“Having crossed the Southwest Mountains I passed along to Lynchburgh, a town situated on the south side of Fluvanna River. This town contains about 100 houses, and a warehouse for the inspection of tobacco, where about 2,000 hogsheads are annually inspected. It has been built entirely within the last fifteen years, and is rapidly increasing, from its advantageous situation for carrying on trade with the adjacent country. The boats, in which the produce is conveyed down the river, are from forty-eight to fifty-four feet long, but very narrow in proportion to their length. Three men are sufficient to navigate one of these boats, and they can go to Richmond and back again in ten days. They fall down with the stream, but work their way back again with poles. The cargo carried in these boats is always proportioned to the depth of water in the river, which varies very much. Along the banks I observed great quantities of weeds hanging upon the trees considerably above my head, though on horseback. A few miles from Lynchburgh, towards the Blue Mountains, is a small town called New London, in which there is a magazine and also an armory, erected during the war. About fifteen men were here employed, as I passed through, repairing old arms and furbishing up others. At one end of the room lay the musquets, to the amount of about 5,000, all together in a large heap, and at the opposite end lay a pile of leathern accoutrements, absolutely rotting for want of common attention. All the armories throughout the United States are kept much in the same style.
“Between this place and the Blue Mountains the country is rough and hilly, and but very thinly inhabited. The few inhabitants, however, met with here are uncommonly robust and tall; it is rare to see a man amongst them who is not six feet high. These people entertain a high opinion of their own superiority in point of bodily strength over the inhabitants of the low country. A similar race of men is found all along the Blue Mountains.
“Beyond the Blue Ridge, after crossing by this route near the Peaks of Otter, I met with but very few settlements till I drew near to Fincastle, in Bottetourt County. This town was only begun about the year 1790, yet it already contains sixty houses, and is most rapidly increasing. The improvement of the adjacent country has likewise been very rapid, and land now bears nearly the same price that it does in the neighborhood of York and Lancaster, in Pennsylvania. The inhabitants consist principally of Germans, who have extended their settlements from Pennsylvania along the whole of that rich tract of land which runs through the upper part of Maryland, and from thence behind the Blue Mountains to the most southern part of Virginia. They have many times, I am told, crossed the Blue Ridge to examine the land, but the red soil which they found there was different from what they had been accustomed to.
“The difference indeed between the country on the eastern and on the western side of the Blue Ridge, in Bottetourt County, is astonishing, when it is considered that both are under the same latitude, and that this difference is perceptible within the short distance of thirty miles. On the eastern side of the Ridge, cotton grows extremely well; and in winter snow scarcely ever remains upon the ground more than a day or two at a time. On the other side cotton never comes to perfection, and in every farmyard you see sleighs or sledges. On the eastern side of the Blue Ridge, in Virginia, not one of these carriages is to be met with.
“Another circumstance may also be mentioned (besides the contrast in the soils) as making a material difference between the country on one side of the Blue Ridge and that on the other, namely, that behind the mountains the weevil is unknown. In the lower parts of Virginia, and the other states where the weevil is common, they always thresh out the grain as soon as the crops are brought in, and leave it in the chaff, which creates a degree of heat sufficient to destroy the insect. According to the general opinion, the weevil originated on the eastern shore of Maryland, where a person, in expectation of a great rise in the price of wheat, kept over all his crops for the space of six years, when they were found full of these insects. For a considerable time the Potowmac River formed a barrier to their progress. The Blue Mountains at present serve as a barrier, and secure the country to the westward from their depredations.
“Bottetourt County is entirely surrounded by mountains. The climate is particularly agreeable. It appears to me that there is no part of America where the climate would be more congenial to the constitution of a native of Great Britain or Ireland. In the western part of the county are several medicinal springs, whereto numbers of people resort towards the latter end of summer. Those most frequented are called the Sweet Springs. A set of gentlemen from South Carolina have, I understand, since I was there, purchased the place and are going to erect several commodious dwellings in the neighborhood.
“The country immediately behind the Blue Mountains, between Bottetourt County and the Potowmack River, is agreeably diversified with hill and dale, and abounds with extensive tracts of rich land. The natural herbage is not so fine here as in Bottetourt County, but when clover is once sown it grows most luxuriously; wheat also is produced in as plentiful crops as in any part of the United States. Tobacco is not raised excepting for private use, and but little Indian corn is sown, as it is liable to be injured by the nightly frosts, which are common in the spring. The whole of this country to the west of the mountains is increasing most rapidly in population. In the neighborhood of Winchester it is so thickly settled that wood is now beginning to be thought valuable.
“As I passed along the road from Fincastle to the Potowmack, which is the high road from the Northern States to Kentucky, I met with great numbers of people from Kentucky and the new State of Tennessee going towards Philadelphia and Baltimore, and with many others going in a contrary direction ‘to explore,’ as they call it, that is to search for lands conveniently situated for new settlements in the western country. These people all travel on horseback, with pistols or swords, and a large blanket folded up under their saddle. There are now houses scattered along nearly the whole way from Fincastle to Lexington, in Kentucky. It would be still dangerous for any person to venture singly; but if five or six travel together they are perfectly secure. Formerly travelers were always obliged to go forty or fifty in a party.
“The first town you come to, going northward from Bottetourt County, is Lexington, a neat little place that did contain about 100 houses, a courthouse and gaol, but the greater part of it was destroyed by fire just before I got there. Thirty miles farther on stands Staunton. This town carries on a considerable trade with the back country, and contains nearly 200 dwellings, mostly built of stone, together with a church. Winchester stands 100 miles to the northward of Staunton, and is the largest town in the United States on the western side of the Blue Mountains. The houses are estimated at 350.”