You will be much surprised to hear of the avidity which prevails in this country for towns consisting of a very few log cabins. For a convenient {190} distribution of seats of justice, and for roads that are at best openings cut through the woods, with the stumps remaining, without side ditches, and without any other bridges through marshes or streams, than a few pieces of timber laid down side by side across the way. But an explanation is made, when you are told that pettifoggers by this means create situations for themselves, and a few of their constituents who are in the employment of squires, county commissioners, prosecuting attornies, supervisors of roads, and constables. With numbers the design is to increase the value of their contiguous lands at the public expense, instead of improving them by their own industry. By such means, they frequently succeed in selling at an advance of fifty, or even a hundred per cent, per annum; and remove to more recent settlements, where they are able to purchase a larger extent of land, and where they can continue their favourite trade of making counties, towns, and roads. Towns are laid out by persons who sell lots of about a fourth or a fifth part of an acre: these sometimes sell at from a hundred to three hundred dollars, even in situations where scarcely a single spot of the neighbouring woods is cleared. After a town has made some progress in point of improvement and population, lots usually rise in price, from three hundred to a thousand dollars; and, in the larger towns, to a much higher value. At present the mania of purchasing town lots is rather declining. Holders are unwilling to see the prices reduced. They continue to talk of former rates, and to keep them up; on exchanging one lot for two, say, that for the better one, one thousand dollars is paid in two lots worth five hundred each. Their conduct very much resembles that of a person who said, that he sold a dog at forty guineas, and explained the transaction by stating, {191} “that he was paid in two dogs, each worth half that sum.” I lately saw a town lot sold for state or county taxes, at a fourth part of the price paid for it two years ago. The rents of the worst kind of houses amount to upwards of fifty per cent, per annum, on the price of erection. A miserable cabin, that could scarcely be let at all in your country, or would not rent at £1 10s. a-year, gives here as much per month. The people are of consequence closely crowded together; several families frequently inhabiting a house of one apartment, without any inner door, so that when the street door is open, passengers may see the inmates at table, and the other particulars of the house. The beds are ranged round the walls, like so many looms in a weaver’s work-shop. In various instances I have seen families living in temporary huts, built of small pieces of decayed timber collected in the woods, laid upon one another