About noon we reached the Genesee River, at the opposite side of which was situated the village where we expected to procure horses. We crossed the river in canoes, and took up our quarters at a house at the uppermost end of the village, where we were very glad to find our Indian friends could get no accommodation, for we knew well that the first use they would make of the money we were going to give them would be to buy liquor, and intoxicate themselves, in which state they would not fail of becoming very troublesome companions; it was scarcely dark indeed when news was brought us from a house near the river, that they went to after we had discharged them, that they were grown quite outrageous with the quantity of spirits they had drank, and were fighting and cutting each other in a most dreadful manner. They never resent the injuries they receive from any person that is evidently intoxicated, but attribute their wounds entirely to the liquor, on which they vent their execrations for all the mischief it has committed. Before I dismiss the subject entirely, I must observe to you, that the Indians did not seem to think the carrying of our baggage was in any manner degrading to them; and after having received their due, they shook hands with us, and parted from us, not as from employers who had hired them, but as from friends whom they had been assisting, and were now sorry to leave. The village where we stopped consisted of about eight or nine straggling houses; the best built one among them was that in which we lodged. It belonged to a family from New England, who about six years before had penetrated to this spot, then covered with woods, and one hundred and fifty miles distant from any other settlement. Settlements are now scattered over the whole of the country which they had to pass through in coming to it. The house was commodious and well built, and the people decent, civil, and reputable. It is a very rare circumstance to meet with such people amongst the first settlers on the frontiers; in general they are men of a morose and savage disposition, and the very outcasts of society, who bury themselves in the woods, as if desirous to shun the face of their fellow creatures; there they build a rude habitation, and clear perhaps three or four acres of land, just as much as they find sufficient to provide their families with corn: for the greater part of their food they depend on their rifle guns. These people, as the settlements advance, are succeeded in general by a second set of men, less savage than the first, who clear more land, and do not depend so much upon hunting as upon agriculture for their subsistence. A third set succeed these in turn, who build good houses, and bring the land into a more improved state. The first settlers, as soon as they have disposed of their miserable dwellings to advantage, immediately penetrate farther back into the woods, in order to gain a place of abode suited to their rude mode of life.