- dren, when they grow up, do just the same, without the
interference of their parents.
Throughout the western country the children are kept punctually at school, where they learn reading, writing, and the elements of arithmetic. These schools are supported at the expense of the inhabitants, who send for masters as soon as the population and their circumstances permit; in consequence of which it is very rare to find an American who does not know how to read and write. Upon the Ohio, and in the Barrens, where the settlements are farther apart, the inhabitants have not yet been able to procure this advantage, which is the object of solicitude in every family.
{198} CHAP. XXI
Nasheville.—Commercial details.—Settlement of the Natches
Nasheville, the principal and the oldest town in this part of Tennessea, is situate upon the river Cumberland, the borders of which, in this part, are formed by a mass of chalky stone upwards of sixty feet in height. Except seven or eight houses that are built of brick, the rest, to the number of about a hundred and twenty, are constructed of wood, and distributed upon a surface of twenty-five or thirty acres, where the rock appears almost bare in every part. They cannot procure water in the town without going a considerable way about to reach the banks of the river, or descending by a deep and dangerous path. When I was at Nasheville one of the inhabitants was endeavouring to pierce the rock, in order to make a well; but at that time he {199} had only dug a few feet, on account of the stone being so amazingly hard.
This little town, although built upwards of fifteen years,
