He praised the soil very highly. I asked him if he was acquainted with the land at Mount Vernon. He said he was; and represented it to be rich land, but not so rich as his. Yet his I thought very poor indeed; for it was (as is termed in America) _gullied_; which I call broken land. This effect is produced by the winter's frost and summer's rain, which cut the land into cavities of from ten feet wide and ten feet deep (and upwards) in many places; and, added to this, here and there a hole, which makes it look altogether like marlpits, or stone-quarries, that have been carried away by those hasty showers in the summer, which no man who has not seen them in this climate could form any idea of or believe possible.... In two days after we left this place, we came in sight of Mount Vernon; but in all the way up the river, I did not see any green fields. The country had to me a most barren appearance. There were none but snake-fences; which are rails laid with the ends of one upon another, from eight to sixteen in number in one length. The surface of the earth looked like a yellow-washed wall; for it had been a very dry summer; and there was not any thing that I could see green, except the pine trees in the woods, and the cedars, which made a truly picturesque view as we sailed up the Potomac. It is indeed a most beautiful river. When we arrived at Mount Vernon, I found that General Washington was at Philadelphia; but his steward[9] had orders from the General to receive me and my family, with all the horses, cattle, &c. which I had on board. A boat was, therefore, got ready for landing them; but that could not be done, as the ship must be cleared out at some port before anything was moved: so, after looking about a few minutes at Mount Vernon, I returned to the ship, and we began to make way for Alexandria.... [9] No doubt Anderson, Washington's last manager. When I had been about seven days at Alexandria, I hired a horse and went to Mount Vernon, to view my intended farm; of which General Washington had given me a plan, and a report along with it--the rent being fixed at eighteen hundred bushels of wheat for twelve hundred acres, or money according to the price of that grain. I must confess that if he would have given me the inheritance of the land for that sum, I durst not have accepted it, especially with the incumbrances upon it; viz. one hundred seventy slaves young and old, and out of that number only twenty-seven[10] in a condition to work, as the steward represented to me. I viewed the whole of the cultivated estate--about three thousand acres; and afterward dined with Mrs. Washington and the family. Here I met a Doctor Thornton, who is a very pleasant agreeable man, and his lady; with a Mr. Peters and his lady, who was a grand-daughter of Mrs. Washington. Doctor Thornton living at the city of Washington, he gave me an invitation to visit him there: he was one of the commissioners of the city. [10] Most certainly a mistake.