He who would read this extract in the same manner as he would the preceding, must be altogether void of sentiment and sensibility.

My next lecture will relate to the different figures of speech, and the peculiar method of justly communicating to each its proper expression both in reading and recitation.

FOR THE PORT FOLIO.

Extract of a letter from Lexington.

SINCE the departure of our friend THE AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGIST ON his western expedition, inquiries have been made respecting him, which, by their frequency and earnestness evince a solicitude for his welfare, highly creditable to him, and indeed not a little to those who made them. It was natural for the public who have been delighted and instructed by his labours, and for his friends who know his personal worth, to be anxious for him while employed in an enterprize of much hardship, and considerable danger. Partaking largely in that anxiety, our pleasure is greater than we can well express in being able to announce, that intelligence has been received of his arrival in safety and improved health at Lexington in Kentucky.

While wandering through the desolation of our remote western territories in pursuit of the means further to enrich the natural history of this country; our Ornithologist's heart untravelled fondly turned to the friends he left behind him, and in his unaccommodated condition, he wrote a letter, from which we have taken the following extract. The perusal of it will no doubt afford our readers that satisfaction which all who have the slightest pretensions to taste must feel in contemplating a picture recommended by strength and correctness of outline, and by a truth in the colouring which none but an artist who had taken a close and accurate survey of Nature, in her minutest details, could possibly bestow.

MY DEAR SIR,

Lexington, April 4, 1810.

HAVING now reached the second stage of my bird-catching expedition, I willingly sit down to give you some account of my adventures and remarks since leaving Pittsburg; by the aid of a good map and your usual stock of patience you will be able to listen to my story, and trace all my wanderings. Though generally

dissuaded from venturing by myself on so long a voyage down the Ohio, in an open skiff, I considered this mode, with all its inconveniencies, as the most favourable to my researches, and the most suitable to my funds, and I determined accordingly. Two days before my departure the Alleghany river was one wide torrent of broken ice, and I calculated on experiencing considerable difficulties on this score. My stock of provisions consisted of some biscuit and cheese, and a bottle of cordial presented me by a gentleman of Pittsburg; my gun-trunk and great coat occupied one end of the boat, I had a small tin occasionally to bale her and to take my beverage from the Ohio with, and bidding adieu to the smoky confines of Pitt, I lanched into the stream and soon winded away among the hills that every where inclose this noble river. The weather was warm and serene, and the river like a mirror, except where floating masses of ice spotted its surface, and which required some care to steer clear of; but these to my surprise in less than a day's sailing totally disappeared. Far from being concerned at my new situation, I felt my heart expand with joy at the novelties which surrounded me; I listened with pleasure to the whistling of the red-bird on the bank as I passed, and contemplated the forest scenery as it receded, with increasing delight. The smoke of the numerous sugar camps, rising lazily among the mountains, gave great effect to the varying landscape; and the grotesque log cabbins that here and there opened from the woods were diminished into mere dog-houses by the sublimity of the impending mountains. If you suppose to yourself two parallel ranges of forest covered hills, whose irregular summits are seldom more than three or four miles apart, winding through an immense extent of country, and inclosing a river half a mile wide, which alternately washes the steep declivity on one side, and leaves a rich flat forest clad bottom on the other, of a mile or so in breadth, you will have a pretty correct idea of the appearance of the Ohio. The banks of these rich flats are from twenty to sixty and eighty feet high, and even these last were within a few feet of being overflowed in December 1808.

I now stripped, with alacrity, to my new avocation. The current went about two and a half miles an hour, and I added about three and a half miles more to the boat's way with my oars. In the course of the day I passed a number of arks, or as they are

usually called Kentucky boats, loaded with what it must be acknowledged are the most valuable commodities of a country; viz. men, women and children, horses and ploughs, flour, millstones, &c. Several of these floating caravans were loaded with store goods for the supply of the settlements through which they passed, having a counter erected, shawls, muslins, &c. displayed, and every thing ready for transacting business. On approaching a settlement they blow a horn or tin trumpet, which announces to the inhabitants their arrival. I boarded many of these arks, and felt much interested at the sight of so many human beings migrating like birds of passage to the luxuriant regions of the south and west. These arks are built in the form of a parallelogram, being from twelve to fourteen feet wide, and from forty to seventy feet long, covered above, rowed only occasionally by two oars before, and steered by a long and powerful one fixed above as in the annexed sketch.

Ark.

Barge for passing up stream.

The barges are taken up along shore by setting poles at the rate of twenty miles or so a day; the arks cost about one hundred and fifty cents per foot, according to their length, and when they reach their places of destination, seldom bring more than onesixth their original cost. These arks descend from all parts of the Ohio and its tributary streams, the Alleghany, Monongahela, Muskingum, Sciota, Miami, Kentucky, Wabash, &c. &c. in the months of March, April, and May particularly, with goods, produce and emigrants, the two former for markets along the river, or at New Orleans, the latter for various parts of Kentucky, Ohio, and the Indiana Territory. I now return to my own expedition.

I rowed twenty odd miles the first spell, and found I should be able to stand it perfectly well. About an hour after night I put up at a miserable cabin, fifty-two miles from Pittsburg, where I slept on what I supposed to be corn-stalks, or something worse; so preferring the smooth bosom of the Ohio to this brush heap, I got up long before day, and being under no apprehension of losing my way I again pushed out into the stream. The landscape on each side, lay in one mass of shade, but the grandeur of the projecting headlands and vanishing points, or lines, were charmingly reflected in the smooth glassy surface below. I could only discover when I was passing a clearing by the crowing of cocks; and now and then in more solitary places the big horned owl made a most hideous hollowing that echoed among the mountains. In this lonesome manner, with full leisure for observation and reflec. tion, exposed to hardships all day, and hard births all night, to storms of rain, hail and snow, for it froze severely almost every night, I persevered, from the 24th of February to Sunday evening March 17th, when I moored my skiff safely in Bear Grass Creek, at the Rapids of the Ohio, after a voyage of seven hundred and twenty miles. My hands suffered the most; and it will be some weeks yet before they recover their former feeling and flexibility. It would be the task of a month to detail all the particulars of my numerous excursions, in every direction from the river. In Steubenville, Charlestown and Wheeling I found some friends. At Marietta I visited the celebrated remains of Indian fortifications, as they are improperly called, which cover a large space of ground on the banks of the Muskingum. Seventy miles above this, at a place called Big Grave Creek, I examined some extraordinary remains of the same kiud there. The Big Grave is three hundred paces round at the base, seventy feet perpendicular, and the top, which is about fifty feet over has sunk in, forming a regular concavity, three or four feet deep. This tumulus is in the form of a cone, and the whole, as well as its immediate neighbourhood, is covered with a venerable growth of forest four or five hundred years old, which gives it a most singular appearance. In clambering around its steep sides I found a place where a large white oak had been lately blown down, and had torn up the earth to the depth of five or

six feet. In this place I commenced digging, and continued to labour for about an hour, examining every handful of earth with great care, but except some shreds of earthen ware made of a coarse kind of gritty clay, and considerable pieces of charcoal, I found nothing else; but a person of the neighbourhood presented me with some beads fashioned out of a kind of white stone, which were found in digging on the opposite side of this gigantic mound, where I found the hole still remaining. The whole of an extensive plain a short distance from this is marked out with squares, oblongs and circles, one of which comprehends several acres. The embankments by which they are distinguished are still two or three feet above the common level of the field. The Big Grave is the property of a Mr. Tomlinson, or Tumblestone, who lives near, and who would not expend three cents to see the whole sifted before his face. I endeavoured to work on his avarice by representing the probability that it might contain valuable matters, and suggested to him a mode by which a passage might be cut into it level with the bottom, and by excavation and arching a most noble cellar might be formed for keeping his turnips and potatoes. "All the turnips and potatoes shall raise this dozen years," said he, "would not pay the expense." This man is no antiquarian or theoretical farmer, nor much of a practical one either I fear; he has about two thousand acres of the best land, and just makes out to live. Near the head of what is called the Long Reach, I called on a certain Michael Cressap, son to the noted colonel Cressap, mentioned in Jefferson's Notes on Virginia. From him I received the head of a paddle fish, the largest ever seen in the Ohio, which I am keeping for Mr. Peale, with various other curiosities. I took the liberty of asking whether Logan's accusation of his father having killed all his family, had any truth in it; but he replied that, it had not. Logan, he said, had been misinformed; he detailed to me all the particulars which are too long for repetition, and concluded by informing me that his father died early in the revolutionary war of the camp fever, near New-York.

Marietta stands on a swampy plain, which has evidently once been the ancient bed of the Muskingum, and is still occasionally inundated to the depth of five or six feet. A Mr. Putnam, son