nother spot, towards the mouth of the Ohio. A daughter, about
fourteen years of age, and two children, considerably younger, were all
the company she had: her house was abundantly stocked with vegetables
and corn.

This part of the Barrens was precisely similar to that which M. Michaux
had traversed the day before; and the same kind of country extends as
far as the line which separates the state of Tenessee from that of
Kentucky. Here, to the great satisfaction of M. Michaux, he once more
entered the woods. Nothing, he says, can be more tiresome than the
doleful uniformity of these immense meadows, where there is no human
creature to be met with; and where, except a great number of partridges,
no species of living beings are to be seen.

The Barrens comprise a portion of country from sixty to seventy miles in
length, by sixty miles in breadth. According to the signification of the
name, M. Michaux had imagined that he should have to cross a naked
space, scattered here and there with a few plants; but he was agreeably
surprised to find a beautiful meadow, where the grass was from two to
three feet high. He here discovered a great variety of interesting
plants. In some parts he observed several species of wild vines, and, in
particular, one which is called by the inhabitants "summer grapes:" the
bunches of fruit were as large, and the grapes as good in quality, as
those in the vineyards round Paris. And it appeared to M. Michaux that
the attempts which had been made in Kentucky, to establish the culture
of the vine, would have been more successful in the Barrens, the soil of
which appeared to him better adapted for this kind of culture, than that
on the banks of the Kentucky. The Barrens are very thinly populated;
for, on the road where the plantations are closest together, M. Michaux
counted but eighteen in a space of sixty or seventy miles.

_Nasheville_, the principal and the oldest town in this part of
Tenessee, is situated on the _river Cumberland_, the borders of which
are here formed by a mass of chalky stone, upwards of sixty feet in
height. Except seven or eight houses, built of brick, the rest, to the
number of about a hundred and twenty, were constructed of wood, and were
distributed over a surface of twenty-five or thirty acres, where the
rock appeared almost naked in every part.

This little town, although it had been built more than fifteen years,
contained no kind of manufactory or public establishment;