e; and
it is a market for all spare produce. Many kinds of culinary plants, and
many fruit-trees are cultivated here; and the Harmonites set a good
example of neatness and industry. When we contrast their neatness and
order, with the slovenly habits of their neighbours, we see (says Mr.
Birkbeck) the good that arises from association, which advances these
poor people a century, at least, on the social scale, beyond the
solitary beings who build their huts in the wilderness.

At Harmony Mr. Birkbeck and his family lived at the tavern, and their
board there cost two dollars per week, each person: for these they
received twenty-one meals. Excellent coffee and tea, with broiled
chickens, bacon, &c. for breakfast and supper, and a variety of good,
but simple fare at dinner. Except coffee, tea, or milk, no liquor but
water is thought of at meals in this country.

Mr. Birkbeck observes that, when the back country of America is
mentioned in England, musquitoes by night, and rattlesnakes by day,
never fail to alarm the imagination: to say nothing of wolves and bears,
and panthers, and Indians still more ferocious than these. His course of
travelling, from the mouth of James River, and over the mountains, up to
Pittsburg, about five hundred miles; then three hundred miles through
the woods of the state of Ohio, down to Cincinnati; next, across the
entire wilderness of Indiana, and to the extreme south of the
Illinois:--this long and deliberate journey, (he says,) one would
suppose, might have introduced his party to an intimate acquaintance
with some of these pests of America. It is true that they killed several
of the serpent tribe; black snakes, garter-snakes, &c. and that they saw
one rattlesnake of extraordinary size. They experienced inconvenience
from musquitoes in a few damp spots, just as they would have done from
gnats in England. In their late expeditions in the Illinois, where they
led the lives of thorough backwoods-men, if they were so unfortunate as
to pitch their tent on the edge of a creek, or near a swamp, and
mismanaged their fire, they were teased with musquitoes, as they would
have been in the fens of Cambridgeshire: but this was the sum total
of their experience of these reported plagues.

Wolves and bears are extremely numerous, and commit much injury in the
newly-settled districts. Hogs, which are a main dependance for food as
well as profit, are the constant prey of the bears; and the holds of
these ani