Cuming's tour to the western country (1807-1809)

Early Western Travels 1748-1846
Volume IV
A Series of Annotated Reprints of some of the best and rarest contemporary volumes of travel, descriptive of the Aborigines and Social and Economic Conditions in the Middle and Far West, during the Period of Early American Settlement Edited with Notes, Introductions, Index, etc., by
Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D.
Editor of “The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents,” “Wisconsin Historical Collections,” “Chronicles of Border Warfare,” “Hennepin’s New Discovery,” etc. Volume IV
Cuming’s Tour to the Western Country (1807-1809)
Cleveland, Ohio The Arthur H. Clark Company 1904
Copyright 1904, by THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Lakeside Press R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY CHICAGO
We devote the fourth volume of our series of Western Travels to the reprint of Fortescue Cuming’s Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country —the tour having been made in 1807-1809, the publication itself issuing from a Pittsburg press in 1810.
Of Cuming himself, we have no information save such as is gleaned from his book. He appears to have been an Englishman of culture and refinement, who had travelled extensively in other lands—notably the West Indies, France, Switzerland, and Italy. It is certain that he journeyed to good purpose, with an intelligent, open mind, free from local prejudices, and with trained habits of observation. Cuming was what one may call a good traveller—he endured the inconveniences, annoyances, and vicissitudes of the road, especially in a new and rough country, with equanimity and philosophic patience, deliberately making the best of each day’s happenings, thus proving himself an experienced and agreeable man of the world.
The journeys narrated were taken during two succeeding years. The first, in January, 1807, was a pedestrian tour from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. Arriving in the latter city on the second of February, after twenty-seven days upon the road, the remainder of the winter, the spring, and the early summer were passed at Pittsburg. On the eighteenth of July following, our traveller took boat from Pittsburg, and made his way down the Ohio to the Kentucky entrepôt at Maysville—where he arrived the thirtieth of the month. Mounting a horse, he made a brief trip through Kentucky as far as Lexington and Frankfort, returning to Maysville on the fifth of August. The following day, he crossed the Ohio, and after examining lands in the vicinity, proceeded partly on foot, partly by stage and saddle, over the newly-opened state road of Ohio, through Chillicothe, Lancaster, and Zanesville to Wheeling; thence back to Pittsburg, where he arrived the evening of August 21.