having lost the track, and
got into several _culs de sacs_, an occurrence which is by no means
pleasant--as in this case you are unable to turn the carriage, and have no
alternative but cutting down one or two small trees in order to effect a
passage. After a great deal of danger and difficulty, we succeeded in
returning on the true bridle-path, and arrived about ten at night in a
small village, through which we had passed three hours before. The gloom
and pitchy darkness of an American forest at night, cannot be conceived by
the inhabitants of an open country, and the traversing a narrow path
interspersed with stumps and logs is both fatiguing and dangerous. Our
horse seemed so well aware of this danger, that whenever the night set
in, he could not be induced to move, unless one of us walked a little in
advance before him, when he would rest his nose on our arm and then
proceed. We crossed the Potoka to Princeton, a neat town, surrounded by a
fast settling country, and so on to Harmony.

New Harmony is seated on the banks of the Wabash; and following the
sinuosities of that river, it is distant sixty-four or five miles from the
Ohio, but over land, not more than seventeen. This settlement was
purchased by Messrs. Mac Clure and Owen from Mr. Rapp, in the year 1823.
The Rappites had been in possession of the place for six years, during
which they had erected several large brick buildings of a public nature,
and sundry smaller ones as residences, and had cultivated a considerable
quantity of land in the immediate vicinity of the town. Mr. Owen intended
to have established here a community of union and mutual co-operation;
but, from a too great confidence in the power of the system which he
advocates, to _reform_ character, he has been necessitated to abandon that
design at present.

Harmony must have been certainly a desirable residence when it was the
abode of the many literary and scientific characters who composed a part
of that short-lived community. A few of these still linger here, and may
be seen stalking through the streets of Harmony, like Marius among the
ruins of Carthage, deploring the moral desolation that now reigns in this
once happy place.

Le Seur, the naturalist, and fellow traveller of Peron, in his voyage to
the Austral regions, is still here. The suavity of manners, and the
scientific acquirements of this gentleman, command the friendship and
esteem of all those who have the pleasure of his acquain