The writings of George Washington; being his correspondence, addresses, messages, and other papers, official and private, selected and published from the original manuscripts; with a life of the author, notes and illustrations. By Jared Sparks.

528 WASHINGTON'S WRITINGS. [APPENDIX.
neither long nor wide, and the hills back of them rather steep and
poor.
2d.- We proceeded up the river with the canoe about four miles
farther, and then encamped, and went a hunting; killed five buffaloes
and wounded some others, three deer, &c. This country abounds
in buffaloes and wild game of all kinds; as also in all kinds- of wild
fowl, there being in the bottoms a great many small, grassy ponds, or
lakes, which are full of swans, geese, and ducks of different kinds.
Some of our people went up the river four or five miles higher, and
found the same kind of bottom on the west side; and we were told by
the Indians, that it continued to the falls, which they judged to be
fifty or sixty miles higher up. This bottom next the water in most
places is very rich; as you approach to the hills you come to a thin
white-oak land and poor. The hills as far as we could judge were
from half a mile to a mile from the river, poor and steep in the parts
we saw, with pine growing on them. Whether they are generally
so or not we cannot tell, but I fear they are.
3d. - We set off down the river, on our return homewards, and
encamped at the mouth. At the beginning of the bottom above the
junction of the rivers, and at the mouth of a branch on the east side,
I marked two maples, an elm, and hoop-wood tree, as a corner of the
soldiers' land (if we can get it), intending to take all the bottom
from hence to the rapids in the Great Bend into one survey. I also
marked at the mouth of another run lower down on the west side, at
the lower end of the long bottom, an ash and hoop-wood for the beginning of another of the soldiers' surveys, to extend up so as to include all the bottom in a body on the west side. In coming from
our last encampment up the Kenhawa, I endeavoured to take the
courses and distances of the river by a pocket compass, and by
guessing.
4th. - After passing; these hills, which may run on the river near
a mile, thero appears to be another pretty good bottom on the east
side. At this place we met a canoe going to the Illinois with sheep;
and at this place also, that is, at the end of the bottom from the Kenhawa, just as we came to the hills, we met with a sycamore about
sixty yards from the river of a most extraordinary size, it measuring,
three feet from the ground, forty-five feet round, lacking two inches;
and not fifty yards from it was another, thirty-one feet round. After
passing this bottom, and about a mile of hills, we entered another
bottom and encamped. This bottom reaches within about half a
mile of the rapid at the point of the Great Bend.
5th. -I sent off the canoe with our baggage, and walked across