FLORIAN - The Most Traveled Man on Earth

Letter 8.
[Lancaster, PA] November 2, 1808
[From Jean-Baptiste Florian to Laura Eugenie Florian, later Bowers (1791-1857), the first
daughter of Jean-Baptiste; she is apparently in England]
I left Philadelphia yesterday morning at 5 o’clock, as I told you in my last letter, my dear
Laura. I arrived at Lancaster about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, a distance of 62 miles.
We stopped almost two hours en route to eat, so you see that one travels by public carrier
as fast as in England. <strong>The</strong> road is a bit rough, being made of a very hard rock which they
break up with an iron club into pieces as thick as one’s fist.
<strong>The</strong> country is beautifully cultivated. <strong>The</strong> only woods one sees are those needed for
consumption. <strong>The</strong>y don’t burn anything else. In all the country and even in Philadelphia
they use coal very little. As far as the eye can see on both sides of the road one sees
farmhouses well built of stone or brick. Orchards of apples and peaches, fields of wheat,
of corn, of clover. <strong>The</strong> country is cut by valleys and hills of medium height ________
and three or four pretty streams not very deep in which flow limpid waters over a bed of
pebbles. It is in the middle of this rich and flourishing countryside that Lancaster is
situated, a pretty market town which contains 800 inhabitants. Almost all of them have a
store or stand, and the majority are of German origin, as are the farmers everywhere
around. <strong>The</strong> signs on the stores and the printed advertisements, are always in English and
German, and the inscriptions on the gravestones frequently are in the first language only.
I was struck by the number of apothecary shops and arms factories. One would say that
here more than elsewhere men like to take care of their existence and destroy that of
others.
<strong>The</strong>y give balls here frequently during the winter. <strong>The</strong>y print an Almanac ________.
Lancaster is the capital of the province. <strong>The</strong> houses are very well built of brick, the
streets wide and straight as an arrow, cutting each other at right angles. <strong>The</strong> inn where
we are staying concedes nothing to those of England. <strong>The</strong> _______ is less abundant than
in Philadelphia and New York, as well as the fish and game, the poultry and fats meats
excellent. It costs much less to live here. Our dinner yesterday only cost half a piaster
per head (about 2-3 Sterling) and still we ha between four of us a half bottle of very good
Madiera wine and a quart of French cognac. I have had occasion to admire the sobriety
of Americans. Two of the invited persons contented themselves with two small glasses
and we left at least three glasses in the half bottle of wine, and almost half of the cognac.
Thus they are constrained by themselves to drink to their own advantage. I had already
notices the same thing in Philadelphia, as ordinary at the hotel of Mr. Arch and Mr. Call,
director of the bank, where I dined Monday. It is not thus in New York, where English
mores prevail very much.
<strong>The</strong>y make a beautiful wool cloth here, almost as _______ and as velvety as that which
the English call Angora [?], and a beautiful grey, but it is very expensive. <strong>The</strong>y asked me
one piaster – 70 cents [p 2] (about seven shillings and six pence). Factories rise up on
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