Class __£ : iS Bo()k^ci2i3__ !'RKSKNT!-:ii l!Y RAMBLES IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA DURING THE YEAR 1845, WITH A SHORT ACCOUNT OF OREGON, By RUBIO. SECOND EDITION, LONDON: JOHN OLLIVIER, 59, PALL MALL. 1847. £\>«XArvdl 7A To LI H , Esq., London. My dear Sir, I had proposed during a late trip to New York to write you a series of letters, descrip- tive of the United States, and the impressions made upon my mind during a few months' tra- velling through that country. But, somehow or other, I never felt in the vein, and therefore preferred the leisure of the voyage home, and such accommodations as are to be met with in a private cabin, to give you these Rambles all of a heap, and thus save you, at least, the expense of foreign postage. Hoping you will make allowance for the tossing of a ship, and not consider the book too curiously, but rather as the plain sentiments of a practical man, I remain, My dear Sir, Your ever obliged friend, Rubio. Paris, October, 184o. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE Introductory — Nature in America Great and Grand— Men con- temptible—Pulpit Denunciation — American Manners and Morals — Country not adapted for Farm Emigrants — Union not Per- manent—Weakness of the Executive — Opinions of Foreigners — Dickens and Trollope— Horrid Climate of the States — Mortality — 474 Deaths in New York weekly — Superiority of England . 1 CHAPTER II. New York — Arrival and Pilot— Pilots all Teetotallers — Pilots Newspapers— Swampy Coast — Feeling of Disappointment — Erro- ,1'ous Notions of Englishmen respecting American Freedom — American Bombast — Landing at Puddle Dock— No Lodgings — New York Filth — The Port — No Names to the Streets— Fires every Night — Boarding- Houses— Nothing eatable or drinkable in them — Americans adulterate everything— Eat like Wolves — Men have no Shoulders, Females no Bosoms — Ladies far from Pretty — No old People to be seen — Steam-Boats, fifteen make a Mile — People all Water- Drinkers — Clergy not given to Wine — All Teetotallers — No Pledge, no Congregation, Ardent Spirits publicly Deuounced by Six Presidents . . . .11 CHAPTER III. . Poor Shops — Fire-Engines — Gratuitous System does not answer — River Hudson — Bottle of Port charged 32s. Cd. — American Mar- kets bad — King of Alleghania — Fruit and Vegetables scarce — Punch and Mrs Caudle — Trade in Cheap Publications — Moving the Mansion House — Brooklyn Ferry — Freedom without Law — Universal Suffrage does not answer — Mob Law — Polk the Great Unknown — His roaring means nothing — Annexation of Canada — Newspaper Press — Penny advertising . . . .31 VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. PAGE One Church to every Three Hundred Inhabitants— Alterations in the Book of Common Prayer — Expected Visit of Queen Victoria to America — Nothing Permanent — All the Presidents have died Poor — Americans an ungrateful People — De Witt Clinton and Whitney — Salaries of Public Men— House Rent enormous — Public Buildings — Paper Ciu-rency— Bank note Engraving a good Busi- ness — Fountains — Packet Ships — Ships of British Colonies such as New Brunswick — American Navy — Temperance Ships of War — Flogging abolished in the Navy — American Boasting — Their Geese all Swans — Few learned Men — Abundance of Ice -Igno- rance — Where is Goldsmith's Auburn - Russian Climate — Specu- lation Mania — New Cities on Paper— Mulberries . . 51 CHAPTER V. New England — Transcendentalists — Their Doctrines — Evils of Protecting Tariff — Probable Bankruptcy of Manufacturers — Disasters in Steam-Boats — Their Accommodations — Detestable Climate of the States — Cheap Board and Lodging -Hotels— Land Bargains — Rome and Syracuse - Railway Travelling Slow and Wearisome— Tin Roofing recommended — Rochester, Bankrupt Millers — Falls of the Genessee — Americans a Gloomy People — British Flag in Canada . . . . . .72 CHAPTER VI. Lake Ontario — Falls of Niagara — Clifton Hotel — Heavy Shower — Toronto and Hamilton good Towns — Lower Canada, or Canada East, must be avoided, not adapted to English Farmers — Too cold — Emigrants should not stop till they reach Toronto or Hamilton in Canada West, or Upper Canada, as it used to be called— Superior to all other Colonies — No Failure of Crops — Near England, and Passage cheap — Land ought to be reduced to One Dollar per Acre, and no Credit — Few Taxes — Loyal People — Quebec and Montreal— Large Population — Healthy and Happy Colony — Too many Irish — Far better than any of the Newgate Colonies of Australia — Superior to the United States, where Englishmen cannot sell Land - Free and Popular Government — Cattle, Horses, and Sheep — Regret at leaving Canada . gy CHAPTER VII. Return to the States — Blackrock and Buffalo— Large Steamers — Cheap Living -Cheap Carriage — Cheap Travelling — Penny a Mile per First Class Trains - Town of Chicago 30,000 Inha- CONTENTS. (II U'TKK VII — continued. bitanta —Inland Navigation — Cleveland pretty Place — Building without Money — Paying Wages Ditto — American Lighthouses all Gratuitous— Speaker of the House — Propellers — Plucking Geese— Ohio River — Frostsevery Month in the Tear— Fire com- fortable 4th July — Cheap Coal -Disasters of English Emigrants in Illinois— Taking in the Britishers -Better to have gone to Canada — Road to Oregon — Peoria — Fort Madison — Prairie du Chien— Memphis . . . . . .108 CHAPTER VIII. Co-operative Societies always successful — No Drinking, no Poverty — What are the English Clergy about? — American Temperance Pledge — Parallelograms — Rewards for the Poor — Bankrupt States — Go-a head Paying States — Cincinnati- Judge M-Lean — Louisville — Falls of the Ohio — Complaints of Trade — Evansville Blacksmith — Sickly Country — Fogs and Bogs — St Louis — Lead and Copper — Iron Mountain — Copper Harbour — Mississippi increases Fifteen Miles per Century in Length — Cotton 2£d. per lb. . . . . . . . 129 CHAPTER IX. Rush of Waters -Funerals — Widows at Fifteen — American Young Ladies mere Dolls — Adieu to Fellow-passengers — Steam-boat Certificates — Cheap Engineers the dearest -Paying Members of Parliament a bad plan — Santa Fe and Oregon — American Spolia- tion—Three Million Slayes— If Property in Slaves were abolished the Traffic would cease — Free Labour best — Home, sweet Home — Monarchy preferable to Democracy — King of Mississippi — Probable Changes — Railway through the Desert to secure Oregon — Americans should buy our Claim for 5,000,000/.— The other Alternative more expensive. — American Policy should be Peace — Non-interference— Wheat 16s. per Quarter— English Corn and Cattle Laws bad . . . . . . .149 CHAPTER X. Crowded Boats -Frightful Climate — Neither Iowa nor Wiskonsin recommended— Philadelphia Poor Place— Folly of High Tariffs — Poor Manufactures — Yellow Fever — Boots and Shoes — Wooden Clocks— Paper Mills— Soap— City of Brotherly Love the most disturbed in the Union— Constant Assassinations — Ha- zardous Risks— Fire Insurance — Army and Navy— Fifty For- midable Ships— No Grog— Flowers of Rhetoric— New Post-Office Law 171 Vlll CONTEXTS. CHAPTER XI. PAGE Education — Learned Professors -National Bank impossible for Want of Honest Men — The Voluntary Principle — Freehold Pews — Chapel Speculations — Religious Sects Harmless — Church turned into Post Office - His Excellency the Rev. Mr Everett, late Minister at St James's — Mr M'Lean — Mr Marcy — Public Lotteries — Provision for the Poor— Americans have no Music in their Souls — Two Drunken Bishops — Conclusion . . 188 CHAPTER XII. New England States : Maine— New Hampshire — Vermont — Massachusetts — Rhode Island — Connecticut. Middle States : " New York New Jersey — Pennsylvania- Delaware. Southern States: Maryland — District of Columbia — Virginia, — North Carolina - South Carolina — Georgia — Florida— Alabama —Mis- sissippi-Louisiana. Western States : Ohio — Kentucky — Ten- nessee — Michigan — Indiana — Illinois — Missouri— Arkansas — Wisconsin — Iowa — Texas . . . . .198 APPENDIX. Geographical and General View of Oregon : Its Islands — The Coast and its Harbours. The Natural Divisions of Oregon: The Three Regions— Climate and Characteristics of the Three Regions — Its Rivers ..... 224 RAMBLES IX THE EXITED STATES, CHAPTER I. Introductory — Nature in America Great and Grand— Men con- temptible — Pulpit Denunciation — American Manners and Morals — Country not adapted for Farm Emigrants — Union not Per- manent—Weakness of the Executive — Opinions of Foreigners — Dickens and Trollope — Horrid Climate of the States — Mortality — 474 Deaths in New York weekly — Superiority of England. Nothing can be more unlike our previously con- ceived notions of any country than the reality on arrival. All the books that have ever been written on the subject of America, from Fearon to Toque- ville, are quite inadequate to give the reader any- thing more than a very vague and faint idea of the Great Republic, as the natives delight to call it. All that nature has done for America is great and noble, on a magnificent and gigantic scale ; her rivers, mountains, lakes, cataracts, forests, plains, minerals, heats, frosts, fevers, and premature deaths, are all astounding and calculated to inspire us with awe. B 2 PULPIT DENUNCIATION. But, on the other hand, it is not so with the in- habitants ; the men inspire us with very different feelings from their vulgarity, hypocrisy, ignorance, and dishonesty, together with their constant sordid and grovelling pursuit of dollars and cents, and in obtaining which they do not appear to be particu- larly successful, as there is scarce a dollar to be seen in circulation through the whole country. With regard to the barefaced hypocrisy and dis- honesty of Americans in the eastern and middle States, I am perfectly borne out by one of their most clever and popular preachers, who said in one of his most admired sermons, delivered in New England, — " You come here, and by a listless atten- dance at the House of God on Sundays, and the austere observance of the appointed fast days, you expect to atone for all your wicked actions, wrong- thoughts, and unholy feelings in the past week — a six days' life of meanness, deception, rottenness, and sin ! " Who knew so well as this eminent teacher and preacher the weak points of his congregation ? And how can we look with anything like respect upon a people who deserve such a severity of reproof ? The fact is, it is not in the nature of things for an American to listen to the old saying, that " Honesty is the best policy ; " they cannot believe it ; and, whilst the nations of all the rest of the world look upon it, not only as a wise proverb, but an axiom of the profoundest philosophy, the American read- AMERICAN MANNERS AND MORALS. 3 ing is entirely different, their maxim being that " Roguery is the best policy ! " I certainly will not go so far as a French friend of mine who had resided twenty-five years in the States, and gave it as his opinion, that the next best speculation, after General Tom Thumb, would be to find a complete American gentleman — that rara avis in terris— and exhibit him in London and Paris at a shilling a head ! Though every one must admit, who travels through the United States, that the human- izing influences of polished society are entirely want- ing throughout that country : and, therefore, it is no wonder the Americans are generally vulgar : but why they should be hypocrites in the northern States, rogues in the middle, and ruffians in the south, is not so easily accounted for. The western states have as yet hardly earned any peculiar and distin- guishing character, except for industry and enter- prise under all the disadvantages of a deadly climate. I have no hesitation in pronouncing the United States of America an inferior country : and after 150,000 miles of travelling in every corner of the world, my opinion may be entitled to some little degree of credit. Every one that emigrates to that country will be disappointed, except the wild Irish, who, though they cannot well be worse off than they are in Connaught and Munster, may be constantly heard grumbling by the side of their wheelbarrows, in New York, wishing to be back to their hovels UP 4 UNION NOT PEEMANENT. and potatoe-parings in Ould Ireland. As for making any comparison between the United States and the United Kingdom, it is out of the question, and would be entirely degrading to Great Britain ; and I should as soon think of comparing Captain Tyler, who, by the accidental death of General Harrison, became President of the United States, and was nicknamed in consequence His Accidency ; I should as soon think of comparing the two countries to- gether, as I should compare the President of Ame- rica with Queen Victoria ; the one, as I have seen him, combing his hair with a filthy comb tied up with a piece of string, in a steam-boat, and washing himself with a jack-towel in common with fifty other dirty passengers : and the other, whom every Briton delighteth to honour — the real Queen of the richest, most powerful, and most stupendous empire the world ever saw, upon which the sun never sets, and the booming of whose morning and evening guns is a perpetual salute from station to station round the globe. With regard to the probable permanency of the American Union, in the present infancy of the Re- public, it is only possible to venture an opinion. The Americans themselves are everlastingly bragging that they will soon reckon a hundred millions of inhabi- tants, stretching from ocean to ocean; and that, as soon as they have got their navy yards and line-of- battle ships at the mouth of the Oregon, all other WEAKNESS OF THE EXECUTIVE. 5 nations may shut up shop, and that "Rule Britannia " will then become an empty boast. Xow, when we consider that this best of all possible governments is only an experiment of some sixty years' standing, it would become the Americans, if they had any grain of modesty, but which they unfortunately have not, to pause before they crow over the other poor deluded nations of Europe, as they call them, and ask them- selves where all the present fury of party politics, the wickedness, bribery, and corruption of their government, the reckless aggrandisement and exten- sion of their territory to Texas and Oregon is to end ? And the most difficult of all, what is to become of the three millions of discontented slaves, and their constant increase, in a land whose written constitu- tion sets out by proclaiming to mankind that all men are born free and equal ! It needs no ghost to come from the grave to tell us that the glory will be departed from the United States long before they attain their expected popula- tion of a hundred millions, and that, long before that period, the " Queen of the World and the child of the skies " will most likely be split into three or four separate governments. The present cabinet of Colo- nel Polk is weak in the extreme, and so are all the heads of departments ; and we all know to be weak is to be miserable. The chief himself is already tired of his elevation, which he finds to be not altogether a bed of velvet ; and, though it may be fun to the 6 WEAKNESS OF THE EXECUTIVE. democrats who elected Mm, the Great Unknown, out of sheer opposition to a worthy and virtuous man, Henry Clay, yet it was death to him, and he publicly declared, before he had been three months at the White House, that he had no intention, at the end of his four years of kingship, to offer himself again as representative of the sovereign people ! The Colo- nel is considered by the few who know him as a plain, straightforward man for a lawyer, with firm- ness and courage, but knows nothing of the science of government, which should only be entrusted to him who possesses most virtue, most knowledge, and most intellect. But these, though they are recom- mendations in old and experienced countries, are the very worst and most fatal qualifications to a candi- date's success in America for the presidential chair. No honest man can ever he President of America again. The day of the Washingtons and Jeffersons is past, never to return. The people publicly declare that they do not want the best man ; they want the most available man. If you elect me I will appoint you ; and as all the servants of the Government are abruptly turned out at a general election every four years, it gives the new President immense patronage, and for the first half-year of his office he is obliged to work like a horse in considering upon and filling up the ten thousand offices that suddenly become vacant. " Eotation to office" is one of the watchwords of every party in America, but particularly of the democrats. OPINIONS OF FOREIGNERS. 7 All classes in America are excessively greedy of praise ; the love of approbation, as Combe would say, being strongly developed in their crania. Notwith- standing the repeated warnings they have received, they cannot believe it possible that the strictures of Mrs Trollope or Dickens can have emanated from anything but a spirit of rancour and national jealousy. With regard to Boz, this was the unkindest cut of all : and I need not caution that clever writer to steer clear of the United States for the remainder of his natural existence, for if they were to catch him in Broadway not all the 8,000 Irishmen forming the grand army of the United States, if they were sud- denly recalled from Texas, Florida, the Canadian and Indian frontiers, would be able to protect Mr Dickens from being tarred and feathered. They do not like the truth, and will not tolerate it from any man. Whilst to praise the Americans and their in- stitutions is still worse than to show up their defects ; and you thus most certainly secure their abuse, at the same time you confirm them in their prejudices ; when by the other open and honest way, you at least open the door to improvement, though the galled jade may wince. The Scotch, who in many respects I am sorry to say resemble the Americans, hated Dr Johnson for abusing their barren country, and for saying that he did not see a tree there larger than his walking-stick. The consequence was immediately seen in rewards 8 HORRID CLIMATE OP THE STATES. offered by various agricultural meetings to the largest planters ; and the forests of larch and firs over many- parts of Scotland, at the present day, testify to the good use the canny Highlandman made of the Doc- tor's abuse. So it is in America ; many of the improvements making and made in their social state, are attributable to the showing up of English travellers. There is one more subject which may as well be alluded to thus early, as it is of the very last import- ance when speaking of the United States, but which has never been prominently brought forward by any writer on that country, at least in the manner it deserves, and that is, the climate, which I consider to be the worst in the world, that is in the temperate regions of the world from 231 deg. to 66^ deg. The writer's opinion is that there is not an inch of the country but what labours under the most unfortu- nate and intolerable climate. On the 29th of May last, in New York, the frost was so severe as to cut off every green thing. The thermometer fell to 24 deg., and on the 18th July the same thermometer was up to 104 deg., showing a rise of 80 deg. in less than two months.* During the cold on the 29th May, it seemed as if the marrow had all left the * By an account in an American print it appears that in the west- ern country at sun rise, lately, the thermometer indicated 18 deg., and at noon of the same day it stood at 94 deg., a difference of 76 deg. of temperature in about five or six hours ! MORTALITY. 9 bones, and every one stood shivering almost incapa- ble of exertion. Not that 24 deg. of cold is any- thing very intolerable when it comes at Christmas or in January or February, but here the excessive cold had been preceded by some extraordinary hot weather in the middle of May, and the sudden transition which occurred in the short space of nine or ten days made the sensation of cold on the 29th May most acute and painful ; but there is a remedy for cold, however severe— additional clothing, additional fires, and extra exercise. But how are you to alleviate great heat ? In the night as well as day, on the sea- board of the States it is all the same, and even at Boston, the head- quarters of ice, the thermometer in July was a degree or two higher than at New York : the heat of Calcutta and Jamaica, without the luxuries or the conveniences of the first, or the sea-breezes of the last. And yet, with all this miser- able heat, when people are dying on every hand around you,* and you are incapable of the slightest * The Weekly Report of deaths in New York, for the week end- ing 20th July, 1845, and signed by Cornelius Archer, City Inspector, was four hundred and seventy-four in a population of 350,000, whilst in the same week in London, the Report published gave eight hundred and forty-four deaths. Now, reckoning the difference of the population of the two cities, London, according to the proportion in New York, ought to show a mortality of 3,000 deaths per week ! And yet London is not so well supplied with water as New York, and the drunkenness of London is beyond all comparison greater than in the American city. 10 SUPERIORITY OF ENGLAND. exertion, the country cannot produce an orange or a bunch of grapes, because it is too cold ! For beef, pork, and butter, wheat, and Indian corn, these main requisites and necessaries of life, the United States excel all other countries, but beyond this you must look in vain for the comforts, enjoy- ments, luxuries, and the elegantife et delicia? vita? of •a residence in any part of London. I have long made up my mind that a shilling in England is better than a dollar or 4s. in the United States, and it is some comfort to know that it is far easier to earn the shil- ling in England than the dollar in America ; and fur- ther than this I feel convinced that the better class of London mechanics, those who earn their fifty, sixty, and seventy shillings per week, eat and drink every day of their lives better and nicer food than two-thirds of the inhabitants of the United States from the President downwards. But, not to detain the reader further, we will proceed to our arrival in and first impressions of America. . CHAPTER II. New York — Arrival and Pilot— Pilots all Teetotallers — Pilots Newspapers — Swampy Coast — Feeling of Disappointment — Erro- neous Notions of Englishmen respecting American Freedom — American Bombast — Landing at Puddle Dock— No Lodgings — New York Filth — The Port — No Names to the Streets— Fires every Night — Boarding-Houses— Nothing eatable or drinkable in them — Americans adulterate everything— Eat like Wolves — Men have no Shoulders, Females no Bosoms — Ladies far from Pretty — No old People to be seen — Steam-Boats, fifteen make a Mile — People all Water- Drinkers — Clergy not given to Wine — All Teetotallers — No Pledge, no Congregation, Ardent Spirits publicly Denounced by Sis Presidents. We arrived on the coast of America from the tro- pics ; there were no other passengers but a young American and myself. We were steering for Cape Hatteras, weather cold and squally, and I shivered up on deck, hearing that we were laying the ship to, previous to sounding with the deep-sea lead. We were in sixty fathoms, and yet no land to be seen. We kept on sounding and shoaling till we descried a pilot-boat from Cape May. They came alongside, but hearing that we were bound for New York, these Philadephian gentlemen would have nothing to do 12 PILOTS ALL TEETOTALLEES. with us ; but the following day another pretty little schooner, having a large painted distinguishing mark in her sails, came very near to us in a rough and stormy sea, and we backed the head- sails whilst the pilot came on board in a little cockle-shell of a dingy, that you could almost carry under your arm. We were very glad to get him on board ; and, after admiring the elegant and fairy-like proportions of his watery home, the schooner shoved off, and we began to ask the news. The pilot service of the port of New York may be considered as nearly per- fect ; it consists of thirteen schooners, of about sixty, seventy, up to ninety tons burthen, and costing six and seven thousand dollars each. There are seventy pilots, all middle-aged men, and none are eligible except total abstinence men; therefore vessels are never lost owing to drunken pilots ; this is impossible. The English might here borrow a leaf out of the American book. It frequently happens, on arriving in the English channel, that the pilot who boards you is a man of seventy years of age, and I have known him hoisted up with a tackle, because he was too infirm for climbing up the side-ladder ; but an important service like that of pilots should be limited to the ages be- tween thirty and sixty. And, moreover, the first thing an English pilot asks for, is a glass of grog ; whilst the New York pilot who boarded us, a hun- dred miles from the port, in common with the other NEWSPAPERS. 1 3 sixty-nine of the fraternity, are pledged to drink nothing stronger than tea or coffee, or they would be refused a licence. We were very much amused with the variety of fresh newspapers which the pilot kept pulling out of his pockets, large and close-printed, the size of the ' Morning Advertiser ' in London, and published at a halfpenny each ! True they were on inferior paper, badly printed, with worn-out type, with violent language, personalities, and party politics, for the stock in trade of the editor. " Ah," said the pilot, " it is party that is killing our country." But the weather was so cold and cheerless that I could no longer remain on deck. We were running along an extremely low sandy coast, with salt water ponds inside the sand hills, the great nursery of the large oysters for the New York market. It is a low miserable shore all the way to New York, and was enough to strike a damp into our minds, being so different from the splendid mountains we had left only a few weeks before. This first sight of the North American continent continued two days, and was calculated greatly to depress us, particularly as we had been all the voyage, with the prompting and assistance of our young American fellow-passenger, filling our imaginations with the idea of the beautiful land we were approaching, its astonishing greatness in physics and morals, and the overwhelming splen- dour of New York, not forgetting Niblo's and Castle c 14 FEELING OF DISAPPOINTMENT. Gardens. Notwithstanding this first disappointment of the low, sandy, swampy and unhealthy coast, I was determined to be pleased with everything, and to become, in short, an American in feeling ; and as I had long been familiar with all her popular institu- tions, and model of cheap and effective government, it was not impossible but I might purchase a small property in the country, and so become a naturalized citizen of the Great Republic. I really was ena- moured, before landing, with everything American, from universal suffrage clown to her rocking chairs, and used to think that we Avere centuries behind her in the science of legislation and cheap govern- ment. I had been taught that monarchy was naturally extravagant, splendid, and expensive ; that it was careless of the sufferings of the people ; and provided it could succeed in raising the taxes, it thought of nothing else but the interests and enjoy- ments of courts and courtiers. But we were now passing the entrance to the Bay of New York, or the " Narrows" as it is called, about three quarters of a mile wide, and it all looked very pretty, and newly painted ; but still all flat and low. Fort Lafayette is on the right hand going in, and is considered, in the hyperbolical language of America, another Gibraltar. There are also a few fortifications on the left hand, opposite to the Fort Lafayette. But the ' Queen' and the ' Howe,' with the ' Great Western ' lashed between them, and of course protected by them, would AMERICAN BOMBAST. 15 render the American Gibraltar, like the Chinese Forts in the Bocca Tigris, a dead letter in about fifteen minutes ! "Is not that a beautiful flag ?" said my young- American friend, pointing to the national colours ; " can anything be finer than this glorious expanse of water ? You that have seen the Bay of Naples, which do you prefer, Naples or New York ? " " Gently, gently, my dear friend ; you are getting on too fast ; perhaps you will allow me to ask a cruestion ; which of the two great modern poems do you prefer, ' Childe Harold,' or ' Cock Robin ? " But in the true American ignorance, he candidly replied that he could not say, for he had never read either. We were now actually stepping on shore at the Battery Point, the universal landing-place for every person arriving in New York. It is exactly like Puddle dock, Blackfriars, where the scavengers collect and transfer the stinking accumulations of rottenness and filth to be sold for manure. Had it been summer, and under the fervid beams of a New York sun, it must have produced malaria and sick- ness, but these people think nothing of these things. As I was not troubled with anything more than a carpet bag, having left our luggage on board the ship, I preferred proceeding on foot ; so, leaving the said travelling bag in charge of an honest-looking Irishwoman sellino: cakes, with orders to deliver it 16 NO LODGINGS. to nobody but myself, I set off to look for lodgings. But, after walking up Broadway and most of the principal streets of the city, I could not discover one single bill up, in any of the windows as I walked along. This I thought very characteristic and singular, and rather a prosperous sign. In the same length of walk in London I could have counted a thousand, either " Apartments Furnished," " Room to Let," " Lodg- ings for a Single Gentleman," " Unfurnished Rooms," or something of the kind, but in New York, after three hours' trudge, not one solitary notice of the kind. I knew that it was not the fashion to live on the soli- tary system, but to congregate in boarding houses, and so, after a very agreeable and instructive walk of about three hours through the principal streets of the city, I returned to the old cake woman, and recovered the carpet bag, and proceeded in a cab to one of the neighbouring boarding houses. My walk had led me through some of the dirtiest streets I had ever seen in my life. Seven years Augean collection of all sorts of nastiness seemed to be here ripening for the first summer's sun, to regale the noses of the New Yorkers, and yet there is no lack of street inspectors ; I was told there are upwards of a dozen ; but they, like all other employees, appear to make their offices nothing more than a great school of politics. But the first glance at the port of New York stamps it at once as the greatest seat of commerce in the world, London alone excepted. NEW YORK FILTn. 17 Bristol and Liverpool, Hamburg, Havre, Bordeaux, and Marseilles, Lisbon and Cadiz, Calcutta and Bombay, Bahia or Bio de Janeiro, are all contempti- ble in comparison of New York as a sea-port, which seems to be formed by nature as the chief emporium of shipping of the civilized world. The city is also well laid out, the streets long and straight, though, being built on a low, swampy, narrow island, it is all length and no breadth, and the price of building land must therefore go on continually advancing in the neighbourhood of the Park, Astor House, and other favourite localities for business. Strange to say, with all the accumulated filth in the streets down town, as it is called, the inhabitants of this great maritime city think New York the cleanest place in the world ; and stranger still, though I was nearly breaking my neck every five minutes in looking up to find the names of the streets, they have a repugnance to have them written up, though every house in the business part of the city is plastered over with enormous letters, from the basement to the attics, with the names and callings of the fifty different people that dwell therein, yet they will not write up the names of their streets. In London, but more especially in Paris, it is universally the practice to put up the names at every corner of the city ; and in the French capital they are much more elegantly painted, and better attended to, than in London. The Croton Aqueduct is deservedly the pride of c 2 18 FIRES EVERY NIGHT. the city. It has cost twelve millions of dollars, and competent engineers have assured me that it might have been done for nine millions. But if it had cost twenty millions it would have been cheap ; for it has distributed health and cleanliness, comfort and cheer- fulness, all through the extensive city, and the rates of fire insurance fell one-half from the day the plugs were opened to the public. The first night I slept in New York there was a large fire, but nobody regarded it, as it only con- sumed nineteen houses. The next night there was another, and not a night or a day passed without one ; and many months after the first night of my return to New York, after a tour to the Mississippi, burst forth the great fire of 20th July ; at which time, as I said before, the thermometer was at 103 deg. and the place might, in every sense, be called a " burning city." I went to several boarding houses before finally making a selection. In answer to inquiries for the terms, they were generally reasonable enough: the highest two dollars a day, about 8s. 6d. sterling ; and the lowest one dollar. At these last I inquired their hours. Breakfast at six o'clock and half-past : — hot beef-steaks, mush and milk, hommaney, rice and molasses, mackerel, salmon, shad, hot cakes, and rolls of every description ; tea and coffee. Dinner at twelve o'clock, and supper at six. The bill of fare, on reading, looks abundant enough ; but really, on NOTHING EATABLE. 19 inspection, this well-covered table offers to an Eng- lishman very little that is even eatable, much less palatable. Though every one must admire the early hours and temperance of the Americans, yet only imagine a Londoner, and an old hand, not used to anything much Avorse than the shady side of Pall- mall, assembling at six o'clock at the noise of a great bell — washed and shaved, mind, by six o'clock — to look at an immense rump-steak at the head of the table swimming in fat, not half cooked ; then lower down a dish of enormous salt mackerel, one of which would make two of our English mackerel ; then some Halifax salmon just as taken from the barrel, and as salt as brine ; then two or three smaller- dishes, some with mush, a food for pigs, and others with hommaney, only differing from mush in that this last is ichite maize ground and boiled in water, whilst mush is yellow corn ground and boiled. As this sort of food is not known in England, thank God, except in the penitentiaries, I have been rather particular in describing it. No caution is required to my countryman to avoid it, because the very sight of it will be enough to make him sick. The remainder of the table was filled up with some warmed-up tough old hen, called chicken fixings, all washed down with the most execrable coffee in the whole world. I used to think that England might defy all creation for bad coffee, but the Americans beat us hollow. It is all that abominable trash from 20 EAT LIKE WOLVES. Rio, costing there about twopence halfpenny per pound by the cargo ; and as the Americans really seem to be no judges, even of things they are con- stantly putting into their mouths, or else so careless that they care nothing about it, whether it be good or bad, all is Brazilian coffee bought by the board- ing-house keeper, ready ground, and of course, as the Americans adulterate everything, ready mixed. I was, therefore, obliged to take refuge in tea, ge- nuine Hyson skin, worth about ninepence per pound ; for, singular to say, on these two important articles with the English government in a financial view — tea and coffee — the tariff of the Americans admit both of them entirely free of duty. There is one thing to be acknowledged at all American tables — the universal excellence and profusion of fresh butter. In all one's travels through that vast country, I never saw anything approaching to a piece of rancid or inferior butter. We were some thirty or forty at breakfast. The men ate like wolves, and, cheap as it was, I reckoned it cost them a shilling per minute.* Little children, who also assemble at these tables, were permitted by their foolish mothers to be guzzling raw rump-steaks swimming in fat at six o'clock in the morning ! There is also at the breakfast table a profusion of nice-looking hot yellow cakes, called, I believe, * A New York shilling is worth an English sixpence. MEN HAVE NO SHOULDERS. 21 Johnny cakes, made of Indian corn, but they are like mush and hommaney — only fit for pigs or pri- soners. This valuable grain, which is one of the greatest gifts of nature, and which is more exten- sively cultivated in the States than in any other country, under the single name of green corn, forms a delicious dish of vegetable at dinner, little inferior to green peas, but in every other shape or manner of preparation it is perfectly execrable, and would scarcely be eaten by a Scotchman, although accus- tomed to his oatmeal porridge. Though not im- portant, it still deserves mentioning, that at what may be called the cruet department of an American dinner table, an Englishman feels greatly disap- pointed. The mustard, pepper, vinegar, &c. form the most detestable collection of nastiness ever put upon a table cloth, and perfectly impossible for an Englishman to touch. This is not merely the case at the dollar boarding houses, but it is universal all over the cities and towns of the sea board and the interior. In Broadway, the principal street in New York, but not near so fine as Regent street or Oxford street, the characteristics of the Americans as a people are hardly to be distinguished, as nearly one third of the passengers are foreigners ; but in walking leisurely through the other principal streets, the physical conformation of the true-blooded Yankee, as he calls himself, begins to be developed. The 22 FEMALES NO BUSTS. men have no shoulders : they are tall and lathy like corn-stalks, and under the nape of the neck they are sometimes as narrow as a female. The ladies of New York have been through all time, which means about fifty years, so famous for their beauty, that I know I shall be accused of heresy, envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness if I say that it is entirely a mistake. But the truth must be told, and I have seen more pretty women in London in one day than ever I saw during all my rambles in the United States. That prominent point of female loveliness, and which the whole English race so much excel in, is entirely wanting in the American ladies : they are as flat as their own horrid sea- coast ; and though they artfully endeavour to con- ceal this national deficiency by a peculiar, newly- invented, and really very ingenious corset, yet it will not do; our imaginings return unsatisfied, and our worst suspicions come back confirmed. But it must be confessed, that what they want in busts they make up in bustles, and to an excess that shocks an English female, and which is so glaring and preposterous as to be downright indelicate. The pure red and white of English complexions must not be looked for in any part of the States. The lilies and the carnations are not of American growth ; the men are sallow, and the women tallow. Another thought occurs involuntarily to the pedes- trian through the city, where are the old men and XO OLD PEOPLE. 23 women ? You see none, absolutely none. Now, I know a town in the United Kingdom, not the United States, where every third person you meet is seventy years of age ! But the fact is, from the statistical tables published, the mortality of the American cities and towns is frightful ! According to the weekly bills of mortality for London during the summer of 1845, the number of deaths every week in New York ought not to exceed one hundred and forty. All beyond one hundred and forty is unnatural, excessive, and premature, and therefore, by adopting greater sanatory precautions, the average salubrity of the city would be improved. Abolishing that nuisance at the landing place at Whitehall before alluded to, as resembling Puddle dock, would effect some good, filling up that most pestiferous slip near it, and abol- ishing some of the other nuisances going towards the pier of the Great Western steamer, would also have excellent results. Nobody of the slightest observation can rest easy in New York until he has seen and visited the splen- did steamers for which she is so justly celebrated. And it gives the writer infinite pleasure, to so much censure to be able to throw in even an ounce of praise. But the New York steamers are beyond all praise. To go on board the ' Troy,' the ' Empire,' the 'Massachusetts,' the ' Rhode Island,' the ' Nara- ganset,' and the hundreds of others, many even superior to these, is quite a treat, and well worth 24 AMERICAN STEAM-BOATS. crossing the Atlantic to see. I am a most strenuous advocate for every person, no matter what his pur- suit, visiting the United States, but to stop and reside there permanently, the Great Republic is not yet rich enough to tempt me with a sufficient bribe. Certainly to be President of the United States, or slave of the lamp as I call him, would not induce me to exchange my humble doings at the west end of London, with the charming facilities of securing access, whenever the fit takes one, to Paris or Rome. But to return to the magnificent steamers on the north and east rivers. They are as truly surprising in their dimensions as they are convenient and pro- fuse in their decorations. Fifteen steam-boats make a mile : this is a new rule of arithmetic, only found out in America, and I mention it because it is much more easy than to remember that they are three hun- dred and fifty feet long each. The Americans of all classes are a travelling people, eminently so as con- fined to their own country ; but they know nothing of any other countries. The United States is large enough, they think, to satisfy the most greedy of travellers, and the price of travelling is so cheap that, as the whole population lives in boarding houses, it is as cheap to be travelling as to be stopping at home, if you can apply such a word as home to a boarding house. For instance, in these moving palaces, which go twice a-day to Albany, one hundred and fifty miles, as far as Margate and back again, I paid two FIFTEEN MAKE A MILE. 25 shillings, but I might have gone the same day for one shilling, by another boat not quite so new and splendid. Only think, to Margate and back for one shilling ! "We sate down two hundred to dinner, and an excellent dinner we had, but it was two shillings each, rather a high price. I noticed that everybody drank water. I hardly remember one single cork being drawn during the whole dinner ; perhaps there was not one ! Now here is a fact as truly astound- ing as the vast proportions and magnificent fittings of the steamer, and I thought to myself, who can stop the progress of a nation that to an unlimited extent of fertile land adds these two grand auxiliaries of steam and temperance ? Steam has done wonders for America and is only in its infancy, and yet omni- potent as it is for developing the power and wealth of the growing states, yet the universal diffusion of temperance is calculated to secure the greatest amount of individual happiness. The greatest men in America have added the lustre of their names to this good cause, and as this has been done from an innate feeling of propriety, and not through any Father Mathew, it is deserving of the highest admi- ration and imitation. Would that the bishops and clergy of our dear Britain, a far superior country for all classes of Englismen than the best parts of the States ; would that our clergy would do as they did in America and preach up the new crusade ! Perish the gin-palaces rather than that the hard-working D 26 PEOPLE ALL WATER-DRINKERS. mechanic and his family should not have the bright example of the clergy to encourage them in their first efforts to shake off the expensive and suicidal habit of drunkenness ! The movement first emanated from the clergy of America, that part, the far great- est part, which we call dissenters. But it is not by preaching that the good came. No, the clergy were the first to sign their names, for ever abandoning the use of all intoxicating drinks, and then their hearers and congregations immediately followed. All the preaching in the world would have done no good ; but, said they, if we see our minis- ter's signature at the head of the list in our town or parish, then we will follow with our names ; and thus this great reform has been accomplished. But we shall have occasion to refer hereafter more at large to the practice and moral effects of the temperance movement in the United States. I had chosen a much too early day in the season to sail up the Hudson, but it was the first or nearly so of the opening of the navigation, and I had become quite impatient to inspect the workings of these elegant monsters of the North River. The Americans are too apt to laugh at and ridicule our Thames steam-boats, and look upon the cockle-shells that run to Gravesend and Margate as a very favour- ite measure of British inferiority in everything con- nected with steam; and certainly, after a visit to New York, the best of these boats look paltry in AMERICAN STEAMERS. 23 the extreme, whether the 'Star' or 'Diamond;' and one can hardly believe that they are the same boats that, previous to going to America, we used to think in every way so fine and convenient. But the Ame- ricans ought to recollect, that larger boats would not be adapted to our rivers, and that we must submit, in the one article of river navigation, to be excelled by our transatlantic brethren. But it is quite the reverse in ocean steamers; there Great Britain beats the world, as witness those giants of the deep the ' Great Western,' ' Great Britain,' l Pre- cursor,' ' Hindostan,' ' Bentinck,' ' Great Liverpool,' and a hundred others in the service of private packet companies — not to say anything of the steam ships of war belonging to Government. There is not an instance in America of the man at the wheel stand- ing, as with us, close to the rudder at the stern of the boat. The helmsman is always perched up aloft on the highest deck, where we place our foremast, giving him a complete command of all before him. There he sits in an elegant office, enclosed on all sides with windows, turning his wheel according to the direction he wants to steer in: which wheel communicates, by means of two rods of iron, about three-eighths generally, with the tiller ; and as none of the passengers ever see him, nobody ever thinks of him, and much less talks to him. I ought to have mentioned that, in reference to temperance, no family in America would attend the 28 FIRST PRINCIPLES. preaching of a minister who drinks anything stronger than tea and coffee ; the Americans cannot reconcile the idea of a parson rising from the fumes of whiskey- toddy, port, or sherry, falling on his knees in the pulpit, invoking the blessing of the Most High, when they assemble and meet together ; it would be con- sidered a profanation, and looked upon as a sacrilege. Even cider must be abandoned, though it is a very harmless and agreeable beverage : and the American cider is the best in the world, and is besides a source of considerable profit to the farmers of New England and New Jersey. But " touch not the unclean thing'''' is the first principle* and they manfully adhere to it, and * The Americans are very fond of first principles, as one may see in their advertisements, one of which I cut out of a ' Nashville Union:' — FIRST PRINCIPLES. HPHAT'S my motto, now and hereafter ; and I regret that I ever lost sight of it. I had made money and was thriving, when, in an evil hour, I let go this wholesale maxim, and lost all in con- sequence. I intend to make a fresh start, and go back to first principles, with full confidence that my old friends and the public will extend a generous encouragement. " Keep thy shop and thy shop will keep thee," said Dr Franklin ; I believe it, and shall therefore be always found at mine in MARKET STREET, three doors from Nichol's corner, opposite the Lion and Mortar, ready and able to manufacture all descriptions of COPPER, TIN, and SHEET IRON WARE, STOVE PIPES, &c, at short notice, on moderate prices, and in the best style of workmanship. ^" Old Copper and Old Pewter will be taken in exchange for every article sold by me. January 20, 1843— tf. WM. H. MOORE. ARDENT SPIRITS DENOUNCED. 29 in every respect find it to their advantage. In short, they never think of anything but the pure element, and the consequence is, that the water every- where is paid great attention to, and is generally excellent. The following was first signed during the late war with Great Britain, under the presidency of Madison, and was thought, at that period of drunkenness, a vast step and a great discouragement to the then pre- vailing and national failing of dram-drinking. It deserves consideration in the high places of our own land; for there can be no question if the money now squandered in needless drink were laid out in good four-pound loaves and legs of mutton for the Sunday's dinner, the poor wives and children of the industrious classes would be much better looking, and soon would also be much better dressed ; besides the saving in time and health ; but we ought in charity to make allowance for them, they have no example, their preachers only point the way instead of leading it. The President's declaration, thirty years ago, against spirituous liquors: — " Being satisfied from observation and experience, as well as from medical testimony, that ardent spirit, as a drink, is not only needless but hurtful, and that the entire disuse of it would tend to promote the health, the virtue, and the happiness of the commu- nity, we hereby express our conviction that, should the citizens of the United States, and especially the SO ARDENT SPIRITS DENOUNCED. young men, discontinue entirely the use of it, they would not only promote their own personal benefit, but the good of our country and the world. ( Signed) r James Madison, Andrew Jackson, J. Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler. Jas. K. Polk." CHAPTER III. Poor Shops — Fire-Engines — Gratuitous System does not answer — River Hudson — Bottle of Port charged 32s. 6d. — American Mar- kets bad — King of Alleghania — Fruit and Vegetables scarce — Punch and Mrs Caudle — Trade in Cheap Publications — Moving the Mansion House — Brooklyn Ferry — Freedom without Law — Universal Suffrage does not answer — Mob Law — Polk the Great Unknown— His roaring means nothing — Annexation of Canada — Newspaper Press — Penny advertising. Arriving from a Catholic country, it was pleasant to observe in this large city no priests, no beggars, no soldiers, and no drunken men. The shops in New York are, however, very second-rate affairs, there not being in the whole city half-a-dozen that have any pretensions to elegance or taste, and those be- long to foreigners. I hardly ever passed up Nassau street without hearing a fire-bell, or encountering either a fire-engine or a hose-cart. These were always very affecting exhibitions, so much property being hourly destroyed by the ruthless element, in- stead of being circulated through a happy and indus- trious community in exchange for the results of their 32 FIRE-ENGINES. labour! The fire-engines and hose-carts are pro- fusely decorated and even gilded, looking a little like the sheriffs' coaches in London, but it appeared to me a very bad system, all through the chapter ; and until it is altered, and a thoroughly efficient fire- brigade, with intelligent superintendents, introduced by the civic authorities, there will be no diminution in the number and extent of New York conflagra- tions. The city enjoys, at present, the bad pre- eminence of being the most subject to fires of any locality in the civilized world. There must be a reason for this unenviable distinction, and the muni- cipality cannot do a greater service to their fellow- citizens than to adopt a speedy remedy. Why not appoint a commission of three respectable and honest inhabitants, who have already visited Europe, to proceed to London and Paris, and report on their return to the Mayor of New York the best means of preventing and extinguishing fires ? The present gratuitous plan will never answer. If the fires in London, rare and unimportant as they generally are, were left to be extinguished by the apprentices and clerks of that city, as they are in New York, no doubt London would soon acquire as great a notoriety as the Atlantic city, especially if they were not paid a farthing for their trouble. Nothing can be more praiseworthy than the courage, activity, and zeal of the young gentlemen of New York, in pulling these Juggernauts of engines through the streets of the GRATUITOUS SYSTEM. 33 city, night and day, and every day ; I have counted sixty young men to one engine, when three horses would have done the work much better and quicker, and the young men might have remained at home in their stores or offices. Besides, in stopping a furious burning is no judgment required, what measures to adopt, whether to pull down or blow up contiguous buildings; and who so proper to take this superin- tendence as a scientific, experienced, and well-paid director of the fire police, upon whom should rest all the responsibility of overcoming these frightful and constant calamities ? The Hudson River is the pride of the Americans. It is certainly a noble river, in every way most useful and convenient, and is constantly, except when ice- bound, pouring the riches of its navigation into the great commercial city. It is as wide as the Thames at Gravesend for one hundred and fifty miles, and deep enough nearly all the way for ships of large burthen. We did the voyage in ten hours, including several stoppages ; so that our speed could not have been less than fifteen or sixteen miles an hour. These boats, as they are miscalled, being longer than the ' Great Britain,' seldom carry fewer than five hundred passen- gers ; and often in the height of the hot season, when there is no breathing in New York, seven and eight hundred. They also carry cargo, and are considered good money speculations, though the fare is only two shillings per head. In America they know no dis- 34 RIVER HUDSON. tinctions of first class and second class ; best cabin and forward cabin, all is alike. Jack is as good as his master, and the fare so cheap that everybody can afford to pay for the best. The railroad carriages as well as steam-boats in America are like the London omnibuses, where a peer of the realm may be seen sitting next to a common soldier. And why not ? It is pleasant to see that the English are getting rid of their prejudices ; they used to think it mean to travel in the second class, but nothing can be mean that is manly and honest. The two striking pieces of scenery on the Hudson River are the Pallisades, soon after leaving New York, and the Highlands near West Point, about a third of the voyage to Troy. There is a small por- tion of the Rhine about Bingen that is superior to anything on the Hudson, and indeed the Rhine is altogether a more imposing and important river ; but still the Hudson upon the whole must be considered equally beautiful and useful. But the Ohio is the finest river in the States, and perhaps in the world, take it altogether, and far superior to the Hudson ; but we must leave any description of that splendid stream until we move to that part of the country. I was not sorry to return to New York ; I had merely gone up to Troy, as it were, to try my wings, and satisfy the craving I felt for an excursion ticket in these magnificent steamers, leaving the grand tour till the season should be a little more advanced. It BOTTLE OF WINE. 35 was a folly to think of starting for the West before the 1st of May, so I had nothing to do but to make myself as comfortable as a New York boarding house will admit. I met by accident an old friend in Broadway, who ■was surprised and, as he said, delighted to see me after nearly twenty years' absence. Englishman-like, no- thing would do but I must dine with him at the Hotel. Not at the public table, for when two old friends meet in another hemisphere, after twenty years' separation, they are not satisfied to dine in ten minutes, secundum Americanos, and therefore we ordered a much worse and more expensive dinner in a private room. The dinner, considering the charac- ter of the house, which is first rate, was abundant enough, but badly cooked, as all dinners mostly are in America, for they don't care so much about it as the English, and no American ever says a word during dinner ; but I should not have mentioned this trivial circumstance of dining with an old friend except for the following circumstance. On the dinner cloth being removed, my friend ordered the waiter to bring a bottle of his best port wine. I told my friend that it was quite unnecessary, I had drank at dinner, mixed with water, all the wine I wished, and more than I should have done had I dined at home, and I would rather have our chat over a good manilla ; but he would not be persuaded. The wine was brought and decantered, and I believe more than half drunk ; 36 AMERICAN MARKETS BAD. but judge our mutual astonishment and annoyance, on calling for the bill, this said bottle of port was charged eight dollars ! The bill was promptly paid, and we left the dear hotel with a growl, determining never to enter it again. Nearly thirty-five English shillings for one bottle of old port ! Talk no more of the rapacity of English landlords after this. I concluded, of course, that the duty on port wine must be enormous in America, but no, not at all, it is remarkably low, only six cents, or threepence, per gallon, so that the duty on port wine is merely a half-penny per bottle. Was ever such a price heard of? The Americans make a great cracking always about their meat and provision markets, the cheap- ness and profusion of all the good things of this life ; and my young travelling companion, had I been green enough, would have almost persuaded me that the roasted turkies walked about in all the thoroughfares of his country with a knife and fork sticking in them crying out to be eaten ! But this is one of the thou- sand fallacies that haunt the imaginations of the igno- rant, that cannot be otherwise got rid of but by a personal inspection of the great metropolitan markets. For New York is everywhere called the Great Me- tropolis, and the State of which it is the capital is as universally called the Empire State. Indeed ". Empire" is a very favourite and popular term all over America, which contrasts oddly enough with KING OF ALLEGHANIA. 37 their democratic principles and manners. But you have the ' Empire ' steam-boat, the ' Empire ' engine, and the word is employed in a hundred different attractive forms, seeming almost to argue a foregone conclusion that the love of distinction, so natural to the acc|uisition of wealth, will, some day or other, con- vert the Atlantic States into the Empire of Allegha- nia. As soon as the seat of the General Govern- ment shall have been removed to the valley of the Ohio or Mississippi, Cincinnati or St Louis, at both of which places such removal is expected and at an early day, then the great States of New York, Penn- sylvania, &c, will begin to think more and more of nullification and separation It is not impossible but some of the present generation may yet live to see the White House at the Federal City, " To be Let." But let us take a walk through the boasted markets of New York, which amount in number to fifteen, conveniently distributed throughout the city. A public market is a sort of epitome of a country, and may very safely be taken as a criterion of its produc- tions. It is true that, at some seasons of the year, they are much better furnished than they are at others ; but having always made the markets in all countries a favourite lounge, I may say that I have visited them at all seasons. The Fulton and Wash- ington are two of the best supplied and largest ; but, beyond the show of beef and potatoes, there was a plentiful lack of everything. In the fish way there 38 FKUIT AND VEGETABLES SCAKCE. was little worth having but halibut and bass (salmon very scarce and dear),, and a very abundant and coarse kind of cockle called clams. But the lobsters and oysters are magnificent, plentiful, and cheap. The vegetable market is almost a blank, with the excep- tion of potatoes and peas ; but if I were to make out a list of what they have not got, it would be as long as my arm. The lowest neighbourhoods in London, to say nothing of her overwhelming markets, but such localities as Whitecross street, Tottenham court road, the NeAV cut, and Spitalfields, exhibit things for sale in the vegetable way that would astonish a New Yorker. With the exception of peaches and apples, which are deservedly celebrated, the American fruit is very scarce and very bad. The latitude of New York is the same as Naples, a country whose happy soil and industrious sons produce everything in per- fection. Grapes of twenty different kinds of colours, shapes, and flavour ; oranges, lemons, citrons ; rasp- berries, mulberries, and strawberries ; apricots, necta- rines, greengages, pears of endless variety and excel- lence, melons and water-melons, innumerable and al- most for nothing ; olives, figs, pomegranates, prickly pears and tomatas, gooseberries, white and red cur- rants, beside black, and such cherries as make the mouth water to remember ; quinces, almonds, and medlars, damsons and plums of every hue, and wal- nuts, filberts, and small nuts innumerable. But not to speak of Naples, some of these are to be seen in FISH AND VEGETABLES SCARCE. 39 the markets and streets of London every day in the year, whilst very few of them are to be seen at all in the American cities ; and when they are to be met with they are mere abortions, and generally of a detestable flavour. The consequence is, that the great show of fruit in the Atlantic markets consists either of blackberries, whirtleberries, wild cherries, pea-nuts, and a dozen other wild fruits, growing in the woods, and intended by Providence for the suste- nance of the birds and squirrels ! The same remarks apply with still greater force to table vegetables. Compared with England the supply is scanty, and the quality very inferior. The climate does not answer for the long list of delicious vegetables known to happy England, but to name many of which would be almost unintelligible to American readers : the same with fish; salmon, turbot, and soles, crabs, shrimps, and prawns are, with the exception of the first, utterly unknown ; and who would live in a " world without soles ! " The other markets are not a bit better than the Fulton, and I will therefore not describe them The market at Philadelphia 1 found on a large scale, and better supplied than any of the fifteen markets of New York ; and even at Cincinnati the various markets appeared fuller of nice things than in the Empire city. The Americans are certainly a nation of readers, and it is always amusing to walk the principal streets and see what a large traffic is carried on in the cheap 40 PUNCH AND MRS CAUDLE EVERYWHERE. publications. The 'Last of the Barons,' or the ' Smugglers,' is no sooner arrived in New York than one publisher strikes off 50,000 copies at threepence each, and a rival printer a better edition of 50,000 at 6d. and Is. The respective authors, however, need not reckon much on this cheap immortality ; the books are thrown by as soon as read, like their half- penny newspapers ; in a little time, if you ask where are they, " Echo answers, Where ?" There are no private libraries in America, nor are there any circu- lating libraries, for it is cheaper to buy than to borrow. The London picture newspapers form an item, also, very considerable ; and you see { Punch,' ' Pictorial Times,' and ' Illustrated London News,' in the shop windows for sale, as abundantly as they are in London. This is not confined to New York, but pervades the entire Union, as far as New Orleans ; and, whilst the boat was getting up her steam at St Louis, at the junction of the two mighty rivers Missouri and Mississippi, we had nearly a dozen boys on board, with great bundles under their arms, singing out, ' Last Lecture of Mrs Caudle ' only one half-penny ; No. 20 of the ' Wandering Jew,' and all Bulwer's and James's novels, at a shilling each ! The boys drive a very lucrative trade in these amusing wares ; one youth told me that he cleared ten dollars a-week on a capital of only ten dollars ! He could therefore dress well, smoke all day, talk politics and literature, and have a glass of gin-sling MOVING THE MANSION HOUSE. 41 when he liked ! The American boys begin the world with about five dollars' worth of cheap publications and travelling-maps, just as the Jew-boys in London are turned out to learn the value of money by trying to sell a few lemons, slippers, or quills. One need not walk through many streets in New York without witnessing in one of them a removal or lifting up of a house ; this is almost peculiar to American mechanics, and I was never tired of looking at it. The practice has contributed very much to the straightness and uniformity of the streets, and so perfectly at home are they at it, that if an advertise- ment were to appear in the ' Sun,' the ' Herald,' or the ' Tribune, ' to remove the London Mansion House to Hampstead Heath, there would be several offers for the job. As for the north side of Middle row, they would think nothing of removing it bodily at once to the Model Prison at Clerkenwell, without any of the young misses of the family being in the slightest degree interrupted in their usual avocations. As for the everlasting and dangerous nuisance of Holborn hill, which I have been looking at more in sorrow than in anger for these forty years, in New York it would be levelled in a week. A worthy tradesman in the city of Brooklyn, opposite New York, wanted to convert his two parlour windows into a shop-front ; " No, no," said the builder, " don't throw away your parlour, I will lift the house up, and build you a much better, loftier, and more spa- 42 BROOKLYN FERRY. cious shop, where the parlour now stands. The screws and timbers were accordingly brought, and I saw the two-story brick house go up slowly and imperceptibly, whilst the daughters were looking out of window, as if nothing was going on more than usual. I watched the alteration every time I crossed the ferry to Brooklyn, and in the course of two or three weeks the tradesman was occupying his new and handsome store, as the shops are called. By the way, nothing can be better regulated, or more complete, than this said ferry across the East River from Fulton market to Brooklyn ; the fare is one penny to casual passengers, but the inhabitants take six-months' tickets at a time for themselves and family, which reduces the price to less than a half- penny. The boats are most excellent and roomy, going every three minutes in the day, and carrying hun- dreds of passengers and twenty wheel-carriages each trip. The breadth of the river is here 731 yards, and the ferry-boat takes you over quicker than you could walk across a bridge, if there was one on the spot. This is the narrowest part of the East River, and a more lively scene on a fine day in April or May can hardly be desired than is here exhibited in the rapid passing of great steamers, large awkward sloops, and ships arriving from and proceeding to sea, all invariably with a tug lashed alongside. The police of the metropolitan city of New York is quite below par, and totally inadequate to the UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. 43 exigencies of the place. Public opinion— the great tyrant of* America — is against all interference with the rights of man, and consequently they detest everybody in authority over them. The Republic started with a hatred of foreign rulers, and they have gone on till the feeling has grown into a hatred of all rulers ; and though the laws are good, nobody obeys them, and the executive is too weak to enforce obedience. Where this is to end it is impossible to say. Universal suffrage is the curse, and will be the ruin of America. I used, as a young man, to think very favourably of the specious forms of po- pular government : but anybody of the slightest observation need only travel three or four months in the States, to perceive what a fatal mistake the wise and good have made in giving up all the real power in the country out of their own hands into the hands of the ignorant and immoral, and who have not a stake in the public hedge, — into the hands of a mob, consisting, in the Atlantic cities, of a great proportion of wild, savage, and uneducated Irishmen. The policemen are not to be distin- guished from private citizens till their services are wanted, and then they turn up the corner of their coat collar and exhibit their badge, just as if the metropolitan police in London were to wear their A 65 out of sight under their coat collar ! Poor fellows, if in America they were courageous enough to wear their letter and number outside, as with us, 44 MOB LAW. the sovereign mob would teach them that all power is derived from and remains with the people. In the same way that a masonic procession, at some seasons of excitement, would not dare to walk the streets of New York. They would be assailed with mud and rotten eggs, because the sovereign people have a prejudice against masonry ; and no consta- bulary force that they could muster would be effec- tual enough to protect them. These are a few of the specimens of liberty without law, so constantly forcing itself on the observation of the passing stranger ; and this insolence of the mob is growing so intolerable and tyrannical, that some change of measures will certainly take place, and it is not at all improbable that the day is coming when the Union will be partially dissolved, and even despotism welcomed as repose ! The St George's Club is formed of a body of English gentlemen resident in New York, who, with a praiseworthy zeal keep up, as far as they dare, the national festivals, and protect, as far as they are able, British interests and British emigrants. They are a very large and wealthy body, and reckon among their number some of the most respectable names in New York. Yet it was a long-debated question, at the meeting convened for the purpose of considering the details to be observed at the funeral honours agreed to be paid to the hero of New Orleans, the late Andrew POLK — THE GREAT UNKNOWN. 45 Jackson, tchether they should carry the Union Jack, and, more important still, who should carry it. But as soon as it was determined that the obnoxious emblem should be carried in the procession, there was an end of all further deliberation, and dozens of English hearts immediately volunteered for the ser- vice, though it was one of no little danger. But the solemn character of the procession prevented any popular disturbance, though the ensign was repeatedly greeted by " There goes the b y flag!" We were discussing the inauguration speech of Lawyer Polk, which had just come out. Nobody knew this man, or anything about him, except that at the last election for President in 1841, when General Harrison came in against Van Buren, there was an obscure young man from Tennessee started for the Vice-Presidency — as Vincent, Oastler, or Nicholson might do for London or Westminster — when Captain Tyler, an acknowledged imbecile, gained the day, the numbers standing thus at the close of the poll : viz., Tyler . . .234 votes. Johnson . . 48 „ Tazewell . . 11 „ James K. Polk . 1 „ And an obscure Jew lawyer in a country village where the Lucius and Leonidas Polks reside, in 46 polk's roaring means nothing. Tennessee, in a standing advertisement before and after the election, thus makes use of his name.* Such a decisive blow as one vote only would, in most men, have indicated a tolerably broad hint to the ambitious lawyer, to retire altogether from fur- ther troubling his friends ; but no : the rejected for the J^'ce-Presidency, four years after, at the next election, actually starts for the Presidency, and gains it too, over the most accomplished, most virtuous, the best informed, and most suitable man in all America ! What must he say, therefore, in his in- auguration speech, for such a nattering reception, such an overwhelming preference ? Why, of course, he must lay it on thick — go the whole figure — flatter the worst passions of those who elected him, and by all sorts of grand, eloquent, and thundering announce- ments about Texas, as unfait accompli, and "Oregon ours without negotiation," et cetera, et cetera, et * HENRY C. LEVY, Attorney and Counsellor at Law, Trenton, Tenn., "\T7"ILL promptly attend to all business intrusted to his care, " ' throughout the Western District of Tenn. REFERENCES. James K. Polk . . . Columbia, Tenn. A. W. 0. Totten . . . Jackson, „ Milton Brown „ „ N. J. Hess . . . Trenton, „ Buckley, Crockett, and Co. . New Orleans. Cave and Shaffer . . . Philadelphia. October 14. ANNEXATION OF CANADA. 47 cetera, send his kind hearers home satisfied and con- tented. But don't be frightened, my Lord Aber- deen, it is all tricky inania verba — words full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. A mere election after- dinner speech, and really and positively not intended to cross the Atlantic. When this speech was penned the orator had no reference to any other readers than his own countrymen, and in justice to Polk this ought to be known, that his roaring means nothing. Still, these silly speeches, electioneering though they be, do harm; they confirm and strengthen those savage sentiments of the democrats about war with Great Britain, and the invincible character of the Americans, already so ridiculously puffed up, which it ought to be the great aim of a good President to subdue ; but I found, go where I would, that the same universal feeling in America prevails in every state, that they would lick us, as they elegantly call it, in about a fortnight ; but if Great Britain could stand it out a month or two, that would certainly be the extent, when she would fall down on her knees before the glorious republic, crying, " Peccavi ! " and yield everything — Texas, Oregon, to 54 deg. 48 min., Annexation of Canada, and pay by instalments the expenses of the war, during the payment of which she would hold Halifax and Bermuda ! This is the feeling all through America. Unfortunately, go where you will, in the States an Englishman is known 48 NEWSPAPER PRESS. instantly by his healthy looks, and is therefore immediately fastened upon to convince him of the greatness of the Union, the everlasting power and importance of the greatest people the sun ever shone upon. This constant recognition of one as an Eng- lishman is under certain circumstances positively a nuisance, and as I had just arrived from a tropical country, and was also on the wrong side of fifty, I had hoped to get along in the crowd, and not be dragged into discussions about the eternal greatness of Polk and Co. But nothing would do, and I was constantly, though the meekest, mildest of mankind, subject to the extremes of rudeness, from ladies as well as gentlemen, in railroads and steam-boats. Everybody, as I said before, reads in America ; but it is the newspaper press that is most patronized and indulged in. No one grudges a halfpenny for the ' Sun ' or * Tribune,' or a penny for the ' Herald,' which is the property of a renegade Scotsman, who is always running clown everything British, at the same time that he is for ever exciting his American readers to acts of spoliation and hostility against his native country ! But this sort of language is the stock in trade of other newspapers as well as the Americans, for instance, the ' Constitutionel,' ' Si&cle,' and ' Presse,' who are all for war, as they can only live on events, and a state of peace and national prosperity does not produce events. " So wretches hang that jurymen may dine ! " NEWSPAPER PRESS. 49 The ' Sun' newspaper states that his daily circulation is forty-four thousand, and that it requires and receives a new fount of type every fortnight. The paper is issued to the boys at three-fourths of a halfpenny, and sold to the public at the marked price, one cent, or a halfpenny each paper. It is about the size of the London papers when single sheets, and it is rumoured that the proprietor clears thirty thousand dollars annually by the speculation. He of the 'Herald' states his circulation at forty thousand, but nobody believes hint, though it is well known that he makes an excellent living, as far as three meals a day goes, from his speculation. But I have heard very hard things said of this editor and proprietor, Mr Bennett, but whether they are true or only partly so, he does not seem to be a very favourable specimen of the Scotch character. The American papers are generally entirely devoid of any pretensions to talent, even the best of New York. Their readers don't want to be bothered with talent. "British Designs on California," at the head of a column, in large capitals, is better than any leading article ; and " Petitions in Favour of the Annexation of Canada," the following week, in equally large type, will carry them through, first-rate, for another ten days. " Insolent Behaviour of a British Cruiser on the Coast of Africa," set up very conspicuously, will also tell ; and these cunning Isaacs know so well how 50 PENNY ADVERTISEMENTS. to dish up their halfpenny meal every morning, that they manage to keep the pot boiling. But if the American papers have no talent, their number is really surprising. If in the United States, Peckham would have its Democrat and Whig journals, published every morning, writing fierce arti- cles against each other ; Tottenham would boast its Gazette and Rough Hewer; whilst Hammersmith and Turnham Green would be kept in a constant state of hot water by the violent leading articles of Dr , the editor of the Journal, and Colonel , the sole proprietor of the * Mercury ' and i Ad- vertiser,' till Acton or Ealing would come in to the rescue, in one of their daily morning or evening extras, and usually smart articles, and the next day there would be a duel on Wormwood Scrubs with soldiers' muskets, and one or both of the said editors would be shot dead at the first fire ! The country papers advertise for almost nothing. A man gives notice that he will advertise in one hundred and twenty of the leading journals of .the State of for less than a penny each, if inserted for three months, and he will receive payment in wheat, maize, rye, pork, bacon, whisky, feathers, bees'-wax, tobacco, hemp, shoes, tinware or eggs ! But we must put an end to this chapter, and see if the weather is not fine enough to venture up the country. CHAPTER IV. One Church to every Three Hundred Inhabitants — Alterations in the Book of Common Prayer — Expected Visit of Queen Victoria to America — Nothing Permanent — All the Presidents have died Poor — Americans an ungrateful People — De Witt Clinton and Whitney — Salaries of Public Men — House Rent enormous — Public- Buildings — Paper Currency — Bank-note Engraving a good Busi- ness — Fountains — Packet Ships — Ships of British Colonies such as New Brunswick — American Navy — Temperance Ships of War — Flogging abolished in the Navy — American Boasting — Their Geese all Swans — Few learned Men — Abundance of Ice— Igno- rance — Where is Goldsmith's Auburn— Russian Climate — Specu- lation Mania — New Cities on Paper— Mulberries. I found the weather still frosty and severe, and very little inviting to country excursions, and there- fore postponed my departure a little longer, till it should be more congenial. This was the less to be regretted, as really New York contains much that is interesting, and a walk up and down the sunny side of Broadway in the month of April is sure to afford amusement, together with abundant matter for re- flexion. Here is a city, including its suburbs, of four hun- dred thousand inhabitants, and constantly increasing ; 52 A CHURCH with one hundred and twenty large hotels; thirty banks, issuing their own notes; seventy insurance offices ; ninety public schools ; forty-five steam-boat companies, and as many different lines of traffic; seventy newspapers ; two hundred churches, &c. ; and yet, numerous as these churches are, in some towns of the interior they are ten times as numerous, many of the capitals of the west having one church for every three hundred inhabitants, and of course one pastor also ; whereas in England it is one church to each thirteen hundred inhabitants. This perhaps may be considered in excess, but it is one of those evils that cures itself, and it is perhaps the best feature belong- ing to the voluntary system, that the supply and demand for ministers of the Gospel are easily adjusted, and if there is no opening in a village for an addi- tional parson, the attempt will not be made to estab- lish him. The supply through the entire Union may be roughly reckoned at one minister and one church for every five hundred of the inhabitants, which is about double the average on the continent of Europe. The Americans are decidedly great patrons of religion, and, to a superficial observer, would be pro- nounced a most religious people. Sunday is most decently observed everywhere, and though they have a singular custom in the State of Connecticut of commencing the Sabbath at sunset on Saturday evening, and finishing at sunset on Sunday, on the principle of the evening and the morning being the TO THBEE HUNDRED INHABITANTS. -53 first day, yet in New York Sunday evening is observed as it is in London, though the Americans will not tolerate any cabs, omnibuses, or railway carriages, plying for hire on that day. I had been attending the Episcopal Church, and joining in the prayers for the President of the United States every Sunday. The preacher had a shocking- nasal drawl, almost universal in America, and the alterations in the liturgy were so numerous as to sur- prise me ; though afterwards, and on reflection, many of these alterations seemed judicious. The republi- cans of the States, following the Church of England or Episcopal form of worship, have made sad havoc of the Book of Common Prayer, and the words so frequently occurring of * King,' ' Prince,' &c., have evidently given them much trouble, how to retain or to expunge them, without spoiling the whole effect of the solemn service of the Church. ' King of kings, and Lord of lords,' as applied to the Most High, were expressions that could hardly be retained in the Republican version of the Book of Common Prayer ; although the phrase ' Kingdom of heaven,' being a sentence from the Bible itself, has been suffered to remain. The American hatred of kings and queens is, however, becoming less violent every year amongst the intellectual and wealthy classes of the commu- nity of the great States on the coast — New England, New York, and Philadelphia ; and I was repeatedly 54 EXPECTED VISIT OF QUEEN VICTORIA. asked whether it was not probable, seeing that Queen Victoria was so fond of travelling, and such an excellent sailor, that her Majesty would not, some day or other, honour America with a visit. If, when she went on board the Great Britain steamer, at Black wall, in the spring of 1845, she had only made up her mind to engage that vessel as a temporary royal yacht for the purpose of visit- ing Canada and, that wonder of the world, the Falls of Niagara, how the hearts of the American people would have leaped for joy at the opportunity of escorting her Majesty from New York to the fron- tiers, and so on. There can be no doubt the Ame- ricans, from so frequently alluding to this probable visit of the Queen of Great Britain to their shores, were quite sincere, but a good deal of their enthu- siasm is attributable to the English sovereign being a female, young and beautiful. At any rate, the respectable class in America is such a small one, that their voice is entirely drowned in the clamour of the mob, who are supreme, and are every day becoming more and more so. An American mob has no veneration for wisdom, worth, station, or talent; and for mere title, the circumstance of a man being a lord would rather tempt a Philadelphia 'loafer to throw a brick at his head and finish his lordship, for daring to come and insult by his pre- sence the free and enlightened citizens of the great and glorious republic. PRESIDENTS DIE POOR. 55 Nothing short of anarchy can terminate this la- mentable state of things, for the laws never will be altered, the law makers being themselves the mob ; but some event or other will arise, nothing being very permanent in any part of the world, and least of all in America, that will bring about a revolution in the present feelings of the better classes in that country. They will find out, especially when they begin to travel to Europe, that we are not such fools on this side of the water as we appear to be ; that we prefer the peace and good order of society to the furious repetitions of corrupt and murderous elections, every four years, for the office of chief magistrate ; and that, although in theory it may be very well to admire cheap and popular governments, yet in practice we have found out, especially by what we witness in the United States, that there is no advantage in democracy anything to be com- pared to the vigour of government under a limited and constitutional sovereign ; and that the fixed order of succession, on the demise of the crown, is a thousand times better than that greatest of all evils — civil war, which they were very nearly expe- riencing lately on the nullification question in South Carolina ; an example which, no doubt, before long will be followed by some other grumbling and dis- satisfied state. All the American Presidents have died poor, and some of them insolvent ; whilst the widow of one 56 AMERICANS UNGRATEFUL. was only relieved the other day by the purchase of her deceased husband's library ! The idea of a pen- sion, or half pay, would not be listened to for a moment by the free and enlightened : so that men of the greatest talent, after wearing themselves out in the service of the people, to whom the morning of their life has been devoted, are turned out in their old age to starve. The Americans are truly an ungrateful people. Besides the shabby way they have treated all their Presidents, from "Washington and Jefferson down- wards, look at their shameful neglect of such men as De Witt Clinton, the Governor of the State of New York, who constructed a work a thousand times more arduous and more useful than Sir Hugh Myddleton's aqueduct, known as the New River from Ware to London ; viz., the vast canal through the Mohawk Valley from Albany to Buffalo— as many miles long as there are days in the year — and yet in a short time, and almost already, his very name is nearly forgotten, and in twenty years more his countrymen, whom he has so much benefitted, will be wondering what in the world De Witt Clinton has constructed to be so much remembered and honoured by the foreign residents in the State of New York — for it will only be among the foreigners that his memory will be cherished and esteemed. Then there is Whitney, not he of the Oregon Railroad, but the great inventor of the cotton gin WIIITXEY. 57 for separating the cotton wool from the seeds, pre- vious to packing. But for this beautiful contrivance how would it be possible to send nearly three million bales of cotton to market. Our readers cannot have a conception of the importance of this invention without a little consideration; but if they will re- collect, that the cultivation of cotton has arrived at such an enormous amount in the southern states of America, that the present crop would require a fleet of one hundred and fifty vessels of one hundred tons each to carry the empty bags required for this quan- tity, they will have some idea of the number of fleets it would require to carry them full ; and yet the man who made the great discovery how to get rid of the seeds after picking the cotton, was allowed to rot and starve, whilst in England he would have had a monument to his honour in some public tho- roughfare two hundred feet high ! Fulton the same : it is all alike ; public services are reckoned as nothing under a government of mobocracy. The public officers, perhaps the navy excepted, are all so badly paid, so thoroughly inadequate to the value of their services, that it is almost beyond human nature to resist peculation or bribery. The President himself receives 5,000/. a year, and the next best paid officer receives 1,500Z., such as Secretaries of State. The best place in the gift of the new President is the American consulship, at Liverpool, whose emolu- ments are quite as large, and some years larger, than 58 ENORMOUS HOUSE RENT. the salary of the President himself. The next best situation in the President's gift is said to be the consulships at Havanna and Havre ; next to these the four collectorships of customs of New York, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Boston, who receive salaries of 1,500/. to 1,600/. a-year each ; so that whilst the head of the state is exercising monarchical powers, and starving on his 5,000/. a-year, he is dis- pensing considerable patronage to his numerous sup- porters who returned him to office. They manage things differently in the kingdom of Naples, where the Neapolitan consul, when appointed to the Island of Malta, is obliged to pay 250/. per annum for his place ! House rent is extravagant in New York. A shop without a parlour, or anything but an empty small shop lets for 1,000 dollars a-year, provided it is in a good situation ; and for a good business premises in the heart of the city, the rent would be as much as the salary of the Secretary of State. Indeed, there is more than one hotel up the country that lets for 20,000 dollars a-year, a rent that cannot be paralleled in the same business in any other quarter of the world. The Aston House is the principal hotel in New York, but the writer did not hear the amount of rent ; it is thought by the citizens to be a very grand affair, and a model of architecture, but this is the science in which the Americans are, of all others, the most ignorant. There is not, with the PUBLIC BUILDINGS. 59 exception of the two recent buildings in "Wall street, anything worth looking at throughout the entire city. A great fuss is made about the new Gothic church of the Trinity, in Broadway, but looking at the immense sum it has cost, and, if they had em- ployed an Italian architect, what might have been constructed for so much money, nothing but a feel- ing of disappointment and regret comes over the spectator on inspecting it. The two buildings al- luded to in Wall street, viz. the Custom house and the Exchange, would do honour to any city, as they are chaste and elegant, while they are solid and sub- stantial specimens of the Grecian style. Nothing could have a better effect in curing the present inor- dinate vulgarity of American taste, than a frequent distribution of such buildings over the country. These, together with the unfortunate United States Bank in Philadelphia, — that grave of ten thousand fortunes, — are admirable exceptions to the general want of good buildings throughout America. By the way, this notorious bank, under the crafty manage- ment of Nicholas Biddle and Co., is now converted into the Custom house for the Port of Philadelphia. Wall street, New York, is, next to Broadway, the most interesting thoroughfare in the city. Here are many banks, some perhaps not so substantial as the granite houses in which they carry on their business, but there is an air of wealth and prosperity in it from top to bottom. 60 CURRENCY. As there is little metallic currency in circulation in America, and nothing to be seen but their filthy- rags in the shape of dollar notes, a large branch of the business of this street consists in exchanging notes for the public, and forcing into circulation as many thousand dollars as they can of the particular bank each broker is interested in. I used to look in at the windows and see the gen- tlemen 'with long scissors cutting and clipping the quires of new pretty pictures, and making them into bundles. It was some time before these were dis- covered to be new bank notes, on which they were intent upon raising the wind ! They were destined for some exchange operation, that should relieve the parties ; for although the banks of the Empire state enjoy a confidence and reputation unknown in the other and remoter parts, yet even here, in New York, after a year or two spent in Lombard-street, you cannot avoid seeing that all is false and hollow. There is not the coin in the country to pay more than one shilling in the pound upon the paper circu- lation of America, and who will the loss fall upon ultimately but upon the industrious and productive classes ? It is a great object to have your bank notes of the most attractive and newest pattern of engraving, as flashy and ornamental as possible ; and in justice to the rising arts in America, it must be conceded to them, that if most things are but indifferently done, this of bank note engraving and FOUNTAINS. 61 printing cannot be surpassed in London itself. It is evidently a thriving trade ; and, being well paid, natu- rally commands the best workmen. Some of the speci- mens are beautiful, although you are sure to suffer somehow or other in having anything to do with them. Nothing is more wanting than a general law through the States prohibiting the issue of all promissory notes under five dollars. Some of their coin would then be visible ; and the numerous national mints, kept up at the expense of the federal government, and now doing nothing, a perfect sinecure, would then have a chance of earning their salaries, and the poor people would cease to be plundered. "WTio would have supposed that, in the city of New York, with all .their well-known vulgarity and want of taste, they would have excelled us in the article of fountains and jets d'eau? and yet it is really the case. Our jets in Trafalgar-square are very sorry concerns compared with those in the Park at New York ; for this simple reason, that instead of a very short column of water, as in Trafalgar square, three or four feet high, in the Park at New York the Americans have erected a three-inch pipe, and the prodigious quantity of water thus enabled to ascend into the air some thirty or thirty-six feet, has a grand and charming effect, especially when playing during a heat little inferior to the burning fiery cli- mate of Senegal. But as so large a conductor as a three-inch pipe would require too large a supply of 62 PACKET SHIPS. water, the jets only play at short intervals, which is rather an advantage than otherwise. But if the Americans are behind the rest of the world in architectural knowledge, they certainly are not second to any nation in naval architecture. Their ships are perfect models, especially the fifty liners^ as they are termed, sailing at fixed days, as regular as mail-coaches, for Liverpool, London, and Havre. They are built as strong as wood and iron can make them ; and their speed, form, and decorations, as well as their comfort and accommodations, stamp them at once as the finest ships that swim the ocean. They are generally 1,000 tons burthen each, and may be seen at the foot of Wall street every day arriving or departing, receiving or discharging cargo. Not much inferior to these are the packet-ships, all along the shore, in the trade to Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, or New Orleans. They are ships generally of 500, 600, or 700 tons, and are proofs of the importance of the coasting-trade, for they are constantly sailing to and fro. The cheapness and abundance of sound American timber has been the prime cause of the excellence of their ships. In England we have not got the timber, and if we had we could not afford to put it in in such liberal abundance as the American ship-builders. I went on board one of the new liners ; she was ready for sea in ninety days from the day her keel was laid down, and cost 16/. sterling, per register SHirS OF NEW BRUNSWICK. 63 ton, everything included, except provisions, and sheathed with Muntz's patent metal. Now the same ship could not be built at Blackwall within fifty per cent, of this price, and yet the Americans are crying out every day, and making constant complaints in their newspapers, of being undersailed by the British, and of the regular annual increase of British tonnage in the American waters, carrying cotton, tobacco, turpentine, and such like bulky cargoes, cheaper than they can do it. How is this ? In the first place seamen's wages are lower in English vessels ; but the grand reason is, that these cheap vessels are built in New Brunswick. They take a cargo of lumber to a southern market, and then, calling at either of the four principal cotton ports, take a cargo of cotton direct to Liverpool, at the same freight that the Americans can take it to New York.* Ship-building should therefore be encouraged at St John's, N. B., and there is room for twenty ships additional at this moment to be placed on the stocks there of 1,000 tons each, especially if they could- be done at a few pounds per ton lower than the New • In the year 1844, ending 30th June, the vessels which entered the ports of the United States were as follows ; viz . : American 8,148 British - 5,030 Hanseatic 155 Swedish 110 French - 55 64 AMERICAN NAVY. York builders. The ships would be taken in shares, and the bird's-eye maple, rosewood, gilding, and satinwood, with other gim cracks, being dispensed with, there is little doubt they might be completed with a profit to the builders for about twelve guineas per ton, everything complete, except provisions. The guard-ship at New York is the ' North Caro- lina,' 74, a very fine ship, built at Philadelphia in 1820, and consequently twenty-five years old. She is about the size and weight of metal of our new 80's, and would be an ugly customer alongside any of our old 74's. She is moored very near to the shore, and is a proof that the largest ships have no difficulty in coining up close to the city. I was rather disappointed to hear that the Tem- perance plan had not yet been introduced in this fine line-of-battle ship, because I had been informed that in the ' Cumberland,' first-class frigate, it had been tried with perfect success ; every person in that vessel, from the first lieutenant downwards, being a total abstinence man, and consequently receiving the Government equivalent of threepence per day, in lieu of grog. It is said that in two years more the pro- bability is that the serving out of rum for sailors' rations on board ships of war will be entirely discon- tinued, as it may be said to be already effected in all the merchant and whaling ships of the Union. Here would be a mighty reform, could it be car- ried out in the British navy ; and surely the weather TEMPERANCE SHIPS OF WAR. 65 un the coast of America, during their long and severe winters, from the Cay of Fundy to Cape Hatteras. is as bad as it is in any part of the world ; and if a pot of hot coffee or cocoa, after reefing topsails in a stormy night, will satisfy an American sailor, why should it not be good enough for our English tar.-, whose vigorous constitutions and broad shoulders less require any stimulus. But if this plan of universal temperance has not yet been thoroughly organized in the American army and navy, there is to every reflecting Englishman great satisfaction in observing that by a late Act of Congress flogging has been entirely abolished in American ships, as well in those belonging to the State as in those belonging to the merchant service. It would have been more agreeable, perhaps, if Great Britain had been foremost in this just work, but it is an example that must soon be followed by our own legislature ; for nothing can be more impolitic on our parts than to leave anything to be envied by either British sailors or British colonists in the laws, cus- toms, or institutions of our Republican neighbours ; but, on the contrary, it should be the aim in Downing street, if possible, to make everything British or Canadian the envy of the Americans ! When we see the rate of seamen's wages in America — fifteen dollars per month — it is no wonder that there is no scarcity of hands to man their ships : for by a late return to Congress it came out, that 66 AMERICAN BOASTING. out of 109,000 men and boys employed in the fisheries, rivers, canals, merchant ships, and navy of the United States, 100,000 were foreigners, that is, British, and only 9,000 Americans ! I met with an American traveller who had been in England, and had gone on board the e Victory,' at Portsmouth, and described to me the brass plate, &c, on the spot where Nelson fell. He looked on the ' Victory ' as a very small vessel, and stated that, alongside of their ' Ohio,' 74, she would only have appeared like a frigate ! This is not only a specimen of American boasting, but American ignorance, two qualities always found together. But it is the same all day long, from morn to dewy eve, nothing but the same tune — American bragging; all their flies are elephants; just as the village of Jersey is called a city, and the little grass plot round the City Hall in New York is called " the Park," — an enclosure about the size of Leicester square in London. In like manner, the numerous little boys' schools scattered over the country, where the dirty- nosed urchins are whipped, or ought to be, once a week, are all designated colleges. Thus there are more colleges and universities, so called, in America, than throughout Europe ; but in the item of pro- fessors they are not so rich, there being compara- tively very few eminent or learned men in the United States. Indeed, there is not much encou- ragement for them, and the principal branch of study FE"W LEARNED MEN. 67 all through the country is divinity ; but in the fixed sciences, where there is no guessing and no uncer- tainties, the number of great names in America is very small. Blumenbach and Bezel, Arago and Faraday, Liebig and Misofanti of Bologna, who is master of forty-two languages, with the galaxy of great names at this time in Europe, are not to be looked for in the States, and never will be while it continues a democracy. There exists no such thing as a learned leisure, except in divinity ; of which they are very fond, if one may judge from the number of schools and colleges of divinity scattered all over the country. The habits of temperance, even in New York, have brought into existence many trades, to an extent that would hardly be credible elsewhere. As the people have abandoned ardent spirits, and in a great mea- sure even ale and porter, something must be had as a substitute : and as wine is out of the question, as much as it is out of the reach of the industrious classes, they have hit upon a number of drinks, warranted not to intoxicate, such as sarsaparilla beer, and root beer, which are sold at every corner of the streets ; whilst the ginger-beer makers drive their innocent commodity about the streets, mostly four- in-hand, in a very flashy style, sufficiently indicative of the prosperous nature of their craft. Waggon loads of ice-cream may be seen beset by the boys and girls in the street, all having in the hot 68 CHEAPNESS OF ICE. months their halfpenny worth of strawberry or va- nilla : nor are the glasses much smaller, or the cream inferior to those of Farrance or Gunter at twelve or twenty times the price. Owing also to an entire absence of duty on green fruit brought in bulk from foreign countries, pine apples and plantains are to be seen at every corner of the streets of New York ; and whilst you see such a profusion of them around you, and you are suffering at the time all the pangs of the horrid heat, you cannot help fancying your- self really in the tropics, till you are awakened from your reverie by seeing a long succession of ice-carts, full of large blocks of ice from the Rockland lake, driving along the streets, selling their weeping and evanescent loads at one shilling per hundred-weight ! When one sees blocks of ice carried through every part of the town like blocks of stone, hot as it may be, one feels convinced there is no mistake here ; and that, after all, we really are in Russia, notwithstand- ing the short burning summer and the aforesaid fes- toons of ananas and bananas ! Talking of American ignorance, one of their pro- fessors — and he had not the excuse of being a divi- nity professor, generally the worst informed of all — noticed to me that we English were not a manufac- turing country ; " you are, no doubt," he added, " a great commercial people, but you don't figure as manufacturers." I replied that I must have been labouring, then, under a great mistake all my life, SHOCKING IGNOBANCE. 69 for I had always thought, if there was any one thing for which my country was justly celebrated, it was for the greatness and immense value of our manu- factures. "Well? said he, "as far as iron and steel go, I think you are 'first-rate ' in England, and get along better than any other nation that I know of: but when I admit that I can go no farther. It is France that is the great manufacturing nation of the globe!" "What do you think, then," I inquired, "about cotton, of which, as an American, you ought to know something." " Yes," says he, " you take more of our cotton, no doubt, than all the rest of the world put together; but then you merely spin it into yarn for other nations to work up into those beautiful tissues and tasty fabrics that my wife and daughters are constantly buying for new dresses. Look at the beautiful shoes, the charming gloves, the bonnets and millinery which we receive every week from Paris, besides those beautiful Indiennes for our ladies' dresses, which you do not know even how to make in England." Seeing that this professor's ignorance was so lamentable and profound (oh, ye blind guides), I really disdained the trouble of convincing him. It was like an elderly lady in one of the steamers : she said she should like to have visited England once in her life, if it were only to have visited " Auburn? which must be a sweet pretty place, according to Goldsmith's description of it — " Sweet Auburn ! loveliest village of the plain." 70 RUSSIAN CLIMATE. " Ah ! " said the lady, in a deep lachrymose tone, "we have many Auburns in America, but I am afraid none of them come up to yours." I replied that there was no such place in England as Auburn, and it was the mere creation of the poet's fancy ; but her mind having dwelt for many years on the reality of Auburn, she could with great diffi- culty believe me, and I rather think I spoiled for the remainder of her short life one of " the greenest spots in memory's waste." This is like the old story of the woman and her sailor son. She knew very well all about the moun- tains of sugar, and rivers of rum in the Indies, but she would not believe a word when he told her of the flying fish ! The horrid weather was getting more tolerable. What would have been, and ought to have been, spring in any other country, was still winter on one side of the street, and summer on the other, only forty degrees difference of temperature between the north side of the street and the south. A friend proposed a drive to Jamaica in Long Island, and off we started. New York possesses many pretty suburbs, of which those in Long Island and Staten Island are decidedly the best ; whilst the opposite shore of the North or Hudson River only presents Jersey city, as the village is pompously called, and a place called Hoboken, rather pretty, but which they are taking infinite pains to spoil and MULBERRIES AND NEW CITIES ON RARER. 71 ruin. We drove across the excellent ferry previously alluded to at Brooklyn, and soon found ourselves on the sandy roads of Long Island, which is represented as a fertile and productive district, though we could see nothing but bush, bad roads, wooden fences, and houses. It must be a horrid place in winter. After proceeding some miles from the ferry, my friend pointed out where many hundred fools had thrown away their own or their creditors' money in the pur- chase of lots of building land to form another large city to be called East New York ! This was about 1837, as I understood, or eight or nine years ago; when all persons were mad, even amongst this shrewd and sagacious people, giving thousands of dollars for *a piece of ground hardly large enough to swing a cat in, expecting to sell it to somebody still madder at forty or fifty per cent, advance in the course of twenty-four hours ! It was about the same period that this thinking people became suddenly convinced that to make a fortune it was only necessary to pur- chase a certain number of plants of the " morus mul- ticaulis," or mulberry from the Philippine Islands ; as silk was to be in future, next to cotton, the great and important item of American export. But the mul- berry speculation, like the East New York and other manias, all fell to the ground ; and the poor deluded dupes awoke from their dreams to ruined fortunes, and to hopes destroyed. CHAPTER V. New England — Transcendentalists — Their Doctrines — Evils of Protecting Tariff— Probable Bankruptcy of Manufacturers — Disasters in Steamboats — Their Accommodations — Detestable Climate of the States — Cheap Board and Lodging— Hotels— Land Bargains — Borne and Syracuse— Bail way Travelling Slow and "Wearisome — Tin Booting recommended — Bochester, Bankrupt Millers — Palis of the Genessee — Americans a Gloomy People— British Plag in Canada. Previous to making the western tour I made a short excursion to Boston to see a friend off to Eng- land by one of Cunard's line of steamers. Our trip was partly by sea and partly by land. The boats on this line are truly magnificent; but, though occa- sionally subject to a little rough weather in Long Is- land Sound, they are not exactly cut out for a storm at sea, and all classes of Americans must allow that John Bull beats them hollow in sea-going steamers. The private boats belonging to London and Liver- pool, and sailing the ocean, amount, in 1845, to 100,000 tons; without reckoning any of the superb vessels steaming down the Red Sea to Aden and Bombay, which, of course, have been navigated round TRANSCENDEXTALISTS. 73 the Cape of Good Hope, or East Cape, the name it is better known by amongst nautical men in America. I attended the Episcopal Church in Boston, whilst my friend visited the Unitarian Church, for the Unitarians are a very large and respectable sect throughout the State of Massachusetts. The preacher made a great impression on my friend by his bold and, fearless exposure of the cant and superstition of his countrymen, the New Englanders; and he gave me the heads of the discourse as much as possible in the very words of the minister, who threw in great eloquence and earnestness to his address.* I am not sure if I * The reverend gentleman's argument ran as follows : — 1st. Man is by nature a religious being. The religious sentiment in him is universal, and as natural to him as sight or hearing. By means of this religious sentiment he communicates with the spiri- tual world. But when this sentiment has become perverted, or mingled with baser elements, it has given birth to various historical religions, to use the preacher's words, Christianity among the rest. Its legitimate and purified product is absolute religion, which means love to man and love to God. 2ndly. All men are more or less inspired, according to the inten- sity of the religious sentiment. No miracles are necessary, nor any creeds. 3rdly. With reference to Christianity, there is no doubt that Jesus was superior to all other men, had most of the religious sen- timent, and was the most of an inspired man that the world ever saw ; his life was consistent, beautiful, and holy ; his precepts wise and good, though the substance of them had been uttered before, but never so variously and delightfully applied to practical uses. As a teacher and model he is unrivalled. But the story of Jesus is incredible and absurd ; a mixture of the legendary, the mythical, and the true ; a good deal arising out of the love and admiration which he rightfully awakened among his followers, and also a good H 74 TEANSCENDENTALISTS. am pleasing all readers by giving a specimen of what is called by Americans transcendentalism in religion ; but it is merely to show the freedom with which serious subjects are handled by their best and most popular preachers, especially in that section of the States called New England, which is generally consi- dered the model portion of the United States in edu- cation, morals, and religion ; and where all licences deal the result of the fanatical expectation of a Messiah, which happened, at that period, to be so current among the Jews. 4thly. The Bible is the greatest of all books ; and it contains more of absolute religion than any other book. But the common notion of it as divine, miraculous, or infallible, is false and foolish. A portion of it is no doubt inspired, in the sense before referred to, in different degrees ; whilst other portions are absurd, legendary, and incredible. 5thly. The true idea of the Church is, Christ the model man and teacher, and men and women listening to his instruction, and ob- serving his life. What is called the Church has answered import- ant purposes, but it would be difficult to say whether it has done most good or most harm. The true Church is yet to come. In another part of his discourse on superstition the preacher ex- claimed, " But why go back to the patriarchs ? Do we not live in New England and the nineteenth century, and have we no super- stition ? Our books of theology, our houses and churches, are full of it. When a man fears God more than he loves him ; when he forsakes reason, conscience, and love ; the still small voice of God in the heart, and is satisfied with authority, tradition, and expe- diency, then is he superstitious. We call out against those who in an age of darkness were made to pass through the fire, but what shall we say to those who now, in an age of light, systematically degrade the fairest gifts of man ; who make life darkness, death despair, the world a desert, and God an ugly fiend, who made the mass of men for utter wretchedness, death, and eternal hell ! Is not all this superstition ? " EVILS OF PROTECTING TARIFFS. 75 for the retailing of intoxicating liquors are steadily refused. I could not spare the time to go over to Lowell, alike celebrated for its factory girls and their parasols. This is no doubt a very desirable state of things, but I am afraid it is merely accidental and temporary, and rather an episode in the history of the manufac- tures of the New England States, than to be regarded as the natural superiority of the American factories over those of Lancashire. The day is coming when the workers of cotton in Lowell will be no better off than the workers in shoes in Lynn, or the cunning in clocks. The parasols will have to be furled and left at home. The unnatural propping up of the manu- facturing system through the silly tariff of 1842 has made many fortunes, especially in the New England States ; but the repeal of said act, which is certain, sooner or later, and perhaps the very session now commencing, will make as many bankrupts. The cotton-trade will be as good after the repeal of the tariff as it is now, but those who have been leaning on the support of those prohibitory duties will find, as soon as such support is withdrawn, that they must become insolvent, unless they evince the energy of humbler manufacturers in other departments, and are determined to undersell the world ; for, with unlim- ited water-power, the raw material at their door, and bread and meat for next to nothing, who can beat a 76 PROBABLE BANKRUPTCY. Bostonian at making calico ? So that, after all, we see that these Lowell parasols have been paid for by the agricultural States, by the gallants of the southern and western country, without their knowing it, and without acknowledgment on the part of the young ladies of the factories. But all that must be changed ; it is absurd to suppose that the planters of New Orleans and Mobile should have to contribute in every article they require at the store to the already overgrown fortunes of the New England manufacturers, who have been boasting, the last three years and upwards, that they have been clearing twenty-five per cent profit on their capitals employed, whilst all the articles produced by the planters, parti- cularly cotton, have been gradually getting lower and lower in price ; and even yet, cotton has not seen its lowest. So that it will be one good thing done by southern preponderance in the national councils of the Union, that the tariff is to be reduced to a revenue standard. The American legislators should observe, that every session the Parliament of Great Britain is ad- vancing in the free-trade principle by removing duties on imports ; and they should recollect that it is now well established, that it is an unchangeable law of human nature that the real interests of all nations are identical. No manufacturing country wants paupers for customers : but, on the contrary, all D] -ASTERS IN STEAM-BOATS. 77 nations find it for their advantage that all the others should flourish — all derive benefit from unrestricted intercourse, free exchange, peace, and justice. \Ve were now steaming up the beautiful river Hudson, on our way to Albany, at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, with two or three hundred passengers — a hundred more or less can hardly be distinguished in these capacious vessels. A dreadful accident had occurred but a few days before by the striking on a rock of the steamer ' Swallow,' opposite the town, or city (I beg its pardon), called Hudson, by which many passengers were drowned ; and it was truly a melancholy sight to see the wreck lying broadside on the rock. It was the fault of the pilot : for the captain, it appears, has nothing to do with the care of the navigation, but every boat is left in the charge of a pilot, who sits up aloft near the head or bows of the vessel, in a neat little glass office, monarch of all he surveys, and by means of his only companion — a large wheel — he steers the ship in safety. Un- like our steamers, where the helmsman always stands at the stern, and can see nothing but the passengers hats, the American steersman always occupies an ele- vated little room on the top deck, close to the head of the vessel, and enjoys an uninterrupted sight of everything before him and around him ; and as he is shut in with the windows of his little office, up or down according to the state of the weather, nobody can talk to him or interfere with him, and nobody 78 THEIR ACCOMMODATION. scarcely knows that there is such a being on board. He has two, or sometimes three, little bells that ring in the engine-room, by which he communicates his orders to the engineer, such as " Go on," " Back astern," " Easy," " Stop her," &c. The lowest room in the steamer is the dining- room, a long and spacious saloon, communicating with the kitchen on deck, through a sort of spout, by which the dishes are sent hot from the fire. The deck over the saloon contains the ladies' cabin, a large and handsomely furnished place, in which a hundred ladies might sit or lounge without being at all crowded; the remainder of this deck is for promenading fore and aft all through the vessel ; and you see in gilt letters over various rooms on each side — " Captain's room," " Clerk's office," " Barber's shop," " Bar," for the sale of fruit and drinks ; and very often may be seen three or four well-dressed itinerant merchants, who, in the true spirit of Ame- rican enterprise, as they are going a journey of business, begin at the beginning, and, whether it be umbrellas, type for marking linen, &c, they manage to do a little trade, and pay their current expenses by selling their respective wares amongst the pas- sengers. After looking a little about me at Albany, which is the county town as we should call it, or capital of the State of New York, I took the ears, as the Ame- ricans say, and pushed on to a nice quiet supper and CHEAP BOARD AND LODGING. 79 glass of brilliant pale ale at the town of Schenectady. I enjoyed a good bed at the inn, and in the morning, when I was dressing within, it was snowing without. Talk of an English winter, here we were in the month of May and the weather like Christmas, in a latitude corresponding to Tuscany and Spain. It could not be the great elevation of the country, either ; for the town of Schenectady is rather flat and low, and very little raised above the tide-waters of the Hudson. The fact is, the American climate is thoroughly and irredeemably bad — the very worst in the world — that is within the temperate zone ; and I conceive nothing can make up for this dreadful and important defect. Whilst enjoying mine ease in mine inn, more from contrast with the weather than any intrinsic excel- lence, I did not feel very impatient to go from my warm room into the snow ; but here is another city, as they call it, a village of six thousand inhabitants, and yet boasting of ten churches, four banks, and twenty hotels ! The number of hotels will naturally surprise Englishmen, because this abundance is uni- versal, however small the city, town, or village : they swarm everywhere, just like doctors and law- yers. The case is, the American people have no homes; there is a dinner provided, for instance, at each of these twenty hotels of Schenectady, and all the adult male population of the place, and a great part of the females too, agreed with Mr Boniface, 80 HOTELS. the keeper of the hotel, for partial board at so much per month; sixpence per head per meal is a very common rate of payment up the country ; and fa- milies, even with three or four children, find this system of assembling for their three meals cheaper than keeping servants and cooking at home, buying fuel, &c. The lowest rate of board, including lodg- ing, that I have ever met with was at a place in Indiana, where a person may obtain both at the low price of four shillings per week, or one dollar ; but I was to recollect that this did not include chicken fixings ; but for fifteen dollars per month, or four- teen shillings per week, a good bed room and three abundant meals daily may be had in any of these cities of the west, — and at a really respectable hotel. It is the numbers alone which enable them to do this, for they usually pay excessively high rents, and can reckon on nothing coming in the way of profit on wine and spirits, which is so large an item in the calculations of English innkeepers. The traveller is also saved all gratuities to servants. This abominable English custom would not be tolerated a day in America. Through various little places along the valley of the Mohawk I arrived at the Little Falls, which is a pretty place ; and, from its unlimited water-power, is sure to maintain its manufacturing importance, as a great deal of it is still unemployed and available to new comers. LAND BARGAINS. 81 After stopping and admiring this singular little spot of perfect wildness, I proceeded to Utica for the night ; which, after the numerous little places, ap- peared a large and populous town of about fifteen thousand inhabitants. I had often in another part of the world observed the word " Utica " branded on flour barrels ; and it now appeared that the town was the centre of a large agricultural country, and that grist mills was a favourite speculation of the inhabitants. I was the more surprised, therefore, to recollect having been teased in New York to buy a farm in the neighbourhood of Utica, at a very low price ; the copy of the advertisement referring to this said farm I thought worth adding in a note below.* As I had never yet seen any farm in America that I would have taken as a gift, with the condition of making it my residence, it was not very likely that I should be solicitous to encounter the half-thawed mud of Herkimer county in particular, to examine this extraordinary bargain. We passed through Rome without knowing it, and soon arrived at Syracuse ; a considerable town, * LOOK at THIS — 160 ACRES of GOOD LAND, water right, and all on a river for 130 dollars or less, and believed to be worth 1,000 dollars — a fortune, the title from the State of New York. Necessity compels the owner to give this away. Any man, woman, or child, who has that amount can never meet with such a bargain ; half of the lot can be had. Call and make an offer— it must be sold— at No. 90 Nassau street, 2nd floor. Also, twenty farms from 400 dollars and upwards. 19 2is* 82 RAILWAY TRAVELLING with the usual liberal supply of banks, churches, and hotels. This is the most celebrated place in the State of New York for the manufacture of salt, of which immense quantities are constantly being despatched to all corners of the country. Not being particularly enamoured, however, of salt marshes, I joined the same train, and preferred resting for the remainder of the day at Auburn, twenty-six miles further. Twenty-six miles is nothing on an English railroad, but in America it is quite far enough to weary and fatigue you after fifty-three miles of previous travel- ling. The line is a single line, with occasional turn-outs, which cause enormous delays of waiting ; and the road, not being enclosed, seems to be the favourite resting- place for cattle, who will persist on going and filling themselves in the sloppy pastures, and then coming to the high and dry railroad, to lie down and chew the cud. Then there is such a hollobaloo to make the cows get up and run off the rails ; so that when you take out your watch at the end of your journey, you find that you have just travelled at the rate of nine miles and a half to ten miles an hour, including stoppages ! I have constantly observed through the States, how careless the constructors of their lines are of the safety and convenience of the passengers ; within an inch or two of a precipice is just the same to them, so as they can save a few yards, not of rails, but of what we should call hoop-iron, screwed on to SLOW AND WEARISOME. 83 the wooden rails. This recklessness I observed first on leaving Syracuse for Auburn, and afterwards on the railroad from Lewistown to Niagara Falls. Arrived at Auburn, pretty well tired of railroad travelling, at the rate of ten miles an hour. This place had been represented to me as a large, hand- some, and important town in the midst of the lakes, abounding in trout, &c. &c. &c. I found it an ex- cessively dull place, without trade and without money ; and could not by any possibility exist, were it not for the little circulation of cash caused by keeping here about seven hundred convicts in the State prison, the daily labour of whom is let out, by public tender, at so much per head for the contractor to make the best he can of; they are therefore made to work hard, which is perhaps the greatest allevia- tion to their sentence, whilst their labour is more productive than in our penal colonies, and amply repays the cost of their maintenance. The presence of this American Newgate in f Sweet ' Auburn throws a damp over the place, which, already dull and gloomy from want of trade, does not seem to promise to make much progress. The Court-house is a pretty object, and looks very well, with its cupola covered over with tin plates. I cannot help thinking that this method of covering steeples of churches and cupolas of other buildings might be tried in England and Scotland. After leaving this dull village of Auburn the railroad crosses the Cayuga Lake, on a 84 ROCHESTER BANKRUPT MILLERS. rickety sort of wooden viaduct, nearly two miles long, and which you feel glad to get to the end of. After passing another large lake, called Seneca, and the village of Geneva, which is a tolerably pretty place with ten churches, three banks, two newspa- pers, and about 2,500 inhabitants (!), you arrive at Canandaigua, built on the edge of the lake of the same name. The Americans look upon this locality of Canandaigua as the ne plus ultra of everything sublime and beautiful, and the town is constantly described in their guide-books as presenting the most delightful prospects in the world ; but, as our readers are long since aware that their flies are all elephants, a discount of full 75 per cent, must be taken off from every American description of the interior of his native State. After seven hours' weary travelling by rail we had accomplished seventy miles, and arrived at what we looked upon as the end of our journey for the present, the town of Rochester, which is a bustling and flourishing place near the banks of Lake Ontario. It is the growth of little more than twenty years, and already contains a population of 20,000 persons. This rapid increase has been owing to the cataract in the very centre of the town, which is powerful enough to turn a hundred mills; and Rochester, in consequence, has become one of the most important flour-markets in the States. Indeed, these falls of the Genessee river, beside their immense utility and value, are exceedingly fine and imposing ; FALLS OF THE GENESSEE. 80 like all falls where there is great depth and plenty of water, and no person of common feeling, or with a grain of taste, can tear himself away from such a scene as this till he is wet through with the spray, or reminded by some thundering bell that it is twelve o'clock, and he must run to eat his dinner at the public table, whether ready for it or not. I could not help regarding the town of Rochester with some degree of favour, everything was new and yet sub- stantial, and the banks had never failed, a statement that could hardly be made of any town of equal size out of the State of Xew York. It was not thought, however, that the flour business was a good one, as a great many of the mill-owners were known to have compounded. But after all, the go a-head principle of America, though eminently rife even in Rochester, is not attended with so many marks of the false and hollow as are to be seen in other places. The inha- bitants were even better-looking and healthier, and the rapid departure of winter gave a cheerfulness to everything around, except the dull and gloomy American, who rarely smiles and never sings, but is always cogitating; and, by chewing great quantities of tobacco almost without knowing it, he fancies his wits will be sharpened, and some lucky thought will occur to him by which he can make ten or twenty dollars. As the American towns are so nearly alike, and I had enough of railway travelling for the present, instead of taking the usual route to Buffalo, I pre- I 86 BRITISH FLAG IN CANADA. ferred driving down to the steam-boat, and having a cruise on Lake Ontario, looking once more on that abhorred flag on the Canadian shore, " That has hrav'd a thousand years, The battle and the breeze ! " The drive from the town down to the embarking place is short, but highly picturesque and beautiful; and there was the black steamer in the deep stillness a hundred feet below the road, nigroque simillima cygno, whilst close behind her were the glorious and foaming Falls glittering in the last rays of the setting sun. It was one of those soft hours that melt the heart of the worn traveller, when nothing satisfies him but the wonderful works of God, and when he cannot help inwardly exclaiming, for his Ave Maria, " Goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my life !" CHAPTER VI. A VISIT TO CANADA. Lake Ontario— Falls of Niagara— Clifton Hotel— Heavy Shower — Toronto and Hamilton good Towns — Lower Canada, or Canada East, must be avoided, not adapted to English Farmers — Too cold — Emigrants should not stop till they reach Toronto or Hamilton in Canada West, or Upper Canada, as it used to be called— Superior to all other Colonies — No Failure of Crops — Near England, and Passage cheap — Land ought to be reduced to One Dollar per Acre, and no Credit — Few Taxes — Loyal People — Quebec and Montreal— Large Population — Healthy and Happy Colony — Too many Irish — Far better than any of the Newgate Colonies of Australia — Superior to the United States, where Englishmen cannot sell Land -Free and Popular Government — Cattle, Horses, and Sheep— Regret at leaving Canada. During the night we had crossed the Lake Ontario, and at daylight found ourselves at anchor at Queens- town, close to Brock's Monument in the River " Niagara," with the shores of the two great rival nations within half a mile of each other. It formed no part of my plan to visit the Grand Falls on this occasion, but I could not resist the opportunity, as we were only twelve miles off, and almost within the noise of their thunder, whilst the entire river was gurgling and bubbling, even at this distance, plainly 88 LAKE ONTARIO. telling of the fearful leap it had taken about two hours before it arrived at Queenstown, and from which it was now recovering, The mighty River St Lawrence, or Niagara, as it is called for twenty miles between the lower lakes, pours more fresh water into the ocean than any other river of the globe, although it is only fourth or fifth in point of length. The train was off to the Falls on the American side, and it was about the worst twelve miles of rail- way travelling I ever experienced, and in some parts positively dangerous, passing by precipices that might easily have been avoided, and on the other side going so close to the river bank, and the yawning abyss about one hundred and eighty feet below, that a young English lady near me was compelled to shut her eyes, she was so agitated, till we arrived in the village and stopped at the Cataract Hotel, the best American house, for breakfast. We had caught a glimpse of the glorious Falls from an opening in the forest, whilst the train was passing, but nothing could stop us, immediately we alighted from the carriages, from hastening to the best and favourite spot for viewing this awful and stupendous sight. The American side, though far inferior to the Canadian in the importance of the Falls, offers in the early morning the pleasing sight of a constant and noble rainbow, perfect in every part, stretching from side to side, and thus we have the sublime and beautiful at the same moment. A visit, NIAGARA. 89 for the first time, to the terrific scene of Niagara is an era in a person's life, and can never be forgotten by any distance of time or place. The Neapolitans have a familiar saying, " See Naples and die," meaning, don't die before yon have seen" Naples ; but it might much better be said, See Niagara and die, for nothing exists in this world of wonders half so overwhelming as this fearful scene. I used often to think, in travelling to Piedmont, if a man could not learn a lesson of humility between Scarena and Limone, amidst the mighty maritime Alps, he could learn it nowhere ; but since seeing Niagara, I think the lesson of shrinking into nothing can nowhere be so well enforced as beneath this living and liquid Alps. It is only a fortnight's trip from Liverpool to Niagara, by steam to Boston, where there is a railroad all the way, through Albany, to the Falls ; and any time during the four months of May, June, July, and August, would do to start in. The Clifton House, on the British side, is one of the best hotels to be found in any country ; and it is a wonder how so many and such splendid establishments can be maintained during so short a season, as the summer in this part of America can hardly be said to endure more than three months. On another occasion, when I visited the Falls later in the year — it was on a Sunday — I reckoned there were one thousand strangers and visitors on the Canadian side alone, 90 . CLIFTON HOTEL. to view the Giant Horse-shoe Fall. This is a great number for so thinly-peopled a district; and in the visitors' book of names, besides the signatures of Lord Durham and Lord Morpeth, there are persons from Calcutta and Ceylon, the Dweller from Mesopotamia,* and the remotest countries of the world. The Clifton Hotel has about seventy windows looking on the smoking cauldron, and on the top of the building there is 1 an elegant and com- manding Belvidere, from which you enjoy a pano- ramic view of the rapids above the Falls, and the wide expanse of river, and Navy Island, together with the scene of the ' Caroline ' American steam- boat, which was cut out by the British from her moorings, and sent down the Falls ; but it would be almost impossible for any large vessel to arrive at the Falls without first being broken into ten thou- sand pieces by the rocks above. Our open carriage, on returning to the steamer at Queenstown, drove through Drummondville in a heavy shower of rain, during which we all put up our umbrellas, when the driver told us it was not raining, and nothing but the spray from the Falls carried in that direction by the wind ; and we after- wards learned at Toronto, forty miles off, that the white cloud above the Cataract of Niagara is seen every clear morning from that city ! A Londoner * Mr Buckingham. TORONTO AND HAMILTON GOOD TOWNS. 91 would think it a grand sight to see the River Thames tall from the top of the monument; but Niagara is a collection of two hundred rivers as large as the Thames, flowing into those four interior seas called Erie, Huron, Michigan, and Superior, the smallest of which is large enough to contain all England and Wales! We joined a pretty English steamer at Queenstown to an early dinner, and in the evening, after thirty miles of lake-sailing, we landed at Hamilton, a very thriving, well-situated, but drunken town, at the head of Lake Ontario, contain- ing about 12,000 inhabitants. Everything appeared rough, prosperous, cheap, and abundant; those who abstained from ardent spirits were good-looking and healthy ; whilst a four-wheeled chaise and pair of horses seemed to be universal amongst the popula- tion both of town and country. Beef, mutton, and pork are 2id. to 3d. per lb. ; ham, 4d. ; bread, the very best, 6d. the 4lb. loaf; milk, Id. per quart; fresh butter, 5d. per lb. ; very fine green tea, 2 s. per lb. ; and coffee, 6d. ; tobacco, 4d. per lb. ; clothing and house rent as cheap or cheaper than in England ; potatoes and lake fish excellent and very cheap; furniture also very cheap and good. Hamilton is a good harbour, and well situated under a ridge, or mountain, as they call it, of lime- stone, and is the key to a wide and fertile country to the north and Avest, and is sure to go on increas- ing in prosperity. The soil is superior to anything ft 92 LOWER CANADA WILL NOT DO. we have any notion of in Great Britain ; and the young wheat and clover were the finest looking I had ever seen in my life. The population of Canada West exceeds 600,000 persons, and is decidedly the most important and thoroughly English colony under the Crown. Al- though the cold is severe, and the winter long, they consider it Italy itself as compared with the Quebec country, where a pail of water, in less than an hour, is converted into a solid lump of ice the shape of the pail, without a drop of moisture remaining ; and the milk is brought to market in bags and sacks, every separate block of milk being scribed with a knife or a nail to mark the price ; whilst the half- finished tumblers of brandy and water, left on the tavern tables overnight, are all solid ice the following morning ! In Canada West matters are not so bad as this, even in the most severe seasons ; and, gene- rally speaking, the soil is drier and better drained than any of the Western States of the Union. So that with a view to emigration, if people will emigrate, which nobody should do if they can anyhow manage to "get along" at home, — to use an American phrase, — they had better go at once to Canada West, and not stop till they reach Toronto or Hamilton. Lower down the climate puts emigration out of the question. Settlers might as well go to Russia, or Siberia. The Home District, Niagara District, Gore District, Lon- don District, and Western Districts are the five best CANADA WEST SUPERIOR. 93 and favourite spots in the Province. There is land enough for generations to come, and every year a residence is becoming more and more tolerable. In any of these districts, if they will build their log- house high and dry, and take the pledge against in- toxicating drinks, they cannot fail to lead a happy life. The settler in Canada West must not expect to live without work, but he should recollect that the state of labour is the very condition of enjoy- ment here, as everywhere else ; and if the settler were compelled to pass his time in the lazy ease of a dull country life, he would indeed be wretched. It is nothing but health and labour that prevents him from moping and having the "blues." The writer has visited the Cape of Good Hope colony, and seen the settlers there ; they enjoy a rude abun- dance of the necessaries of life, live in a fine climate ; but, taking it altogether, it does not offer the advan- tages of Canada West. He has also visited South Australia or Adelaide, but he gives the preference much to Western Canada; — he has also examined both sides of Van Diemen's Land, the Hobart Town and Launceston divisions of the island ; and, though the climate is excellent, he prefers Western Canada, even if there were no convicts in Van Diemen's Land. The writer has also traversed the whole of Port Philip, through the Morumbidgee and Bathurst country, to Sydney, which is undoubtedly a fine sheep country, but he infinitely prefers the five districts he has named, 94 NO FAILURE OF CROPS. in Western Canada, to any and every part of New- South Wales ! The settlers are easier and happier in Canada West, they form a much better society together, they are kinder towards each other, and are not so taken up in squabbles and law as they are in New South Wales. The writer also visited New Zealand, to see how emigration was likely to answer in that distant quarter : and he need hardly state, though it is a fine soil and climate, New Zea- land must not be thought of for twenty years to come at least, unless the emigrant has any wish to be made into mince meat by these savages. There- fore Canada West is the best place, and from To- ronto and Hamilton, round by St Catharine's to the grand river as far as London, are all first-rate places, and farming and farm labourers in any of those quar- ters will do well. The whole triangular peninsula of Canada West, situate between the three great lakes of Ontario, Erie, and Huron, is a rich elevated plain, containing twenty millions of acres of as fine land as any in the world ; and w T hen the emigrant gets down to the shores of Lake Erie, in the Talbot District, to Windsor and Sandwich, and the country opposite to Michigan, the climate is much warmer, where tobacco is cultivated with facility, and the wheat is excellent. Though the winters are severe in Canada and most parts of the United States, yet it is a great consolation to the farmer that the seasons are re- CHEAP PASSAGE TO CANADA. 95 gular, and that if he sows he will most likely reap ; but at the Cape Colony sometimes, and very often in Australia, there is a failure of the crops ; the four- pound loaf is sold for twenty pence and two shillings, till a fleet of ships has brought food for the farmer from Calcutta, Java, and Valparaiso. Nothing of this kind of calamity ever happens in Canada West ; and another comfort, the settler has generally got a friendly neighbour within a ten minutes' walk of him. The hay harvest seldom or never fails in Canada ; whilst inferior oat hay has often been sold in Sydney at 20/. per ton, or 10s. and 12s. per truss, and flour at ten guineas per sack ! Besides, Canada West is an older and more populous country, having nearly 600,000 inhabitants, which is five times more populous than Australia ; which is, besides, about the same size as Canada West — that is, in the settled parts. The summer emigration to this magnificent but hitherto mismanaged country ought to be one thou- sand persons every day for one hundred days, not to arrive at Montreal before the 6th of May, and con- tinue till the first week in August, after which emi- gration to cease till the following spring. There are too many Irish already in Canada West, and they do not make the best settlers, being fond of lingering about the towns and taking their chance of picking up a living round the taverns and drinking-houses. The settlers ought to be confined the first year or 96 CHEAP L^ND. two to English and Scotch. The price should be 21. per head for adults, and 20s. each for others, nothing but bread and water provided ; and the ships should be Government steamers of the largest class, which would perform the run out to Quebec in fourteen clays. If land were sold to these emigrants also at a dollar per acre, or four shillings, and it ought to he cheaper than in the States, where it is universally a dollar and a quarter, and the same system of payment enforced, viz., ready money down for the whole amount, the fine province of Canada West would soon muster a million of British sub- jects, and then the Governor-General should be raised to a Viceroy, with the power to confer hono- rary distinctions on wealthy and influential colonists, his salary doubled, and other popular measures in- troduced to the farthest limits of the province. The tariff in Canada is a very bungling affair as it exists at present, and it might be altered very much to the advantage of the people and Government ; and this measure ought to be adopted without any loss of time, as at present it is glaringly absurd and faulty. No gratuitous emigration should ever be encou- raged towards our Canadian possessions ; and if par- ties cannot by frugality and saving manage to raise 21. each for themselves, and 20s. each for their boys and girls, they would not be likely to make very good settlers. Toronto is a large, bustling, cheerful, and wealthy FEW TAXES. 97 city, containing twenty-four thousand inhabitants, but it is a sad drunken place, and there is no part of her Majesty's dominions where the influence of some Father Mathew is so loudly called for and required. The trade or importance of the town does not seem to have suffered by the removal of the seat of Govern- ment ; on the contrary, building is going on in all directions, as indeed it is in Hamilton, a town about thirty miles further west, to which place there is a steam-boat every afternoon. Toronto has an excellent harbour, formed by na- ture, and enclosing a sheet of water large enough for some hundred vessels. There are a great many rich persons living on their fortunes, and in the winter season the military and better classes of the inha- bitants keep up a constant round of visits and fes- tivities. Everything is English, whilst the spacious streets, substantial houses, and handsome stores, make it preferable to even Rochester or Albany. The Americans, however, find fault with the want of progress made by the Canadian population, alleging that, Avith their great advantages of soil and climate, the absence of taxation, and a strong Government, they don't go a-head so fast as the Americans ; whilst the Canadians reply that they are more slow but they are also more sure, and if there is more commer- cial and manufacturing prosperity apparently in the opposite town of Rochester, about the same size as Toronto, there is double the number of monied men, K 98 CANADIAN LOYALTY. say worth 20,000/., in the Canadian town that there is in Rochester. This is a question in which I think the Torontoites are very likely to be in the right. It cannot be concealed that there is no love lost between the rival nations. If the Americans affect to look down on the Canadians and their sleepiness, the Canadians, on the other hand, thoroughly despise the Americans, and all their smart and swindling tricks to get money, from wooden nutmegs down- wards to fortunes in land sales, and other bubbles. The Canadians appeared to be everywhere almost w/^ra-royalists and loyalists; and British connexion and British rule they never dream of escaping from. Why should they ? To be swallowed up, of course, by absorption into the great and increasing union, which, the faster it grows, the surer it is to be dis- solved or undermined. To overthrow it from with- out would be impossible, and any attempt of that kind would only strengthen their institutions, and rally all dissentients for their defence. I did not on this occasion venture to Montreal, but looked forward to visit it in a more advanced part of the summer. We had just received information of the burning of Quebec, and it is not a pleasant sight to see a city in distress. Quebec, as all my readers know, forms one of the most striking and most beautiful pictures in America. It is one of the strongest fortresses in the world next to Gibraltar, contains 30,000 inhabitants, and in June 3 LAEGE POPULATION. 99 July, and August, you may relish either strawberries or mosquitoes, in singular perfection. The quick- silver here enjoys the singular prerogative of a wider range than, I believe, in any corner of the earth, it having been known as high as 103 deg., and in winter 37 deg. below zero, making altogether 140 deg. of variation. Nevertheless, amongst the French habi- tans of Quebec there is a stronger feeling of love of their "country than perhaps among any race of men living, whilst their good humour and constant cheer- fulness is better worth to them than all the maxims of philosophy. But Montreal is the great capital of Canada, is double the size of Quebec, and contains 60,000 inha- bitants, is the seat of Government and the Legislature, and one of the most commercial cities in America. I was not sorry to get back to my snug quarters in Hamilton, from whence I made sundry excursions , into the bush, and along the plank road. Thinking I was going to settle among them, I had daily offers of beautiful farms, more or less improved, some as low as 10s. per acre, up to 51. and 10/. an acre, whilst 20/. per acre was asked for some suburban spots on the plank road. The buildings about the towns and along the roads all seemed warm and substantial, though it was a pity to see such hundreds of pretty places for sale, and no buyers ! This can only be owing to a falling off of emigration, occasioned by the late Canadian troubles, which are not likely to occur LoFC. 100 TOO MANY IRISH. again, and therefore the field of enterprise, being so unlimited in Western Canada, there is no doubt the roaming portion of our English emigrants will prefer that country, especially as they can get the English newspapers only a fortnight old, by way of Boston, which is a great advantage over every other colony, and there will be a constant demand for all their surplus wheat, ashes, and timber. The total population of the province of Canada West is nearly 600,000, as follows : viz. — Natives of England - 60,000 Ditto Ireland - 100,000 Ditto Scotland - 45,000 Ditto French Canada - - 14,000 Ditto Canada West - - 280,000 Ditto United States - 39,000 Other foreigners - 14,000 552,000 This table exhibits rather too large a preponder- ance of the Irish, and as they are never worth a potato when they arrive in Canada, no wonder that so many fine farms remain unsold for want of buyers : whilst Australia has been receiving rich emigrants from England, for the last twenty or twenty-five years, to the extent of some millions of money-capital, there is more of happiness, ease, and competence, in the fortunes of the Western Canadians than will be found in New South Wales for generations to come. CANADA WEST, A HEALTHY, HAPPY COLONY. 101 Board and lodging is written up in many of the towns of Canada at six shillings per week, and there being a great deal more silver money in the country than in the States, comparatively speaking, the wages of labourers and mechanics is better than in the States. This I became more and more convinced of in my subsequent trips through the Western country. I don't know whether you cannot hear as pure Irish at Toronto or Hamilton as at the steam-boat wharves or piers in New York, where you certainly hear it in perfection; and why, because there are 70,000 sons and daughters of the Emerald Isle domi- ciled in the Empire City. This accounted for always seeing the e Nation ' newspaper stuck up at the bookshops for sale, along with ' Punch ' and ' Mrs Caudle,' after every arrival of the Liverpool steamer. The Americans, in their excessive hatred of Eng- lish greatness, power, and justice, — " She hates that excellence she cannot reach," — are always looking, every arrival, for the breaking out of the revolution in Ireland, and the election of King Daniel to the vacant throne. This is an event, sooner or later, which they look upon as certain to happen, and they cannot account for its being so long delayed. The state of the sister kingdom, and the overwhelming magnitude of our national debt, leaves them no room to doubt that the delenda est Carthago 102 EMIGRANTS SHOULD AVOID must shortly come to pass, and then will be their time to pay off their old scores against Great Britain. But to return to Canada West : large as we have seen the population to be, yet, in comparison to the extent of country, it is nothing. Whichever way you travel, the country, with few exceptions, presents nothing but one vast forest ; and in the more imme- diate neighbourhood of the towns and villages, the little clearings, dotted over with the black stumps of trees, only proves how much remains to be done by the sturdy emigrant labourer, as soon as he arrives in the country. I repeat, therefore, that if my countrymen of England will emigrate, don't let them throw away themselves and their scanty means by going to the Cape of Good Hope, or any of the Australian colonies, or New Zealand ; but, by all means, go to the best parts of Canada West, where they will find the soil fertile beyond their expectations, the seasons certain and regular, and the climate healthy ; besides which, it is a cheap and abundant country, without taxes; whereas, if they should emigrate to the United States, which is called the Land of Freedom, they will be insulted for being Englishmen ; where taxes are high, clothing very dear, produce very low, and nothing but fever and ague to welcome the settler ; and, the best of the joke, not half so much freedom as in Canada ; and what with the constant nuisance of Yankee swindling and Yankee swagger, the Eng- AUSTRALIA AND THE UNITED STATES. 103 lish farming emigrant would find it impossible to get on ; lie would soon find out he was no match for American smartness, and, as the usual course after being ruined is to take to whisky, this is generally the finish of English agricultural settlers who emi- grate to the States instead of going amongst their own countrymen in Canada West. Besides, the Americans, with all their wickedness, put forward — like most rogues — the greatest pretensions to reli- gion : the country is inundated with preachers of a thousand different sects, — for preachers must live as well as other trades, — whilst that sort of crotchety nonsense does not exist in Canada, where the people attend the churches with propriety and decency, and the exhortations of the clergymen leave no room to doubt that they are influenced by a rational and elevated piety, instead of the gibberish of an Ame- rican camp meeting. Many Englishmen have emigrated to the towns of the American Union with success ; but they have been either clever in manufactures, or in trades con- nected with manufactures, such as dyeing, bleaching, calico printing, &c, or clever in iron working, min- ing, or finding coals, &c. ; but I look upon it as an impossibility for an Englishman to succeed in the United States, who should go out singly, with capital, to turn his attention to mere tillage farm- ing ; and my advice to Englishmen is, never to 104 FOKEIGNERS CANNOT SELL LAND. attempt such a step, unless they wish to be ruined in double-quick time. An Englishman may buy land as much as he pleases, in America, but the law has been so framed that he cannot sell it till he has been residing in the country some six or twelve months : because no foreigner — as an Englishman is called — can give a title to land, and no person will buy from a foreigner ! An Englishman, therefore, in order to sell a farm worth perhaps only 100/., must previously renounce his country, obtain letters of naturalization, and take the oath that he is a true American citizen ! No, no, Canada is the place ; a thousand times preferable to the United States for the farming emigrant ; and there is enough of the popular ele- ment mixed up with the Government of Canada to satisfy the most radical reformer, as a proof of which it may be stated, that in ordinary times the Govern- ment is not felt — the people are left alone to pursue their own roads to fortune and happiness, and the Government never interferes with them. The whole business at Government house, Montreal, for this immense territory, is managed by the secretary ; and though Lord Metcalfe is a first-rate man, full of years and experience, it is quite understood that Mr Higginson, his secretary, is the real Governor of Canada : thus happily proving how little there is to do, and how well it must be done ; for except CATTLE AND HORSES. 105 now and then, at an election, in which a few heads are certainly broken, and a great deal of rum is consumed, the people don't seem to care much about politics, and only desire to be let alone. After visiting Dundas, Glandford, Ancaster, &c. as far as the Grand River, I drove over by a much worse road to St Catharine's by the Welland Canal to Drummondville and Chippeway, and I must say I never saw any bad country during the whole trip. The soil everywhere is most productive, and ' the cattle and horses excellent. It is nothing but justice to the good Canadians to say, that it would be difficult to find any of their live stock out of con- dition. They seem, Like all good farmers, fond of their horses, and go where you will, it is a common sight to see the humblest-looking settlers driving their wives or sisters out, with a pair of horses that would not disgrace Regent street. There is an air of comfort about the appointments and dwellings of a Canadian settler, that must not be looked for in our remote and Newgate colonies of Australia. The only thing in which Canada does not enjoy all the advantages of our Eastern colonies is in the article of sheep. Owing to the climate, sheep and cattle cannot be kept out in their natural pastures all the year ; they must be sheltered in-doors for five months in winter. But so they must in Saxony, where wool- growing is carried on to large profit. So that, if the Canadians would aspire to this branch of agricultural 106 EEGEET AT LEAVING CANADA. industry, they must take a leaf out of the German sheep-farming, and erect proper sheds for their Me- rinos. On a small scale it will not pay, but when carried on to the extent of five hundred or a thousand breeding ewes, of the best Saxon blood, the Cana- dians will find it highly profitable. The land also in the Western districts is highly adapted to the cultivation of beet, and as the settlers are so distant from the coast, sugar manufactories from beet would yield fortunes to the growers and boilers ; for sugar will never be very cheap in the Western and London districts, and the refuse, after pressing out the juice, is still good for hogs and cattle. It occupied an entire day to drive over these indifferent roads from Hamilton to the Falls of Nia- gara, where we alighted at the Pavilion Hotel, and revelled again in this most stupendous of all Nature's works, which the oftener you witness the more you admire and tremble. Whether sleeping or waking the cloud and tumult of the ceaseless foam is always rising up to heaven ; as loud and as incessant as the cries of the three millions of our torn and mangled fellow-creatures, held in a state of slavery in the sugar and cotton States of the falsely called Land of Freedom opposite, some sections of which I was now about to revisit. So, Canada, farewell ! Happy and healthy colony, may you long go on A FAREWELL. 107 and prosper in the successful cultivation of your peaceful fields : content in the pure and simple plea- sures of a country life, you have no cause to envy the feverish existence of your Republican neighbours, but, on the contrary, the day is coming when they will envy you. Farewell ! I leave you with regret, and shall always look back upon your fine country with increasing interest and aiFection ! CHAPTEE VII. RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES, Return to the States— Blackrock and Buffalo— Large Steamers- Cheap Living— Cheap Carriage — Cheap Travelling — Penny a Mile per First Class Trains— Town of Chicago 30,000 Inha- bitants—Inland Navigation — Cleveland pretty Place — Building without Money— Paying Wages Ditto— American Lighthouses all Gratuitous — Speaker of the House — Propellers — Plucking Geese — Ohio River — Prosts every Month in the Year — Pire com- fortable 4th July — Cheap Coal — Disasters of English Emigrants in Illinois — Taking in the Britishers — Better to have gone to Canada — Road to Oregon — Peoria — Port Madison — Prairie du Chien— Memphis. To such a scene as the Niagara Falls, it is impossi- ble to say, Farewell. It is ever present to the imagi- nation, and, if as old as the patriarchs, the spectator would remember it in all its awful character. After taking an early dinner at the village of Chippeway above the Falls, we embarked on board the British steamer for Buffalo, a short trip of two or three hours up the stream of the Niagara River. The shores on both sides are low, and the British appear to most advantage, the high road skirting the 'empire' steamer. 109 river, and no lack of travellers trotting and driving along. Houses and inclosures were also neat and numerous, but all was strictly rural; whilst, as we approached Blackrock and Buffalo, there was a greater appearance of speculation in mills and manufactories on the American side of the river. The Americans, from their general habits of temperance and early rising, and unceasing diligence and industry in the pursuit of wealth, have much more to show than the Canadians in buildings, but the genius of the inhabi- tants on the opposite sides of this dividing stream are strikingly different, and every year becoming more so ; so that in time this river, not half a mile wide, will separate two nations as different as the French and English, separated by the narrow channel between Dover and Calais. We were now entering the harbour of Buffalo, crowded with magnificent steamers, built on a dif- ferent plan, but not at all inferior, to the great steamers of New York. When I thought of the ' Sapphire ' and ' Ruby,' be- longing to Gravesend, and the ' City of Canterbury ' and her sister-boat, that used to carry us in days of yore to Margate and Heme Bay, it was very humi- liating, and enough to make the Englishman blush for his inferiority; but only for a moment, till he recollected that the English waters would not admit of boats of larger construction. I have no doubt that the two boats ' Empire ' and L 110 CHEAP LIVING. ' Wiskonsln ' could have hoisted up half the fleet of 1 Star ' and ' Diamond ' steamers as easily as South- seamen hoist up their whaleboats ; the saloon of the ( Empire ' being three hundred feet long, and as hand- some and convenient as experience and upholstery- could make it. Buffalo is certainly a striking place ; a bustling place, and it is eminently an American place. I saw boarding and lodging announced at six shillings a week, and casual entertainment at sixpence per meal, the ^zue-pound loaf of best wheaten bread at sixpence, and the best pale ale I ever drank in my life, as good as Bass's, Hodgson's, or Allsop's, at six- teen shillings and sixpence per barrel, or less than sixpence per gallon 1 But though Buffalo is a place of twenty thousand inhabitants, rents were moderate, many houses to be had as low as 40/. per annum. Trade was dull and no money to be seen, everybody was complaining of the hardness of the times, and yet the hotels were crowded, and the steamers for Detroit and the upper lakes full of passengers. As in all the Canadian towns, particularly Toronto and Hamilton, I saw oyster-shells everywhere, so they abounded in Buffalo ; for, though they must all be brought four hundred miles by rail, and half as many more by steamboat, yet carriage is nothing in this country, in consequence of the immense facilities and competition in canals and railroads, and nobody thinks of the expense of conveyance. Thus over the Alleghany mountains, where the railroad passes the CHEAP TRAVELLING. Ill summit of 2,500 feet above the terminus at Philadel- phia, the heavy canal boats, the very boats, instead of being emptied of their cargoes, are carried over the mountains, boats, cargoes, and all, without being disturbed, and hoisted upon the rails, so little do they regard the expense of carriage. I walked into a store at Buffalo for the sale of cheap publications, a great trade everywhere, as I have observed before. ' Punch ' and ' Mrs Caudle,' the ' Nation ' and the London pictorial papers, were exhibited to much effect outside the shop, which was not kept by a native. He informed me that every person in Buffalo was complaining of business, except himself; and from the constant custom which he had, and the abundant stock which he kept of all sorts of American editions of English standard works, there appeared some truth in his assertion. When one can buy Bulwer's last novel for sixpence, and if in a news- paper form, the whole three volumes for threepence, no wonder this is a thriving trade. e Martin Chuzzle- wit,' and all the most popular works of the most popular authors, are the same price, from sixpence to a shilling in the book form, large octavo, and double columns, small type, and inferior paper; but in the form of the ' Examiner ' they are only threepence. The Americans are decidedly a reading people ; but they could not find time to read so much if they were not also a travelling people. Travelling in America is just as cheap as stopping 112 PENNY A MILE FIRST-CLASS TRAINS. at home. As the people are all, more or less, anti- renters, they live in boarding houses, and as soon as they leave the expense ceases, and they begin board- ing in a steamboat instead of on shore. For instance, the steamers at Buffalo, the best of them, go twice a day to Chicago, 1,050 miles up the lakes, for \l. 12s. ; and three meals a day, good sub- stantial meals, and an excellent roomy cabin to your- self to sleep in, besides a splendid saloon and prome- nade. This is less than one halfpenny per mile, board and lodging included ! And as the voyage occupies five days, the total expense is about 65. 6 d. per day in a steamer, more like a ship of the line than our steamers. The railroad fare is one penny a mile, first class. Buffalo must be a cold place in winter, and every- body admitted it. Its progress has been sudden and rapid, as there was hardly a house in the place twenty years age. It is the point from which produce is forwarded to the Atlantic cities, and manufactures and groceries sent back in return. Though five hun- dred miles from New York, it is considered nothing, and persons of very humble circumstances never regard the expense of long journies in America, they really are so very trifling. Buffalo, besides being very cold in winter, is also much exposed to the fury of the lake (Erie), and a winter's hurricane from the west will, some day or other, sweep the lower part of the town away, and POPULATION OF CHICAGO 30,000. 113 cause damage that will require millions of dollars to make good. This should be looked to in time, when the requisite defences against the lake might be made at less than half the expense. But rapid as the rise of Buffalo has been, it is nothing to the great town at the other extremity of the lake, called Chicago, which in a few years, and before the people in Europe had ever heard of it, contains 30,000 people, and bids fair to be one of the most important cities of the Union. It is situate in the state of Illinois, at the bottom of Lake Michigan, and commands a very short and easy water commu- nication to the River Mississippi, by means of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, exactly a hundred miles long, and now in course of finishing. For, notwith- standing the bankruptcy of the State of Illinois, the London capitalists have recently advanced the requi- site funds to complete the canal, which, if any canal in the world could be expected to pay, it is this. The steamers from New Orleans to the south, and from Buffalo to the north and east, meet, all but this hundred miles; so that it would have been almost an act of suicide, having gone so far with their loans, not to go a little further and endeavour to make this one work at least productive, which it is sure to be as soon as finished. So that, by the summer of next year, a person may leave New Orleans for St Louis on the Mississippi, by steam 1,800 miles, then join a smaller steamer for Peru, at the head of the Illinois 114 INLAND NAVIGATION. Eiver, three hundred miles more, then by a packet- boat through the canal, one hundred miles, to Chicago, when he goes all the way to New York by steam, 2,600 miles further ; making the entire distance about 4,800 miles of uninterrupted water-travelling through the interior of a continent, a greater distance than exists even in India or China, or even Mr Birchell's voyage through South America from Para at the mouth of the Amazon, up the Topayos and down the Paraguay to Monte Video, at the mouth of the River Plate. This was not so long as the American river communication from New Orleans to New York by way of Chicago. From Buffalo we proceeded by one of these steamers to the city of Cleveland. As I wished to see the intermediate places, it was necessary to se- cure a berth in one of the inferior boats — the largest class of newest steamers, such as the e Empire ' and e Wiskonsin,' not condescending to stop at such paltry places as Dunkirk, Erie, Ashtabula, &c, all which and many more on the southern or American side of Lake Erie we visited, and found, to our regret, that they were paltry places indeed. In the afternoon we arrived at the long-looked for city of Cleveland, and took up our quarters at the ' Franklin ' — a very good hotel, and reasonable, in Superior street. The principal streets are named from the surrounding lakes, ■ — Ontario street, Michigan street, St Clair street, Huron street, and Erie street ; and the town, BUILDING WITHOUT MONEY. 115 being built on the rising ground, overlooks the lake, and vessels may be descried many miles off, ap- proaching or leaving the port. Cleveland is con- sidered one of the pattern cities of the Union — a sort of modern Athens, as the dirty dwellers in Auld Reekie like to call their capital. But everything was very dull in this model city. No trade, and no money stirring; and they were beginning to fear they would have a very dry season, and a failure of the hay crop. They were just laying the foundations of a large hotel in an excellent situation in the main street, just above the ( Franklin,' with a dozen shops or stores underneath. I mention it because the contract was remarkable. The entire building was agreed for at 100,000 dol- lars, in a district of country where all materials and labour are extremely cheap, — bricks at 16s. per 1,000, and timber almost for nothing, whilst stone for heads and sills was in great abundance, — so that 100,000 dollars, under such circumstances, is a large estimate for one building. The peculiarity in the contract, usual enough in America, was that the work-people were not to receive a dollar in money. Every Saturday night the wages were to be settled for by orders on the various shopkeepers — butchers, bakers, grocers, clothiers, drapers, and shoemakers — or rather promissory notes, payable only in shop goods, were to be received in full payment by the 116 AMERICAN LIGHT-HOUSES. various mechanics, who have most likely by this time, October, 1845, got the roof on. It is a new and peculiar way of building a block of houses, 100 or 150 feet frontage, and could hardly be thought of in England, where it would be an illegal way of payment. Nevertheless, this is the way in which the boasted American cities have sprung up like mushrooms ; and when we hear in England of brick- layers' labourers obtaining four shillings daily wages, we ought on the other hand to remember, that it is not paid in silver money, but in trowsers, teapots, or any of the extremely numerous things that an industrious mechanic does not want. I must say that Cleveland is rather a genteel — not at all an American word — and a very quiet place : though it must be a dreadful place in winter, for it was piercingly cold though nearly in June. There is a lofty light-house at the end of one of the streets, to direct the vessels on the lake at night ; and down below, in the filthy and sickly part of the town, or harbour, there is another light-house to enable steamers to enter between the piers. The American Government are rather liberal in light-houses, which are very numerous all along the coast of the Atlantic, in the Gulf of Mexico, and along the shores of the lakes. They are well ma- naged, and kept up very efficiently and economically at the same time ; but although they cost the general government a large sum every year, they are like ENGLISH LIGHT-HOUSES. 117 roads and 1 ►ridges in France, quite gratuitous ; and captains of ships, foreign or native, have nothing to pay in America for light-money. This is in Eng- land a very serious charge, and increases the expense of travelling considerably. Besides, the Honourable Board, who are the legal recipients of this heavy tax on shipping, are responsible to nobody, and there- fore the public do not know what becomes of the money. Amongst the numerous reforms of the day, may we not look, as a relief to commerce, to have light-money abolished? The safety of the English coasts affects everybody, as well as the captain and owner of the ship; the underwriter, the merchant, and each individual of the community ; and the English Government should never be ashamed to take a hint from the Americans. On the writer's plan, of leaving nothing to be envied in the American Republic, not a session of Parliament should be allowed to pass without throwing open the navi- gation of the English seas without payment for light-houses. Mr Hume should look to this, if our powerful Premier has too much work upon his hands. I made an acquaintance here with a mean-looking young man who was squirting his tobacco saliva in every direction,— one of the most frequent and odious nuisances in the United States, — when, to my asto- nishment, he told me he was Speaker of the House of Representatives ! Had he been speaker at the debating club at the Pig and Whistle, it would have 118 PROPELLERS. been a grave announcement ; but to find my friend exercising such high legislative functions as Speaker of the House of Representatives was what I was not prepared for. He was a thorough-going democrat, and had been highly useful to his party in helping to return Mr Polk, and was just proceeding to head quarters to claim his reward. Whether he ever ob- tained anything or not I never heard. There is a large traffic on Lake Erie and the upper lakes, in the conveyance of all sorts of goods, and the lowest classes of Irish and German emi- grants, by means of propellers, as they call them, or sailing vessels with a small steam-power attached, in case of calms or adverse winds. The rates of freight and passage by these vessels being only two-thirds of the regular steamers, they obtain plenty of busi- ness; and as dispatch is the soul of all American commerce, and "the summer ends too soon," there are no sailing vessels on the lakes without the ad- dition of steam, and then they are called "pro- pellers." Ohio is one of the finest States of the Union, and in proceeding across it, from the lake to the Ohio River, there was a great progress visible in every di- rection, both in tillage and grazing. A large portion of the fat cattle of this State are driven to Phila- delphia and sold at twopence halfpenny per pound, whilst a much greater number are driven to Cincin- nati, and sold at half the price for salting. PLUCKING GEESE. 119 In sheep-farming the American farmer appears to be behind the rest of the world. They are a long- tailed, dirty, small, and coarse-wool breed, straggling about without a shepherd in numbers of fifty or sixty, and must be more trouble than profit. But the hogs are worth looking at. They are reared in large numbers, and in the town of Cincinnati there are houses where they slaughter and salt down a thousand in a day. Geese are also universal, not merely in Ohio, but throughout the States, and may be reckoned by millions. The people do not seem to care much for them, however, as a dish at table ; but they are kept chiefly for the repeated crops of feathers which they afford to the small settler; feathers being everywhere received as money at the stores in town in payment for goods. Whether the geese admire this periodical plucking or not, never enters into the imagination of the owner, any more than cutting off his slave's ears in the cotton States troubles the drivers of Alabama or Mississippi. The travelling by land is always bad, but the far- ther you remove from the Eastern States the worse it becomes ; the roads once made receive little or no repairs ; small holes increase to serious impediments : and the stage-coaches are very rickety affairs, threat- ening every now and then to send the passengers sprawling on the road, or over the precipice. The approach to the Ohio at the town of Beaver is charming, quite as good as anything I remember 120 OHIO RIVER. in Europe. The descent is, however, rather trying to the nerves of ladies ; you look down into the abyss from the mountain-road, and, whilst you would will- ingly prefer walking, the driver cannot stop, and you are obliged to trust to the chapter of accidents for your ultimate safety in reaching the bottom. The Americans have nothing that they may so well be proud of as this magnificent River Ohio ; and, if one could only forget the dreadful climate, a sum- mer of Senegal and a winter of Siberia, it would be impossible not to desire to possess some of the lovely spots on the banks of this shining stream. But as our landlord at the e Sun ' observed, " Hot as it is, sir, we have a frost every month in the year," which I had no difficulty in supposing, for I passed the great and glorious Independence day, the 4th July, on board a steamboat on this River Ohio, which was a foggy, frosty day, and the passengers were crowding round the stove fire, to keep themselves warm. Eng- lishmen abuse their climate and call it changeable, but let them go to the States, and for the first time in their lives they would find out what the word changeable means; driving a four-wheel waggon across a river to-day, and this day week obliged to plunge into the same river to cool yourself! Who would live in such a country ? And yet this extreme of temperature took place on the River Wabash, which divides Indiana from Illinois, a little time before I was there. onio RIVER. 121 I had determined to avail myself of the first boat that should touch at Beaver going down the Ohio, but it was late in the afternoon before any arrived. One had jiassed whilst Ave were at dinner, and it turned out to be a very good one ; so the next, in all probability, would be rather inferior. And so, in fact, it turned out; it was deep-laden, to within four or five inches of the gunwale, and had but few passengers, not above thirty, in a saloon fit to accommodate a hundred. But this proved rather an advantage. The passengers became all very sociable together, which could not have been the case had we been full ; and as the weather was fine, and our table abundant, we did not affect an impatience which we did not feel, and saw other boats give us the go-by without any regret. The Ohio is just 1,000 miles long, from the bridge at Pittsburgh to the junction of the River Mississippi, and a finer thousand miles of river scenery could hardly be found in the wide world. The lower part of the river, however, is quite destitute of beauty, it is only the first five or six hundred miles that is really picturesque; the mountains coming down to the river within a mile or two, leaving a rich bottom of alluvium between the navigation and the foot of the hill. In other spots the mountain comes down to the water, and here we see the people busy excavating coal, limestone, or iron ore. The price of coal is put up in large letters at many of the pits, which varies from three-halfpence M 122 COAL THREE-HALFPENCE A BUSHEL. to twopence-halfpenny and threepence per bushel. It was three-halfpence at Martinsville, opposite Wheeling, and got gradually dearer till we lost it altogether. Then we came to the Salt springs, after which the minerals ceased for many hundred miles. During the whole thousand miles of the River Ohio there is no bridge, but numerous ferries, and along the banks of the river there are ninety-eight towns or villages, of which Cincinnati is the largest, and then Louisville; but Steubenville and Wheeling, Ports- mouth, Maysville, Covington, Lawrenceburgh, JefFer- sonville, Evansville, and New Albany, are all more or less flourishing and increasing places. From the bridge at Pittsburgh to the mouth of the Piver Mis- sissippi, below New Orleans, is 2,212 miles, a naviga- tion that is daily performed in a species of boats or flats that are merely nailed together like packing- cases ; and, as it might be expected, almost daily acci- dents are happening to these frail conveyances. Our fellow-passengers seemed all to take an interest in the English traveller; and were not long in in- quiring where he was going to, as is usual amongst Americans. This, by the way, is either grown harm- less, or does not exist so rudely as many writers have represented it ; and as to the often-alleged impro- prieties of speech and liberties taken with the Queen's English amongst Americans, I need not be suspected of partiality to the Pepublicans, when I say, without hesitation, that our language is spoken much better A surgeon's experience. 123 and more correctly in all parts of America than it is in England. There are no provincialisms in the States, where the abominable dialects of Somerset, York, and Lancaster, entirely disappear; and, exten- sive as the country is, one uniform correctness obtains in speaking the English language. In answer to their inquiries how far I was going, I made free to ask the same question of many, and in- deed most, of our passengers. One middle-aged man replied that he was a surgeon, going to establish him- self at Bolivar, in the State of Missouri ; it was quite a new place, and represented to him as very healthy. He had formerly lived in Indiana, near Vincennes, and had suffered dreadfully in health, and was deter- mined to begin again "in a better location? He should leave the boat at St Louis, and then take another up the Missouri, four hundred miles to Independence, where he must buy a horse, and make the best of his way through the Osage country, till he reached Bolivar, about four hundred miles further, the only healthy place, he considered, in the State of Missouri. He would have preferred, he said, not to have gone so far, and would have liked the capital, Jefferson city, but the selection had been so injudi- ciously made, that it must always remain an un- healthy spot. He pressed me to accompany him, at any rate, as far as Independence ; but I could hold out 6mall prospects, for, much as I loved adventure, my time was limited ; and I wished to sail for Europe 124 DISASTEES OF EMIGRANTS IN ILLINOIS. before the bad weather set in. He wished, he said, that he was going with me, for he himself, he added, was English, being a native of Hertford, but he feared he should never see his native place again. I here inquired into the fortunes of the family, which emigrated, many years ago, to Illinois; he said he had known them well, but it was quite ex- tinct — father, sons, and daughters, all dead and for- gotten. Should we go ashore at , and inquire for the name of , once so influential in those parts, he assured me it would not be remembered, or even known. The last of the race was compelled to seek work in a brickmaker's field, wheeling clay and sand to the moulders ; and this fine young man, who, had he remained in England, could hardly fail to have done well, turned to drinking, and finally finished himself by (here he made a significant motion across his throat, that could leave no doubt of the dreadful end of the last of his race). "It is impossible for an English agriculturist to succeed in this country," said the surgeon, " whether he has capital or not. Without money he would stand perhaps a better chance, but either way it is impossi- ble." As soon as Mr arrived in this country he was sanguine of success ; all his neighbours entered into an agreement among each other by every means to obtain his ready money ; and though the real price of Indian corn was only fivepence per bushel, amongst themselves, yet, when Mr became a buyer, as he TAKING IN THE BRITISHERS. 125 must be to a large extent, the price to him was to be a dollar, or four shillings, per bushel ; and they all religiously adhered to this piece of roguery on every occasion to fleece the rich Britisher, who, so far from repining at the high price, saw in it the very element of success, and wrote home those well-remembered letters, and calculations of wealth, by growing thou- sands of acres of prairie land with Indian corn at eighty bushels per acre, and four shillings per bushel, but which, fortunately, deceived nobody but himself ! Perhaps no Englishman ever emigrated to America with greater advantages than Mr . With a large capital and still larger experience as a practical farmer, he carried with him his own society of seve- ral educated sons and daughters ; and the only mistake he seems to have made, and a fatal one it was, was not going to Upper Canada instead of to the United States. Had the family gone to the English side of Lake Erie instead of the American, with such advan- tages as they possessed, everything they touched would have turned to gold; the sons and daughters would have married into the first Canadian families ; they would all most likely have been alive at the present moment, rich, prosperous, and happy; thei* houses and lands would have advanced to a high market value ; and the head of the family would have been figuring, as he was so well calculated to do, as a member of the Canadian Parliament. What a melan- choly contrast this sad history presents ! 126 ROAD TO OREGON. I inquired of my medical friend, pointing to the roof of our steamboat, where all those four-wheeled new waggons were going to, so nicely painted ; some forty or fifty waggons with their wheels slung over the sides. He answered me that they were made in Pittsburg, and were all going to Independence for sale to the Oregon settlers or Santa Fe traders, who all made the little village of Independence their starting-place. This year there was a very con- siderable movement in both directions, and it was thought to Oregon alone there would be ten thou- sand settlers start off in the six weeks beginning with the 1st of June, and some even reckoned the number at twenty thousand. He told me that on a former excursion up the Missouri, he had learnt a good deal about the journey, which to an American was far from formidable, if undertaken in a proper season of the year; and before we parted he furnished me with a good many valuable memoranda respecting this qucestio vexata — the territory of Oregon, some of which I have placed at the end of the volume. I said to another younger man, " Where are you going to, if you will excuse my curiosity ? " He replied, " To Peoria, in Illinois." " Have you ever been there?" I asked. "No," he said, but he had heard it was a very promising place ; he had come from Akron, in the Portage county of Ohio, and was an artist. I asked if it would not have been nearer to have gone by the lakes ; he said yes, it would, TRAIRIE DU CHIEN. 127 but he wished to accompar^ his brother-in-law as far as he was going, who kept a store at Fort Madison, and was now on board with his new wife (his sister) to whom he begged to introduce me. The bride was far from ill-looking — was young and cheerful; and the prospect of a residence in the distant State of Iowa seemed not to give her a moment's uneasiness ; on the contrary, she had heard so much of the health- iness of Fort Madison, that she did not at all regret leaving her brothers and sisters in Ohio. " Are you going also to Iowa," I said, to rather a Jew -looking man, who was evidently a tradesman, and had considerable anxieties on his brow. " No," replied he, " I am going home to my store and family at Prairie du Chien." In answer to my questions, he said it was a very poor place, no money stirring, except the little spent by the Indians out of their Government allowance, and now and then a few dollars from the United States' troops ; and as it was a horrid climate for eight or nine months in the year, he had made up his mind to leave it, and was going home now for that purpose. " Where do you think of removing to?" He said he had hardly yet made up his mind completely, but he thought it would be Key West, where there was more money stirring, and a warmer climate. As Key West is a little low island, on the coast of Florida, he will no doubt find a considerable change in climate, after coming from 128 MEMPHIS. the almost perpetual winter of Prairie du Chien, on the Upper Mississippi. The last person that engaged my inquiries was a son of the South. He should leave us, he said, at Louisville, and then proceed to his home at Mem- phis, in the State of Tennessee, on one of the bluffs of the Mississippi, and one of the most flourishing and promising places in all the West. Memphis shipped last year, he stated, eighty thousand bales of cotton, and was beating the older towns of Vicks- burg and Natchez, lower down the river, all hollow. He hoped I should come and visit them at Memphis, and I should really be surprised to see how they were going a-head with railroads, &c. CHAPTER VIII. VOYAGE DOWN THE OHIO CONTINUED. Co-operative Societies always successful — No Drinking, no Poverty — "What are the English Clergy ahout ? — American Temperance Pledge — Parallelograms — Rewards for the Poor — Bankrupt States— Go-a head Paying States— Cincinnati- Judge M'Lean— Louisville— Falls of the Ohio— Complaints of Trade— Evansville Blacksmith — Sickly Country — Pogs and Bogs — St Louis — Lead and Copper — Iron Mountain — Copper Harbour — Mississippi increases Fifteen Miles per Century in Length — Cotton 2jd. per lb. There is a flourishing community of Harmonites on a part of the Ohio, near Beaver, called Economy ; and in a day or two we should be approaching an- other equally prosperous, known as Rapp's settle- ment, at Harmony ; now purchased, I think I un- derstood, by Mr Owen. It is a singular thing that these communities are all, without exception, pros- perous ; not only making money, but, unlike indi- vidual farmers, possessing it and keeping it. There are the Davidites, to the north of Toronto, in Canada ; the Fourrierites, in Massachusetts ; the Mormons, at Nauvoo, opposite Fort Madison, on the 130 CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES. and the Shakers, at Lebanon, — cum multis aliis,—nnd all doing well. The disciples of the Frenchman, Fourrier, are understood to be the best, and based on the truest principles of co-operation without encouraging idleness, or working the willing horse to death. In society it is proved, beyond question, that a settlement may be made in a new country where land is cheap and labour dear, with far better pros- pects of success than by private and individual ex- ertions. By himself one man becomes almost fright- ened at how much he has to do, and how much he has to endure ; but in community these difficulties vanish. The union and co-operative labour is doubly effective in felling trees, raising log buildings, &c. ; indeed, it is a continual "bee," to use the country phrase, where every one assists the other, whilst all the profit of store-keeping, banking, or any other legitimate pursuit, goes into the general accumulating fund, instead of enriching an individual, and becomes public wealth in opposition to private wealth. Ma- nufactures, building, and mining succeed to tillage, and by good management such societies ultimately become the richest in the country. If fifty families should agree in London, on this principle, and embark for the Gore or London Dis- trict, or some of the adjoining districts in Canada West, and club their little funds together to pur- chase an improved farm, they could not fail of sue- NO DRINKING, NO POVERTY. 131 cess. Of course there must be rules and regulations laid down, and a leader appointed to preserve order and enforce economy and honesty. Every one must sign the agreement, and the creation of wealth after the first year or two would be astonishing. In general, the communities in America, based on the co-operative system, have originated in some crotchety nonsense of faith, some peculiarities in their religious observances, or in abstaining from marriage, and many others ; but notwithstanding any nonsense of this kind, they all seem to have had an eye to the main chance ; and it is sufficient to notice the Shakers and their garden-seeds, which sell uni- versally through the United States and even Ca- nada at double the price of the same goods from private nurserymen. The subject of bettering the condition of the poor has engaged the minds of thousands of benevolent individuals in Great Britain during the present cen- tury, whilst millions of money have been freely sub- scribed to assist in the good work. But how little has been accomplished beyond mere talk, whilst vast and disproportionate sums have been squandered in useless and expensive tracts, and the salaries of secre- taries, collectors, house rent, printing, stationery, and advertising. The first step to take would rather be something practical, to show the people that one mouthful of bread is better for them than a barrel of 132 WHAT ARE THE CLERGY ABOUT ? rum, and one leg of mutton on Sunday is worth a whole river of gin ! This would be beginning at the right end ; but as the labouring classes will not be- lieve this doctrine unless their teachers show them the good example, why do the clergy and dissenting ministers hesitate to follow in the path of the Ame- ricans, and before they preach let them first sign the pledge themselves, engaging to abstain from all in- toxicating drinks ? Then they might naturally hope for success ; thousands would flock to their standard ; all trades would improve, except the distilleries : because the money expended now in liquid poisons would then go in good woollens, shoes, and calico ; whilst those wretched scenes, the most disgraceful in London, in the neighbourhood of the gin palaces, would be spared to the passer-by. But nothing will be done till the preachers begin it, and the condition of the poor will never be much benefited till they adopt the American plan of tem- perance. How is it that the Rev. Mr This and the Rev. Mr That will not sign his name to a temperance pledge ? Is it that they are " given to wine," — so fond of drink, whether punch or toddy, that they cannot give it up ? After seeing the wonderful success of the tem- perance movement in America, and which has been promoted mainly by the dissenting ministers in that TEMPERANCE PLEDGE. 133 country, it is a disgrace to look at home, and see these holy and sleek shepherds of the flock incapable of abandoning their brandy and water. The American pledge is short, intelligible, and very much to the point ; * and I cannot help think- ing that, if the reverend gentlemen going about lately in Southwark electioneering, had employed the same zeal in collecting signatures to this pledge, amongst the poor and honest inebriates of the Bo- rough and the New cut, it would have given them far more pleasure and real satisfaction than if their candidate had succeeded in his vain attempt. This would, indeed, be bettering the condition of the poor ; and then would follow other and more important plans by which the number of the poor would annually decrease. Even parallelograms, that have been so much laughed at in England, would then probably come into fashion amongst the indus- trious classes, who might, by that method, have better lodgings at one shilling per week than they can ob- tain at present for three shillings, whilst the landlord would be receiving 12^ per cent, interest on his capital, which is much more than he now obtains. In a tliickly-peopled country like Great Britain, * American Temperance Pledge. " We, the undersigned, do agree, that we will not use intoxicating liquors, nor traffic in them as a beverage ; that we will not provide them as an article of entertainment, or for persons in our employ- ment ; and that in all suitable ways we will discountenance their use tliroughout the community." N 134 REWARDS FOR THE POOR. where land is scarce and dear, and a large capital required for its cultivation, any attempts to press the co-operative principle must fail ; but Canada West is a country peculiarly adapted to such so- cieties, which can no longer be called experiments, seeing that so many exist already in that country, without a solitary instance of failure. The poor in England seem to have had, with all the immense amount of the national charities, very little done for them. There has been no want of prisons and penitentiaries, Bridewells and Newgates, gibbets, transportation, and the hulks ; but no legis- lators have ever yet proposed rewards for the poor, it is and has been all punishment — nothing but punish- ment ! We invite them into the gin shops, and stand at the doors ready to handcuff them on coming out ; forgetting that it is misfortunes that make men wicked; and in awarding sentence, make no allow- ance for their want of education for their constant and superior temptations. Would it not be wiser to turn them from the error of their ways by the tem- perance pledge, than throwing money away in building and enlarging model prisons and criminal courts ? But to return to the Ohio. Passing Galiopolis and Point Pleasant, we arrived at Portsmouth, at the junction of the Grand Canal which connects this river with Lake Erie, leading for three hundred and thirty-four miles through the heart of the State of Ohio. This Ohio canal would be considered an im- BANKRUPT STATES. 135 portant public work in any European country, as it has one hundred and fifty-two locks, and cost a mil- lion sterling ; but in America these stupendous works are common, and undertaken, perhaps, with too little thought or calculation. If it were otherwise they would not have such an accumulating amount of debt. Thus the bankrupt States, or those not paying any interest, though not all repudiators, are ten, and these are pretty near the amounts following, viz. — 1. Pennsylvania owes - 41,000,000 dollars. 2. Louisiana „ - 17,000,000 „ 3. Maryland „ - - 15,000,000 „ 4. Illinois „ 15,000,000 „ 5. Indiana „ - 14,000,000 „ 6. Alabama „ - - 13,000,000 „ 7. Mississippi „ - - 8,000,000 „ 8. Florida „ 5,000,000 „ 9. Michigan „ - - 4,000,000 „ 10. Arkansas „ 3,500,000 „ Total . 135,500,000 This is an enormous sum, and never will be paid, though from recent efforts on the part of Pennsyl- vania, they are making great efforts to pay a divi- dend ; and though the largest debt, it is perhaps the least desperate of them all, because they have, in the Quaker State, great resources and a large population; and the friends of Pennsylvania all agree in saying, that the interest will be regularly paid in future. We shall 6ee. 136 PAYING STATES, In some of the other States the hopes of repayment are but feeble. They have commenced everything, and finished nothing, and have been long at a stand- still, with nothing coming in. " One thing at a time " is not the American motto, but everything is sacri- ficed for the " Go a-head " principle. So that it is difficult to see where the money is to come from to pay the interest of any of these debts, except, per- haps, Pennsylvania, and it would be a disgrace if the second State in the Union in wealth, population, and improvements were to repudiate whilst so many infe- rior States are regularly paying their dividends. Whilst there are ten States which may be called bankrupt, seeing they have repudiated and no longer pay the dividends, there are, on the other hand, ten other States whose stocks are reckoned as very good, as they regularly provide for the payment of their interest : these are as follows, viz. — New York owes - 28,000,000 dollars Ohio „ ' - 19,000,000 „ Virginia „ - 7,000,000 „ Kentucky „ 4,500,000 „ Tennessee „'--'■- 3,000,000 „ Georgia „ - 2,000,000 „ S. Carolina „ - 3,000,000 „ Missouri „ - 1,000,000 „ Maine „ - 2,000,000 „ Massachusetts - - 7,000,000 „ Total - - 76,500,000 CINCINNATI. 137 "Without reckoning the national debt of America, giving a grand total of indebtedness amounting to two hundred and twelve millions of dollars, which is nearly fifty millions sterling, a tremendous sum, which ought not to be increased. After passing a bustling little town on the banks of the Ohio called Maysville, a few hours brought us to Cincinnati, which may be called the metropolis of the western country, and containing nearly a hundred thousand inhabitants, including the opposite town of Covington in Kentucky, to which it is proposed to throw over a bridge, which the Americans will find no difficulty in doing except in times of flood, when the water is sometimes four feet deep in the very shops on the quay ! Cincinnati is one of the most agreeable cities in the Union, and trade seemed flourishing. I counted forty-five steamers at the wharf, and most of them smoking, ready to shove off on their upward or down- ward voyage, all which gave great life and animation to the scene. The markets in the city are numerous and well supplied, everything cheap and abundant, from whisky, at tenpence per gallon, to pork, at a penny per pound, and best milk at a penny per quart. Indeed, I have heard of a man at one of the mar- kets buying, last year, four turkeys, four ducks, and four chickens, all for a dollar, or four shillings ! But I confess I only heard it; I saw nothing half so cheap. This city stands in latitude 39 deg., about 138 CINCINNATI. the same as Lisbon and Alicant, and the winters, though very severe, are not quite so long as in Cleve- land and New York. The town stands 450 feet above the sea at New Orleans, but, notwithstanding its great and unparalleled success, it is difficult to say what particular cause it is owing to, unless that it is a sort of half-way house, in a salubrious climate, and the centre of a vast and fertile region, from all parts of which it is easily accessible. St Louis and Chicago are both getting on fully as rapidly as ever Cincinnati did, and promise to become as great. The only ham that I ever saw in the States that could be pronounced eatable was at Cincinnati ; but to look for a rasher of bacon in this paradise of pigs would be useless, the Americans do not know what it means; they have the name and also the thing, but, tell it not in Gath! it is as much like London bacon as the filthy American red herrings are like our Yarmouth bloaters ! Nevertheless, Cincinnati is a very tolerable place, and, were I transported to the States, and compelled to live there, which God forbid ! " And drag at each remove a lengthening chain," I think I might hope for fewest annoyances by fixing my quarters at the Buckeye city. This is, after all, but a faint degree of praise ; but it is something to learn that there is a spot in this most disagreeable of all disagreeable countries, LOUISVILLE. 139 where an Englishman of spirit and of moderate taste and desires could contrive to pass away his time without being much insulted. The society of Cin- cinnati is good and literate too, which is an extraor- dinary thing to say for an American town. I had letters of introduction to one of the principal inhabi- tants, the Honourable Judge Maclean, but I under- stood he had not returned from his judicial business in Michigan, and I did not care about any other in- troductions. The judge, I learned, w r as a man out of ten thousand, full of virtue, intellect, and knowledge ; and will probably be put in nomination for the Presi- dency in 1848 by the young and feeble party called the native Americans, or young America ; but the judge is too honest and too good a man to be success- ful in such a contest, and he will most likely reap no other honour or reward than being rejected, like Henry Clay ! Our boat stopped all the day at Cincinnati ; and in the afternoon she dropped down the river along with three others, all large steamers, and bound, with full cargoes like ourselves, to St Louis. We had the satisfaction of being the slowest of them all, and before it was dark were left far astern. After passing Lawrenceburgh, the first town of Indiana, we arrived, soon after daylight, at the Swiss settlement of Vevay, where a doubtful attempt has been made to cultivate grapes. Here the River Ohio begins to lose some of its beauties ; the high lands 140 PALLS OF THE OHIO. have receded farther from the river, and the place did not look a quarter as well as the real Vevay on " Leman's Lake," commanding, as it does, the glorious view of the everlasting Alps ! We stopped some time at Louisville, with its numerous tall chimnies, but made little or no altera- tion in passengers, except taking one in at New Albany, a town four miles lower down ; who made, I remember, great complaints of the badness of trade, alleging that New Albany had been built too close to Louisville, and that all his ready-money customers supplied themselves at the larger city. He was about leaving it for the west, perhaps for St Louis ; though he did not hear very good accounts even of that city, for it was reported that great scarcity of money prevailed at St Louis, that trade of all kinds was dreadfully overdone, and it would not be long before a crisis took place there, as the storekeepers owed immense sums of money to the merchants of Baltimore and Philadelphia, which it was impossible they could pay. He was therefore going to see if these unfavourable accounts were true or not. The falls of the Ohio, though considerable enough to interrupt navigation after a dry season, were nothing at the time we passed, as the river was very full ; but the rapids have been rendered harmless by an excellent canal, which, though only a mile long, has cost a million of dollars. This canal enables the EVANSVILLE BLACKSMITH. 141 largest-class steamers to pass up the river in the lowest state of the water, and has tended very much to the benefit of Louisville and all the higher parts of the river. Louisville contains forty thousand inhabitants; and is, next to Cincinnati, the largest place on the Ohio. It may be considered the Dun- dee of America, as it is more largely engaged in the trade and manufacture of hemp than any other town of the Union. Pittsburgh is called the Birmingham of America ; but such comparisons are far from flat- tering to the English, the cleanest part of Pittsburgh, as I saw it just after the fire, being far dirtier than the lowest districts in Birmingham. At Evansville, in Indiana, the last town of any consequence on the Ohio, w T e took in a passenger for St Louis ; who stated to me that he was a blacksmith, and, in answer to my inquiries, was doing pretty well, putting by his fifteen or sixteen dollars per week: and yet he said he was going to leave it, for he could not get paid. He admitted that he could get flour and provisions, but though he had been eight years at work at the forge, in a country far from healthy, he was no better off than Avhen he commenced ; he had plenty of money on his books for work done, but on the books it would remain, for it was next to im- possible to collect it, and he was determined to begin the world again somewhere else. He was only going a little way with us, and should probably select one of the Atlantic cities, where there was at least some 142 SICKLY COUNTRY. money, though the profits might not be so good. He was taking Indian corn in at eightpence per bushel, and wheat at two shillings, when he could get it, and would be well satisfied to close his accounts in this manner ; but those articles were the same as money, and were not to be had for old debts. He was determined to leave the country. We had also two young men that joined us at Evansville. They were Germans, from Alsace, and were returning to Europe shortly, having done no good. One of these young Germans had just recovered from a bed of sickness, caused by the fever and ague. He had been living at Terre Haute, a very pretty town near the boundary line, between Indiana and Illinois ; but had caught the fever at La Fayette, which was a better place for business than Terre Haute, and all he had been enabled to save was just sufficient to carry him from the wretched Wabash to the banks of the Rhine. He told me that he had been in a clothing store, but whether as principal or assistant there was no means of judging. These frequent accounts of want of success were almost the invariable results of my inquiries, and they were truly disheartening; as these persons, though in an humble sphere of life, were samples of a large and useful class, and ex uno disce omnes. But it was very little better when I made in- quiries about our wealthier fellow-passengers ; I say about them, for I could not expect them to tell of FOGS AND BOGS. 143 their own extravagancies and embarrassments: but it appeared, from good authorities, that the cotton- planters of the south were a most reckless race, had no regard to the value of money, had their planta- tions heavily mortgaged for monies borrowed of the abolitionists in Boston to purchase slaves when cotton was worth sixpence per pound sterling, and, now that it had fallen in the shipping ports to two- pence-halfpenny, they naturally felt a constantly in- creasing difficulty in paying the interest ; but how they should ever pay the principal they neither knew nor cared ! We were now in the lowest portion of the River Ohio ; it was broad, deep, and muddy, with a slug- gish stream, and we were looking with interest for its junction with its mighty neighbour, the great Mississippi. All the beauty of scenery had vanished; we were passing the miserable Shawnee town, which had been better named Ague town, off the mouths of two extensive rivers — the Cumberland and Ten- nessee — both coming from the south. The River Ohio, which had been so beautiful for five hundred or six hundred miles, was now uniting with the Mississippi, and seemed to resemble an ocean of pea soup — an ocean without a shore — not a bit of dry land to be seen as big as your portman- teau. Vast and raging, full and overflowing, this impetuous mixture of clay and water was now against us, and we had to keep our steam up to overcome 144 ST LOUIS. the current. It was altogether dismally uninterest- ing ; and there were no regrets at leaving the decks for the night; and it was not till dark the following evening that we descried the lamps of St Louis. But, dark and late as it was, I had my luggage landed, and was soon comfortably at supper at the Planter's hotel. In the morning I discovered that we were in a large and rapidly improving place of forty thousand inhabitants, that our hotel was a palace, and that there was a brisk and important commerce carrying on with places up the various neighbouring streams, " Eivers unknown to song ;" and with cities, whose names even had scarcely, if ever, been heard on the European side of the At- lantic. Boats at the wharf were getting up their steam for Galena and Dubuque, bringing back car- goes of lead ; — excursion boats to St Peter's River, Lake Pepin, and the falls of St Anthony, touching at Prairie du Chien, and not occupying ten days, with an excellent table all the way ; — ■ boats for Peoria and Peru, up the Illinois River ; — others for Jefferson city and Independence, up the Missouri ; but the far greater number were placarded about for Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, on the Ohio, whilst the largest boats were for New Orleans, touching at Memphis, Vicksburgh, and Natchez. Here was an amount of business truly astounding, LEAD AND COPPER. 145 and I could not help saying to myself, — If there is a place in the whole of the American Union that bids fair for permanent prosperity it is this, St Louis ! The wharf is lined with grog-shops, the temperance movement not having had time to travel yet 2,000 miles from New York, and copper money, singular to say, is not in circulation ; like Beau Brummell, they " don't know the coin." But St Louis is the head- quarters for lead, which sells at 14/. to 15/. per ton, even there, and it was to be seen in immense quanti- ties whichever direction you might proceed in, but principally down by the shipping-place. The lead district near St Louis extends over two millions of acres, and, with the adjoining States of Iowa and Wiskonsin, forms undoubtedly the richest region in the world for that mineral, beating the English and Spanish mines already in amount of produce, but in a few years it will be equal to the whole consumption of the globe. It appears that they have not yet adopted the method which the great leadowners of Yorkshire and Northumberland have of refining the lead ; consequently many tons of silver, say seven or eight, are thrown away annually by the Americans on the banks of the Mississippi, as I reckon every ton of their lead will produce five oz. of silver ; and con- sequently their loss this year will be near 200,000 dollars, by not refining. Iron is so abundant to the south of St Louis that it seems to be on that account quite disregarded. o 146 MISSISSIPPI INCREASES At the Pilot Knob and Iron Mountain the ore is so rich and metallic that it may be beaten out into some rough implements on the spot, whilst at Copper Har- bour, in the neighbouring State of Michigan, on the shores of Lake Superior, a 'company in Boston has secured what they consider the richest copper-mines in the world, extending over 250,000 acres. This enterprise is quite in its infancy, having been only just discovered, but 1,000 tons of ore were shipped to Boston at the opening of the navigation in 1845, which produced 700 tons of metal ! My informant was one of the partners, but assured me there were no shares for sale, there never having been more than twelve partners. Copper has been hitherto imported largely by the United States, but as soon as they get their smelting-furnaces erected at Copper Harbour, America will be an exporter of copper, as she already is of lead. This copper business is the most important discovery that has been made in that country for yea-o, and ought to enrich the otherwise poor State of Michigan. Is it not more than likely, that, if competent per- sons Avere to be dispatched to Canada, the same mineral riches might be found on the British side of Lake Superior, opposite Copper Harbour ? At any rate it is worth the attempt. British capital would not be found wanting for maturing such a speculation, and Canada is greatly in want of exports. St Louis, though such an important place, is in a very bad EACH CENTURY FIFTEEN MILES. 147 situation, though it was the best that offered to the original French settlers. The floods of the united rivers, Missouri and Mis- sissippi, unite at a spot only eighteen miles above the city ; and, by the time this father of waters has reached St Louis, it seems about to carry everything before it. The channel is already taking an unfortu- nate direction for the town, and is roaring over to the opposite shore of Illinois, deepening the water where it was not wanted, and leaving shoals at St Louis,, where they wanted depth of water. The furious river during the floods makes itself entirely new channels ; and it is not improbable that, some day or other, St Louis may no longer be on the banks of the river : — " The boats are still there, but the waters are gonee' : If we see a town on the Rhine that has formerly changed sides and back again, there is no difficulty in anticipating much greater changes in this fearful river, whose ancient channels are at the present day- far inland, mere long swamps, in the State of Illinois., and which old channels the river seems to be desirous of re-opening. When we consider further, that, during the last two hundred years the mouth of the Mississippi has pushed itself thirty miles further into the sea, we can understand what changes may be looked for in the next two hundred years, and we can also ascertain 148 COTTON TWOPENCE-HALFPENNY PER POUND. what becomes of the millions of tons of earth and soil carried down at all periods of the year by this river of rivers. It forms the immense alluvium between the city of New Orleans and the Belize, on which future sugar planters will make their fortunes. Sugar planting is a profitable business at New Orleans. I was introduced to one living at Patterson- ville, near that city, who was making money fast. He rather appeared to commiserate the state of the cotton-planters, with a constantly falling market, and contrasted the 200,000 hogsheads of Muscovado, of their last crop, at full prices, with the expensive and badly remunerated business of growing cotton at twopence-halfpenny per pound. Sugar was, how- ever, exposed to the casualty of frost, which was some winters so severe in the low wet soil of New Orleans, as entirely to cut off the canes, and destroy the hopes of the planter. It was also a much more expensive crop, but then the produce of an acre of cane brought three times as much cash as an acre of cotton. But the country was dreadfully sickly, and, as the people begin to die off on or about the loth of August in the lower part of the Mississippi, nobody can remain in the district after July. They must then push off somewhere without delay or deliberation, and they generally take the steamer for the Ohio or St Louis, in order to save their lives. CHAPTER IX. MISSISSIPPI VALLEY AND SLAVERY. Rush of Waters— Funerals — Widows at Fifteen — American Young Ladies mere Dolls — Adieu to Fellow-passengers — Steam-boat Certificates — Cheap Engineers the dearest — Paying Members of Parliament a bad plan — Santa Fe and Oregon — American Spolia- tion — Three Million Slaves — If Property in Slaves were abolished the Traffic would cease — Free Labour best — Home, sweet Home — Monarchy preferable to Democracy — King of Mississippi — Probable Changes — Railway through the Desert to secure Oregon — Americans should buy our Claim for 5,000,000/. — The other Alternative more expensive — American Policy should be Peace — Xon -interference — Wheat 16s. per Quarter— En ghsh Corn and Cattle Laws bad. St Louis, with all its advantages, geographically speaking, of position, is in other respects an unfor- tunate selection, for it must ever be an unhealthy city. There is a terrible mortality every summer and autumn, from the murky atmosphere which is at those seasons filled with the overloaded miasmata of a thousand swamps, near the meeting of the waters of these great rivers. People were dying fast, even at the early part of the season, when I was there, owing to the long-continued inundations from the 150 FUNERALS. Missouri. It is now too late in the day to alter the names of these rivers, but what is called the Missouri is unquestionably the Mississippi, and ought to have been so called, the same character of mud and rate of progress proving the two streams to be identical; whilst the Upper Mississippi is a clear stream, more gentle than the other, and at the junction unites as a perfect stranger. Each river is as distinct, to com- pare great things with small, as the waters of the Soane and Rhone, where they blend together at Lyons, and it is a pity that such an important error must now be allowed to pass without a hope of cor- rection. As deaths and funerals are so frequent in all parts of America, except perhaps the New England States, compared with what they are in Great Britain, the same ridiculous vanity is not observable in the last marks of respect paid to the deceased. The friends assemble in their usual dress, and by a numerous muster, rather than by their inky habiliments, testify their regard to the memory of the defunct. As for hearses and mourning coaches, plumes, cloaks, and hatbands, with all the other tricks of undertakers to make out a long bill for funeral expenses, all such nonsense is unknown in America ; whilst the act of sepulture is performed with as much propriety and decency as in London, and probably does not cost more than a sovereign ! And why should it ? This is one of the most glaring follies of my countrymen, WIDOWS AT FIFTEEN. 151 and it is to be hoped their good sense will not much longer submit to the tyranny of undertakers. Though in America, a funeral attended by fifty friends of the family need not cost more than a few dollars for the coffin and grave, yet in some parts of Italy, I remem- ber, it costs still less, not half as much as it does in America, but then the practice is revolting, though nobody witnesses it. A large grave is opened every day in the year ; and all who die that day are buried without coffins, in that grave, principally by torch- light. The bodies are then covered over with quick lime, and the earth shovelled in, and the same grave will not be opened again till that day twelvemonths, there being a new and separate grave for each of the 365 days of the year, which are all treated in the same way ; and, by reason of the cprick lime, nothing is found to remain in the grave when next it is opened. In this way survivors have nothing to pay for funerals in Italy, and it is well it is so, for the ostentatious plan of the English funerals would soon ruin all Italy. I saw, in St Louis, a widow and a mother at fifteen, which is at all times a melancholy sight, but which could never be seen in England. It is the more melancholy in America, inasmuch as it proves the greater mortality among the men, which is allowed on all hands, and because the American ladies are at best but helpless creatures, and more especially at that tender age. The early marriages of the American girls is 152 ADIEU TO PASSENGERS. always remarkable, and some writer has observed, that they no sooner put down their dolls than they take up their infants, which is often true ; but they may well dispense with dolls, for they are nothing but dolls themselves all their lives. They absolutely know nothing ; and the father of a family of four daughters, and who had often himself been in Eng- land as a buyer of Birmingham and Sheffield goods, told me that not one of his girls knew anything more about making a pudding than George the Third did. Indeed, he doubted if either of them knew how to lay the cloth for breakfast : but as for melting a little butter, or boiling a potato, it was as foreign to them as algebra. The reason, he said, was plain. Often born, and always reared, as they call it, in boarding houses, they never see anything of the kitchen — which is in possession of a black cook — perhaps, all their lives. There is a good deal to impress a stranger with in this distant city of St Louis, and the busy wharf was a constant ex- cursion. My fellow-passengers down the Ohio were here embarking for their various destinations, and all gave me the heartiest invitations not to forget them. My surgical friend tried hard to persuade me to accompany him as far as the town of Independence, whilst the open-hearted young bride plied me as hard to go with them and see Fort Madison. But it was impossible ; I had already come farther than I had intended., and I had no sort of inclination to be over- STEAM-BOAT CERTIFICATES. 153 taken by the marsh fever, the remittent or the inter- mittent fever, ague, or dumbague, or to be finally laid in a wet grave on the banks of the Mississippi '. so I wished them all, most sincerely, every good, and finally bade them adieu : intending, in my own mind, in two or three days to embark also on my return to the eastern cities, and prepare for a voyage to Europe. The steamers, as I said before, make a very formidable show along the wharves at St Louis, and explosions are not unfrequent. One fine boat — the Big Hatcher — blew up at the wharf soon after I left. The various State Governments have all passed laws that no steamer shall ply for pas- sengers until she has obtained a certificate from two competent persons, appointed as inspectors, that she is, both as to her hull, engines, and machinery, safe and sound, and fully worthy to proceed on the voyage she is licensed for. This certificate, framed and glazed, may always be seen fixed in the most conspicuous part of the vessel, and is" calculated to impart great confidence to the public. But they say nothing about the en- gineer, who ought equally to be licensed, as it can be proved that most of the terrible explosions on the Mississippi 'have arisen from the carelessness, igno- rance, or drunkenness of the engineers, who are very often nothing more than common stokers or firemen, promoted to the care of the machinery because they are willing to receive a dollar or two per week less 154 PAYING MEMBERS A BAD PLAN. wages than their predecessor. I was, therefore, look- ing out for a boat something like the one I came in, slow and sure, not fancying these " Beat-everything, red-hot, high-pressure" concerns, that, after taking your money, throw you a somerset into the air, in- stead of quietly performing their contract to land you in Louisville or Cincinnati. I found abundance of oyster shells, live lobsters, ' Punch ' and ' Mrs Caudle,' in this distant city, proving that two thousand miles carriage from New York was looked on as nothing, as, indeed, it added little or nothing to the price. There are plenty of newspapers published daily in the town, but the farther west the less talent is observable in the editorial department ; and so that new advertise- ments pour in, which they do, the papers care little for original articles. It is no bad thing to be returned as a member of Congress from these distant States, such as Missouri, of which St Louis is the capital. The mileage al- lowed by Government for travelling is sufficiently liberal to leave a considerable profit ; and the eight dollars daily payment during the session makes the allowance fully equal to three or four hundred a year sterling : an amount that is sure to tempt some needy lawyer, or at any rate some individual, to whom such a respectable means of existence is worth intriguing for. This plan of paying members is a very bad system, although it looks equitable in SANTA FE AND OREGON. 155 theory ; and as it is a favourite project among Eng- lish Reformers, like those equally absurd crotchets of the ballot and universal suffrage, all I can say is, let my % honest fellow-countrymen forbear to imitate any of these three schemes, because they are Ame- rican. If they would only go and judge for them- selves how these fine theories work in practice, they would be disgusted with them, as I was, and return to their fatherland contented with being citizens of the best governed country in the world, and the only land of true and genuine liberty ! I could not help watching the removal of our nicely-painted blue waggons, from the steamer that brought them from Pittsburgh, to the boat that was ready to start for Independence. There was, evi- dently, a considerable trade going on with the Mex- ican province of Santa Fe and the northern parts of Texas, the annexation of which appeared to confirm all true Americans in the overwhelming power and preponderance of American diplomacy. Though Santa Fe forms no part of Texas, it will be no difficulty to the Shannons and Calhouns at Washington to include it, and thus open up the entire road to St Francsico and Monterey, in Upper California ; for although Oregon may be a very good country, and, as they say, always has been, and always shall be, part and parcel of the United States, in spite of Great Britain, still Upper California is a much better one, and the United States will never stop 156 AMERICAN SPOLIATION. till she obtains possession of it for her increasing and adventurous citizens. Such is the unqualified lan- guage of all parties of the people, but whether such be the sentiments of Mr Polk and his Cabinet at head quarters this deponent sayeth not. The Americans say they were obliged to annex Texas in self-defence, and it was solely to prevent its becoming a free country that it was admitted to the Union of freemen. Had it remained a free and in- dependent State, it would have been impossible to prevent the half-murdered slaves in Arkansas, Loui- siana, Mississippi, and Alabama from running away across the frontier ; and Texas would have become the same sort of nuisance as the British settlements in Canada, only a great deal worse, as being so much nearer to the slave population. But the Americans may depend upon it, whatever injustice is committed in this aggression on the territories of a friendly and neighbouring power, they shall have their reward. The robbery of Mexico will not be followed by that easy and quiet course which the Government of Washington expect ; for it is a law of nature, certain and invariable, and which God speaks as plainly through his works as if we heard it uttered in his voice from Heaven, that no individual, party, or people can act unjustly with safety any more than I could go to sleep across the Birmingham railway, or attempt to fast thirty days. Look at the French at Tahiti and Algiers ; the English at AfFghanistan and THREE MILLION SLAVES. 157 New Zealand ; and the Russians in Circassia and the Caucasus, how they have all reaped that they have sown ! So will it be in Texas and California. Every act of American fraud and injustice will be visited by a proportionate punishment of disgrace and suffering. Look at the gross and infamous injustice of this free people, as they call themselves, keeping three millions of their felloAV-creatures in the condition of slaves ! And not satisfied with all the evils, losses, mur- murs, and murders of the system, they are still open- ing up fresh ground in Texas for the increase and further development of this hellish degradation ! To buy the slaves is out of the question, they are too numerous, and the purchase of them would amount to one hundred millions sterling, at the least. There is no other remedy but to make a virtue of necessity, and by freely giving them their liberty, and hiring them afterwards as domestic or farm labourers, put an end to this horrible reproach. Even if it pro- duced a national bankruptcy or crisis, as it assuredly would, it would be the least of two pressing evils, but far preferable to that impending and threatening- day when a servile war may take place, and another St Domingo business be repeated in the cotton States of America, on a much larger scale 1 There is some hope that the fine State of Ken- tucky Avill be the first to show an example in this good work. But whichever may be the first of the 158 PKOPERTY ABOLISHED, TRAFFIC CEASES. States in this holy race, it will be twice blessed in giving and receiving; and nothing but honour and prosperity would attend it. Until the Christian world consents to abolish slavery, it will be impossible to stop the slave trade. Till we agree to put an end to the practice of one man holding a property in his fellow-creatures, it is useless to attempt to abolish the traffic in our fellow- creatures. And, melancholy to say, the present flourishing state of the slave trade on the east and west coast of Africa amply proves this. For the cause of humanity has gained but little by the British act of abolition of the trade or traffic in human flesh, merely because we began at the wrong end, and did not stipulate by treaty for doing away with the pro- perty in human flesh ! When the slave trade was legal, the numbers of negroes annually shipped from the coast of Africa amounted, on an average, to 50,000, out of which the deaths on the voyage did not exceed five per cent., say 2,500 human carcases thrown overboard as food for the sharks ; but now, in the year 1845, with a large preventive service on the coast, kept up at an enormous waste of English lives and English treasure, the numbers shipped reach 150,000, whilst the mortality has increased to fifteen per cent., or twenty-two thousand Jive hundred dead bodies thrown overboard every year ! A good deal the unfortunate results of English diplomacy, FREE LABOUR BEST. 159 beginning originally at the wrong end; trying to crush the traffic before they crushed the property in blacks. There is no doubt that white men cannot grow sugar and rice, and very few of them would stand either cotton or tobacco ; negroes, therefore, must be had for all these four branches of agricultural indus- try ; and why not ? It was never intended that our black fellow-creatures should escape the general law of tilling the ground for the support of life ; indeed the state of labour, as previously remarked, is the very condition of enjoyment; and, as some French writer calls it with still more enthusiasm, labour is the " divine physician of our bodies and souls." But let us hire our black friends, and treat them as we do the whites, and pay them their stipulated wages, and in the picking season of cotton and the boiling season of sugar, if they demand an increase of pay, let us give it, in the same manner as we pay higher wages at harvest time in England. It is no use to object that if freedom were granted to the slaves they would leave the estates, and, roving about the country, commit robberies and murders. Experience has proved in Jamaica quite the contrary ; besides, if they did, a more vigilant police would soon interfere with this habit. It may also be said that the slaves are already happy, often singing, better fed than your English labourers, and that the accounts 160 HOME, SWEET HOME ! of cruelty and ill-treatment by the overseers are false or notoriously exaggerated. Be it so. I have heard a slave myself singing " Home, sweet home ! " of all songs in the language the least adapted to his condition. But this only shows how easy the black race adapt themselves to their degraded and infamous position, brought on entirely through the wickedness and greediness of their owners. As soon as the price of cotton shall fall in these Southern States one cent per pound more, and, instead of four cents and a half, it should be sold at New Orleans and Mobile at three cents and a half, or, at Liverpool, if it should fall to twopence halfpenny per pound for ordinary New Orleans, the slavery system of the United States may be considered virtually at an end. In like manner, if the Minister in England should give up the corn laws, down would come the market value of rice ; so that, if no alteration should be made in the tobacco duties, then the planters would find out that free labour would be much cheaper than slave, and in fact, with the low price of cotton, rice, and tobacco, they would be compelled to alter their whole system. The price of sugar is of no conse- quence. Missouri, though a slaveholding State, does not reckon more than 60,000 of them, and it is thought she already regrets that she ever elected to be admitted to the Union in such a character, particularly as the MONARCHY PREFERABLE TO DEMOCRACY. 161 country is cold, and not adapted to the cultivation of those four crops where black labour may be consi- dered indispensable, such as we have just referred to. It is a very large State, containing forty-six millions of acres, and therefore not very much smaller than the whole of Great Britain, and yet, large as it is, it forms only one out of thirty various States or inde- pendent Governments, which have united together, from time to time, in a sort of league, by which, while they agree to conduct their own internal affairs, they are united together for their common interests, with a general Government common to them all, and having their relation to other Governments in common. By this sort of compact they all hoped to avoid the evils of the too great extent of kingdoms, the neglect of remote provinces, and the usual mismanagement of local affairs, the constant jobbing and corruption incident thereto, whilst they might enjoy all the advantages of concentration, as well as the conve- niences and privileges of many capital cities, instead of one. These are, no doubt, solid advantages, and, if there were no drawbacks, would be the perfection of human government. But it has been found out in America, during the sixty years' experiment of their independence, that there are two great, alarm- ing, and daily increasing evils incident to this sys- tem : — 162 KING OF MISSISSIPPI. First, the too great independence of the separate States; witness the nullification lately in South Carolina; and secondly, the want of power in the general Government to perform its functions. This is more and more striking every day with the good folks at Washington, who feel the incapability of ruling where there is no obedience in the go- verned. And as every year increases the power of the separate States, so, as there is no natural increase in the functions of the central Government, the one gets weaker as the other gets stronger ; and when Cincinnati or St Louis demands the transfer of the seat of government, and it is not complied with, then look out for squalls. The Western States have no particular affection for thiDgs at Washington, and to be King of Mississippi may be the aim, some future day, of some successful adventurer, just as " King of Alleghania " may awaken the ambition, one of these days, of some millionnaire in the Empire State of New York. The American Union is, no doubt, like its great river lying beneath me, grand and imposing, and its energies and resources vast and wonderful; but there is no certainty or permanency in either ; the river is yearly making itself new channels, ravag- ing the neighbouring lands, and is too impetuous for human control, — so is the people ; and the seven wise men of the East forming the Government will find the difficulty of their position yearly increasing. PROBABLE CHANGES. 163 A modern writer of great distinction* has said that the tendency of human affairs is for the people to elect their chief magistrate, acknowledging, at the same time, that all elected monarchs have been the best ; for instance, William the Third, Cromwell, Xapuleon, and Louis Philippe ; but I would say also to this philosopher as I would to the English Radical, " Go and see," and no true lover of his country would wish to see the fixed order of succession, as estab- lished in England, ever altered, as the advantages on our side decidedly outweigh the many evils of the elective principle. Since the abolition of the property qualification of electors through all the States, Virginia excepted, mob law has become " suprema lex ; " and every moderate and respectable citizen in America acknow- ledges and laments the fatal mistake that was then made ; for Jack is as good as his master, and as there are infinitely more labourers than bosses, the entire power now is in the hands of the rabble ! Previous to my arrival at St Louis it was esti- mated that as many as 7,000 persons had started for Independence and Oregon, at which latter place they would arrive about the beginning of November, 1845, after a world of troubles and privations. The jour- ney may be considered as follows : — • Lord Brougham. 164 RAILROAD THROUGH THE DESERT TO OREGON. New York to Cincinnati - - 1060 miles. Louisville - - 130 „ Shawneetown - 270 „ St Louis - - 290 „ Total from New York to St Louis 1750 „ Independence - 420 „ Foot of Rocky Mountains - 800 „ Fort Hall on the River Saptin 415 „ To Vancouver - - 700 „ To Mouth of Oregon - - 100 „ Grand Total from New York ") a-\qz to the Pacific J And yet there are two rival schemes to carry a rail- road across this country ! Twenty thousand men are to be placed on the work, who will complete 500 miles per annum. Like the ultima ratio regum, the railway of the republicans is to settle the question of the Oregon, without the trouble of negotiation ; and, as it is estimated at a mere trifle, only 5,000/. sterling per mile, a single line, it can be accomplished for about 20,000,000/. sterling, say, in round figures, 100,000,000 of dollars, to be raised by a nation that cannot pay their debts, or even the interest, and among whom it is difficult to see a silver dollar in circulation ! And Oregon, when you arrive there, is not worth having ! It is a country of mountain and AMERICANS SHOULD BUY OUR CLAIM. 165 flood, and though twice the extent of Texas, com- prising about 400,000,000 of acres, it is not capable of maintaining more than 1,000,000 of inhabitants ; nothing but mountains, torrents, and barrens; the best lands in the sea-district being subject to floods and regular periodical inundations. Though in the latitude of Bordeaux, the climate is cold and cheerless, and the river which has given its name to the country, for all purposes of commerce and navigation, is nearly useless. The water-power is certainly unrivalled and unlimited, and there is no end to the supply of fine timber ; but beyond this one opening which the country offers, of a flourishing lumber trade, always a poor trade, there is nothing else to induce settlers to emigrate, except, perhaps, the salmon business; which, however, nobody likes when salted, and it brings in every market but a very meagre price ; whilst, for all the purposes of practical or national occupation, it is as near to Great Britain as to the United States, and most likely will never belong to either ! It will be gradually settled by the ignorance and rapacity of American emigrants ; and, if they don't remove to Bodega and the country round St Francisco, Montorey, Santa Barbara, St Gabriel, St Diego, and the other missionary stations of the Spaniards in Upper California, Oregon will become a separate republic, quite distinct from the United States. But most likely the Americans themselves will abandon it for the richer land and 166 THE OTHER ALTERNATIVE milder climate of California, and I have no doubt, under the pretence of starting for Oregon, the whole concern is nothing short of a descent on that remote portion of Mexico, which the weakness of that Govern- ment will not be able to oppose. So that, some fine morning, the Mexican authorities will discover a great part of Upper California wrested from them, and in the actual occupation of American settlers ; from the island of Geronimo, about latitude 30 deg., to the harbour of Bodega in 38 deg. But worthless and remote as Oregon is to Great Britain, England has a clear right to it by first dis- covery, and she is not going to sit still and see it pillaged from her by these unprincipled people ; who, if they set so high a value on it, had better buy it. It must be cheap at threepence per acre ; so let the Government at Washington pay us at that rate, which would amount to 5,000,000/., sterling, and so settle the dispute. If they should decline any negotiations on this basis, and expect to get it cheaper by a forcible seizure, and the alternative of war, they may in that case lose the country and the money too; beside having to pay our expenses as well as their own. No peace without first paying the bill, being the modern mode of concluding hostilities. But with all their gasconade, the United States Government are hardly mad enough yet to venture on a war with Great Britain. True, that country is MORE EXPENSIVE. 167 to a great extent invulnerable nearly, to any attack by sea or land ; and though it might be possible for a large force to march through the country and be well supplied as to quarters and provisions, yet, in the end, such a step would terminate in defeat and disgrace, and England would lament to see repeated the humiliating affair of New Orleans ! Destroy New York, Boston, and Detroit, if you please, but don't land, further than at the last place, merely to give these brawlers for war a practical experience of what it means, and what such a rich and powerful nation can do to annoy them. If one hundred large transports were scuttled and sunk a little below St Felippe, at the mouth of the Mississippi, laden with stones, and some other one or two plans adopted which at present shall be kept in reserve, all the inconve- niences of war would be felt by the Americans with- out the English losing a single man. The Americans don't read Greek, but what Themistocles said a long while ago, is truer now than it was then, that " the masters of the sea are masters of everything," and the glorious Republic would soon find this out. The Americans expect that in any future war with Great Britain the Black West India regiments would be landed at Mobile or some other parts of the slave States, and that, by fraternizing and arming the slaves, they would rise against their masters and liberate themselves from a state of thraldom. Nor would such a measure be very difficult in those 168 NON-INTERFERENCE. States where the Black population already exceeds the White in numbers, such as Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina; and where it is nearly equal, as in Alabama and the southern districts of North Carolina. War, of all pursuits, should be the last to be thought of by America, whose aim for the next hundred years should be the creation and accumulation of capital, the article they most require, and to concoct the least objectionable method of giving early freedom to their slaves. The party of abolitionists do more harm than good, and have positively retarded the good work rather than advanced it ; whilst the indiscreet zeal of such friends as Cassius Clay actually swamp the humane wishes of many well-disposed Kentuckians who could better dispense with their slaves than any other State, and who therefore might be expected to take the lead in emancipation. It is like the war in the River Plate between the Gaucho Rosas and Montevideo. Had the English and French Governments not interfered, the dispute would have been settled years ago ; but Dictators do not like to be dictated to ; and as to an armed interference on the part of the European Govern- ments, it would be equally useless; for how could they injure a beggarly country like Buenos Ayres, where, we ought to remember, we only came off second best once before. Non-interference ought always to be the English policy, and it is time we WHEAT SIXTEEN SHILLINGS A QUARTER. 169 learned the wisdom of not meddling in other nations' quarrels. We have had experience enough to avoid it. Before leaving the immense valley of the Missis- sippi, where the cheapness and abundance of bread and meat is truly astonishing, one cannot help casting a thought across the Atlantic, to that dear island of Great Britain, where the people are so much in want of both, but who, through mistaken views of policy, have passed laws to exclude them. I inquired how it was possible for the farmers to sell their wheat at two shillings per bushel, and their maize, rye, barley, and oats, at eightpence ? " Why, sir, my friend , in Indiana, has got this year 2,000 acres of wheat in one patch, which, at twenty- five bushels to the acre, amounts to 50,000 bushels. The thrashing by our simple machines, and the cra- dling at harvest-time, enables him to get through the work much quicker than is done in Europe, and in this poor country 25,000 dollars is a large sum to receive in a heap for his crop of wheat ; and as car- riage is nothing on our rivers, or next to nothing, there are few deductions. There is always sufficient solar heat to insure good crops, the only danger being from drought, but there has never been a failure since I have been in the country. Now you see how we can grow wheat to pay us at two shillings per bushel, or, as you say in England, sixteen shillings per quarter, and it is never likely to be dearer ! " The entire removal of the duty on bread-corn, im- Q 170 ENGLISH CORN AND CATTLE LAWS BAD. ported in British ships, leaving the manufactured articles of flour, biscuit, &c, as they stand, or at a fixed duty, would be better than going to war re- specting Oregon, and filling up the channel of the great river between the Belize and St Felippe, and would induce the American Government to lower their duties on some staple articles of British manufacture. The articles of beef and pork are not of so much consequence. Englishmen have a very natural re- pugnance for salted meat ; and therefore, although the entire duty were removed from those articles, they would not enter very largely into the consumption of the English people ; but surely the expenses and risk of shipping live cattle, freight, fodder, water, and attendance during the voyage, are sufficiently heavy to protect the English graziers ; and the twenty- shilling duty on foreign oxen ought to be repealed, and the duty on foreign butter and cheese reduced one-half. A tariff, according to Mr Polk, to be just and equitable, should have no reference to any sec- tional interests, but merely look to revenue ; and if the English Chancellor of the Exchequer cannot afford to forego these various items, let him make good the loss by laying an additional shilling duty on malt, and raise the annual licence for first-class gin- palaces to 50/., and for the second-classes, 30/.; which is the exact tax of our Australian colonies. To transfer the tax from bread to poison, ought to dis- please nobody. CHAPTER X. RETURN TO THE COAST, MANUFACTURES, ARMY AND NAVY. Crowded Boats —Frightful Climate — Neither Iowa nor Wiskonsin recommended — Philadelphia Poor Place— Folly of High Tariffs — Poor Manufactures — Yellow Fever — Boots and Shoes — Wooden Clocks — Paper Mills— Soap — City of Brotherly Love the most disturbed in the Union— Constant Assassinations — Ha- zardous Risks — Fire Insurance — Army and Navy — Fifty For- midable Ships — No Grog — Flowers of Rhetoric — New Post-Office Law. St Louis was now getting hot and unhealthy, and I thought it time to be off before it got worse. The most I could do, to vary my route homewards, was to land on the south side of the Ohio, and so proceed by the stage route through Kentucky and Tennessee to Washington and Baltimore ; but many circumstances tended to prevent putting more than part of this plan into execution, and I therefore found myself again in Cincinnati, after a crowded and uncomfortable pass- age up the Ohio. Though every one is a water- drinker, the water in these boats in general is into- lerably bad and muddy, it being merely taken up in 172 NEITHER IOWA NOR WISKONSIN a bucket from alongside, and allowed to settle, when the mud is precipitated to the bottom of the jar or cistern ; but as the impure element was in constant demand from such an unusual number of passengers, the cisterns were emptied before the mud had time to settle, and the water all the voyage was yellow and revolting. I thought that one or two hundred large earthen filters, such as are seen in London, where they are not required, if shipped to New Orleans, would have found ready buyers up the river. We were now leaving the great valley of the Mis- sissippi, which must have been at no distant period entirely submerged by the sea ; but the waters having retired, they have left for the use of man the widest and most fertile valley in the world, containing 700,000,000 of acres, mostly of good land ! The progress of population is the only element wanted to insure its greatness; and that is fast developing itself, notwithstanding its frightful climate and burn- ing marshes. But still, not even climate will prevent, though it may impede, the rapid rise of the Western States; and it is impossible to imagine that, when they shall have gained strength and wealth, they will regard Washington city with any other sentiments than contempt. What is Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba ? They will govern themselves, and regulate also their intercourse with foreign nations, without the assist- ance of the gentlemen at head-quarters. This I look upon as certain ; and Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa, as TO BE RECOMMENDED. 173 they will be the best populated of the "Western States, so they will be the first to feel their strength. Iowa may be considered one of the best climates of all the States ; high and dry> and better drained than those lower down, it cannot fail of being a great wheat country, and will be the favourite resort of settlers for years to come ; whilst the State of Wis- konsin, on the opposite bank of the great river, is too cold a climate to make any extraordinary progress by immigration. It is much more severe than Canada West ; which is a country in every respect superior to "Wiskonsin. I am the more inclined to mention this, as I have observed in a Sunday paper, circulating very largely among the working classes of London, frequent encomiums on the State of Wis- konsin, which the editor strongly recommends as a field for English emigrants ! This is to be regretted, as it could not fail to lead to disappointment ; and if the editor had talked for hours, as I did, with the disappointed settler from Prairie du Chien, one of the best parts of Wiskonsin, he would in future not be so sanguine. The Alleghany Railroad is an extraordinary work of engineering skill, and does the Quaker State great credit. It is only thirty-seven miles in extent, but is carried over the mountains, by means of stationary engines, to the summit of 2,400 feet, and then joins the canal again, leading from Pittsburg to Philadel- phia, and 400 miles long. Where the canal could be 174 PHILADELPHIA POOR PLACE. carried no further, by reason of the mountain range intervening, the projectors had recourse to a short railway ; and, by means of a succession of inclines, they have overcome one of the most formidable diffi- culties that ever presented itself in railway enterprise. After this Alleghany line, civil engineers need not be frightened at anything ; for it would be no more difficult to carry a line from Basle to Milan than over the Alleghanies to Hollidaysburgh. We finally arrived at Philadelphia, and felt com- fortably settled at Saunderson's Hotel. This city is a large and imposing place ; but, apparently, in a sort of transition-state from commerce to manufactures. There are very few large ships in the foreign trade ; not half a dozen, and the Cape May pilots may well complain of the falling off of trade; and, drunken dogs as they are, keep their spirits up by pouring spirits down. The abundance of good coals at Phil- adelphia, and all through this extensive State, points the city out as the future seat of important manufac- tures ; and, with cheap food and cheap fuel, the Americans, without any protecting tariff, ought to undersell the world. With a five-pound white loaf for sixpence, and a roasting-piece of beef for three- pence per pound, they need not be afraid of Man- chester or Leeds. All they have to do is to aim at making better goods. The American printed cottons, after returning from Canada, where they are so beautiful, looked dull and dingy, as if they had been FOLLY OF niGH TARIFFS. 175 exposed in a shop-window the whole summer months : the cloth is good enough, perhaps stronger than our own, but the management and mixture of the colours is abominable. So much for protection ! The Americans will never be a wool-growing people ; that is, not sufficiently so for their domestic wants. The climate is not congenial to sheep, and they are an expensive stock where the winters are so long and severe as they are in all sections of the Union, compelling the farmers to build costly sheds, and lay up large provision of hay and other food for seven months' artificial keep. And yet an American writer, Avho published a volume in 1825, stated in his book that, in twenty years from that time (viz. 1845), the export of sheep's wool from the United States would be so extensive, as nearly to rival that of cotton ! Whereas the ex- port of sheep's wool is, now that we have arrived at the limit of his twenty years, just nothing ! This is exactly an example of the perpetual future tense of this boasting people. It is always, " We shall or will be." Thus they prophesy that, in 1920, only seventy- five years to come, the population of the States, now barely 20,000,000, including 3,000,000 of blacks, will amount then to 160,000,000 ! Entirely overlooking the probability that the Union will be dissolved or undermined in half that time, and that without any wars or external interference of other States, but entirely by themselves ! 176 POOR MANUFACTURES. Their woollen manufactures are therefore still more inferior than their cotton fabrics ; and yet the Government are unfeeling enough to lay on a fright- ful duty, in this free country too, and make the poor people who stand so much in need of woollen clothing, to go without it, or pay an enormous price for it, when they could get the fine woollens from France and Saxony, and the heavier cloths from Yorkshire, at half the money they are now paying. The same with carpets. The country is overrun with old jaun- diced-looking patterns of home manufacture, half hemp, when they could procure the best Brussels at the same money, but for their too fond Government, who, under the imbecile John Tyler, insisted upon stuffing manufactures down the people's throats, whether they would or no, although the agricultural, mining, shipping, commercial, trading, and profes- sional interests amount to 5,000,000 of persons actually employed, whilst the whole of the persons employed in manufactures was about 200,000 ! By which it appears that 5,000,000 of persons and their families employed as farmers, &c, are to put their hands in their pockets every year to contribute to making the fortunes of the 200,000 persons and their families employed in manufactures. In articles of wood the Americans decidedly excel ; all such manufactures being elegant and cheap, and want no protection. Their turners' shops, as we should call them, being perfect museums in their way. YELLOW FEVER. 177 You see in the eastern cities, buckets, washing-tubs, churns, and chairs, by millions, and cargoes of them are sent all over the world. They are mostly made in New England, during their dreary winters, when the ice of the rivers is often as thick as our parlours are high, and the snow, by continual drifting, makes it a difficult job to get in or out of your own house ! And yet the Americans are so thoroughly ignorant of other countries, that they are not sensible of their living in a bad climate, much less in the worst cliinate of the world, — that is, as I said before, of the tem- perate zone. I know that my friends in America will find fault with thus speaking of their climate ; but I will defy them all to point out a spot throughout the Union, where the thermometer has a smaller range or varia- tion than 100 deg. in the course of six months; unless it be a place notoriously subject to yellow fever. Now can anybody call such a climate good ? Is it not execrable ? Englishmen complain of their climate, which is far preferable to that of the States ; but in England how rarely does the variation of the thermometer for any six months exceed 50 deg., or just half of the Ameri- can. We think it excessively cold in January, when the glass stands at 24 deg., or eight degrees below freezing; and we reckon it uncomfortably hot in July, when the cpjicksilver indicates 74 deg. in the shade. But what Avould a Londoner say to 12 deg. 178 BOOTS AND SHOES. below zero in February, and, five months after, viz. in July, find the thermometer at Boston up to 103 deg., making an extreme variation of 115 deg.? But in Falmouth and Torquay, Jersey, St Malo, or Nice, the variation very little exceeds 40 deg. all through the year; 45 or 48 deg. being the extreme. Such may therefore be called good climates. In Indiana and Illinois a variation of 74 deg. is often observed between sunrise and noon ! Shoes are an immense article of American manu- facture ; and in the State of Massachusetts the value of boots and shoes sold every year exceeds 3,000,0007. sterling. Of course every one in the States buys his highlows ready made ; the combination of eastern shoe-factories on so large a scale putting private snobs out of the question. They could not get bread and cheese ; and are only to be seen, and that rarely, in the chief cities of the coast, such as New York and Philadelphia. Clock-making is also a great trade ; very showy mahogany and brass clocks being retailed all over the country at twelve and as high as sixteen shillings each, bringing in vast sums to the makers. One man lately purchased 10,000 of them at a reduced price, in New England, at something like 9s. 6d. each, shipped them in a vessel just going to China, and jumped in himself as passenger ; and having made a good sale of his adventure at about 30s. each to Fouqui, he came back again in less than twelve PAPER. 179 months a man of fortune, acquired in a single specu- lation ! Such is American enterprise. Paper-mills are seen and advertised all over the country ; the consumption of every description of this article is prodigious, not only for newspapers, which are twenty times as numerous as ours, but for all sorts of wrappers; whilst for children's books, and cheap editions of English works, the consumption is liberal and increasing. The market-women, and the sellers of fruit and cakes at the corners of the streets, may be seen with a ream of yellow straw paper at their elbow, and with a halfpenny-worth of cherries they give you, unasked, a sheet of paper to carry them home in. Paper, indeed, seems to be worth nothing ; at least the inferior straw paper, which is in general use for common purposes. The better descriptions are dear, and not much in demand ; but of the inferior sorts it is quite the reverse. A child is sent to school, for instance, on Monday morning with a new spelling-book, a penny Dilworth; and before Thursday, what with the heat of the child's hands and the dogs'-ears in the flimsy cotton paper, nothing legible is left of the penny pedant, and a fresh spelling-book is provided for the young urchin, who, whatever he may learn, contrives to destroy two books a week; whereas, had they been printed on good paper, like the English books, they would have lasted a month. Soap and tobacco are both great articles of manu- 180 SOAP. facture ; and are shipped by these adventurers to all parts of the world ; and as tallow, alkali, rosin, and water, are abundant enough in all parts of the east coast, the soap is very cheap, and, as might be ex- pected, very bad. I have seen soap marked up at one penny a pound ; and, as rosin is only two shillings per cwt., the manufacturers of soap throw in as much as possible in order to reduce the price ; but still, tens of thousands of boxes of soap are shipped every month from New York, bad as it is, and it is most likely a good trade, or it would not be continued. Philadelphia looks well on the map, but it is really far inferior to New York in point of situation. They are both low, but New York is entirely free from swamps, whilst the drab-coloured city is surrounded with wet and overflowed land, so as to render the place piercingly cold for eight months in the year, and full of sickness and mosquitoes during the summer. I saw very little to admire in Philadel- phia except the markets and a few of the public buildings, and it is not to be compared with New York in wealth or commercial importance. How a man of correct taste like Joseph Buonaparte, the ex-King of Spain, could be content to remain in such a country and such a neighbourhood, it is diffi- cult to understand ; except that all Europe was shut to him, and Count Survilliers, therefore, preferred even Bordentown to the surveillance of the secret police of Paris ! THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE. 181 Iron castings are very well made in America, though not equal to the French, who, to the surprise of an Englishman, are very superior to us in this department of the hardware trade. Although the Quaker city enjoys but a bad repu- tation for honesty, she is eminently famous for Irish rows, which seem to recur every six or twelve months. They are not, however, the simple rows engaged in at Donnybrook, where Paddy meets his friend, " and for love knocks him down," but they are very serious affairs, Paris emeutes, where bloodshed and butchery goes on, and houses are set fire to without remorse, when they are occupied by the enemy. Numbers of these burnings occur without being suspected in the neighbouring cities, and the military are called out, and as often beaten. How is it that this city of brotherly love should be the most disturbed district of the Union ? The thermometer stood at 90 deg. every day during my stay at Philadelphia ; but, though hot, it did not interfere with perambulating the spacious streets of the city. Walking slowly, and choosing the shady side of the street, I usually returned to the hotel but slightly fatigued. I left this city without regret, just as I had left every place in the country, hoping that no possible chance in my future life might bring me near them again. The Americans are truly a vulgar, ignorant, brag- R 182 CONSTANT ASSASSINATIONS. . ging, spitting, melancholy, sickly people. Passing their lives in a high state of mental excitement, some kill themselves with drink, and some with tobacco ; some are hurried to the ever-yawning gates of their cemeteries by excesses in religion, or excesses in politics ; excesses in commerce, or excesses in spe- culations ; or tribulations of mind induced by a com- bination of these causes. But calamity is not of very long life in America, for the men are soon dead, and soon forgotten. Duels and assassinations also help to thin their ranks; for, strange as it may appear, it can be proved that, famous as Italy, Sicily, and Spain are for the stiletto, there are many more assassinations and stabbings in the slave States of America, than in all those countries put together. This is a melancholy truth ; but, as the minds of the masters in the Southern States insensibly become degraded by the mere contact, not to say association, with beings so degraded as their slaves, the moral sense becomes blunted, they care little for assassination or for murder, and nothing for stabbing and maiming. The country between Philadelphia and New York is a dead level, often in parts covered with water, and the railroad is comparatively good, and under- stood to pay well, as a pecuniary speculation. It was quite agreeable to get back to New York, and find one's self surrounded by forests of tall ships. I took a stroll through the black ruins of the late fire in Broad street, where so many millions had been HAZARDOUS RISKS. 183 destroyed, and could not help thinking that, while in London it is 180 years since the great fire of 1666, in New York two equally great fires have occurred in the space of eight or nine years ; and, no doubt, will be frequently occurring again, — at least, as long as doubly and trebly hazardous trades are allowed to be carried on, often in wooden buildings in the closest parts of the town. What would an English insur- ance office charge for the following risk ? Four- story brick building, without party walls, and roof of wooden tiles or shingles ; basement or cellar occu- pied by a box and packing-case maker, all the year round up to his knees in deal shavings, and working every evening by the light of a candle ; ground floor, a marine store and ship chandler, full of rope and oakum, pitch, tar, rosin, paint, and turpentine ; first floor, a lard-oil manufacturer, and maker of stearine for the candle works ; second floor, a Luci- fer-match and blacking manufactory ; and fourth floor, a printer's ? Such an assemblage of trades would not be tolerated in any English city ; but it is quite au regie in the city of New York. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the insurance busi- ness is one of the most peculiar in America, and could only be supported by a liberal and periodical smash amongst them, particularly after any great fire. Notices are therefore posted outside the doors of the chief insurance offices after a fire of any magnitude, that " the losses by the late calamitous fire will not occasion any suspension of business in this 184 FIRE INSURANCE. office ;" whilst those offices that cannot affix such a notice outside their doors are supposed not to be able to pay. They make, therefore, a compromise, break up the concern, and begin again with a new- name. As the Americans are for ever talking about war, and how they mean to lick the British whenever the opportunity is given them, it was interesting to in- quire into the strength of their military force, which, in round numbers, may be reckoned at 10,000 effective men, including cavalry, artillery, ordnance, waggon, and store department. This force, with a trifling exception, is employed in Florida and the frontier States nearest Texas, Fort Gibson, Fort Learmouth, &c. &c, to overawe the Indians, and give protection to the Santa Fe and Oregon travellers; whilst a few may be seen at Detroit, and other stations on the Canada frontier. It is not a favourite service; and, though I often saw the recruiting offices and the money inducements printed and pla- carded about the towns of the interior for volunteers, there is great difficulty in procuring even Irishmen to enter, because all classes of labourers in America can do better than being shot at for one shilling a day. The navy is a better service, more comfortable and better paid ; and not like the military, stuck up for years in distant garrisons, looking after Indians. The total number of sailors in the United States' navy is 6,100, of whom about 960 are stated to be FIFTY FORMIDABLE SHIPS. 185 native-born Americans, the rest being principally English, with a few Swedes and Hanseatics. Their pay is fifteen dollars a month, and two dollars per month additional, if they don't draw any grog ration. This is fully equal to three pounds ten shillings per month. Without this high rate of wages it would be next to impossible for the Secretary of the Navy to man the ships. The navy of the United States is very respectable. Taking their navy list it appears that they have, of all classes of ships, old, rotten, on the stocks, and on their rivers and lakes, in China and the Pacific, a grand total of seventy-six ; namely, ten line-of-battle ships, twelve frigates of the first class, two of the second class, twenty-three sloops-of-war, eight brigs, eight schooners, eight steamers, together with four store-ships and brigs ; but it may be safely reckoned that between forty and fifty of this list are really superior, formidable vessels, and immediately avail- able for any service or emergency. Five ships of the line, alongside of which, they say, our ' Victory ' looks like a frigate, might be ready for sea in a month, and about six first-class frigates, rated as forty-fours, but really more resembling our razee, e Warspite,' which may be considered one of the best ships of her class. The Americans have only one razee, the ( Independence,' fifty-four, a description of ship that hitherto has not been seen in any of our navy yards, but which we shall soon have to exhibit 186 NO GROG. in a few razees now constructing out of some old first-rates that have not seen much service. About twenty sloops, or small frigates, might also be made immediately available, provided they could find hands, and nothing but the high wages of seventy shillings sterling per month to the temperance sailors, and the late act abolishing flogging, could enable them to man their ships. It has been proved, over and over again, that the seamen are far more efficient and healthy, as well as in better discipline, without grog than with it ; and a drink of hot cocoa or coffee, when they reef topsails, is more agreeable to the hardy sailor than the stimulus of grog in the British navy. Note. — An American writer of the present day thus lays down the difference which he understands to exist between his countrymen and the English : — "By the American institutions every citizen is in himself a sove- reign ; and possesses, as a matter of course, every natural right and its consequences that monarchs grant by special act of grace to their obedient subjects. While Europeans range in varying subordinate degrees, the citizens of our glorious republic have a right to rank with kings." In a. mad prospectus for a railroad, only 4,000 miles long, to Oregon, the projector finishes with the following specimen of the grand : — " Arouse, then, Americans, and obey the mandate which destiny has imposed upon you, for the redemption of a world ! Send forth upon its mighty errand the spirit of enfranchised man, the spirit of liberty and philanthropy, to the uttermost ends of the earth, in a fulness that shall realize the fondest dreams of the millennium ; nor let it pause until it bears down every barrier of unrighteous power, till it enlarges the boundaries of freedom to the last meri- dian, and spreads its influence from pole to pole." NEW POST-OFFICE LAW. 187 The new post-office law had come into operation since July, 1845, and it was expected on all hands to turn out a failure. The rate is now twopence-half- penny on a single letter, or half oz., for any distance not exceeding three hundred miles, and fivepence for all above that distance. The stamp is a head of Washington, that any apprentice might engrave after a few months' teaching, and the consequence will be a universal system of forgery ; whilst newspapers are forwarded thirty miles for nothing, and private indi- viduals in towns and cities are allowed to put up boxes and convey letters by their own private penny post, to the great damage of the public revenue. So that the poor post-office law has not a fair chance of success, from nothing more than want of proper organization. There are between fourteen and fifteen thousand postmasters to be paid also out of this revenue ; so that, when Congress meets, it may be fairly expected to be announced a total failure ! CHAPTER XL EDUCATION, RELIGION, NATIONAL BANK. Education — Learned Professors— National Bank impossible for Want of Honest Men— The Voluntary Principle — Freehold Pews ■ — Chapel Speculations — Religious Sects Harmless — Church turned into Post Office— His Excellency the Rev. Mr Everett, late Minister at St James's — Mr M'Lean — Mr Marcy — Public Lotteries— Provision for the Poor— Americans have no Music in their Souls — Two Drunken Bishops — Conclusion. There is a general diffusion of common education all through America ; reading, writing, and the first rules of Cocker being indispensable in the poorest communities ; but beyond this there is very little to talk about. There are no instances of men eminent in learning or science ; everything is for utilitarianism ; and Latin and Greek are not in demand. The best- informed professors are in the New England States, where they manage to keep up the appearance of a decent love of learning ; but it is mostly subservient to theological studies, and preparatory to joining the ministry. LEARNED PROFESSIONS. 189 Notwithstanding all this lack of knowledge, there are between one hundred and two hundred universities and colleges in the United States ; and 100,000 per- sons living upon the public, engaged in what they call the learned professions ! There are no surgeons or apothecaries in America, any more than there are captains or lieutenants ; they are all majors and colo- nels, and, of course, doctors. No person would be insane enough to affix his name on the door as plain Mr Liston, surgeon, but invariably Doctor So-and- So ; because, if he did, he could never earn a guinea, and must abandon practice, however great his abili- ties. So that all America is one continual and living falsehood ; just as they say that the United States Bank is built of white marble, when it is notorious that there is not a quarry of white marble in the whole country. They have a white limestone in Vermont that works well for gravestones, doorsteps, &c, but it is not capable of polish in the slightest degree, and has as little claim to be called marble as alabaster. This too celebrated Bank of the United States just referred to, as many aching hearts in London know, is situate in Philadelphia; and is really a handsome building of white stone, now converted into a Custom-house. The great buildings in Wall street, New York, do not pretend to be of marble, but of simple granite ; and they are not of that frau- dulent and fictitious character that the Philadelphian 190 NATIONAL BANK IMPOSSIBLE. establishment rejoiced in. The question of a National Bank has been often discussed, and there seems no good reason why there should not be one, seeing what splendid, useful, and profitable concerns those of France and England are; but no, every one was against it, but especially the late President Jackson, who did all in his power, most indecently so, to ruin every plan for such an institution. They pretended to be afraid of raising up a monied monster, ready at any time to ruin their free and democratic system ; they feared also that this gigantic power would render itself too powerful in elections for President, &c. ; but, above all, as was most frequently alleged, there were not honest men enough in the United States to be entrusted with its management, and they should be obliged to send to England for all the officers and clerks, from the governor downwards to the porters and messengers ! "What an admission ! Something like the confession of a merchant, who had realized a large fortune, and lived not a hundred miles from Fayette place, and who had occasionally a dinner party in the English style, though the family gene- rally lived in the front kitchen, or basement story under ground; but, in order to prevent his guests cutting and slashing his mahogany, as soon as the dessert was set on the table, there was always placed with the apples a dish of little sticks of soft deal, for the gentlemen to cut instead of the table, which they assuredly would have done, pour passer le temps, if VOLUNTARY PRINCIPLE. 191 they had not been provided with the handier and softer material ! This sitting still at table after having done eat- ing is insupportable to an American, who is entirely unfurnished with anything like table-talk, and fancies the best dinner in the world need not occupy more than seven or eight minutes ! With regard to religion in America, the Govern- ment affords it no support whatever, it being left entirely to the voluntary zeal of its professors, who are reckoned at about 50,000 persons, or about double the number in Great Britain. The churches and chapels are still more numerous in proportion than the pastors, often averaging one place of worship in each town for every three hundred inhabitants ! But in a country where selling the fee simple in a pew is better understood than it is in England, church- building is often a first-rate speculation, and the most taking advertisements concerning it may be often read in their leading journals. The country, there- fore, what between powerful preachers and cunning- builders, is overrun with churches, and it is not easy to predict where this popular movement is to stop. But there are anti-renters in religion as in all other American callings, and who prefer the open fields and the summer evenings for their camp meetings and revivals. Of these obscene assemblies it is super- fluous to speak, except to say that they are not a bit worse than the sacrament Sundays in many country 192 EELIGIOUS SECTS HARMLESS. places in Scotland, especially the Black Isle in In- verness-shire and thereabouts, where I have been present. Notwithstanding this jumble of religious trading and the title deeds of pews, there are some respect- able congregations in every section of the Union, whilst those assuming to be the most respectable for intelligence and wealth are the Episcopalians and Unitarians. What would be considered in Eng- land the most deistical doctrines are there propounded and defended before the most select congregations, whilst the bolder and newer views of the Transcen- dentalists are pronounced to be the opinions and creed of those who promise to become the gifted men of the day. All the thousand religious vagaries in America seem to produce no harm, but rather good. The cultivation of the religious sentiment being the gene- ral taste of the people, runs, no doubt, frequently into lamentable excesses and follies, but they seldom have any tendency to disturb public order, and being split into so many hundreds of shades and sections, in the end all balance one another, and rather promote the ends of civil government. The cost of religion in the United States per annum may be reckoned at about 10,000,000/. sterling, or 10s. annually out of the pockets of every individual in the country. This is without reckoning the cost or interest of money in their numerous churches, but merely includes the NEW YORK CHUECn, PRESENT POST OFFICE. 193 stipends of the ministers, the wages of doorkeepers, fuel, light, printing, and travelling expenses. This is an immense sum, and contrasts very unfavourably, with all its faults, with the ecclesiastical establishment of England. But, bad as our system is, it is better than the voluntary one ; for as a circulation of one- pound notes is sure to drive away the gold, so does the excess of these " little goes," in the way of chapels, swamp and finally destroy the respectable church. Though a free trader in everything but religion, I hope never to see the day when to be a preacher it shall not be necessary to be a gentleman. If that should ever be the case in England, farewell peace and do- mestic comfort, and welcome shipwreck of everything that is great or good ! The central Government, not long ago, seeing the increased business of the post office, were looking out for a more suitable locality ; and having the offer of a church in the most public part of the city of New York, negotiations were opened, and it was finally purchased ; and the building, with very little exterior alteration, makes a most convenient, cheap, and suit- able public establishment. Other churches have from time to time been devoted to secular uses in New York and other cities, nor is it at all uncommon for a person brought up to the ministry to turn round on the first advantageous offer, and relinquish his gown and sacred calling. The late plenipotentiary at the Court of St James was an instance ; his 194 ONCE A MINISTER ALWAYS A MINISTER. Excellency Mr Everett having in early life been a preacher in the Unitarian connexion ; but a good opening presenting itself, leading to the diplomatic line, he naturally accepted it. His successor, the present Envoy Extraordinary, Mr M'Lean, is understood to have taken the appointment for only two years. The situation was going a-begging ; for though the most difficult of the foreign stations, it is the most expen- sive of courts, and only paid at the same rate as the minister at Brazil — viz., 9,000 dollars per annum ; but as the allowance for outfit is the same whether the appointment be for one year or ten, Mr M'Lean was appointed, on his own terms, for two years, making the actual salary 13,500 dollars per annum, instead of only 9,000 ! The envoy is known as a thorough republican, and will, no doubt, do all in his power to maintain the honour and interests of his country; and my Lord Aberdeen must take care, on the other hand, in any negotiations on the vexed question of Oregon, that the plain republican, who goes on foot to Downing street, does not get to windward of him. Mr M'Lean was chairman of one of the southern railroads previous to his appointment as minister to Great Britain, and was held by the shareholders and his brother directors in the highest estimation for his business and personal qualifications, and he will no doubt be very glad to lay down the great man, and, at the end of two years, return to Baltimore. I had been introduced on board a steam-boat to an elderly MR MARCT. 195 looking person, leaning on a gingham umbrella, amongst the crowd of passengers, one of the Cabinet Ministers at Washington, — no less a person than the Secretary of State, as he would be called in England, for the War Department ; or, in plainer language, Win, Marcy, Secretary at War. He was a plain sort of person, and, as might be judged from his conversa- tion, a very peaceable secretary, looking apparently with more interest to his salary of 1,500/. a-year, his routine duties and red tape, than to any schemes of conquest or ambition. It will hardly be supposed that public lotteries can be tolerated by the States' Governments at this ad- vanced age of religion and civilization ; but, lament- able to say, they abound ad nauseam in many of the States; for, though New York has kicked out the nuisance with contempt, and made it penal for any person to deal in lottery tickets, yet they are to be purchased in various public places of the city as easily as cigars, and the first thing that strikes the eye of the stranger when he crosses the Ferry from New York to New Jersey is a large board Avith " State Lottery Office " written up ; and a capital business it appears to be, though every one is ruined at it except the owners and contractors. The trade in lotteries, like the slave trade, was bad enough when it was legalized, but as soon as it was abolished by law, and recourse was had to smuggling, the nuisance became more bold and revolting, as well as constantly 196 PROVISION FOR THE POOR. increasing in magnitude and profit. I was told of several young men, originally of respectability, now reduced almost to beggary in New York from in- dulging in lottery -tickets. It is quite an error to suppose that there are no poor in this land of liberty without law ; they are as numerous as they are in other cities, but they are taken out of the streets, and therefore do not force themselves so prominently on public attention. In- deed, the American plan in the management of peni- tentiaries and poor-houses, is better, perhaps, than ours. The inmates being abundantly fed, but dread- fully worked, and their labour being sold by tender to the highest bidder, the contractor has a direct interest in turning their labour to the best account. There is therefore no fear of these receptacles of vice being made too comfortable. I have elsewhere remarked that the Americans are a dull and gloomy people ; they never sing except in chapel. This is by no means a result of their tempe- rance, because they are undoubtedly gayer in the present day than they were in the good old times of Stoughton and dram-drinking, now happily gone by for ever. But still there is no disposition to be merry, nor would an Italian boy be able to collect a copper in the streets of an American city, even were he a Paganini in disguise. What ! no street-music ? No, it is not the taste of the people. In their utilita- rian notions they will not allow themselves to be DRUNKEN BISHOPS. 197 happy, although it has been long acknowledged that " to be happy is to be good." There was a good deal of gossip about the pecca- dilloes of the two bishops lately degraded, Bishop Onderdunk and Bishop . It turned out that they were both fond of a glass of port wine, and thought it gave them strength and confidence in addressing large assemblies. But the congregations were not at all of this opinion ; for, though it might be necessary, in the rev. prelates' opinion, to go charged into the pulpit with intoxicating drinks, if they could not address the Supreme Being without such impurities, the sooner they abandoned their high calling the better : and the consequence was that the two Fathers in God were dismissed forthwith, and very different men have been elected in their place. CONCLUSION. The most agreeable incident during my sojourn in America was tjie preparation for leaving it ; and it was with no small degree of pleasure that after se- curing an excellent cabin in the fine American liner, , Capt , we saw Sandy Hook astern of us. We had but few passengers, and all English or Cana- dians ; and after a rapid and agreeable passage, landed in Old England in time for partridge-shooting. CHAPTER XII. A GENERAL VIEW OF THE UNITED STATES UP TO 1845. New England States : Maine— New Hampshire — Vermont — Massachusetts— Rhode Island— Connecticut. Middle States : New York— New Jersey — Pennsylvania— Delaware. Southern States: Maryland — District of Columbia — Virginia — North Carolina— South Carolina — Georgia — Florida— Alabama —Mis- sissippi—Louisiana. Western States : Ohio— Kentucky — Ten- nessee — Michigan — Indiana — Illinois — Missouri— Arkansas- Wisconsin — Iowa — Texas. For the sake of such of my readers as are not very familiar with the statistics of the United States, I have thrown the following sort of recapitulation to- gether, which will give them a very good idea of the state of the country at the period of the writer's visit. The United States may be considered the most interesting and important division of the New World. The popular nature of its Government, the rapid in- crease of its population, the temperance, industry, and enterprise of its inhabitants, together with their Anglo-Saxon language and origin — all conspire to make Englishmen regard the country with particular UNITED STATES IN 1845. 199 favour, especially as it is, no doubt, the most produc- tive portion of the Xorth American continent. After Great Britain, the Americans are the most commercial nation of the world, and their country enjoys a large proportion of land eminently fitted for cultivation, whilst there are but few mountains, few barrens, no extensive deserts, immense prairies of good soil without a tree, and the richest vallies in the world. The mountains are few, and of no serious extent in elevation; the highest, which is in East Tennessee, only rising to 6,000 feet. The lakes are numerous and large, and may be reckoned as interior seas of fresh water. These last are shared with Canada, except Lake Michigan, which is entirely within the American boundary. Michigan Lake is 320 miles long, and though a cold, gloomy, and flat country, without a hill to be found on either shore, it is rapidly j settling by emigrants from the Eastern States. The principal rivers in America are the Mississippi, 4,100 miles long, watering a valley of not less than 700,000,000 of acres, of surpassing fertility 1 The Missouri, formed by the Yellow Stone, the Platte, and Kansas, is another mighty river ; whilst the Ar- kansas, 2,000 miles long, Ked River, 1,500 miles, Ohio, 1,000, and Illinois, 500 miles, come next in importance to the Mississippi and Missouri. The mines of America are very considerable, and, though 200 UNITED STATES IN 1845. only in their infancy, the produce of lead is already 20,000 tons per annum. The United States is a federal republic. Each State is entirely independent, and has control of all its local affairs ; whilst the defence of the country, the regulations of commerce, the coinage, &c, are intrusted to the general Govern- ment, which consists of a President, elected for four years, a Senate formed by fifty- eight senators, being two from each State, and at present 250 representa- tives, elected by the various States, according to their population, which is regulated by law as follows : — One representative to every 47,700 of freemen, and one to every 79,500 of slaves. The President must be a native-born American, thirty-five years of age, and have resided in the country fourteen years. The American constitution secures personal free- dom, liberty of conscience in matters of religion, the liberty of the press, trial by jury, and the right of choosing, and being chosen, to office. The revenue is derived principally from a duty on imports, the sales of land, the post office, and lead mines. The navy consists of about sixty ships of war ; of which number about thirty, or one-half, are formida- ble ; they have seven navy yards, viz., at Portsmouth, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Nor- folk, and Pensacola ; and there are upwards of 14,000 post offices throughout the country. The Eastern States are famous for grazing and UNITED STATES IX 1845. 201 their dairy produce, the Middle and Western States for wheat and Indian corn, and the Southern States for cotton, sugar, tobacco, and rice. The crop of cotton for this year, 1845, will, it i§ thought, exceed 2,500,000 bales; 100,000 hogsheads of tobacco; and 250,000 hogsheads of sugar. There are 1,000 steam-boats traversing their waters, and they reckon upwards of 3,000 steam-engines in various parts of the country. Their manufactures exceed in value 300,000,000 of dollars annually, but of this large quantity they do not export more than to the value of 7,000,000, which principally consist of coarse calicoes, tobacco, and sperm candles, clocks, and coopers' work. The property-qualification for electors has been abolished, within these few years, in all the States except New Jersey and Virginia. There is a general diffusion of common education ; but none are found eminent in literature or science, though they boast of 100 universities. No provision is made for the sup- port of religion, which is left to the voluntary prin- ciple. In forty or forty-five years, the population is expected to amount to 100,000,000. The churches and ministers are about one in every 500 inhabitants. There are still about 300,000 of the aborigines, or Indians ; two-thirds of which are beyond the Missis- sippi, and one-third on the eastern side of that river. 202 UNITED STATES IN 1845. New England States. There are six States so called, viz., Maine, New- Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. They are all of an unmixed English origin ; they are looked upon as the model States of the union, being religious, moral, industrious, com- mercial, literary, and enterprising. Their country is, however, mountainous, rocky, and barren, whilst the falls of water being universal, have led the inhabi- tants to manufacturing industry, and a long line of coast has diverted a great many to the fisheries. The winter evenings are employed by the farmers and their families in little manufactures, where the raw material is of small value ; but though trifling in detail, are important in the aggregate. Education is universal in these States ; indeed, it would be diffi- cult to find an adult person without common school learning. Still the population is but small, only two millions and a half, as the inhabitants are con- stantly emigrating to the Western States. There are a few sheep raised in this country, but it is gene- rally too cold for them, whilst in Pensylvania they can muster as many as two millions. 1. Maine Contains 35,000 square miles ; is cold and mountain- ous. It joins the British Colony of New Brunswick, and by the wisdom of the Ashburton treaty was UNITED STATES IN 184o. 203 pacified from a previous state of high excitement on the Eastern Boundary question, now so happily settled. In consequence of the British improve- ments going on along the line, and a grand Govern- ment road at the expense of England, no future doubts can ever arise on this former cause of dif- ference between the two countries. The principal trade of Maine consists of lumber, which amounts to two millions sterling annually. The towns are mostly in the southern portion of the State. The population is only scanty. Portland is the chief town. 2. New Hampshire Contains 9,5000 square miles ; is very mountainous and barren. Population not increasing, as they are given to emigration. Portsmouth, the capital, is thought to contain 7,000 inhabitants. 3. Vermont Contains 8,000 square miles; is entirely an interior State, not connected with the ocean, but is nearer to Lower Canada and the city of Montreal than any other of these parts. A good deal of cattle is fed on the hills in summer. Quarries of a beautiful white stone are worked, which they call marble ; like the Highlands of Scotland, the people are excessively poor, whilst their numbers are not increasing:. 204 UNITED STATES IN 1845. 4. Massachusetts Extends over 7,000 square miles, and is the best cultivated country of the whole American Union, and may be considered one of the richest and most industrious. The boots and shoes manufactured in this State amount yearly to the large sum of four millions sterling. Population, 700,000. Boston is the principal city, and the fifth, in point of population, in the United States. Harvard University, in the town of Cambridge, is the most respectable scho- lastic establishment of these parts. Nantucket and New Bedford are great seats of the South- Sea whale fishery, and Lowell, Lynn, and Marblehead are all celebrated for their manufactures. The Legislature of this State refuse to grant any licences for the sale of spirituous liquors by retail. 5. Rhode Island Is a very small state, not containing more than 1,225 square miles, with a population of 108,000. Provi- dence and Newport are the principal towns ; the latter is considered one of the best harbours of America. 6. Connecticut Contains 4,764 square miles, and 300,000 inhabi- tants. Is celebrated for the Blue Laws, a code of great severity against persons not going to church, UNITED STATES IN 1845. 205 &c. Sunday in this State commences at sun-set of Saturday, and finishes at the same time on the follow- ing evening. The valley of the Connecticut River is one of the prettiest pieces of scenery in America ; and extends for upwards of one hundred miles through the finest meadows in New England. Yale College, at Xew Haven, was founded by Governor Yale, when Connecticut was an English colony, and is one of the most important seats of learning in the United States. The four middle states consist of 1. New York, The first and most important of all the United States ; extending over a space of 47,000 square miles, and boasting a population of three millions, having trebled itself in twenty years. The city of New York is, next to London, the most commercial city in the world ; and there are also se- veral other important and flourishing cities, as Albany, Utiea, Syracuse, Troy, Oswego, Rochester, and Buffa- lo, all deeply engaged in agriculture and manufactures. 2. New Jersey, A small State of only 8,320 square miles, low, sand}', and marshy by the sea-side ; but, nevertheless, un- usally prosperous from an active manufacture and agri- cultural industry ; whilst, being placed between the two great markets of Philadelphia and New York, T 206 UNITED STATES IN 1845. and in a cheap and abundant country, with the falls of the Passaick and Patterson, it enjoys many advan- tages over rival manufactories ... in those great cities. — The population is not far short of 400,000. 3. Pennsylvania. This is a large and important State, about the same extent as New York, comprising 46,000 square miles. It is a fine and fertile country, boasting a rich soil and a milder climate than New York, and abounds in minerals and manufactures. The coal-fields, called anthracite, extend over 624,000 acres ; whilst at the west side of the Alleghany mountains there is an equal abundance of bituminous coal. On the pretty river Kiskiminetas millions of bush- els of salt are annually made from the brine-pits in Western Pennsylvania, where every fifty-five gallons of water is said to produce a bushel of salt. The country is intersected in all directions by canals and railways ; and, though the income of the State is only one mil- lion of dollars and their debt is forty millions, there is every reason to anticipate, more from the resources of the country and good policy of the governors than their honesty, that in a short time the dividends will be punctually paid, and the people gradually regain their now lost character. A private individual, a banker, named Gerard, has been a great benefactor to the State by bequeathing lately two millions of dollars to found a college for destitute orphans ; which promises UNITED STATES IX 1845. 207 to be, when complete, one of the handsomest buildings in Philadelphia. The population of the State is nearly two millions. The city is well laid out, be- tween two fine rivers, the Delaware and Scuylkill ; and yet there is not so much foreign trade as there was at the beginning of the century. Four millions of gallons of pure water are supplied every day for the use of the city ; so that we may say that both New York and Philadelphia are better furnished with this indispensable article than even London itself; where, in some parts of the town, the water is very scarce and hardly drinkable. The principal towns in the interior are Lancaster, Harris- burgh, Reading, Pittsburgh, Beaver, and Erie. 4. Delaware. This is the smallest of the States, except Rhode Island; and only contains 2,100 square miles, and a population of 80,000. Wilmington is the chief town, with 10,000 inhabitants. SOUTHERN STATES. The inhabitants are represented as more generous, hospitable, and honourable than their northern coun- trymen ; frequently exhibiting a manly independence of thought and conduct, but not so frugal, industri- ous, moral, or religious as they might be ; whilst the curse of slavery, under which they labour, smothers all spirit of enterprise, and will finally ruin them, as it ruined ancient Rome ! 208 UNITED STATES IN 1845. 1. Maryland. A flourishing State, containing 11,000 square miles, producing large quantities of flour and tobacco. The great inlet of the sea, called Chesapeake Bay, runs up into the interior, and divides the State into two por- tions, called east and west. The Catholic religion flourishes in Maryland ; but one-fourth of the entire population is collected in the city of Baltimore, which is the fourth city of the Union. 2. District of Columbia. This is a separate District, not belonging to any of the States. It is only ten miles square, and con- tains the federal city of Washington. Congress meet in it the first Monday in December. It is a poor place ; there are shad and herrings caught in the bay. 3. Virginia. This is the largest and most ancient of the States, containing 70,000 square miles ; being about the size of Great Britain, but a more uniformly good soil. Virginia has also great advantages as to her position, climate, and rivers. She is the oldest settled State in the Union, and the most aristocratic, going by the name of Old Dominion. She has fourteen good rivers ; and it has been thought that grapes and mulberries might be cultivated with success. Minerals abound ; UNITED STATES IX 1845. 209 but, notwithstanding her numerous advantages, po- pulation remains stationary at about a million and a quarter, half blacks and half whites, or nearly so. Virginia has also furnished the nation with more public men than any other State, five out of the eleven Presidents having been Virginians, with a similar proportion of secretaries and ministers to foreign courts. Richmond, the capital, is hardly more than a village ; whilst Petersburgh and Lynchburgh, though all pretty places, are still more inconsiderable. Over the moun- tains "Wheeling is the most like a town ; but Harper's Ferry, and the White Sulphur Springs, are spots eminently beautiful, and deserving a special visit. In the western and south-western parts of the State, beyond the Ohio, there is abundance of good land to be purchased at a few shillings per acre: but an emi- grant's life, even in Ohio or Virginia, is nothing but a protracted struggle, and it would be far from a step to be recommended to go even to one of these best of the States, even if the settler got his land for nothing. Notwithstanding its slave character, the writer thinks highly of Western Virginia, but the 100 degrees variation of the thermometer prevails there as well as elsewhere, and the mahogany com- plexions of the settlers' wives tell a tale of hard living, suffering, and toil, that would be ill relished by those of his countrymen in England who live at home at ease ! 210 UNITED STATES IN 1845. 4. Nortli Carolina. This is a large State, possessing 50,000 square miles. On the sea-coast the land is low, sandy, swampy, and insalubrious ; but in the interior rises into mountains, called the Blue Ridge, 6,500 feet high. This State abounds in turpentine trees, and carries on a considerable trade in lumber. Gold mines are worked, and more than pay their expenses ; a piece of pure gold having lately been found that sold for 8,000 dollars ! Like all parts of the States, the number of persons born blind, or deaf and dumb, is very large ; it generally averaging one and a half per cent, of the total population. 5. South Carolina. This is a much richer district than the Northern State of the same name, though not so large ; South Carolina containing only 33,000 square miles. The climate is very bad; the air, hot, moist, and unelastic, occasions constant yellow fever. The cul- tivation of rice is carried on to a large extent where the plantations are under water; and cotton also grows with great luxuriance. In the low grounds of this State there are three blacks to one white, a fear- ful disproportion ; and which must, some day or other, have a disastrous result. Charleston is the principal town, which contains 30,000 inhabitants; but they are rather decreasing than otherwise. The total UNITED STATES IN 1845. 211 population of the State is 590,000, of which three- fifths are slaves. 6. Georgia. A very large State, of 62,000 square miles ; but, like the Carolinas, the sea-coast is low and marshy, abounding in pine-barrens. The population is 600,000 ; Savannah is the sea-port, and Augusta the principal town of the interior. The population of 600,000 are more than half slaves, and are principally employed in the cultivation of cotton. Some gold is found in this State. 7. Florida, This is an insignificant State, lately admitted into the Union. It contains 55,000 square miles ; but does not possess one inhabitant to the mile, though more than half are slaves. The country is dreadfully sickly for six months in the year. Key West, a low, sandy island on the coast, is the principal place. Poor as the State of Florida is, it ships nevertheless 60,000 bales of cotton annually. St Augustine is the oldest town in the Union, and, ten years ago, it used to supply a few oranges to some of the northern ports ; but, though as hot as Havannah, the severe frosts of 1837 cut the trees up root and branch, and destroyed the trade. The general Government have a naval station at the port of Pensacola, but it is a wretched place. 212 UNITED STATES IN 1845. 8. Alabama Contains 52,000 square miles ; is situate in the Gulf of Mexico ; but, like the other States of the Atlantic coast, it is low and sandy. This character of the country extends for fifty or sixty miles from the sea. But the cheapness and goodness of the land has, notwithstanding its heat, moisture, and consequent insalubrity, attracted to Alabama a large immigration from other States ; and it now exports 460,000 bales of cotton per annum from the port of Mobile alone. This town, or city as it is called, contains upwards of 20,000 inhabitants. It is a very flourishing place ; and the cotton-planters this year (1845) are satisfied to receive four and four cents and a half per pound for their crop, say twopence-farthing sterling at Mobile, which might be sold at threepence per pound at Liverpool. About the first week in September the people of Mobile begin to die off in great numbers, owing to the sickly season; but all who can afford it leave the city for the high grounds or the Eastern States, and remain there till winter commences. The villages of Tuscaloosa, Montgomery, and Florence, each having a population of 2,000 persons, are the principal places in Alabama. Population, 600,000, half slaves. 9. Mississippi. This State contains 48,000 square miles. The great river forms its western boundary for 700 miles; it UNITED STATES IN 1845. 213 is low, wet, hot, and extremely unhealthy. The Yazoo district is very fertile ; and the whole State produces this year (1845) nearly half a million bales of cotton; with a population of only 400,000, who are more than half slaves. Natchez and Vicksburg are the princi- pal towns, containing about 4,000 and 5,000 persons respectively; whilst Jackson, Woodville, Granada, and Columbus, are the next in importance, but are only villages of 2,000 inhabitants. 10. Louisiana. This is the last of the Southern States in our enu- meration, but the first in importance. It is the same size as its opposite neighbour ; and contains, like Mis- sissippi, 48,000 scpaare miles. But there is not a hill in the whole country, which is subject to frightful inundations ; which are carried off by lagoons and bayous along the river, and at or near the mouth. The population is only 400,000, and one-half are slaves, though there are 120,000 inhabitants in the single city of New Orleans. A million of bales of cotton will be shipped from this port, the produce of the crop of 1845. New Orleans is an extremely sickly place ; and about the middle of August the people begin to die like dogs, so that the lower part of the river is nearly deserted by all who can afford to go away ; whilst at Christmas, when the town has become not only healthy but agreeable, there are 40,000 to 50,000 strangers in the city. An immense 214 UNITED STATES IN 1845. business is transacted during the winter at New Orleans ; which at that period assumes the character of almost Parisian gaiety, every night, Sunday in- cluded, offering plays, balls, or masquerades. Several most respectable newspapers are published in this city, French as well as English ; and branch houses from all the principal cities of Europe have estab- lishments at New Orleans. The Westekn States May be generally characterized as exclusively boast- ing of vast prairies or natural meadows without a tree to be seen, and in parts a great deficiency of water ; a territory rich in minerals, and enjoying the advantages of a navigation, by means of its numerous rivers, unrivalled in the world. 1. Ohio. This is a beautiful country, embracing 44,000 square miles, and a population of 2,000,000; and may be looked upon as one of the best and most im- portant States of the Union. In the eastern parts it has a fine rolling, undulating surface, healthy and picturesque; and in the southern parts, along the banks of the river, it has an inexhaustible fertility. Ohio is the Indian word for beauty ; and it was never better applied than to this noble stream. The principal town is Cincinnati, which is centrally situated, and, being in an abundant country, has made UNITED STATES IX 1845. 215 greater progress in population than any town in the United States. The climate is also not so bad as it is in most other places, although there is often a change of sixty degrees in six hours ! Cincinnati contains 100,000 people, and is the sixth town in the Union, coming next after Baltimore and Boston. There are other numerous towns in the State, such as Columbus, Chillicothe, Zanesville, Marietta, Steu- benville and Cleveland, having 6,000 and 10,000 inhabitants ; whilst others, such as Sandusky, Toledo, and Dayton, on the borders of Indiana, are each of about 5,000 people. This State of Ohio compares very favourably with any others ; and if I were in- clined to settle myself in any part of the Union, — which I am not, — or if I were inclined to recommend any State of the Union to others, — which I am not, — it would most likely be Ohio, or on the Ohio river. But Englishmen, as I have said elsewhere, must not dream of emigrating to any part of the States as farmers ; for this class of emigrants the road to the States is the road to ruin; and if they cannot do at home, let them go to Canada West ; where they will enjoy superior advantages every way, and at least avoid being cheated and insulted. 2. Kentucky. This is a very fine State ; and it is a pity it should be cursed with slavery. The extent of Kentucky is 40,000 square miles, and the population 800,000. 216 UNITED STATES IN 1845. The Mammoth Cave is one of the greatest curiosities in America. Wheat, Indian corn, hemp, tobacco, and salt, are the principal articles of farm produce ; but horses and cattle are bred to a great extent ; and more attention has been paid to grazing in Kentucky than in any other State of the Union. The rivers, flowing over a limestone soil, dry up in summer with the great heats. Louisville is the chief city, con- taining 40,000 people ; whilst Frankfort and Lexing- ton are considerable towns in a beautiful country. The celebrated Henry Clay resides in this State, at his farm of Ashland ; and though he was too honest a man to be elected for President, enjoys a reputation the very highest in America. 3. Tennessee. This is a very fine State, covering 45,000 square miles ; and is divided into three sections, East, West, and Middle. East Tennessee is high and mountain- ous ; the Middle is hilly, and rather warmer climate ; whilst West Tennessee is hot, flat, damp, and rich; bounded by the river Mississippi, where the principal town is built on one of the bluffs of the great river, and called Memphis. The population of the State is 800,000, one quarter of which are slaves. Nashville is the capital, and the only town deserving the name in the State, having 10,000 inhabitants; the rest of the towns, as they are called, being mere villages of 600 and 700 inhabitants. Such are Knoxville, UNITED STATES IN 1845. 217 Blouutsville, Jonesbro', Rogersville, &c. The climate of East Tennessee is reckoned the best in America ; though even there the thermometer is often at zero during the winter, and as frequently in July and August at 100 and 105 deg. The country is, how- ever, reported as comparatively healthy, and free from fever, except by the sides of rivers, and is a very cheap and abundant country, being rather remote from markets ; eggs being threepence per dozen, chickens fourpence each, ducks sixpence, butter five- pence per pound, beef and pork three halfpence, hams threepence. There are some English keeping shops in this State, but it is a business requiring care and capital, as they are compelled to keep a stock of everything, from a silk dress to a tin pot ; and then they are obliged to take payment in feathers, whisky, bacon, bees'- wax, cloth, flour, &c. The legal interest of money in all these Southern and "Western States is eight per cent. ; and by agreement, eighteen per cent, even is allowed. 4. Michigan Is a very extensive State, containing 60,000 square miles. St Mary's River, fifty miles long, which leads into Lake Superior, has unfortunately some consider- able falls, which prevents anything larger than boats from entering the Lake ; but the State Legislature has authorized a canal being constructed, which is actually commenced, and will be of great benefit to u 218 UNITED STATES IN 1845. the trade of this remote and desolate region, on account of the prodigious quantity of copper ore lately disco- vered on the southern shore of the lake ; and which bids fair to rival, if not surpass, all the mines of Great Britain put together ; the ore turning out on smelt- ing forty per cent, of metal. Michigan is a large peninsula, about the size of England and Wales, but without a hill. The climate is very cold in the northern parts, much colder than Canada West ; and yet, young as the State is, the population amounts to 400,000. Detroit is the principal town, with about 20,000 inhabitants ; the next important being Mun- roe, Fort Gratiot, Mackinaw, and St Joseph's. Fever and ague abound in the whole peninsula, and may be considered the curse of the country. 5. Indiana. A low, flat, swampy, and unhealthy State, covering 36,000 miles, but highly fertile and productive. There are neither mountains, minerals, nor manufac- tures. The Wabash Canal is a great work, extending from Lake Erie to the river Ohio, at Evansville, a distance of 440 miles through Maumee and Terre Haute. The population, notwithstanding the sickly climate, is constantly increasing, and next year it is expected to reach a million of persons. The settlers live in a rude abundance, board and lodging being obtainable in most places as low as four shillings per week ! The principal towns are New Albany, nearly UNITED STATES IN 1845. 219 opposite Louisville, on the Ohio ; Indianopolis, La Fayette, Lawrenceburgh, and Vincennes. Many of them are low and often inundated, whilst in the sum- mer water is very scarce and very bad through the greater part of the interior. 6. Illinois. A large and important State, containing 55,000 square miles. It has not been so long settled as Indiana, and therefore not so populous, the inhabit- ants being about 700,000; but in a few years it will overtake her, and is expected indeed to surpass her, as there are few countries in America that promise more rapid and more certain progress than Illinois, whilst there is nothing to obstruct it except its sickly climate, the thermometer often in the summer stand- ing at ten degrees hotter than the West Indies, whilst in the winter the settlers' log-huts are sometimes nearly buried underneath eight feet of snow ; and per- sons not taking care of themselves run a danger of being frozen to death. The Illinois Canal, to connect Chicago with Peru, and thus unite the Great Lakes with the Mississippi River, is an easy scheme, it being only 100 miles distance, and must, from its importance give a great impetus to the trade and settlement of Illinois. The chief towns are Alton on the Mississippi, Peoria, Springfield, and Galena, which is the head- 220 UNITED STATES IN 1845. quarters of the lead-mining country, and a very flou- rishing place. 7. Missouri. This is a State of great extent, comprising 64,000 square miles, and is destined to become one of the most important in the Union. On the banks of the Mississippi and the Missouri the land is low and inundated, and not adapted for human habitations, except on a few high bluffs, offering some extent of building land ; but in the interior, away from the two great rivers, the country becomes elevated and better drained, but sometimes so perfectly barren as not to be worth a farthing an acre. The State of Missouri is rich in minerals, and its lead and iron are thought to be inexhaustible. In addition to these advantages the country to the south improves in temperature, and grazing will at all times amply reimburse the enterprising settler. A great quantity of rich furs are obtained from the Indians, and the population is fast increasing, and even now exceeds 600,000. The traffic occasioned by the wants of emigrants to Cali- fornia, Oregon, and Texas, is a source of considerable profit to the State. St Louis is the capital, and numbers already 40,000 people, and is expected to be the metropolis of the Western States, and perhaps, some day or other, the seat of the general Govern- ment, in lieu of Washington. Jefferson City is a failure, having been built in a swamp on the Missouri, UNITED STATES IX 1845. 221 just as the towns of New Madrid and St Genevieve have been washed away by the floods of the Missis- sippi ; and even St Louis is by no means safe, for if it is not washed away, the river threatens to leave it, and make its channel on the other or Illinois side. 8. Arkansas. This State is pronounced as if written Arkansaw. It is a wild, unimportant country, extending over 55,000 square miles, sterile, barren, sickly, and thinly peopled, there not being more than 100,000 inhabit- ants. It is a slave State, and what little agriculture there is, is in cotton, but even that is trifling. There are no towns, and the chief village and seat of Govern- ment, called Little Rock, hardly numbers 1,000 persons. 9. Wisconsin. This is a new State, admitted into the Union in 1845. It is an immense, cold country, comprising 100,000 square miles; and except for its lead mines, not good for much. Milwaukie, Racine, and Prairie du Chien, are the only towns, and the population is as yet very trifling, some of the counties of 300,000 acres not containing twenty inhabitants! For the four summer months the climate may be reckoned good ; but for the other eight months, owing to the number of wet prairies, the cold is intense. A canal is intended to connect the Fox River in Green Bay with the Wisconsin River, by which steamers will be 222 UNITED STATES IN 1845. enabled to go direct from Buffalo to New Orleans without shifting, an uninterrupted fresh- water navi- gation of nearly 5,000 miles ! Wisconsin abounds in lead, and is expected to yield an abundance of copper. Milwaukie is a flourishing place, and the price of town lots has increased there most rapidly. 10. Iowa. This is the last of the "Western States, and in many respects is one of the best. It is estimated to contain 150,000 square miles; but the settled parts do not extend over more than 40,000 in the south of the State, and along the banks of the Des Moines River. The country abounds in lead, and promises to be a rich agricultural and grazing country besides. It enjoys also, for America, what may be considered a fine climate, and smart emigrants from the Eastern States of the Union cannot fail to do well here, though I would caution my countrymen in England from having anything to do with Iowa, though it is a favourite quarter at the present ; and about Fort Madison, Davonport, Burlington, Dubuque and Iowa City, there will be money to be made for many years to come. The Mandan nation of Indians used to be numerous a few years ago in this country, but the small-pox was introduced, and out of 1,600 individuals, all died but thirty-one. The Missouri River exhibits a stupendous sight at what is called the Gates of the Rocky Mountains. The stream is only 450 yards UNITED STATES IN 1845. 223 wide, and perpendicular rocks come down close to the water 1,200 feet high, continuing for many miles. In the North-western part of the State of Iowa a canal, it is said, of one mile from St Peter's River to Lake Winnipeg, would connect Hudson's Bay with the Mississippi River ! Texas. Though not yet formally admitted into the Ameri- can Union, no doubt it will be at this present session, commencing in December, 1845, when it is expected to be organized into three distinct States, the present dimensions being 200,000 square miles. Whether Santa Fe is to be included is not known, although it is quite clear that it never formed any part of the province of Texas. This vast country consists of immense prairies, where a good deal of cotton is cultivated, and large herds of cattle reared. The year is divided into dry and wet seasons ; and though the country is so near the tropics, the cold is very severe in December and January. The principal towns are St Augustine, Nacodotches, Austin, Matagorda, Houston, and Gal- veston, which are more or less subject to destructive inundations. The population of the country exceeds 300,000. If it should be divided into three States, it will add six senators to Congress, and thus give a preponderating influence to the institution of slavery, and all southern interests of the United States. 224 APPENDIX. By an American. geographical and general view of oregon. Its Islands. Oregon is a vast country lying on the Pacific Ocean, stretching along the coast through twelve degrees and forty minutes of latitude, extending its eastern limits into the body of the Rocky Mountains, and embracing within those boundaries an area of four hundred thousand square miles. Attached to this immense territory, and extending along the whole line of its coast from the Strait of Fuca to its northern limit, and even beyond that to the Arctic Sea, is a continuous chain of islands, known by the general name of the North-west Archipelago, which in themselves can scarcely be regarded as less than a feature of secondary importance. The largest are all traversed by mountain ridges, in the direction of their greatest length, and the whole archipelago may be considered as a portion of the westermost chain of mountains, broken off from the main land at the Strait of Fuca, and running through the sea, con- HISTORY OF OREGON. 225 necting those of Oregon on the south with the range on the north, of which Mounts Fairweather and St Elias are the most prominent peaks. The first and chief of these islands is Quadra and Vancouver's. This extends along the coast from 48 deg. 30 min., in a northerly direction, for the space of one hundred and sixty miles, and forms, by its parallel course with the coast (from which it is distant about twenty miles), the celebrated arm of the sea called the Strait of Fuca. Its average width is about forty-five miles, and it contains a surface of about fifteen thousand square miles. The climate of this island is mild and salubrious, and large portions of its soil are arable and capable of advantageous cultivation. It has an abundance of fine harbours, which afford accommodations for vessels of any size. The chief of these is ISTootka Sound, the Port Lorenzo of the Spaniards, a spacious and secure bay, running deep into the land, under parallels 49 deg. 34 min., and containing within itself many other harbours, affording most excellent anchorage. A few miles south of Nootka, we come to another large bay, called Clyoquot, in which we have seen that Captain Kendrick preferred to remain during the winter of 1789, to any other harbour on the coast. There is another still further south, named Nittinat, which lies at the entrance of the Strait of Fuca, and is filled with an archipelago of little islands. The coasts of this island, and, indeed, the coasts of 226 HISTOEY OF OREGON. those above, abound with fine fish of various descrip- tions, among which the salmon predominates. In consequence of their fisheries, the islands are more numerously populated by the natives than the ter- ritory of the main land. The next island of significance is Washington, or Queen Charlotte's. It received the former title from Captain Gray, who circumnavigated it for the first time in the summer of 1789. It is triangular in its form, is one hundred and fifty miles in length, and contains four thousand square miles. After Gray's visit it became the favourite resort of the American traders of the North Pacific. Its climate and soil are represented by Captain Ingraham as being extremely well adapted for agricultural purposes, particularly those portions in the vicinity of a fine harbour in latitude 53 deg. 3 min. on its eastern coast, and at Port Estrada, or Hancock's River, on the north side. The islands of the next importance below the southern cape of Prince of Wales' Island, (which is the point of our northern boundary line) are Pitt's, Burke's, Dundas', and the Princess Royal groups. Most of those lie between Washington Island and the shore, and form a numerous archipelago, which renders the intervening navigation extremely tor- tuous and difficult. Between Washington and Van- couver's Island is a continuous line of others, of considerable size, lying closer to the land, and fol- lowing with their eastern outlines almost every HISTORY OF OREGON. 227 sinuosity of the continental shore. These latter groups are for the most part uninhabited, and are composed of granite and pudding stone, which appear to be the prevailing rock north of latitude forty -nine. They are generally destitute of fresh water, and having but few anchorages, the strong intervening currents render navigation perplexed and dangerous. They are only resorted to by the natives in the spring and in the fall on account of their fisheries. The Coast and its Harbours. The coast of Oregon from the forty-second parallel to the mouth of the Columbia, pursues a northwardly course, and from that point trends with a slight and gradual westerly inclination to the Strait of Fuca. Its profile consists of a bold, high, wall-like shore of rock, only occasionally broken into gaps or depressions, where the rivers of the territory find their way into the sea. The first of these openings above the southern boundary line is the mouth of the Klamet. This is a stream of considerable size, issuing from the land in 42 deg. 40 min., and extending into it to a distance of one hundred and fifty miles. It has two large tributaries, called by the unromantic titles of Shasty and Nasty rivers, an error of taste, which it is to be hoped the future " Alleghanians," who inhabit their fertile valleys, will correct and reform. The bay of the Klamet is admissible only for vessels of very light draught ; its whole valley is extremely 228 HISTOEY OP OEEGON. fertile, and the country adjacent to the stream abounds with a myrtaceous tree, which, at the slightest agitation of the air, diffuses a fragrance that lends to it another feature of an earthly paradise. Between this and the Urnpqua River, disemboguing in 33 deg. 30 min., are two other small streams, neither of which, however, affords a harbour available for commercial purposes. The Umpqua river is a considerable stream, enter- ing the land to the distance of a hundred miles. It has a tolerable harbour, navigable, however, only for vessels drawing eight feet of water, and its stream, thirty miles from the sea, is broken by rapids and falls. Its valley is blessed with its portion of the general fertility of the lower region of Oregon, and consists of alternate groves of stupendous timber and rich arable plains. The Hudson's Bay Company have a fort at the mouth of the river, the site of which is the scene of a flourishing settlement. Five lesser streams find their way into the sea, at intervals, from this point to the mouth of the Columbia, and contri- bute their aid in fertilizing the extensive region lying between the coast and the parallel barrier running at the distance of a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles, known as the President's range of mountains. The mouth of the Columbia is found at 46 deg. 16 min., but is only distinguishable from the sea by a slight and gradual inner curve in the shore. Like all the harbours formed by the rivers on the sea-coast, HISTORY OF OREGON. 229 it is obstructed with extensive sand-bars, formed by the deposits of the river on its meeting with the ocean, and, according to Lieutenant Wilkes, "its entrance, which has from four and a half to eight fathoms of water, is impracticable for two-thirds of the year, and the difficulty of leaving it is equally great." It is thought by some that these obstacles may be removed in time by artificial means, but it is an extremely doubtful question whether it can ever be made an available harbour for vessels of any draught. Passing Cape Disappointment, the northern headland of the river's mouth, we sail forty miles further north, where we find a secure anchorage in Gray's Bay, for vessels drawing ten feet of water ; but this harbour is considered of little importance on account of the extensive sand-flats which usurp the greatest portion of its entire surface. From Gray's Bay to Cape Flattery, the southern point of the Strait of Fuca, but two streams, and those of but trifling significance, break the overhanging barrier of the coast. We have now traversed the whole coast of Oregon lying immediately on the Pacific, and in its course of five hundred miles, find but two places of refuge for vessels (Gray's Bay and the mouth of the Colum- bia), and even these are of but trifling importance in a commercial point of view. Indeed, all geographical authorities agree that none of the harbours on this portion of the coast can be deemed safe ports to enter. x 230 HISTORY OF OREGON. The next branch of the coast demanding our atten- tion is that which lies along the Strait of Fuca. This immense arm of the sea cuts off the northward line of the coast at Cape Flattery, in latitude 48 deg. 23 min., and runs apparently into the land in a south- easterly direction for about a hundred and twenty miles. It then turns north-west by west, and follow- ing that direction for three hundred miles more, joins the sea again at Pintard's Sound. The southern portion of this strait varies from fifteen to thirty miles in width, and the coast of Oregon along its course is an exception, in its maritime advantages, to the portion immediately on the sea. It abounds with fine inland sounds, offering a secure anchorage to vessels of the heaviest draught, and there are no por- tions of the interior navigation which conceals a hidden danger. The straits can be entered in any wind, and the great rise and fall of the tides offer facilities for building maritime establishments unsur- passed in any portion of the world. Here, whatever direction emigration may for the present take, the commercial operations of the territory will eventually centre, and the din of our naval arsenals will proclaim to the world the fulfilment of the prediction that " The course of empire has westward found its way." The most important branch of this strait is a spa- cious arm descending from its eastern extremity in a southerly direction, into the land to the distance of IIISTOHY OF OREGON. 231 one hundred miles. It is called Admiralty Inlet, and the lowermost portion of it is known as Puget's Sound. This inlet, like the other southern portions of the strait, is filled with splendid harbours, the southern- most of which has the peculiar advantage of being within but little more than three hundred miles of the navigable waters of the Missouri. Great quanti- ties of bituminous coal have been found in its vicinity, and there are other peculiar advantages attached to the station, Avhich must eventually make it a point of the first importance. These circumstances have not escaped the watchful eyes of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany, and they have already established a fort and a settlement there, by way of securing possession of the point.* At the south-east end of Vancouver's Island there is a small archipelago of islands, which, though well wooded, are generally destitute of fresh water. They are consequently, for the most part, uninhabited. The coast of the main land along the north-western course of the strait is cut up and penetrated by numerous inlets, called, from their perpendicular sides and deep water, canals. They afford no good har- bours, and offer but few inducements to frequent them. One large river empties into the strait about * The consideration of the maritime advantages of the southern coast of the Strait of Fuca and Puget's Sound, suggests a pretty forcible view of the remarkable liberality of Great Britain's offer of the Columbia as the line of compromise. This, while it secures to her every navigable harbour, does not leave us one. 232 HISTOEY OF OREGON. latitude 49 deg., which pursues a northerly direction for several hundred miles. It is called the Tacoutche, or Fraser's River, and has a trading-post named Fort Langley situated near its mouth. The other portion of the coast to the north is much of the same charac- ter as that south of this river, on the strait. It is cut up by inlets, and the numerous islands which line it, and the heavy fogs that are frequent in the region, render it at all times difficult to approach or to navigate. THE NATURAL DIVISIONS OF OREGON. The Three Regions. Oregon is divided into three distinct regions, by three separate mountain ranges, with an additional inferior chain, binding the extreme outline of the Pacific coast. Overlooking the rim upon the ocean edge, the first chain we come to is the Cascade Mountains, or, as they are sometimes called, the President's Range. They start below the 42nd parallel, and run on a line with the coast at a distance varying from 100 to 150 miles throughout the whole length of the territory ; rising in many places to a height from 12,000 to 15,000 feet above the level of the sea in separate cones. Their succession is so continuous as to almost interrupt the communication between the sections, except where the two great rivers, the Columbia and HISTORY OF OREGON. 233 Eraser's, force a passage through ; an achievement which they only accomplish by being torn into foam, plunged down precipices, or compressed into deep and dismal gorges. This chain of mountains has obtained the title of the President's Range, in conse- quence of their most elevated peaks having been named after the chief magistrates of the United States, by a patriotic American traveller. The stupendous line runs from Mount Jackson to Mount Tyler, and there is yet room among their gigantic cousins for several succeeding dignitaries. The idea which suggested their adaptation to our natural history was a happy one. Perpetual memen- toes in the archives of our nation, they form no perishable notes of heraldry for the contempt of a succeeding age, but basing their stupendous data upon the eternal earth, pierce with their awful gran- deur the region of the clouds, to transcribe then- records on the face of heaven. The first of them, Mount Jackson, commences the list, in 41 deg. 10 min. ; Jefferson stands in 41 cleg. 30 min. : John Quincy Adams in 42 deg. 10 min.; Madison in 43 deg. ; Monroe in 43 deg. 10 min. ; Adams in 45 deg. ; Washington (the Mount St Helens of the English) in 46 deg. ; Van Buren, north-west of Puget's Sound, in 48 deg. ; Harrison, east of the same, in 47^ deg., and Tyler in 49 deg. Of these, Mount. Jackson is the largest, and is said to rise above the level of the sea near 20,000 feet. Washington, which is next in 234 HISTORY OF OREGON. size, is estimated at 17,000 to 18,000. This is the most beautiful of all. It ascends in a perfect cone, and two-thirds of its height is covered with perpetual snow.* The region of country lying between this range of mountains and the sea is known as the first or LOWER REGION OF OREGON. The Blue Mountains form the next division. They commence nearly in the centre of Oregon, on parallel of longitude 43 deg. west from Washington, and in 46 deg. of lat. They run southwesterly from this point for 200 miles in an irregular manner, occasion- ally interrupted, and shooting off in spurs to the south and west. The region between this ridge and the President's Range is called the second or middle region. Beyond the Blue Mountains, and lying between them and the Rocky Mountains, is the high coun- try, OR THIRD REGION OF OREGON. The general course of the Rocky Mountains is from south to south-east. They run south from 54 deg. 46 min., parallel to the coast (at a distance of 500 miles), for 300 miles, and gradually extend their distance from the sea by a continuous south-easterly course to over 700 at the 40th degree. In these mountains, and their offsets, rise the principal rivers * The limit of perpetual snow for these mountains is, according to Lieutenant Wilkes, 6,500 feet from the level of the sea. HISTORY OP OREGON. 235 which find their way into the Pacific to the west, and the Gulf of Mexico on the east. Near the 42nd parallel is a remarkable depression in the chain, called " the Southern Pass " which experience has proved affords a short and easy route for carriages from our States into the territory of Oregon. Above the 48th parallel, again, other passes are formed by the course of the rivers, from either side, which find their way in some places between the mountains. There are other ridges intersecting the face of this vast country, but they are principally offsets or spurs of the three main chains already described. The principal of these is the Wind River cluster, on the east of the Rocky Mountains, from which flow many of the head-waters of the Missouri and the Yellow Stone Rivers. Climate and Characteristics of the Three Regions. The third region or high country is a rocky, barren, broken country, traversed in all direc- tions by stupendous mountain spurs, on the peaks of which snow lies nearly all the year. It is from 2,000 to 3,000 feet above the level of the sea, and in conse- cpaence the rivers flowing through it westward to the Columbia are broken at frequent intervals by the rugged descent, and rendered unnavigable almost throughout the whole of their course. There are but few arable spots in this whole section of territory, its level plains, except narrow strips in the immediate 26b HISTORY OF OREGON. vicinity of the rivers, being covered with sand or gravel, and being also generally volcanic in their character. The distinguishing features of the terri- tory are its extreme dryness, and the difference of its temperature between the day and the night. It sel- dom rains except during a few days in the spring, and no moisture is deposited in dews. In addition to these discouraging features, the climate, from its enclosure between these snowy barriers, is extremely variable, a difference of fifty and sixty degrees taking place between sunrise and mid-day. The soil is moreover much impregnated with salts, springs of which abound in many places. It will be seen by reference to the journal which forms the latter por- tion of this work, that some of these possess highly medicinal qualities, and from the beauty of their situation will doubtless become, before time is done, the resort of the fashionable population of Western America. Notwithstanding all these unfavourable qualities, there are many small prairies within its mountains, which, from their production of a nutritious bunch grass, are well adapted for grazing purposes, and in despite of its changeable climate, stock is found to thrive well, and to endure the severity of the winter without protection. The second or middle region of Oregon, between the Blue and the President Ranges, is less elevated than the third, and consequently all the stern HISTORY OF OREGON. 237 extremities of the latter's climate and soil are pro- portionately modified. Its mean height is about a thousand feet above the level of the sea, and much of its surface is a rolling prairie country, with the ex- ception of the portion above latitude 48 deg., -which is very much broken by rivers and traverse mountain chains. It is consequently adapted only in sections to farming purposes. Plenty of game, however, is found in the forests of the country to compensate for its unfitness for agriculture. Below this parallel, and in the middle of the section, are extensive plains, admirably adapted to stock raising, from the per- petual verdure always overspreading them, and from the salubrious climate that prevails throughout their neighbourhood. Cattle thrive even better here than in the low country, and there is no necessity for housing them at any time ; neither need provender be laid in, the natural hay found always in abund- ance on the prairies being preferred by them to the fresh grass upon the bottoms. It is in this region the Indians raise their immense herds of horses, and here, whenever the territory shall be numerously settled, may be bred clouds of horsemen, who would not be exceeded by any light cavalry in the world. The southern portion of this region, as it advances to the boundary line, becomes less favourable to the purposes of man, and loses its fertility by rolling into swelling sand-hills, producing nothing but the wild wormwood, mixed with prickly pear, and a sparse sprinkling of short bunch grass. 238 HISTORY OF OREGON. The first or lower region of Oregon is that which lies along the coast, and extends westward to the line of the President's range of mountains. The portion of this lying north of the Columbia and be- tween it and the Straits of Fuca, is a heavily tim- bered country covered with forests of trees of extra- ordinary size. It has, however, its spaces of prairie on which good pasturage is found, and it has also some fine arable land. This section is watered by four rivers, of which the Chickelis, disemboguing into the Columbia, and the Cowelitz, emptying into the sea at Gray's Harbour, are the most important. The forests of this portion of the lower region are its great feature. They consist of pines, firs, spruce, red and white oak, ash, arbutus, arbor vita?, cedar, poplar, maple, willow, cherry, and yew, with so close and matted an undergrowth of hazel, and other brambles, as to render them almost impenetrable to the foot of man. Most of the trees are of an enor- mous bulk, and they are studded so thick that they rise before the beholder like a stupendous and im- pregnable solidity, which declares futile all ordinary attempts to penetrate it. This astonishing exuber- ance is not confined alone to the timber of the section north of the Columbia, for we have an account of a fir growing at Astoria, eight miles from the ocean, on the southern bank of the Columbia, which mea- sured forty-six feet in circumference at ten feet from the ground, ascended one hundred and fifty-three feet before giving ofi° a branch, and was three hun- HISTORY OF OHEGOX. 239 dred feet in its whole height. Another tree of the same species is said to be standing on the Umpqua, the trunk of which is fifty-seven feet in circumfer- ence, and two hundred and sixteen feet in length below its branches. Prime sound pines, from two hundred to two hundred and eighty feet in height, and from twenty to forty in circumference, are by no means uncommon. The value of this spon- taneous wealth has already been appreciated by the acute company who reign commercially pre- dominant in this region, for already their untiring saw mills, plied by gangs of Sandwich Islanders and servile Iroquois, cut daily at Fort Vancouver alone thousands of feet of plank, which are transported regularly to the markets of the Pacific Islands. But to return to that section of the lower region lying between the Columbia and the Straits of Fuca. The banks of the Cowelitz are generally bare of timber, but the soil in their immediate vicinity is for the most part poor. The Hudson's Bay Company, however, have a fine farm of six hundred acres in its western valley, which in 1841 produced seven thou- sand bushels of wheat. The average produce is twenty bushels to the acre. They have also a saw and grist mill now in operation there, both of which find a market for their products in the Sandwich and other islands of Polynesia. Live stock do not suc- ceed avcII on these farms, and this is owing to the absence of low prairie grounds near the river, and 240 HISTORY OF OREGON. also to the extensive depredations of the wolves. The hilly portion of the country immediately around, though its soil is very good, is too heavily timbered to be available for agricultural purposes, and this is also the case with many portions of the level land. There are, however, large tracts of fine prairie at intervals between, suitable for cultivation and ready for the plough. Proceeding northward, we came to Fort Nasqually, a fine harbour at the southern point of Puget's Sound. Here the Hudson's Bay Company have another fine settlement, and raise wheat (fifteen bushels to the acre), oats, peas, potatoes, and make butter for the Russian settlements. On the islands of the sound, and on the upper sections of Admiralty Inlet, the Indians cultivate potatoes in great abundance. These vegetables are extremely fine, and constitute a large portion of their food. Having disposed of this section, we come now to that portion of the lower region lying south of the Columbia, between the President's Range and the coast. This, by universal agreement, is admitted to be the finest portion of all Oregon. It is entered by the Willamette River, about five miles below Van- couver, which stream extends into its bosom over two hundred miles. This river is navigable for steam-boats and vessels of light draught for nearly forty miles, when you come to a fall — the invariable feature of the rivers of this territory. Above the HISTORY OF OREGON. 241 falls are the principal settlements of Oregon. Here the American adventurers have principally established themselves, and by the contributions of the emigra- tions from the States their number is rapidly increas- ing. As these settlements are described with some particularity in the journal which concludes this work, we will omit a particular account of them in this place. The fertile portion of the valley of the Willamette is about two hundred and fifty miles long, and aver- ages about seventy in width, making in all a surface of more than seventeen thousand square miles of rich arable land. The soil is an unctuous, heavy, black loam, which yields to the producer a ready and pro- fuse return for the slightest outlay of his labour. The climate is mild throughout the year, but the summer is warm and very dry. From April to Oc- tober, while the sea breezes prevail, rain seldom falls in any part of Oregon. During the other months, and while the south winds blow, the rains are fre- quent, and at times abundant. In the vallies of the low country snow is seldom seen, and the ground is so rarely frozen that plough- ing may generally be carried on the whole winter. In 1834 the Columbia was frozen over for thirteen days, but this was principally attributable to the accumulation of ice from above. " This country," says Wyeth, " is well calculated for wheat, barley, oats, rye, peas, apples, potatoes, and all the vegetables 242 HISTORY OF OREGON. cultivated in the northern part of the Union. Indian corn does not succeed well, and is an unprofitable crop." A letter * recently received from Oregon, and giving an account of last year's crop, will serve to show the wonderful productiveness of this delightful region, f Of this valley Lieutenant Wilkes says, " the wheat yields thirty-five or forty bushels for one bushel * " The harvest is just at hand, and such crops of wheat, barley, oats, peas, and potatoes, are seldom, if ever, to be seen in the States, that of wheat in particular — the stalks being in many instances as high as my head, the grains generally much larger — I would not much exaggerate to say they are as large again as those grown east of the mountains. The soil is good, and the climate most su- perior, being mild the year round, and very healthy, more so than any country I have lived in the same length of time. Produce bears an excellent price — pork, ten cents ; beef, six cents ; potatoes, fifty cents ; wheat, one dollar per bushel. These articles are pur- chased at the above prices with great avidity by the merchants for shipment generally to the Sandwich Islands and Russian settle- ments on this continent, and are paid for mostly in stores and groceries, the latter of which is the product of these islands, par- ticularly sugar and coffee, of which abundant supplies are furnished. Wages for labourers are high— common hands are getting from one to two dollars per day, and mechanics from two to four dollars per day. It is with difficulty men can be procured at these prices, so easily can they do better on their farms. The plains are a per- petual meadow, furnishing two complete new crops in a year, spring and fall, the latter remaining green through the winter. Beef is killed from the grass at any season of the year. If you have any enterprise left, or if your neighbours have any, here is the place for them." f The above is an extract of a letter from General McCarver, who is at present the Speaker of the Lower House of Oregon. HISTORY OF OREGON. 243 sown ; or from twenty to thirty to the acre. Its quality is superior to that grown in the United States, and its weight is nearly four pounds to the bushel heavier. The above is the yield of the new land; but it is believed it will greatly exceed this after the third crop, when the land has been broken up and well tilled. In comparison to our own country, I would say that the labour necessary to acquire wealth or subsistence is in proportion of one to three ; or, in other words, a man must work through the year three times as much in the United States to gain the same competency. The care of stock, which occupies so much time with us, requires no attention here, and on the increase alone a man might find support." South of the valley of the "Willamette we come to that of the Umpqua, in which are found large prairies of unsurpassable arable land, though the vicinage of the river is chiefly remarkable for its gigantic pine timber. Some idea of the extraordinary size of its forest trees may be obtained from the fact that their seed cones are sometimes more than a foot in length. Below the Umpqua we next arrive at the country watered by the Tootootutna, or Rouges River, and beyond that, to the voluptuous valley of the Klamet. These lower portions of the first region are thought by many to be the paradise of the whole territory, excelling in richness of soil and voluptuousness of climate even the celebrated valley of the Willamette. 244 HISTOEY OF OREGON. Of this opinion is Lieutenant Wilkes, to whose ex- ertions and researches we are indebted for most of our accurate geographical knowledge of the western portion of Oregon. Indeed, probability seems to be in favour of regarding the vallies of the Klamet, Tootootutna, and the Umpqua, as the gardens of the west, and the cause of the preference of the northern portions is to be attributed mostly to the readier access afforded to them by the avenue of the Colum- bia. Population, however, is already gradually en- croaching further and further south, and but few years will elapse before coasters will be running down to the mouths of these three rivers for their agricultural products. The principal settlement of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany is situated at Vancouver, on the Columbia ; a point ninety miles from its mouth. At this station the main branch of foreign commerce is carried on, and from it the chief exports in the Avay of pine plank, the grains, butter, &c, is made to the Russian settlements, and to the islands of the ocean. They have another farm upon the Fallatry plains, west of the Willamette and about ten miles from Vancouver, which is also well stocked, and in productive cul- tivation. Before concluding our description of this portion of Oregon, it may be well to state that the continual influx of emigrants from the States at the station of the Willamette, and the occasional connections of in- HISTORY OF OREGON. 245 terest, rendered it necessary, in the absence of pro- tection from the laws of the Republic, that the Ame- rican settlers should establish a territorial government for themselves. They have accordingly proceeded to constitute two legislative bodies, to appoint a Chief Justice, and make the necessary ministerial officers to enforce his decisions. The two houses meet at stated periods in the year for the transaction of all the necessary business of the little body politic, and the degree of importance which the new legislature has already obtained may be estimated by the fact that the officers of the Hud- son's Bay Company have accorded their acknowledg- ment of its powers, by applying through the chief governor of all the stations in the territory (Doctor McLaughlin) for a charter for a canal around the Willamette Falls. The exclusive right was granted to him for twenty years, on the condition that he should, in two years, construct a canal around them sufficient for the passage of boats thirteen feet in width. This recognition of the authority of the legislative confederacy would, however, be a politic course in the resident governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, even though he should be ever so averse to it ; for such recognition would not affect the interests of his association in case it were overthrown by his own government, and it would afford him, meanwhile, an opportunity for the cpaiet pursuit of his plans. It is 246 HISTOET OF OREGON. but just, however, to bear in mind, that the juris- diction exercised by the company over all the citizens in the territory, previous to this legislative conven- tion, was not their own arrogation, but the investi- ture of the British Government, for its own special objects ; and it is no less just to say that this power was exercised by the gentleman above named, during his rule, with a temperance and fairness but seldom found in those who have no immediate superior to account to. The letter that brings us this latter information also tells us the Doctor has already commenced his work with a large number of hands, and that there is no doubt of his perfect ability to complete it within the time named. He was likewise constructing at the date of this information (last August) a large flouring mill with four run of burs, which was to be ready for business last fall. The Rivers. Having completed a description of the general characteristics of the three regions of Oregon, there remains but one feature of its geography unfinished ; and as that extends for the most part continuously from region to region, it could not be properly em- braced in the particular account of any one. We allude to the course and characteristics of the Colum- bia River and its tributaries. The northern branch of the Columbia River rises HISTORY OF OREGON. 247 in latitude 50 cleg, north, and 116 min. west (from Greenwich) thence it pursues a northern route to McGillivray's Pass in the Rocky Mountains. There it meets the Canoe River, and by that tributary as- cends north-westerly for eighty miles more. At the boat encampment at the pass, another stream also joins it through the mountains, and here the Colum- bia is 3,600 feet above the level of the sea. It now turns south, having some obstructions to its safe navigation in the way of rapids, receiving many tri- butaries in its course to Colville, among which the Beaver, Salmon, Flatbow, and Clarke's Rivers from the east, and the Colville and two smaller tributaries higher up from the west, are the chief. This great river is bounded thus far on its course by a range of high, well-wooded mountains, and in places expands into a line of lakes before it reaches Colville, where it is 2,049 feet above the level of the sea, having a fall of 550 feet in 220 miles. Fort Colville stands in a plain of 2,000 or 3,000 acres. There the Hudson's Bay Company have a considerable settlement and a farm under cultivation, producing from 3,000 to 4,000 bushels of different grains, with which many of their other forts are sup- plied. On Clarke's River the company have another post called Flathead House, situated in a rich and beautiful country spreading westward to the bases of the Rocky Mountains. On the Flatbow also the company have a post, named Fort Kootanie. 248 HISTORY OF OREGON. From Fort Colville the Columbia trends westward for about sixty miles, and then receives the Spokan from the south. This river rises in the lake of the Pointed Heart, which lies in the bosom of extensive plains of the same name. It pursues a north-westerly course for about two hundred miles, and then empties into the Columbia. Its valley, according to Mr Spaulding, an American Missionary who surveyed it, may be extensively used as a grazing district ; but its agricultural capabilities are limited. The chief features of its region are (like those of the upper country, through which we have already traced the Columbia and its tributaries) extensive forests of timber and wide sandy plains intersected by bold and high mountains. From the Spokan the Columbia continues its westerly course for sixty miles, receiving several smaller streams, until it comes to the Okanagan, a river finding its source in a line of lakes to the north, and affording boat and canoe navigation to a consi- derable extent up its course. On the east side of this river, and near its junction with the Columbia, the Company have another station called Fort Okanagan. Though the country bordering on the Okanagan is generally worthless, this settlement is situated among a number of small, but rich arable plains. After passing the Okanagan, the Columbia takes a southward turn, and runs in that direction for one hundred and sixty miles to Wallawalla, receiving in HISTORY OF OREGON. 249 its course the Piscous, the Ekama, and Entyatecoom from the west, and lastly, the Saptin or Lewis River from the south. From this point the part of the Columbia which we have traced, though obstructed by rapids, is navigable for canoes to the Boat En- campment, a distance of five hundred miles to the north. The Saptin takes its rise in the Rocky Mountains, passes through the Blue, and reaches the Columbia after having pursued a north-westerly di- rection for five hundred and twenty miles. It brings a large volume of water to the latter stream, but in consecpience of its extensive and numerous rapids, it is not navigable even for canoes, except in reaches. This circumstance is to be deplored, as its course is the line of route for the emigration of the States. It receives a large number of tributaries, of which the Kooskooske and Salmon are the chief. Our previous account of the arid and volcanic character of this region obviates the necessity of a farther description here. There is a trading station upon the Saptin near the southern boundary line, called Fort Hall, and one also near its junction with the Columbia, called Fort Wallawalla. The Columbia at Walla- walla is twelve hundred and eighty-four feet above the level of the sea, and about three thousand five hundred feet wide. It now takes it last turn to the westward, pursuing a rapid course of eighty miles to the Cascades, and receiving the Umatilla, QuisnelPs, John Day's, and Chute Rivers from 250 HISTORY OP OREGON. the south, and Cathlata's from the north. At the Cascades the navigation of the river is inter- rupted by a series of falls and rapids, caused by the immense volume forcing its way through the gorge of the President's Range. From the Cascades there is still-water navigation for forty miles, when the river is again obstructed by rapids ; after passing these, it is navigable for one hundred and twenty miles to the ocean. The only other great independent river in the territory is the Tacoutche or Frazer's River. It takes its rise in the Rocky Mountains near the source of Canoe River; thence it takes a north-westerly course for eighty miles, when it makes a turn southward, receiving Stuart's River, which brings down its"waters from a chain of lakes extending to the 56th degree of latitude. Turning down from Stuart's River, the Tacoutche pursues a southerly course until it reaches latitude 49 deg., where it breaks through the Cascade range in a succession of falls and rapids, then turns to the west, and after a course of seventy miles more, disembogues into the Gulf of Georgia, on the Straits of Fuca, in latitude 47 deg. 7 min. Its whole length is three hundred and fifty miles, but it is only navigable for seventy miles from its mouth by vessels drawing twelve feet of water. It has three trading posts upon it belonging to the company : Fort Langley at its mouth, Fort Alexandria at the junction of a small stream a few miles south of Quisnell's River, and another at the HISTORY OF OREGON. 251 junction of Stuart's River. The country drained by this river is poor and generally unfit for cultivation. The climate is extreme in its variations of heat and cold, and in the fall months dense fogs prevail, which bar every object from the eye beyond the distance of a hundred yards. The chief features of the section are extensive forests, transverse ranges of low coun- tries, and vast tracts of marshes and lakes, formed by the streams descending from the surrounding heights. The character of the great rivers is peculiar — rapid and sunken much below the level of the country, with perpendicular banks, they run as it were in trenches, which make it extremely difficult to get at the water in many places, owing to their steep ba- saltic walls. They are at many points contracted by dalles, or narrows, which during the rise, back the Avater some distance, submerging islands and tracts of low prairie, and giving them the appearance of extensive lakes. The soil along the river bottoms is generally alluvial, and would yield good crops, were it not for the overflowing of the rivers which check and kill the grain. Some of the finest portions of the land are thus unfitted for cultivation. They are generally covered with water before the banks are overflown, in consequence of the quicksands that exist in them, and through which the water percolates. The rise of the streams flowinc; from the Cascade 252 HISTOKY OF OEEGON. Mountains takes place twice a year, in February and November, and are produced by heavy and abundant rains. The rise of the Columbia takes place in May and June, and is attributable to the melting of the snows. Sometimes the swell of the latter is very sudden, if heavy rains should also happen at that period ; but it is generally gradual, and reaches its greatest height from the 6th to the 15th of June. Its perpendicular rise is from eighteen to twenty feet at Vancouver, where a line of embankment has been thrown up to protect the lower prairie ; but it has generally been flooded during these visitations, and the crops often destroyed. The greatest rise of the Willamette takes place in February, and sometimes ascending to the height of twenty feet, does considerable damage. Both this river and the Cowelitz are much swollen by the backing of their waters during the height of the Columbia, all their lower grounds being at such times submerged. This puts an effectual bar to the bor- der prairies being used for anything but pasturage. This happily is fine throughout the year, except in the season of floods, when the cattle must be driven to the high grounds. The lakes of Oregon are numerous and well dis- tributed in the different regions of the territory. In the northern section the Okanagan (from which flows the river of that name), Stuart's, and Frazer's, near the upper boundary ; Quisnell's in 53 cleg., and HISTORY OF OREGON. 253 Klamloop's in 51 deg., are the largest. In the cen- tral section we have the Flatbow, the Cour d'Alene, or " Pointed Heart," and the Kullespelm ; and in the southern district are the Klamet, the Pit, and an abundance of inferior lakes, as yet unnoticed on the maps, and for which geographers have not yet been able to discover names. Several of the latter are salt, and, at intervals, we find chains of hot springs bubbling in some plaees above the ground, like those of Iceland. The smaller lakes are said to add much to the picturesque beauty of the streams. The whole territory is well watered in all direc- tions, and from the peculiar character of its rivers, their descent, the rapidity of their currents, and their frecpient falls, there is perhaps no country in the world which affords so many facilities for manufac- turing purposes through the agency of water power. This is a peculiarly happy circumstance, when taken into consideration with the fact that the timber overspreading the western portion, and clustering around its mill sites, will for a long time form one of the principal exports in the markets of the Pacific. This will appear from the high prices which it now commands, and also from the fact that no other portion of the north-west eoast produces it. Already trading vessels resort to the mouth of the Columbia to supply themselves with spars, and other necessary materials, and the improving facilities of inland in- 254 HISTORY OF OREGON". terconimunication has directed some of it from point to point within the territory. Having now completed our account of the great physical characteristics of Oregon, our attention na- turally turns to those portions of its natural history which are equally necessary to render a land service- able to the wants of man. Of these, the first and most important are the fisheries. "These," says Lieutenant Wilkes, " are so immense, that the whole native population subsist on them." All the rivers, bays, harbours, and shores, of the coast and islands, abound in salmon, sturgeon, cod, carp, sole, flounders, ray, perch, herring, lamprey eels, and a kind of smelt or sardine, which is extremely abundant. The dif- ferent kinds predominate alternately, according to the situations of the respective fisheries, but the salmon abound everywhere over all. This superior fish is found in the largest quantities in the Columbia, and the finest of them are taken at the Dalles. They run twice a-year, May and October, and appear in- exhaustible. To so great an extent is traffic in them aleady advanced, that the establishment at Vancouver alone exports ten thousand barrels of them annually. There are also large quantities of oysters, clams, crabs, mussels, and other kinds of shell-fish, found in the different bays and creeks of the country; and, to complete this piscatory feature, we are further told that whales are also found in numbers along the coast HISTORY OF OREGON. 255 and at the mouth of the Strait of Fuca, where they are frequently captured by the piscivorous aborigines. Of game an equal abundance exists. In the spring and fall the rivers literally swarm with geese, duck, cranes, swans, and other species of water-fowl ; and the elk, deer, antelope, bear, wolf, fox, marten, beaver, muskrat, grizzly bear, and siffleur, make, with them, the harvest of the hunter's rifle. In the middle section little or no game is to be found, but in the third region, the buffalo are plenty, and form an at- traction to numerous hunting parties of the Blackfeet and Oregon Indians. The population of Oregon territory has been esti- mated by Lieutenant Wilkes to be about 20,000, of whom 19,200 or 300 are aborigines, and the remain- ing 700 or 800, whites. This number and its pro- portions have, however, increased and varied con- siderably since the time of his estimate. The years succeeding his visit beheld large emigrations from the States, and the white population of Oregon may now be safely set down as being between 2,000 and 3,000, of whom the majority are from the States. The largest portion of these are located in the valley of the Willamette, where, as we have already seen, they have adopted a government of their own. The other white inhabitants are sprinkled about in different portions of the territory, at the establishments of the Hudson's Bay Company, whose officers and servants amount, in all, to between 500 and 600, but this 25Q HISTORY OF OREGON. number does not include their Iroquois and Sandwich Island serfs. There are no means of ascertaining with accuracy the numbers of the aboriginal population, as many of them move from place to place in the fishing seasons ; but, for the purpose of furnishing the reader with the nearest warrant for reliance, we will here insert a tabular statement, prepared by Mr Crawford, of the Indian department, for the use of last Congress. Indians West of the Rocky Mountains, in the Oregon District, and their Numbers. Nes Perces - Chimnapuns - 2,000 Ponderas - Shallatlos - 200 Flat-heads - - 800 Speannaros - - 240 Cour D'Alene - Saddals - 400 Shoshonies - - 1,800 Wallawallahs - 2,600 Callapooahs - Chopunnishees - 3,000 Umbaquahs - Catlashoots - - 430 Kiyuse - Pohahs - 2,000 Spokeus - Willewahs - - 1,000 Oknanagans - Sinacsops - 200 Cootomies - - Chillokittequaws - 2,400 Chilts - 800 Echebools - - 1,000 Chinookes - - 400 Wahupums - - 1,000 Snakes - 1,000 Euesteurs - - 1,200 Cathlamahs - - 200 Clackamurs - - 1,800 Wahkiakumes - 200 Chanwappans - 400 Skillutes - 2,500 Sokulks - 3,000 29,570 HISTORY OF OREGON. 257 The most numerous and warlike of the Oregon Indians are in the islands to the north, but on the main land they are generally friendly and well-dis- posed. They are, however, rapidly passing away before the advancing destiny of a superior race, and with the wild game, vanish gradually from the white man's tracks. Those remaining are a servile and degraded class, who perform the meanest offices of the settlements, and readily consent to a mode of existence under the missionaries and other settlers, but little short of vassalage. In the Willamette valley there are now left but a few remnants of the once numerous and powerful tribes that formerly inhabited it. At the mouth of the Columbia there are some few of the Chenooks still left, and about the Cascades and at the Dalles still linger considera- ble numbers of this ill-fated and fast-fading people. There is no longer any spirit left in them; their hearts are broken, their bows unstrung, and from lords of the soil they have sunk to the degradation of its slaves. The Kiuses and Nes Perces still maintain a por- tion of their independence, but numbers of them, through the exertions of the missionaries, have made considerable advances in civilization, and many more would doubtless adapt themselves to a more methodi- cal system of life, were not the first lessons of the science an exaction of their labours for the benefit of others. At the present they can only be regarded 258 HISTORY OF OREGON. in the light of a servile population, which, in the existing dearth of labour, is rendered of vast service to the active settler. In speaking of the influences of the missionaries over the Indians, Lieutenant Wilkes remarks : " They have done but little towards Chris- tianizing the natives, being principally engaged in cultivating the mission farms, and in the increase of their own flocks and herds. As far as my personal observation went, there are very few Indians to engage their attention, and they seemed more occu- pied with the settlement of the country and agricul- tural pursuits than in missionary labours." The treatment of the Indians by the Hudson's Bay Company is politic and judicious ; they rigidly en- force that wise provision of their charter which for- bids the sale of ardent spirits, and in carrying it out have even been known, upon the arrival of a vessel at the Columbia with spirits aboard, to purchase that portion of the cargo, to prevent others from defeating the wisdom of the prohibition. Schools for the native children are attached to all the principal trading posts, and particular care is extended to the education of the half-breed children,* the joint offspring of the traders and the Indian women, who are retained and bred, as far as possible, among the whites, and subse- quently employed, when found capable, in the service of the company. The policy of this course is obvious. * A natural obligation where so many are born. HISTORY OF OREGON. 259 The savage is gradually cured of his distrust, and coaxed into new connexions. He abandons the use of his bows, his arrows, and all his former arms, and the result is that he soon becomes an absolute de- pendent upon those who furnish him his guns, ammu- nition, fish-hooks, blankets, &c. Reykell and Weight, Little Pulteney street, Regent street. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide I Treatment Date: March 2010 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION j 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111 li-^imMii^r ■ 11 PI LIBRARY of 011291593 CONGRESS A •