Carlisle is a post town, and the capital of Cumberland county. It contains about three hundred houses of brick, stone, and wood. The two principal streets cross each other at right angles, where there is a market-house, a neat brick court-house and a large stone meeting-house. There are besides in the town, a German, an Episcopalian, and a Roman Catholick church. The streets are wide, and the footways are flagged or coarsely paved. Dickenson college on the north, was founded in 1783, and was so named in compliment to Mr. John Dickenson, formerly president of the supreme executive council of Pennsylvania, and author of the Pennsylvania Farmer’s Letters, and other writings of much merit. It has a principal,[13] three professors, and generally about eighty students. It has a philosophical apparatus and a library, containing about three thousand volumes. It has £4000 in funded certificates, and the state has granted it ten thousand acres of land: {33} On the whole it is esteemed a respectable seminary of learning, and is extremely well situated for that purpose, in a healthy and plentiful country, and about equidistant from the capital of the state, and the capital of the United States, one hundred and twenty miles from each.[14]
FOOTNOTES:
[11] The character here given of old Mr. Jameson, puts us in mind of an old man of a similar character in Washington county, Pennsylvania, of the name of Foreman, who at this time is ninety-eight years of age. I had a curiosity in seeing this old gentleman, and about two years ago called on him for the purpose of conversing a few minutes with him. I was fully paid the trouble, for I found him talkative and considerably worldly minded. Among other things he observed that ‘The fashions of the day had injured society, and had lead astray the minds of young men and young women from the paths of simple and rustick honesty they used to walk in fifty or sixty years ago. That there was much hypocrisy in the shew of so much religion as appeared at present. That people were too fond of lying in their beds late in the morning, and drinking too much whiskey. That he himself used to take a frolick now and then to treat his friends of a Saturday night, after working hard all the week, but that he had not drank any spirituous liquors for twenty-five years. That he had been always an early riser, having been in the habit when he first settled where he now lives (having come from Virginia about thirty years ago) of going around to all his neighbours before or about day-light, to waken them up, and bid them good morning, and return home again before his own family would be out of bed. I asked him why he never came to Pittsburgh; he replied that he could ride there he supposed, but that he had no business in that place, but that he should like to move to Kentucky or to the state of Ohio, if he went any where. On speaking of his great age and the probable number of years he might yet live, he seemed inclined to believe he would live at least four years longer, (being then ninety-six) wishing as appeared to me, to make out the round number of one hundred years. He is quite a small man, somewhat emaciated, but erect in his carriage, can see tolerably well, and walks about the house without a cane, milk and vegetables have been, through life, his principal diet, and water his beverage. His present wife, being his second, is quite a smart woman, and is about eighty-six years old. The old gentleman observed that he had never to his recollection been sick, so as to have required the aid of a physician.’ Happy old man thought I, thou hast been happy, and art still so!—Peace to the remainder of thy lengthened days!—Cramer.
[12] For an account of Carlisle, see Post’s Journals, vol. i of this series, p. 237, note 75.—Ed.
[13] By a letter from Mr. Robert Lamberton, postmaster at Carlisle, it appears Dickenson college was burnt down by accidental fire, February 3d, 1803, and rebuilt in 1804. Doctor Nesbit, a Scotch gentleman of great learning, and much celebrated for his application to his studies, and particularly for the uncommon retentiveness of his memory, had been several years president of this college; he died 18th January, 1804. The Rev. Mr. Atwater, from Middlebury, Vermont, took his place as principal at the last commencement, on Wednesday the 27th September, 1809, and from his known abilities and piety, we may safely calculate that the college is again in a flourishing condition.—Cramer.
[14] Dickenson has had many well-known alumni; but after the death of its first president, Dr. Nesbit, a period of decline set in, lasting until 1833, when its founders, the Presbyterians, sold it to the Methodists, who have since maintained the college.—Ed.
CHAPTER IV
Different roads to Shippensburgh—Foxes—South mountain and pine woods—Shippensburgh—Strasburgh—North or Blue mountain—Horse valley and Skinner’s tavern.
On the 25th January at 8 A.M. I left Carlisle, having previously taken an egg beat up in a glass of wine. There are two roads, one called the Mountrock road which goes from the north end of the town, and the other called the Walnut-bottom road, which leads from the south end. They run parallel to each other about three miles apart. I took the latter, which is the stage road, as the wagon with my baggage was to go that way, though I was informed that the first led through a better country. I found mile-stones on the right hand all the way to Shippensburgh, placed at the expence of the proprietors of the lands on this road, to prove it shorter than the other, they having before been computed at the equal length of twenty-one miles each; but now this one is marked only nineteen. The first five miles are through a very poor and stony country, thinly inhabited, and covered, except on the cultivated parts of the few miserable looking farms, with short, stunted, scrubby wood. The next seven miles are through a better improved country, and a better soil, with large farms {34} and good houses; then there are three miles over the northern skirt of the South mountain, through gloomy forests of tall pines, with here and there a log cabin surrounded by a few acres of cleared land, and abounding in children, pigs, and poultry. The last four miles improve gradually to Shippensburgh.
At eleven o’clock I stopt and breakfasted at a large tavern on the right, seven miles from Carlisle, I got coffee, bread and butter, eggs and excellent honey in the comb, for which I was charged only nineteen cents. My landlord presented me one of the largest and finest apples I had ever seen: it was the produce of his own orchard, where he had several trees of the same species, raised by himself from the pippin, and neither grafted nor budded. He had the manners of a New Englandman, being desirous both of receiving and of communicating information, but I soon gathered from him that he was a native of that part of Pennsylvania, and of English extraction. On my entrance he had laid down a book, which taking up afterwards, I found to be a volume of Robertson’s Charles V.