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nydus/Notes on the State of VirginiaPublic

Thomas Jefferson compiles these notes in response to inquiries from a foreign official regarding the geography and state of Virginia. The text provides detailed descriptions of the region's boundaries, dimensions, and physical landscape as understood in the late eighteenth century.

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AUeghaney mountain. From the falls, where it interfefts the Laurel mountain, to Fort Cumberland, the head of the navigation on the Pa- towmac, is 40 miles of very mountainous road. Wills's creek, at the mouth of which was Fort Cumberland, is 30 or 40 yards wide, but affords no navigation as yet. Cheat river, another confiderable branch of the Monongahela, is 200 yards wide at its mouth, and 100 yards at the Diinkards^ fettlement, 50 miles higher. It is navigable for boats, except in dry fea- fons. The boundary between Virginia and Pennfylvania crofles it about 3 or 4 miles above its mouth.

The j4lleghaney river, with a flight fwell, affords navigation for light batteaux to Venango, at the mouth of French creek, where it is 200 yards wide, and is prac- tifed even to Le Boeuf, from whence there is a portage of 15 miles to Prefque Ifle on the Lake Erie.

[ 27 1 The country watered by the Miflifipi and its eaftern branches, conftitutes five- eighths of the United States, two of which five-eighths are occupied by the Ohio and its waters: the refiduary ftreams which run into the Gulph of Mexico, the At- lantic, and the St. Laurence, water the remaining three-eighths.

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