is generally of excellent quality. The coal exists in unknown abund. ance, in veins from five to twelve feet in thickness; some above and some below the bottoms of the valleys. We have here, therefore, all that can be wished, of the means for acquiring comfort and wealth, and these means so placed as to demand toil and economy for their development. This fact, united to the very admirable character of the original settlers, leads us to think that General Parson's selection will in the end prove a very fortunate one. Having, in this brief manner, given an outline of the planting of the first colony in Ohio, we next turn to the settlement of the Miami coun try, the most important, in immediate results, of all the early settle nents. The region etween the two Miamies of the Ohio was early known to the whites as one of great fertility. In 1751, Christopher Gist, the agent of the old English Ohio Company, went a hundred and fifty miles up the larger of those two streams; and in 1752, the English had made a fort, or trading station, among the Piankeshaws, a tribe of the Twigtwees, or Miamies, on what is now called Loraime's Creek, forty-seven miles above Dayton; which post was attacked and taken by the French during that year. The Miami valleys were afterward examined by Boone, during his captivity among the Shawnees in 1778; and by the war parties, which Bowman and Clark led against the Indian villages on the Little Miami and Mad river. But as the Shawnees were among the most inveterate enemies of the whites, and the unceasing plagues of the Kentucky settlers, no attempt was made to effect a lodgment near their town until after the treaty made with them in January, 1786. During the spring of that year, Benjamin Stiles, of Redstone, (now Brownsville,) on the Monongehala, visited the newly-ceded district, and, being much pleased with it, went to Philadelphia for the purpose of interesting some of the leading men in its purchase and settlement. He was introduced to John Cleve Symmes, a representative in Congress from New Jersey. Mr. Symmes was so much interested by the accounts given him of the beauty and fertility of the Miami region, that he determined to visit it himself, which he did; though at what period precisely we do not know. Finding the representations of his informant to fall short of, rather than exceed the truth, he applied himself, upon his return, to the task of interesting others in the proposed purchase; and, on the 29th of August, 1787, wrote to the president of Congress, requesting that the Board of Treasury might be empowered to contract with him and his associates for all the lands between the Miami rivers, and running as far north as the north line of the Ohio Company's purchase; the terms of the contract to be substantially the same as those to be made with "Messrs. Sargent, Cutter & Co." His petition was referred to the Board, with authority to contract, upon the 2nd of the following October. Upon the 26th of the next month Symmes issued a pamphlet, addressed "to the respectable public," stating the terms of this contract, and the scheme of sale which he proposed to adopt. This was, to issue his warrant for not less than a quarter section, (a hundred and sixty acres,) which might be located anywhere, except, of course, upon reser vations, and spots previously chosen. No section was to be divided, if the warrant held by the locator would cover the whole. The price was to be sixty-six cents and two-thirds till May, 1788; then one dollar till November; and, after that time, was to be regulated by the demand for land. Every locator was bound to begin improvements within two years, or forfeit one-sixth of his purchase to whosoever would settle thereon and remain seven years. Military bounties might be taken in this as in the purchase of the Associates. For himself Symmes retained one township at the month of the Great Miami, at the junction of which stream with the Ohio he proposed to build his great city; to help the growth of which he offered each alternate lot to any one that would build a house and live therein three years. As continental certificates were rising, in consequence of the great land purchase then making with them, and as difficulty was apprehended in procuring enough to make his first payment, Symmes was anxious to send forward settlers early, that the true value of his purchase might become known at the East. He had, however, some difficulty in arranging with the Board of Treasury the boundaries of the first portion which he was to occupy. In January, 1788, Matthias Denman, of New Jersey, took an interest in Symmes's purchase, and located, among other tracts, the section and fractional section upon which Cincinnati has been built. Retaining one third of this particular locality, he sold another third to Robert Patterson, and the remainder to John Filson; and the three, about August, 1788, agreed to lay out a town on the spot, which was designated as being opposite the Licking river, to the mouth of which they proposed to have a road cut from Lexington, Kentucky, to be connected with the northern shore by a ferry. Mr. Filson, who had been a schoolmaster, was appointed to name the town; and, in respect to its situation, and as if with a prophetic perception of the mixed race that were in afterdays to inhabit there, he named it Losantiville, which, being interpreted, means ville, the town, anti, opposite to, os, the mouth, L, of the Licking. This may well put to blush the Campus Martius of the Marietta scholars, and the Fort Solon of the Spaniards. What the connection may have been, it is out of our power to say; but Mr. Filson was killed in about a month from this time by a single Indian, near the Great Miami. Meanwhile, in July, Symmes got thirty people and eight four-horse wagons under way for the West. These reached Limestone (now Maysville) in September, where they found Mr. Stiles with several persons, from Redstone. But the mind of the chief purchaser was full of trouble He had not only been obliged to relinquish his first contract, which wa expected to embrace two millions of acres, but had failed to conclude one for the single million which he now proposed taking. This arose from a difference between him and the government, he wishing to have the whole Ohio front between the Miamies, while the Board of Treasury wished to confine him to twenty miles upon the Ohio. This proposition, however, he would not for a long time agree to, as he had made sales along nearly the whole Ohio shore. Leaving the bargain in this unsettled state, Congress considered itself released from its obligation to sell; and, but for the representations of some of his friends our adventurer would have lost his bargain, his labor, and his money. Nor was this all. In February, 1788, he had been appointed one of the judges of the Northwest Territory, in the place of Mr. Armstrong, who declined serv ing. This appointment gave offense to some; and others were envious of the great fortune which it was thought he would make. Some of his associates complained of him, also, probably because of his endangering the contract to which they had become parties. With these murmurs and reproaches behind him, he saw before him danger, delay, suffering, and, perhaps, ultimate failure and ruin; and, although hopeful by nature, apparently he felt discouraged and sad. However, a visit to his purchase, where he landed on the twenty-second of September, revived his spirits; and upon his return to Maysville, he wrote to Jonathan Dayton, of New Jersey, who had become interested with him, that he thought some of the land near the Great Miami "positively worth a silver dollar per acre, in its present state." But, though this view of the riches now almost within his grasp somewhat reassured Symmes's mind, he had still enough to trouble him. The Indians were threatening; in Kentucky, he says, "they are perpetually doing mischief; a man a week, I believe, falls by their hands; " but still government gave him little help toward defending himself; for, while three hundred men were stationed at Muskingum, he had "but one ensign and seventeen men for the protection and defense of 'the Slaughtex-house," " as the Miami valley was called by the dwellers upon the "dark and bloody ground" of "Kentucke." And, when Captain Kearny and forty-five soldiers came to Maysville in December, they came without provisions, and made bad worse. Nor did their coming answer any purpose; for, when a little band of settlers were ready to go, under their protection, to the mouth of the Miami, the grand city of Symmes that was to be, the ice stove their boats, their cattle were drowned, and their provisions lost, and so the settlement was prevented. But the fertile mind of a man like our adventurer, could, even under these circumstances, find comfort in the anticipation of what was to come. In the words of Return Jonathan Meigs, the first Ohio poet with whom we have any acquaintance, "To him glad Fancy brightest prospects shows, And domes and temples swell into the skies." But alas! so far as his pet city was concerned, "glad Fancy" proved but a gay deceiver; for there came "an amazing high freshet," and "the Point," as it was, and still is called, was fifteen feet under water. But, before Symmes left Maysville, which was upon the twenty-ninth of January, 1797, two settlements had been made within his purchase. The first was by Mr. Stiles, the original projector of the whole plan; who, |