The northerly and westerly winds which occasion an extraordinary coldness in winter, spring and fall, on the East side of the Alleghany mountains, by blowing from the high and cold tract of country composed of those mountains, are tempered in this country by passing over the extensive bodies of w^ater which are situated on the northern and western boimds ; and the south wind does not produce those frequent changes in winter which are injurious to the raising of grain in the easterly parts of the states. -- Whilst the neighbourhood of these lakes also renders the air in summer cool and temperate ; and the nights, very few excepted, are so cool as to admit of sleeping under blankets. The heat of summer in this country is accordingly more temperate than in the eastern parts of

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the states, which are situated even in a more northerly latitude; i,nd the frosts in winter are remarked as less violent than in the middle states.

In most parts the climate is healthy, particularly as a newly settled country, of which an in^considerable part is yet improved ; though in the neighbourhood of marshes and stagnated waters the inhabitants are subject to agues and other bilious complaints. Once in three or four years, as is the case in most countries, it has been sickly in many parts. The fall of 1801, was probably as sickly a season as any one since the earliest settlement ; which is imputed to an uncommon wetness of the weather, occasioning much stagnated water. The prevailing sickness, which was the bilious fever, proved however not very mortal to the sick ; and the number of deaths was most probably not more than one for every two hundred inhabitants.