of them well built, and some quite handsome. The public buildings are a meeting-house, and a stone Gaol. There is a printing-office in the town which issues a weekly newspaper. Several manufactures are carried on in the place, and much business done in the mercantile line to very great advantage. Though the town has been settled but fifteen years, it is, next to Pittsburg and Wheeling, the most flourishing town through which we passed on the western side of the mountains. Near it are some valuable merchant-mills; and in the county are eighteen furnaces and iron works, and several distilleries.[47]
{67} Towards evening we pursued our journey as far as Connelsville, where we slept. This town has been settled eight years. It is pleasantly situated on the Yohiogany; and contains about eighty houses, and four hundred inhabitants.[48]
Tuesday, June 14
Through woody and rugged ways we passed the Chesnut Ridge, and Laurel Hill, and reached Somerset to lodge: a distance of thirty-three miles. This is a pretty place, the shire town of the County of the same name. It has been settled eight years; contains about fifty houses, several of them well built; some merchants' stores, shops of artists, a meeting-house, and a handsome Court-house and Gaol built with stone.
