Lexinton, the manor-house for the county of Fayette, is situated in the midst of a flat soil of about three hundred acres, like the rest of the small towns of the United States that are not upon the borders of the sea. This town is traced upon a regular plan, and its streets, sufficiently broad, cut each other at right angles. The want of pavement renders it very muddy in winter time, and rainy weather. The houses, most of which are brick, are disseminated upon an extent of eighty or a hundred acres, except those which form the main street, where they are contiguous to each other. This town, founded in 1780, is the oldest and most wealthy of the three new western states; it contains about three thousand inhabitants. Frankfort, the seat of government in Kentucky, which is upwards of twenty {123} miles distant from it, is not so populous.[39] We may attribute the rapid increase of Lexinton to its situation in the centre of one of the most fertile parts of the country, comprised in a kind of semicircle, formed by the Kentucky river.

There are two printing-offices at Lexinton, in each of which a newspaper is published twice a week. Part of the paper is manufactured in the country, and is dearer by one-third than in France.[40] That which they use for writing, originally imported from England, comes by the way of Philadelphia and Baltimore. Two extensive rope walks, constantly in employ, supply the ships with rigging that are built upon the Ohio. On the borders of the little river that runs very near the town several tan-yards are established that supply the wants of the inhabitants. I observed at the gates of these tan-yards strong leathers of a yellowish cast, tanned with the black oak; in consequence of which I saw that this tree grew in Kentucky, although I had not observed it between Limestone and Lexinton; in fact, I had seen nothing but land either parched up or extremely fertile; and, as I have since observed, this tree grows in neither, it is an inhabitant of the mountainous parts, where the soil is gravelly and rather moist.

{124} The want of hands excites the industry of the inhabitants of this country. When I was at Lexinton one of them had just obtained a patent for a nail machine, more complete and expeditious than the one made use of in the prisons at New York and Philadelphia; and a second announced one for the grinding and cleaning of hemp and sawing wood and stones. This machine, moved by a horse or a current of water, is capable, according to what the inventor said, to break and clean eight thousand weight of hemp per day.

The articles manufactured at Lexinton are very passable, and the speculators are ever said to make rapid fortunes, notwithstanding the extreme scarcity of hands. This scarcity proceeds from the inhabitants giving so decided a preference to agriculture, that there are very few of them who put their children to any trade, wanting their services in the field. The following comparison will more clearly prove this scarcity of artificers in the western states: At Charleston in Carolina, and at Savannah in Georgia, a cabinet-maker, carpenter, mason, tinman, tailor, shoemaker, &c. earns two piastres a day, and cannot live for less than six per week; at New York and Philadelphia he has but one piaster, and it {125} costs him four per week. At Marietta, Lexinton and Nasheville, in Tenessea, these workmen earn from one piaster to one and a half a day, and can subsist a week with the produce of one day’s labour. Another example may tend to give an idea of the low price of provisions in the western states. The boarding-house, where I lived during my stay at Lexinton, passes for one of the best in the town, and we were profusely served at the rate of two piastres per week. I am informed that living is equally cheap in the states of New England, which comprise Connecticut, Massachusets, and New Hampshire; but the price of labour is not so high, and therefore more proportionate to the price of provisions.

Independent of those manufactories which are established in Lexinton, there are several common potteries, and one or two powder-mills, the produce of which is consumed in the country or exported to Upper Carolina and Low Louisiana. The sulphur is obtained from Philadelphia and the saltpetre is manufactured in the country; the materials are extracted from the grottos, or caverns, that are found on the declivity of lofty hills in the most mountainous part of the state. The soil there is extremely rich in nitrous particles, which is evidently due to {126} the chalky rock, at the expense of which all these excavations are formed, as well as for vegetable substances, which are casually thrust into their interior. This appears to demonstrate that the assimilation of animal matters is not absolutely necessary, even in the formation of artificial nitrous veins, to produce a higher degree of nitrification. Saltpetre of the first preparation is sold at about sixpence halfpenny per pound. Among the various samples I have seen, I never observed the least appearance of marine salt. The process that is used is as defective as their preparation of salt; I only speak relative to the extraction of the saltpetre, not having seen the powder-mills. I shall conclude by observing, that it is only in Kentucky and Tenessea that saltpetre is manufactured, and not in the Atlantic States.

The majority of the inhabitants of Lexinton trade with Kentucky;[41] they receive their merchandize from Philadelphia and Baltimore in thirty-five or forty days, including the journey of two days and a half from Limestone, where they land all the goods destined for Kentucky. The price of carriage is from seven to eight piastres per hundred weight. Seven-tenths of the manufactured articles consumed in Kentucky, as well as in the other parts of the {127} United States, are imported from England; they consist chiefly in coarse and fine jewellery, cutlery, ironmongery, and tin ware; in short, drapery, mercery, drugs, and fine earthenware, muslins, nankeens, tea, &c. are imported directly from India to the United States by the American vessels; and they get from the Carribbees coffee, and various kinds of raw sugar, as none but the poorer class of the inhabitants make use of maple sugar.

The French goods that are sent into this part of the country are reduced to a few articles in the silk line, such as taffetas, silk stockings, &c. also brandies and millstones, notwithstanding their enormous weight, and the distance from the sea ports.

From Lexinton the different kinds of merchandize are despatched into the interior of the state, and the overplus is sent by land into Tenessea. It is an easy thing for merchants to make their fortunes; in the first place, they usually have a twelvemonth’s credit from the houses at Philadelphia and Baltimore, and in the next, as there are so few, they are always able to fix in their favour the course of colonial produce, which they take in exchange for their goods: as, through the extreme scarcity of specie, most of these transactions are done by way of barter; the merchants, {128} however, use every exertion in their power to get into their possession the little specie in circulation; it is only particular articles that are sold for money, or in exchange for produce the sale of which is always certain, such as the linen of the country, or hemp. Payments in money always bear a difference of fifteen or twenty per cent to the merchant’s profits. All the specie collected in the course of trade is sent by land to Philadelphia; I have seen convoys of this kind that consisted of fifteen or twenty horses.[42] The trouble of conveyance is so great that they give the preference to Bank bills of the United States, which bear a discount of two per cent. The merchants in all parts take them, but the inhabitants of the country will not, through fear of their being forged. I must again remark, that there is not a single species of colonial produce in Kentucky, except gensing, that will bear the expense of carriage by land from that state to Philadelphia; as it is demonstrated that twenty-five pounds weight {129} would cost more expediting that way, even going up the Ohio, than a thousand by that river, without reckoning the passage by sea, although we have had repeated examples that the passage from New Orleans to Philadelphia or New York is sometimes as long as that from France to the United States.

The current coin in the states of Kentucky and Tennessea has the same divisions as in Virginia. They reckon six shillings to the dollar or piastre. The hundreds which nearly correspond with our halfpence, although having a forced currency, do not appear in circulation. The quarters, eighths, and sixteenths of a piastre form the small white money. As it is extremely scarce, it is supplied by a very indifferent method, but which appears necessary, and consists in cutting the dollars into pieces. As every body is entitled to make this division, there are people who do it for the sake of gain; at the same time in the retail trade the seller will generally abate in his articles for a whole dollar, than have their full worth in six or eight pieces.

I have heard from several persons very well informed, that during the last war, corn being kept up at an exorbitant rate, it was computed that the exportations from Kentucky had balanced the price {130} of the importations of English goods from Philadelphia and Baltimore, by the way of the Ohio: but since the peace, the demand for flour and salt provisions having ceased in the Caribbees, corn has fallen considerably; so that the balance of trade is wholly unfavourable to the country.

During my stay at Lexinton I frequently saw Dr. Samuel Brown, from Virginia, a physician of the college of Edinburgh, and member of the Philosophical Society, to whom several members of that society had given me letters of recommendation. A merited reputation undeniably places Dr. S. Brown in the first rank of physicians settled in that part of the country. Receiving regularly the scientific journals from London, he is always in the channel of new discoveries, and turns them to the advantage of his fellow-citizens. It is to him that they are indebted for the introduction of the cow-pox. He had at that time inoculated upward of five hundred persons in Kentucky, when they were making their first attempts in New York and Philadelphia. Dr. Brown also employs himself in collecting fossils and other natural productions, which abound in this interesting country. I have seen at his house several relics of very large unknown fish, caught in the {131} Kentucky River, and which were remarkable for their singular forms. The analysis of the mineral waters at Mud-Lick was to employ the first leisure time he had. These waters are about sixty miles from Lexinton; they are held in great esteem, and the most distinguished personages in the country were drinking them when I was in the town. The Philosophical Transactions and the Monthly Review, published at New York by Dr. Mitchel, are the periodical works wherein Dr. Brown inserts the fruit of his observation and research.[43]

I had also the pleasure of forming an acquaintance with several French gentlemen settled in that part of the country: Mr. Robert, to whom I was recommended by Mr. Marbois, jun. then in the United States; and Messrs. Duhamel and Mentelle, sons of the members of the National Institution of the same name. The two latter are settled in the environs of Lexinton; the first as a physician, and the second as a farmer. I received from them that marked attention and respect so pleasing to a foreigner at a distance from his country and his friends; in consequence of which I now feel myself happy in having this means of publicly expressing my warmest gratitude.