_Sunday, 9th._--I quitted Lexington, and one of the best taverns in America, for Paris, Kentucky, and a good, genteel farm-house, the General Washington, twenty-three miles from the city, belonging to Mr. Hit, who, though owning between four hundred and five hundred acres of the finest land in Kentucky, does not think it beneath him to entertain travellers and their horses, on the best fare and beds in the country. He has been offered sixty dollars, and could now have forty dollars an acre, for his land, which averages thirty bushels of wheat, and sixty bushels of corn per acre, and, in {337} natural or artificial grass, is the first in the world. Sheep, (fine stores) one dollar per head; beef, fine, three cents per lb., and fowls, one dollar per dozen. _10th._--Rode all day in the rain and mud, and through the worst roads in the universe, frequently crossing creeks, belly deep of our horses. Passed the creek at Blue-lick, belly deep, with sulphurous water running from a sulphur spring, once a salt spring. The water stinks like the putrid stagnant water of an English horse-pond, full of animal dung. This is resorted to for health. Five or six dirkings and stabbings took place, this fall, in Kentucky. _11th._--Breakfasted at Washington, (Kentucky) where we parted with Mr. Phillips, and met the Squire, and another gentleman, debating about law. Rested at Maysville, a good house, having chambers, and good beds, with curtains. The steam-boats pass this handsome river town, at the rate of fifteen to twenty miles an hour. To the passenger, the effect is beautiful, every minute presenting new objects of attraction. _12th._--Crossed the Ohio in a flat, submitting to Kentuckyan imposition of seventy-five cents a horse, instead of twenty-five, because we were supposed to be Yankees. "We will not," said the boat-man, "take you over, for less than a dollar each. We heard of you, yesterday. The gentleman in the cap (meaning me) looks as though he {338} could afford to pay, and besides, he is so slick with his tongue. The Yankees are the smartest of fellows, except the Kentuckyans." Sauciness and impudence are characteristic of these boat-men, who wished I would commence a bridge over the river. Reached Union town, Ohio,[108] and rested for the night. _13th._--Breakfasted at Colonel Wood's. A fine breakfast on beef, pork-steaks, eggs, and coffee, and plenty for our horses, all for fifty cents each. Slept at Colonel Peril's, an old Virginian revolutionary soldier, living on 400 acres of fine land, in a good house, on an eminence, which he has held two years only. He now wishes to sell all at ten dollars an acre, less than it cost him, because he has a family who will all want as much land each, in the Missouri, at two dollars. He never had a negro. He knows us to be English from our dialect. We passed, this day, through two or three young villages.