{151} About half a mile further, we passed on the right the handsome house, spacious square barn, fine farm and improvements of major John Brown, an Irishman, the whole together indicating taste and opulence.
A mile and a half beyond this on the left, is a large and remarkably well built brick house of a Mr. Blanchard, well situated, but left rather naked of wood.
The country on every side appears to be better improved than I have observed it in any part of America, and wonderfully abundant in grain, chiefly Indian corn.
Four miles from Maysville, we entered the flourishing town of Washington, which is laid out on a roomy and liberal plan, in three parallel streets, containing only as yet ninety-six houses, mostly large and good ones. There is here a good stone court-house with a small belfry, a church of brick for a society of Scotch Presbyterians, and another of wood for one of Anabaptists. Washington being the capital of Braken county, and in the heart of a very rich country, is a thriving town, and will probably continue to be so, notwithstanding it is without the advantage of any navigable river nearer than the Ohio at Maysville.[114]
Mr. Lee a merchant here, to whom I had letters of introduction was polite and obliging.[115] We got an excellent dinner, at Ebert’s tavern; after which we hired two horses through Mr. Lee’s interest, as it is difficult for strangers to procure horses on hire throughout this country. We engaged one at half a dollar, and the other at three quarters of a dollar a {152} day; the last from a Mr. Fristoe, a small man of sixty-eight, married to his second wife of thirty-two years of age. She is a contrast to her husband in size as well as years, she being tall and fat, and weighing two hundred and forty pounds. She is two years younger than his youngest daughter by his first wife. He has grand and great grandchildren born in Kentucky. He is a Virginian, and was once a man of large property, when he resided on the banks of one of the rivers which fall into the Chesapeak, where he loaded the ship in which captain, afterwards consul O’Brien was captured by the Algerines. By unfortunate land jobbing in Kentucky, he has lost his property, and is now a butcher in Washington.
He is truly a philosopher, contrasting his former with his present situation, with much good humour and pleasantry.
At three o’clock, we left Washington on horseback, and travelled on a good road through a well improved country, four miles to the north fork of Licking river, which we crossed by a wooden bridge supported by four piers of hammered limestone, with a transverse sleeper of timber on each which supports the sill. The bridge is seventy-seven yards long, and only wants abutments to be very complete. A wagonner had stopped his wagon on it to measure its proportions. He told me that he had contracted to build a similar bridge over the south fork of Licking at Cynthiana, forty miles from hence, which is larger than the north fork. It may seem strange that a wagonner should be employed as a builder, but it is common throughout the United States, particularly at a distance from the sea coast, for one man to have learned and wrought at two, and even sometimes three or four different mechanical professions, at different periods of his life.
{153} The country still continued fine, but not quite so well improved, to Lee’s creek mill, three miles and a half beyond the north fork of Licking. The mill was now stopped for want of water in the creek, which is an inconvenience to which the whole of the western country is liable, the brooks and small rivers generally failing during the summer.
Half a mile further we came to a small post town, called May’s-lick, containing only eight or ten houses, irregularly scattered on the side of a hill. We here stopped to feed our horses, and then proceeded four miles through a good natural, but indifferently improved country to Clark’s excellent mill on Johnston’s fork of Licking, which is a fine mill stream, and falls into Licking river, several miles lower down. The road on each side the fork is very bad, the hills being extremely steep.
After passing Clark’s mill, we found the country gradually worse cultivated, less inhabited, and at last a continuation of barren hills, bearing very little besides wild pennyroyal, with which the air is strongly perfumed, and a few stunted shrubs and trees, there being nothing to promote vegetation, but gravel and loose stones of every variety—marble, limestone, flint, freestone, and granate, among which the limestone is the most predominant. The road also was very bad for the three or four miles next to the Blue salt licks on Licking river, which is eight miles from Clark’s mill.