was then gay and young, and the west has been ever since improving; several farmers having made fortunes trebling and quadrupling their first capitals by purchasing.
"West country hospitality," says Mr. Johnson, "is most abundant, and is well exemplified in the conduct of many of the most respectable settlers, towards a stranger who was waylaid and robbed of 3,000 dollars. On making it known, colonels, majors, captains, and lieutenants, all as one man, instantly armed without fee or reward, and scouring the country round for many miles, overtook and seized the robber, and recovered all the cash for the overjoyed stranger."
I noticed to-day, that at lone houses a little out of society, the children all rushed to the doors to gaze upon us, and with a fixed, wild, staring eye, seemed to say: We have never seen such strangers before in this world.
9th.—Being now in the neighbourhood of his excellency the president's country seat,[32] or farm-house, the patrimony of his family, I find that his {148} neighbours are rejoicing because his excellency, on coming here last week, was arrested three times in one week by neighbours whom he ought to have paid long ago; the debts being money borrowed on his estates. He has long been under private pecuniary embarrassments, and offered all his estates for sale in order to discharge the demands of his creditors.
I reached the elegant farm mansion and table of Colonel Thomas, to dine. Here I found many interesting sons and daughters, who, together with their sire and mother, seemed full of good-will and generous hospitality to me, a stranger. The colonel has two farms, one of 600, and the other of 300 acres; bought 30 years since at
