Journey from Bethlehem in Pennsylvania to New Harmony on the Wabash
Reading – Harrisburg on the Susquehanna – Picturesque Juniata Valley – Height of the Alleghenies – Stay at Ebensburg – Hunting excursions – Laurel Hill – Blairsville – New Alexandria – Pittsburgh – Economy on the Ohio – Society of Mr. Rapp – Wheeling – Navigation of the Ohio – Marietta – Parkersburg – Cincinnati – Louisville– Mount Vernon
October 17, 1832
At six thirty we had a temperature of 15°R [65.8°F, 18.8°C], a great change from yesterday’s cold. During the night we had passed several towns and creeks and early in the morning reached Brandenburg, a village on the left bank. Here there are rocky, rather high hills, all of which reveal horizontally stratified, whitish rocky walls; they are furthermore completely wooded, gently rounded, and extensive. Here we saw a large number of flatboats sailing on the river. To the right was a very beautiful dark forest, cultivated fields picturesquely set in clearings surrounded by tall trees like colonnades and pillars. We took on wood on the bank near a house. Near the bank below were beautiful long islands, partly overgrown with willows. A small round island, like the Carapuca in the Rio Doce, had a crown of low timber at the lower end, above which, one discerned, in contrast, the tall timber. The understory was mostly Salix. On the right bank we reached the market town, or rather village, Leavenworth (not on the map). Tall forests on both banks; thick stones on the bank below. In the afternoon we reached Stephensport to the left; opposite, there is a village bearing the name Rome; both have some ordinary houses. Afterward we had little variety: forest on both banks, interrupted here and there by cultivated fields.
On the bank we saw strange boulders formed by the water; the layers had been increasingly washed away from the bottom to the top. Before the lofty forest, Platanus and willows grew along the bank. Tall beeches in the forest, many of them intertwined with the vermilion red vines of Hedera. The stratified stone beds on the bank were [at this time] exposed 4 to 5 feet high because the river was so low. Cloverport was situated on the left bank. As it is a dark night, one anchors near the bank until the stars come out, since the moon does not rise until late. In the cabin various games began; all the while, great heat and innumerable cockroaches (Blatta americana), which run around in all the beds and fall down on the table.