About 8 o’clock, the landlord, who was a German, came into the room and offered to light us to bed: My fellow travellers complied, but I told him I should sit up two hours longer. The old man repeated my words, “two hours,” shrugged up his shoulders and went off, while I literally kept my word, amused by a series of three or four of the last Baltimore Federal Gazettes. On going to bed, and finding the bed clothes very light, I added the covering of another bed in the room to mine, which I left so in the morning as a hint to the house.
At five o’clock next morning, we resumed our journey, and found very little snow on the road, though there was so much on the mountains behind us.
The aspect of the country is similar to what it is between the Laurel hills and Greensburgh. Hills running in ridges from north to south, heavily wooded with white oak, walnut, sugar tree and other timber natural to the climate; and the valleys narrow, but rich and all settled.
At eight miles from Greensburgh, we passed on our right an excellent house and fine farm of a Col. Irwin, one of the assistant judges; and three miles further we stopped to change horses and breakfast at {60} Stewart’s, where we were charged only a quarter of a dollar each.
We soon after entered Allegheny county. The weather was cold and clear, and very pleasant for the season, but the country afforded no variety, being still, hill, dale, woods, and scattering farms. At nine miles from Stewart’s, we descended a very long and steep hill, by a shocking road, crossed Turtle creek at the bottom, which runs to the southward to join the river Monongahela, 12 miles above its confluence with the Allegheny; we then ascended another hill by an equally bad and dangerous road. It is astonishing that in so fine and so improving a country more attention is not paid to the roads. A turnpike is projected from Pittsburgh to Harrisburgh, which I am clearly of opinion, might be kept in repair by a reasonable toll;—and then wagons with goods may travel between the two places in a third less time than they do now, and without the present great risks of breaking down, and the mails may be delivered at the post-offices one half sooner.
When about seven miles from Pittsburgh, we had a picturesque view of the Monongahela on the left, which was soon hid again by the intervening hills; and when within three miles of that town, the view was beautiful over the fine low cultivated level, or bottom, as it is called, which skirts the river Allegheny from thence to Pittsburgh, which is seen at the confluence of that river with the Monongahela; beyond which, the high and steep coal hill crowned by a farm house most romantically situated, seems to impend directly over the glass manufactury, on the bank of the river opposite the town.
The last two miles was along the fine level above mentioned, passing on the right, between the road and the Allegheny, the handsome seat of Mr. John Woods, a respectable lawyer;[25] and immediately after, {61} we passed Fort Fayette, a stockaded post on the right[26]—entered Pittsburgh, and put up at Wm. M’Cullough’s excellent inn.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] For an account of Greensburgh, see Michaux’s Travels, vol. iii of this series, p. 153, note 16.—Ed.
[25] John Woods was one of the two first lawyers in Pittsburg, being admitted to the bar from Allegheny County in 1786. He represented the city in Congress from 1815-17.—Ed.