Fastening our skiff to a tree, we ascended the steep sloping bank to the house, where we were received with cautious taciturnity by Mrs. Neisanger, whose ungracious reception would have induced us to have proceeded further, had not the evening been too far advanced for us to arrive at better quarters before dark; and besides the state of our stomachs rendered us insensible to an uncourteous reception: We determined therefore to make our quarters good, though a few minutes after, friend A——, repented of our resolution, on seeing a figure scarcely meriting the name of human approaching him, where he had gone alone in quest of some of the males of the family. It had the appearance of a man above the middle age, strong and robust, fantastically covered with ragged cloathing, but so dirty that it was impossible to distinguish whether he was naturally a white or an Indian—in either case he equally merited the appellation of savage. A——, accosted him as lord of the soil, but he did not deign any reply, on which he returned to me, where I was in the boat adjusting our baggage, to consult with me whether we had not better proceed farther; but first resolving to make one more attempt, we again mounted the bank and found two men with rifles in their hands sitting at the door, neither of whose aspects, nor the circumstance of their being armed, were very inviting: As however we did not see the strange apparition which A——, had described to me, we ventured to accost them.
The elder of the two was Neisanger.—Though he did not say us “nay” to our request of supper, his “yea” was in the very extreme of bluntness, and without either the manner or expression which sometimes merits its having joined to it the adjective honest.
{115} They laid aside their rifles, and supper being announced by the mistress of the cabin, we made a hearty meal on her brown bread and milk, while she attended her self-important lord with all due humility, as Sarah did Abraham; which patriarchal record in the scriptures, is perhaps the original cause of a custom which I have observed to be very common in the remote parts of the United States, of the wife not sitting down to table until the husband and the strangers have finished their meal.
During supper, Mr. Neisanger gradually relaxed from his blunt and cautious brevity of speech, and we gathered from him that he had been a great hunter and woodsman, in which occupation, he said that one man may in one season kill two hundred deer and eighty bears.
He had changed his pursuit of the wild inhabitants of the forest about nine years ago, for an agricultural life. Since that time he had cleared a large tract of land, had planted three thousand fruit trees on his farm, and had carried on a distillery of whiskey and peach brandy, for the first of which he gets seventy-five cents per gallon, and for the last a dollar.
After supper we took leave of this Nimrod of the west without much regret, as our seats while under his roof had not been the most easy to us, and we returned to our boat with more pleasure than we had done heretofore.
We betook ourselves to rest on our platform, lulled to repose by the mournful hooting of the owl, whose ill omened note was amply compensated for by the delightful melody of the red bird, who awoke us at early dawn with his grateful welcome to the returning day.[94]
From hence to Clarksburgh in Virginia is only seventy-five miles.
FOOTNOTES:
[90] For the Hockhocking River, see Croghan’s Journals, vol. i of this series, p. 131, note 99.—Ed.