At Louisville we first saw the effects of a violent epidemic disease which had attacked the horses, and many were dying of it. The disorder appeared first upon the tongue, without any previous symptoms of fever that I perceived; blebs or blisters rose, broke, and increasing in number the whole tongue shortly became completely skinned and much swelled; the malady extended itself gradually down the throat, and the animal died, more it would appear from inability to take in food than immediately owing to the disorder.--Almost every horse we met on the road had caught the infection; at Louisville and Frankfort, at the last in particular, I saw near forty altogether in one yard: various were the {142} modes of treatment; some bled them and gave physic upon the first appearance; diet, soft mashes with nitre honey and the insides of gourds: the animals seemed to suffer greatly from hunger. The local applications were a mixture of copperas, alum, and blue vitriol pulverized and rubbed upon the tongue twice or more each day, in order to destroy the activity of the disease, and a frequent washing between these applications, with honey and alum water. This was the mode of treatment I adopted,[47] for three of my horses caught it, and they all recovered, though one was reduced so low that I was obliged to exchange him at Maysville. With the others we continued the journey without the delay of one day, and they were in better condition on re-entering Philadelphia than when they left it. At Lexington (Kentucky) we stopped at the Indian Queen which is a good house. Another change of notes became here necessary; those of the Bank of the United States were not to be procured, and no others being received with any certainty on the road, I sold the notes changed at Louisville for dollars at a further discount of two and a half per cent, and even {143} for this bargain I was again beholden to the good offices of the same gentleman who had kindly cashed my draft when going westward. My dollars were put into a bag, and as I returned swinging them along to the tavern, the weight caused some reflections on the different effects on mankind of specie and paper as circulating mediums;--the first, by its weight obviously tends to make one think more of expenditure even in small sums; the latter, by the facility it affords of carrying in the pocket-book sums of any magnitude must have a directly reverse effect;--perhaps one of the greatest evils attendant upon the paper money system may be attributed to this cause, and the very inconvenience which I now experience of carrying an inconsiderable sum in specie might therefore, if general, be an important means of raising the value of money, and of establishing economy in public and private affairs.