roads to it, which do not vary in point of distance above twenty miles. Travellers take that where they think of finding the best houses for accommodation: I took the one that leads through Lincolnton, Chester, and Columbia. The distance from Morganton to Lincolnton is forty-five miles. For the whole of this space the soil is extremely bad, and the plantations, straggling five or six miles from each other, have but a middling appearance. The woods are in a great measure composed of different kinds of oaks, and the surface of the ground is covered with grass, intermixed with plants.
Lincolnton, the principal town of the county of Lincoln, is formed by the junction of forty houses, surrounded by the woods like all the small towns of the interior. Two or three large shops, that do the same kind of business as that at Morganton, are established {267} there. The tradesmen who keep them send the produce of their country to Charleston, but they find it sometimes answer their purpose better to stock themselves with goods from Philadelphia, although farther by six hundred miles. Some expedite them by sea to Carolina, whence they go by land to Lincolnton. The freight, a little higher from England to Charleston, and the enormous advance which the merchants lay on their goods, appear the only motives that make them give the preference to those of Philadelphia.
At Lincolnton they print a newspaper in folio, that comes out twice a week. The price of subscription is two dollars per year; but the printer, who is his own editor, takes, by way of payment, for the ease of his country subscribers, flour, rye, wax, &c. at the market price. The advertisements inserted for the inhabitants of the country are generally the surest profit to the printers.
