is family had ever been
afflicted with fever of any description. The district in which he lived,
was entirely free from local nuisances, and the inhabitants he
represented as being as healthy as any in the United States.

My observations, so far, lead me to conclude, that this climate agrees
fully as well with Europeans as with the natives, indeed that the
susceptibility to fever and ague is greater in the natives than in
Europeans of good habits. The cause I conceive to be this: the early
settlers had to encounter swamps of the most pestilential description, and
dense forests through which the sun's rays had never penetrated, and which
industry and cultivation have since made in a great measure to disappear.
They notoriously suffered much from the ravages of malaria, and such as
survived the baleful effects of this disease, escaped with impaired
constitutions. Now this susceptibility to intermittent fever, appears to
me to have been transmitted to their descendants, and to act as the
predisposing cause. I have seen English and Irish people who have been in
the country upwards of thirty years, who look just as you would expect to
find persons of their age at home.

There are situations evidently unhealthy, such as river bottoms, and the
vicinity of creeks. The soil in those situations is alluvial, and its
extreme fertility often induces unfortunate people to reside in them. The
appearance of those persons in general is truly wretched.

The women here, although they live as long as those in the old country,
yet they fade much sooner, and, with few exceptions, have bad teeth.

CHAPTER IV.

Having decided on visiting New Harmony, in Indiana, where our friend B----
had been for some time enjoying the delights of sylvan life, and the
refinements of backwoods-society, T---- and I purchased a horse, and
Dearborne, a species of light waggon used in this country for travelling.
We furnished ourselves with a small axe, hunting knives, and all things
necessary for encamping when occasion required, and so set out about the
beginning of September.

We crossed the Big-Miami river, and proceeded by a tolerable road, and
some good farms, to Lawrenceburg, a handsome town on the Ohio, within a
mile of the outlet of the Miami. From thence we drove on towards
Wilmington; but our horse becoming jaded, we found it expedient to "camp
out," within some miles of that town. Next morning we passed through
Wilmington, but lost the di