[91] Washington admonished his executors in his will, not to dispose of these lands too cheaply, and suggested a sale price of ten dollars per acre. This particular tract became the property of six of his grand-nieces, two of whom (named Fitzhugh) later settled in the vicinity.—Ed.
[92] The bald or white-headed eagle (haliaëtus leucocephalus), the American national symbol.—Ed.
[93] Peter Neisanger (or Niswonger) joined the Marietta colony in 1790. He was employed thereby as a ranger, and the succeeding year gave timely warning to the people assembled at a church service of a threatened Indian raid.—Ed.
[94] The red-bird was either the scarlet tanager (piranga rubra), or the cardinal grosbeak (cardinalis virginianus), both of which frequent the Ohio shores.—Ed.
{116} CHAPTER XVII
Old-town creek, and a floating mill—Take two passengers, both curious characters—Laughable anecdote of a panick—Some of the customs of the backwoodsmen—Their fondness for, and mode of fighting—Their disregard of being maimed, illustrated by an anecdote—Le Tart’s falls—Graham’s station—Jones’s rocks.
Proceeding on Saturday 25th July at 5 in the morning—at six we were three miles below Neisanger’s, abreast of Old-town creek on the right, and a floating mill owned by an Irishman named Pickets. These kind of mills are of a very simple construction—the whole machinery being in a flat, moored to the bank, and the stones being put in motion by the current. They have but little power, not being capable of grinding more than from fifteen to twenty bushels of wheat per day.
We were here hailed by two men who offered to work their passage to the falls. We took them on board, and one proved to be one Buffington, son to the owner of Buffington’s island, from whom Pickets had purchased his farm and mill, and the other was an eccentrick character, being an old bachelor, without any fixed place of abode, residing sometimes with one farmer and sometimes with another, between Marietta and Galliopolis, and making a good deal of money by speculating in grain, horses, hogs, cattle, or any thing he can buy cheap and sell dear.
Buffington was a very stout young man, and was going to the falls to attend a gathering (as they phrase it in this country) at a justice’s court, which squire Sears, who resides at the falls, holds on the last Saturday of every month: He supposed there would be sixty or seventy men there—some plaintiffs, and some defendants in causes of small debts, actions of defamation, assaults, &c. and some to wrestle, fight, {117} shoot at a mark with the rifle for wagers, gamble at other games, or drink whiskey. He had his rifle with him and was prepared for any kind of frolick which might be going forward. He was principally induced to go there from having heard that another man who was to be there, had said that he could whip him (the provincial phrase for beat.) After his frolick was ended he purposed returning home through the woods.
He related a laughable story of a panick which seized the people of his neighbourhood about two years ago, occasioned by a report being spread that two hundred Indians were encamped for hostile purposes on the banks of Shade river.