LETTERS FROM THE WEST;

CONTAINING

SKETCHES

OF

SCENERY, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS;

AND ANECDOTES CONNECTED WITH THE

FIRST SETTLEMENTS OF THE WESTERN SECTIONS

OF THE

UNITED STATES.

BY THE HON. JUDGE HALL.

LONDON:

HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.

1828.

SHACKELL AND BAYLIS, JOHNSON'S-COURT, FLEET-STREET.

PREFACE.

THE following Letters were commenced in the year 1820, and were intended for the pages of a periodical work,* in which some of them have been published. A residence of several years in the country which he attempts to describe, has enabled the author to enlarge his original plan, and to offer the result of his observations in the more formidable shape of a volumeformidable to the public, who are already surfeited with books, and to the author, who in this dress, may incur the test of criticism, which he might have escaped under the humbler garb of a periodical writer.

THE PORTFOLIO, a monthly magazine, which has been published at Philadelphia since the year 1801-a degree of longevity altogether unequalled in the United States. It is conducted by John E. Hall, Esq., who is likewise the editor of an "American Law Journal," and other works on Jurisprudence.