Finally; were, however, America, of which I now perhaps take my leave for ever, every thing that the purest patriotism could make it, yet the climate is an evil, a perpetual evil, a mighty drawback, an almost insurmountable obstacle to the health, wealth, and well-being of all, except the native red and black man, the genuine aboriginal, and the unstained African, for whom alone this land of promise, this vast section of the earth, this new and better world, seems by nature to have been intended. Otherwise, it is argued, would noisome pestilence annually desolate its cities and districts, and every where unsparingly and prematurely people the grave? In spite, however, of climes, tropical or changeful, torrid or frigid, and of constitutional predisposition to sickness, health, physical and moral, is much more at the command of mankind than she is generally supposed to be. Temperance, abstinence, and exertion, approximating to labour, in free air, are the essential handmaids to health, and enable a man to laugh at doctors, and to withstand the effects of climate. Hence, then, {488} in whatsoever climes, stations, or circumstances, my reader may be found, let him learn to think health worth a sacrifice. To persons, whose fortune it may be to encounter the risks of this dangerous and debilitating climate, I would especially say: Let ablutions and affusions of pure, cold spring water, become habitual with you, and as a beverage, let water be substituted for wine, whiskey, and alcohol in all its forms. Let milk supply the place of tea, coffee, and other stimulants; and let tobacco, snuff, and all the family of narcotics, be abandoned. Surely health is ever, what a late venerable friend of his species was often wont to call her, _the Sugar of Life_. He who thinks and acts otherwise rarely finds health, and never deserves her. FOOTNOTES: [104] Richard Daniel came to Princeton in 1816. He was a circuit judge for one year (1819-20), and subsequently represented Gibson County in the legislature.--ED. [105] Petersburg is fifteen miles south of Washington. Several families had settled in the neighborhood by 1817. Pike County being organized in that year, it was chosen as the county seat, and a town surveyed and platted. It was incorporated in 1855.--ED. [106] For the "mud holes" and Judge Chambers, see Hulme's _Journal_, volume x of our series, notes 28, 29. For Corydon, see Flint's _Letters_, in our volume ix, note 136.--ED. [107] The Silver Hills extend north from New Albany through Floyd and Clark counties, the two most prominent peaks being the "Haystack Knobs," at Bennettsville; the principal ridge is from four hundred to five hundred feet above the valley.--ED. [108] Uniontown is now Waverly, the name having been changed when the Ohio-Scioto Canal was constructed through the village (1830), and it acquired the dignity of a post-town. It is about twenty miles from Chillicothe.--ED.