsburgh, and nearly the same distance from Orleans. This river runs so extremely serpentine, that, in going down it, you appear following a tract directly opposite to the one you mean to take. Its breadth varies from two

hundred to a thousand fathoms. The islands that are to be met with in its current are very numerous. We counted upwards of fifty in the space of three hundred and eighty miles. Some contain but a few acres, and others more than a thousand in length. Their banks are very low, and must be subject to inundations. These islands are a great impediment to the navigation in the summer. The sands that the river drives up, form, at the head of some of them, a number of little shoals; and in this season of the year the channel is so narrow, from the want of water, that the few boats, even of a middiing size, that venture to go down, are frequently run aground, and it is with great difficulty that they are got afloat; notwithstanding which there is at all times a sufficiency of water for a skiff or a canoe. As these little boats are very light, when they strike upon the sands it is very easy to push them off into a deeper part. In consequence of this it is only in the spring and autumn that the Ohio is navigable, at least as far as Limestone, about one hundred and twenty miles from Pittsburg. During these two seasons the water rises to such a height, that vessels of three hundred tons, piloted by men who are acquainted with the river, may go down in the greatest safety. The spring season begins at the end of February, and lasts three months; the autumn begins in October, and only lasts till the first of December. In the meantime these two epochs fall sooner or later, as the winter is more or less rainy,or the rivers are a shorter or a longer time thawing. Again, it so happens, that in the course of the summer, heavy and incessant rains fall in the Alleghany mountains, which suddenly swell