A JOURNEY ON HORSEBACK FROM NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, TO LYCOMING COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA, IN 1799.

CONTRIBUTED BY HON. THOMAS HILL, PORTLAND, MAINE.

[Abijah Hill, of Warwickshire, England, b. May 1, 1690, d. Jan. 26, 1783, had one daughter and five sons, of whom the youngest, Samuel, was b. Aug. 3, 1741, d. Jan. 1804. He had four sons, of whom the oldest, Thomas, came to America prior to reaching his majority and settled in New Brunswick, N. J. Here he died April 3, 1828. He was a man of great stature and muscular strength, of sound sense, and incorruptible integrity, and for many years filled honorably the offices of Justice of the Peace, and Judge of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas in Middlesex County, N. J. The following extracts from his diary of a horseback journey from New Brunswick, N. J., to Lycoming County, Penna., are of interest, as they contain a certain amount of historic interest concerning the roads, manners, and customs of the inhabitants, crops, etc., at the close of the last century.]

New Brunswick N. J. June 29, 1799.-Cash thirty dollars, three silk neck hdkfs, three pocket hdkfs, two pair stockings, three nankeen waistcoats, two coatees, three pair of trousers, a great coat, one pair of shoes, one hat of chip, a watch, a pair of saddle bags, a brace of razors, a knife with three blades; and a good horse, a bright bay, with a poor bridle and a good saddle, on which is mounted

your humb serv't

T. HILL.

P.S.-Tobacco in segars, 100; also a box full of opium, rhubarb, aloes, and magnesia.

July 1.-[from New Brunswick] to Reading town meeting, 20 miles; to Exton's, 14 miles more, to lodge. A pleasant country, [Raritan] river brimfull, grass good, chiefly mowed; crops on the west side, 20 bushels, on the east side 12 bushels. But the pleasant prospects will not cure my blisters which are as big as a dove's egg. Oh dear!

the hot weather, and rough fustian trousers, and a hard trotting horse incline me to pray!

The Lehigh

July 2.-Put on linen trousers. To the Hickory tavern, 7 miles, along the ridge of a mountain;-hard pebbly road, few settlements, and poor land. The linen trousers do better than cotton. To Phillipsburg and East Town [Easton], 12 miles, through several small villages, on fine rapid trout streams, with mills. Limestone land, very indifferent; lime not used as a manure; average of produce 12 bushels, scarcely. Red clover and pretty good lots, wherever there are mills. On such lots, 25 bushels; hay, 1 tons; apple trees look well. Abutment and piers for a bridge from Phillipsburgh; two piers only; span 180 ft. falls in, just below; high banks, stony lands; river not rapid enough to be romantic, nor wide and full enough to be majestic; much disappointed. Pretty good houses of limestone. Stone lime delivered at one shilling per bushel. A many stores. Inhabitants chiefly German. 130 houses or more. Four or five tanners. Bark stones drove by water. A few miles off, one on the coffee mill principle, answers well. Seven years ago I could find no clover sown, except near cities; now, wherever you find a mill, or a store, you see lots [fields] of clover; a plain proof of superior information in any class of men over farmers.

A most beautiful romantic clump of houses, on a brook, west side of the town, with a delightful tumbling dam. When I turn hermit, here will I live. To Stierk's tavern 18 mile, yellow loam with limestone bottom, chiefly, till last two or four miles, slates very good. Two houses covered with them by Stierk's father. He's an intelligent German, a rare thing. Very unlike the Yankees, in general they can give me no information at all. The Yankees on the contrary, in York State, used to tell me not only their own business, but every one of their neighbor's!

July 3.-To Harry Hoes 9 miles, to breakfast, generally over a poorish land, a yellow shelly loam; the bottom chiefly a whitish, spar-looking stone, something like plaster in appearance, but very hard. All Germans;-the most

early rising, hard working people I ever saw; they seem to enjoy not more happiness or knowledge, than some bellflowers, who sleep at night, wake early, to bed late, perpetuate their species, and die. They cannot tell you the distance, or route to the next village. How different from the new Englishmen who, of all others, abound in local information in a superior degree. The women, all at work in the fields, seem very active, but are masculine in the extreme; their countenances seem to express much jealous suspicion. Their dress,-one petticoat striped blue linsy, a man's hat, and a shift, some of them with wristbands. Twelve miles from Harry Hoes to Livy's, arrive at past 10 o'clock. The mountain is very steep; about a mile and a

up and a mile down again; but in appearance, or height, from the foot, it falls far short of the Catskill Mountains. The stones seem a very hard kind indeed, a little gritty, with Motherstones and the white stones above mentioned, which I suppose Granite, mixed in small quantity; about a mile of this side, say west, a perfect Red Shell.

Crops, the 21 miles I have come, not more than 10 or 12 bushels. I have not yet seen any equal to the Raritan [valley]; and no trees deserving the name of timber; small chestnuts and oaks all the way from Exton's. I have much trouble with my horse, he stumbles so much, I dare not ride him down hill, and up hill I walk to save him.

This country has been settled with Germans about fifty years, I hope to be soon through them. My breakfast was this morning two cups of coffee without sugar, and 3 eggs; bread baked hard, and crust wet. What a pity I cannot draw, if I could I would describe a beautiful wild deep red flower, on a stem 18 inches long, flower 1 inches long, bell-shape. [Lilium Philadelphium]

A new and curious species of Laurel [Rhododendron or Kalmia] a long leaf like Magnolia, 15 ft high; the flowers from their having a kind of natural bird lime upon the outside of them, are hung up, Livy tells me, for fly traps;-I suppose on Sundays only, from the dirt. In the brook plenty of trout. A lizard makes a noise like the constant VOL. XIV.-13

rapping of a small stick upon a board. Leiby (for so he spells his name) says he often sees them. I doubt. Salad with milk, oil, vinegar, bonny clabber and bread; good God! how can they work so hard on such food! A fine lesson; I was determined to eat as they did, but was forced to take a piece of dried venison. They have a fine black eyed girl, 2 years old, but I suppose by ten, she will lose all her beauty and look like one of Shakespears witches. I notice their shifts being made exactly like shirts, except the collar, they button with one button at the top. Can it be possible! Am I in America! where wages are six or seven shillings per day! No wonder they acquire wealth. No schools, no itch for learning. Were they dressed alike, I defy any man to tell boys and girls of 10 or 12 apart. When grown up their forms differ, but their masculine features nearly the same. What will not education do! To see and observe these people is worth riding a hard trotting horse 90 or 100 miles. I am 12 miles from that part of the Lehigh which produces such excellent coal;—6d per bushel to Philadelphia, by water.1

My present landlord has a considerable store, a small farm, &c.,-wages a dollar per day. Set off, at 3 o'clock for Snyder's; went over a long high mountain called Somer's Ridge, at the foot of which you cross the Little Schuylkill. The Somer's Ridge is a miserable road, a sharp sand, upon a sandstone, too hard to be called free. The next mountain, called the Second Blue Mountain is still worse; I wonder how it is possible to get loaded wagons over such miserable rough stony roads. I then crossed the Tuscarora Mountain, which contained a many rocks of that kind of motherstone used in mills. The timber that covers these lands, if so it be called, consists of short, knotty pitch pine, chestnut and chestnut oak. At the bottom of this

1I remember that about 25 years later than this, my father procured a lump of Lehigh coal about as large as his two fists, and tried it on his wood fire in an open Franklin stove. After two days he concluded that if the world should take fire the Lehigh coal mines would be the safest retreat, the last place to burn.

mountain I come to a house, kept by Snyder as a tavern. I had been told of a fine barn, and meadows, though a middling house; five miles from the Schuylkill. How disappointed was I in finding a large family in a small old log house as black as a smoke house and more dirty than a hogpen. I entered, look at a thousand holes thro' the roof, see that they have the itch badly, drink a small glass of whiskey, pay them 6d instead of 3d, and set off for Trushes, 3 miles, and there find a stable without hay or straw. A poor house and dirty bedfellow,- dollar. 15 miles from Leibys. A foolish democrat with strange notions, all for want of candid information.

July 4. 15 miles to Fred. Lavinburgh's to breakfast, over mountains composed of nearly the same materials; more motherstone, at 11 miles come down the first road. worth observing over these mountains, N. E. side. You observe the trees in the under valley as plain as plums in a pudding under your nose. Over the valley and next hill plains of mile broad, of very good pine and oak, fit for spars of any kind; and the land has not many stones; and would no doubt be worth clearing. A brook runs through east and west, but the dumb fools know not where it empties. However, good eggs and bacon, bad coffee and a good stomach, make up for wanted information, in some respects. To Roaring Creek 9 miles. First over a mountain called. the Little Mountain, over which is the best road of any mountain I had yet crossed; it took me one hour, exact, to cross it; after that pretty good roads to this place. I have through the want of information gone five miles out of the way. However, my landlord says the better road will make up for it. He is well informed, descended from Irish parents; not party spirited; has 3 seeming industrious girls; chatty; use thee and thou; majestic sounds after the yaw, yaw! Though ordinary persons, they are vastly superior to the Germans in expressive phizes. Can this be all education, or not? They live pretty well, ham, eggs, lettuce, plain; much better than the German warm salads. Have come over some red shell land; very poor; will never