Welsh Journals

DOWN THE OHIO 'Our box arrived by waggon on Saturday, and we had an opportunity to go on a flat boat. On Wednesday we arrived at Marietta on the Musgingum, sometimes called the Ohio Company's purchase. There we found some good land that is said to yield one hundred bushels of corn to the acre. but much of the land is hilly. The present Register of the land is General Putnam. a very worthy character. We got a plot of two tracts of donation lands from him. in all fifty lots of one hundred acres each. We were out viewing for three days, but could not think of accepting and settling on these lands. 'We left Marietta on a flatboat bound for Limestone (Maysville, Ky.), and thence to Cincinnati. The passage down the Ohio is safe, and the heavier the boat the faster it will go. The Ohio receives a number of rivers; some of them appear as large as itself, but its width does not increase much, but it is said that sometimes it rises sixty or seventy feet above low water mark. The banks are chiefly clay; not many rocks. Generally one shore is level and the opposite hilly. We travelled mostly in the night, as the boat floats faster in the night than in the day. 'When we landed at Cincinnati, once called Fort Washington, we applied to Judge Symmes, who is Register and chief proprietor of this purchase, for a plot of the land he has for sale. We went to see it, but did not like it. We spent three weeks in traversing the five lower ranges, and could fix on only one tract which we thought real good land for this country. It was well watered and convenient, being within half a mile of the big road from Cincinnati to Hamilton. The judge would not divide that section, and his price was high, so I broke off with him. This land was Section 23, Town 2, Range 2. I then bought one hundred acres at the north-east corner of Section 34, Town 2, Range 1, of another person for 2.50 dols. an acre. The land was not very level. 'My chief object in buying it was to wait till the U.S. land west of the Great Miami would be surveyed for sale. This land is near the Miami river, so that I would be near the government land and become acquainted with it, and learn experimentally what we could raise on the land when it was cleared. I was under apprehension that congress would not pass the bill this session, but I now find that the land over the Miami will be surveyed as soon as possible. 'The Miami is navigated by boats with provisions for the army at Fort Greenville. They pass every day and go about 100 miles up the river. Their crafts are long, sharp keel boats, with a board fixed on each side to walk on, having large poles with iron sockets. The boatmen stand at the bow, fix their poles in the bottom of the river, and push until they come to the stern and so on in their turn. Fort