We had, too, many "compagnons de voyage," exact samples of the general character of New England emigrants; poor, active, parsimonious, inquisitive, and fully impressed that no country, in moral advantages, could equal the country which they had left. They felt, in common with us, their love for the dear homes they had left, increasing as they receded from them. In common with us, too, they calculated to have taken a final farewell of those homes. When we had at last reached the highest point of the first of the three parallel ridges, before we began to descend a declivity, which we expected would forever shield the Atlantic country from our view; before we went "over the hills and far away," it will readily be conceived, that a family which had been reared in seclusion, such as ours, would be likely to drop "some natural tears," and to take a long and anxious look at the land, which contained all their ties and charities. We tried to comfort each other, as we steadily contemplated the blue summits that were just before us, that we had a world in which

to choose our place of rest, and Providence our guide." But we had already wandered far enough from home, to admit the full truth of the exclamation of Attala: "Happy they, who have not seen the smoke of the stranger's fire."

LETTER III.

WE passed these hills on the common route from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. The first ridge was not very precipitous, and I should suppose, short of a thousand feet above the level of its base. The grandeur

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of these mountains, so impressive when their blue outline just touches the horizon in the distance, diminishes when you reach their summits. They have not the pathless precipices, nor the rushing torrents, of the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont. But whatever they wanted in sublimity, at the time when we passed them, they more than made up in the difficulty and danger of crossing them. I have no wish, however, to fatigue you with the recital of our exertions in lifting the carriage up precipitous ascents, washed by the rains, and the still greater exertions necessary to let it down again. We passed hundreds of Pittsburg waggons, in the crossing. Many of them had broken axles and wheels, and in more than one place it was pointed out to us, that teams had plunged down the precipices and had perished. In descending the ridges, a winding road, just wide enough to admit one carriage, was carried round the verge of the declivity, perhaps for more than a mile. In this case, if two carriages met, there would be no alternative but to retreat to the commencement of the narrow way. To prevent this, it is necessary that the carriage, which is commencing the ascent or descent, give notice by blowing a horn, or sending a messenger in advance.

These people, who drive teams between Philadelphia and Pittsburg, were to me, in their manners and way of living, a new species, perfectly unique in their appearance, language, and habits. They devote themselves to this mode of subsistence for years, and spend their time continually on the road. They seemed to me to be more rude, profane, and selfish, than either sailors, boatmen, or hunters, to whose modes of living theirs is the most assimilated. We found them addicted to drunkenness, and very little disposed to assist

each other. Such was the aspect they presented to us. We were told, there were honourable exceptions, and even associations, who, like the sacred band of Thebes, took a kind of oath to stand by, and befriend each other. I often dropped among them, as by accident, that impressive tract, the "Swearer's Prayer." I was pleased to remark the result of their reflections, as they read the tract, apart on their window-seats. In some it seemed to produce a momentary thoughtfulness; in others a smile; and again in others, a deep growl of acquiescence, very like that which every one has heard, who has attended a council of Indians, and heard them express a kind of reluctant assent to terms proposed to them.

In the valley, between the middle and the last of the parallel ridges, we encountered a drove of more than a thousand cattle and swine, from the interior of Ohio; a name which yet sounded in our ears like the land of savages. The appearance of the swine and cattle, in our eyes, had an unnatural shagginess, and roughness, like wolves; and such, you know, even yet, are the impressions of multitudes of the Atlantic people, with respect to that beautiful country. The name of the country from which this drove came, added something, no doubt, to these associations. They were from "Mad River." We were told that the chief drover, a man as untamed and wild in appearance, as Robinson's man, Friday, was taking them on to Pennsylvania to fatten, previous to their being sold in the Philadelphia market.

There is a considerable tract of table-land, before you descend the last hill, and on this there was a public house. Here we encountered a stage broken down. The passengers had been drenched in rain. They

were a company of tinners, going to establish themselves somewhere in the West, and a printer from Connecticut, with his young and beautiful wife, about to commence a printing-office for a gazette in Kentucky. This fine young woman, who had suffered her share with the rest, gave us an example of natural equanimity and philosophy. She was cheerful and conversable, while the other women were querulous, in tears, and out of temper with every thing about them, and full of all the tedious complaints with which inexperienced travellers meet the incidental disasters of their way.

Our journey from the beautiful Moravian settlements in Pennsylvania had been rendered sometimes tedious, and sometimes amusing, by the company of a German Lutheran minister and his family, who had been sent out to some Lutheran settlements on the Big Miami. He was recommended to us as an amiable and exemplary man, and had been reared, I believe, in Germany. A more singular specimen of a clergyman could not well be presented to a New England minister. He was a short, robust man, with a round and ruddy face, with a singular expression, between cheerfulness and apathy. When travelling, he had constantly in his mouth a pipe, in form much like that musical instrument called a serpent, in which the smoke circulated through many circumvolutions, and finally reached his mouth through a silver mouth-piece. He rode a huge Pennsylvania horse, apparently with no consciousness of want of feeling for his wife and children, who, for the most part, trudged along beside their waggon on foot. When we arrived at the public house, and were seated to the substantial and sumptuous fare that is furnished at the good houses in these

regions, and this family at the same time ordered their national diet, boiled potatoes, sour milk, and mush, we could easily discover by the longing looks of the children, that, all national preferences to the contrary, it would have been easy to persuade them to exchange their diet for ours.

I can scarcely hope to give you any impression of our feelings when we began to descend the last ridge, and the boundless valley of the Ohio began to open upon our view. The finishing of the superb national road from Baltimore to Wheeling, and the pres ent ease and frequency of crossing the mountains, will soon render it difficult to conceive what a new and strange world opened at that time and place before the imagination of an unpractised Atlantic traveller. In such an unexplored and unlimited view of a country to be our resting-place, and the field of our labours, where there was no fixed point, no shelter for our hopes and expectations, where all must necessarily be strange, a country to which, in approaching, we had constantly heard the term "back woods" applied, melancholy thoughts and painful remembrances would naturally arise in our minds. I fear that my family and myself feel more bitterly and painfully than is the common lot to feel, the gloomy and depressing sensation of experiencing ourselves strangers in a strange land.

There are some very handsome villages on the slopes of the hills as you approach Pittsburg. Pennsylvania abounds with them, especially on the east of the Allegany ridges. Some of these, the names of which had only met us on an itinerary, astonished us by their size and populousness. Others delighted us with the beauty of their situations. East Pennsylvania is a beautiful country in every point of view. I