18th
Century Travel in the New World.
“When one travels on the roads, one
constantly travels in bush or forest.
Occasionally, there is a house and several miles down the road there is
another house.”
John W. Kleiner and Helmut T. Lehman, The
Correspondence of Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg, Volume 1, 1740-1747, (Picton
Press, Camden, ME, 1986) 118; hereafter cited as Muhlenberg Correspondence.
“…lost their way several times and had to cross
several rivers, through one of which, the Nottway, they had to swim, as there
was no one at hand to take them across in a boat.”
William
J. Hinke, "Diaries Of Missionary Travels Among The German Settlers In The
American Colonies 1743-1748," The Pennsylvania German Society Proceedings
And Addresses, (Published By The Society 1929) 34:79.
“ The settlements here
are totally surrounded by forests.”
Muhlenberg
Correspondence, 80.
“the whole country is one continuous
woods!”
Benjamin
F. Owen, "Letters of Rev. Richard Locke, and Rev. George Craig,
Missionaries In Pennsylvania of the Society For Propagating the Gospel In
Foreign Parts, 1746-1752," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography, (The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa., 1900),
24:470.
“…farmsteads were irregular in their
appearance, they were frequently set far back from the roads and most often adjacent
to a spring or stream.”
Ibid.,
104.
“The land is not really
dear. One takes up two-hundred acres,
promised to pay by installments in ten years and instead clears off the debt in
five years.”
Mittelberger,
119.
“Reaching a settlement is like a feast for
an inexperienced traveler—to see sun shine on some open grounds, to view clear
fields. You seem to be relieved from
that secret uneasiness and involuntary apprehension which is always in the
woods.”
J.
Hector Crevecoeur, Letters From an American Farmer And Sketches Of 18th-Century
America, (Penquin Books, Ltd., Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1981) 359.
“In this country the chickens are not put
in houses at night nor are they looked after but they sit summer and winter
upon trees near houses. Every morning many a tree is so full of chickens that
the boughs bend beneath them.”
Mittelberger,
64.
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