A little below the basin that
cooled our wine was a cascade of sufficient dimensions to give us
all the music of a waterfall, and all the sparkling brightness of
clear water when it is broken again and again by jutting crags.
To sit beside this miniature cascade, and read, or dream away a
day, was one of our greatest pleasures.
It was indeed a mortifying fact, that whenever we found out a
picturesque nook, where turf, and moss, and deep shade, and a
crystal stream, and fallen trees, majestic in their ruin, tempted
us to sit down, and be very cool and very happy, we invariably
found that that spot lay under the imputation of malaria.
A row upon the Ohio was another of our favourite amusements; but
in this, I believe, we were also very singular, for often, when
enjoying it, we were shouted at, by the young free-borns on the
banks, as if we had been so many monsters.
The only rural amusement in which we ever saw any of the natives
engaged was eating strawberries and cream in a pretty garden
about three miles from the town; here we actually met three or
four carriages; a degree of dissipation that I never witnessed
on any other occasion. The strawberries were tolerable
strawberries, but the cream was the vilest sky-blue, and the
charge half a dollar to each person; which being about the price
of half a fat sheep, I thought "pretty considerable much," if I
may be permitted to use an expressive phrase of the country.
We had repeatedly been told, by those who knew the land, that
the _second summer_ was the great trial to the health of
Europeans settled in America; but we had now reached the middle
of our second August, and with the exception of the fever one of
my sons had suffered from, the summer after our arrival, we had
all enjoyed perfect health; but I was now doomed to feel the
truth of the above prediction, for before the end of August I
fell low before the monster that is for ever stalking through
that land of lakes and rivers, breathing fever and death around.
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