i 
 
LETTERS 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR SINGLETON, ESQ. 
 
 r\>n\3ht-_ H^V^^Y C_0^S\AJ-&.1\ 
 
 BOSTOJV : 
 PUBLISHED BY RICHARDSON AND LORD. 
 
 J. H. A. FROST, Printer. 
 
 1824. 
 
f il3 
 
 DISTRICT OF MASS.iCHUSETTS, to wit : 
 
 District Clerk^s Office. 
 BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the fourteenth day of July, A. D. 
 1824, in the forty-ninth year of the Independence of the United States 
 of America, Richardson & Lord, of the said District, have deposited 
 in this office the title of a Book, the right whereof they claim as Pro- 
 prietors, in the words following, to wit : 
 
 " Letters from the South and West, by Arthur Singleton, Esq." 
 In Conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, entitled, 
 " An Act for the encouragement of Learning, by securing the Copies of 
 Maps, Cliarts and Books, to the Authors and Proprietors of such copies, 
 during the times therein mentioned :" and also to an Act entitled, " An 
 Act supplementary to an Act, entitled, " An Act for the encourage- 
 ment of Learnins;, by securing the copies of Maps, Charts and Books, to 
 the Authors and Proprietors of such copies during the times thereia 
 mentioned; and extending the benefits thereof to the Arts of Design- 
 ing, Engraving and Etching Historical and other Prints." 
 
 JOHN W. DAVIS, 
 Clerk of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 ^4> 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LETTER FROM PHILADELPHIA, 5 
 
 LETTER FROM WASHINGTON CITY, 33 
 
 LETTER FROM VIRGINIA, 57 
 
 LETTER FROM KENTUCKY, 83 
 
 LETTER FROM NEW ORLEANS, 109 
 
 LETTER FROM THE GULF OF MEXICO, 135 
 
LETTER FROM PHILADELPHIA, 
 
 mBQt^QtX^m. 
 
 DEAR BROTHER, 
 
 THIS city, which is the great metropolis of 
 Penn's Woodland, and which was eulogized by Him 
 of Tarsus, ' h ^]xx^e?^<pix ^uiWu -, Philadelphia forever ! 
 a Greek compound, you perceive, signifying broth- 
 erly-love ; is as level as a Quaker's broad brim. 
 The day after my arrival, I ascended the almost only 
 eminence in the city, one of the two shot-towers, to 
 spy down upon it. It appears not unlike a horizon- 
 tal Brodingnagian brick-kiln ; long never-ending 
 blocks of brick, with little holes at bottom to creep 
 in at; and little holes at top to peep out at. At 
 this altitude, the eager currents of human beings 
 appear diminished into a small folk, like Lilliputians ; 
 all, like the armies of the grandson of Cyrus, in a 
 hundred years, to be no more. The city, which is 
 six score of miles from the sea by the channel, is spread 
 upon the isthmus between the Delaware, and the 
 Schuylkill, half a score of miles above their conflu- 
 ence. These two rivers, east and west of the city, 
 are, the one grand, the other picturesque ; and the 
 
6 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 elegant light broad- spanned arch thrown over the 
 latter by our townsman Palmer, recalls agreeable 
 associations. The Delaware waters were, last winter, 
 so consolidated, opposite the city, tliat a festive ox 
 was roasted whole upon the ice. Although this 
 river is now floating ships to and fro from all nations, 
 once was the time, when, if a ship arrived from 
 Europe, the citizens used to chime Christ-church 
 bells. As tliis city is, in many respects, the metrop- 
 olis of the states, I confess I was disappointed in its 
 externals. The streets running south and north 
 were, in olden prime, called after the trees in the 
 vicinity : — cedar, mulberry, sassafras, vine ; chesnut, 
 walnut, spruce, and pine. The streets crossing east 
 and west are numbered ; and the whole, being 
 divided into wards and squares, spreads into an 
 immense chequer-board. There is but one crooked 
 street in the city ; and that, which is crooked, can- 
 not be made straight. After you have vvalked one 
 square, you have seen the whole. Indeed, the 
 houses are so thick, there is no room for land. No 
 spires, no domes, few bells, few promenades ; no 
 any thing to relieve the eye, or arrest the fancy. 
 There is nothing like the long marble-fronted, but 
 too finical. City- Hall ; or the irregular, but beauti- 
 fully verdant Battery, of New- York. Every view 
 is quakerfied. No marvel, that Paine said, though 
 rather irreverently, if a Quaker had been consulted 
 at the Creation, what a drab-coloured world we 
 should have had. Still, it is a noble city; wealthy, 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 7 
 
 substantial^ convenient; with extending blocks of 
 massy private tenements ; and a very few piiblick 
 edifices of simple Doric grandeur, as, in particular, 
 the marble bank. Christ-church is rather of the 
 Gothic structure, and elegant ; the bricks of this, 
 and also of many other ancient buildings in the city, 
 are, one red, another black glazed, in alternation. 
 The six stately Corinthian columns, which support the 
 roof in front of the first Presbyterian Church, look 
 majestically. The national mint, or money- mine, is 
 in this city ; and was formerly under the supervisor- 
 ship of Rittenhouse. Central in the city, is a spacious 
 mansion-house, which was erected for the President, 
 when Congress, in by-gone years, sat in this metropo- 
 lis. The water-works, whose hydrants supply the 
 city with water inducted for three miles in subterra- 
 nean conduits, with their ponderous steam-enginery, 
 are proofs of the resistless submission of vast mechan- 
 ical power to human ingenuity. In the circular mall, 
 which enclosed the former nucleus of these works, is a 
 small 7*6^ (Peau, where the fluid is spouted upwards 
 through the long snipe-bill of a sculptured water- 
 fowl, which stands upon the shoulder of a water- 
 nymph ; and, after rising about twenty feet into the 
 air, spreads and falls in spray into a grassy-fringed 
 fountain beneath. In the western part of the city, 
 are Vauxhall-Gardens, included, with a Rotundo in 
 the centre ; and about four miles out of the city, on 
 the border of the Schuylkill, are the beautiful botani- 
 cal gardens of the Bartrams ; the first ever in the 
 
8 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 country ; and where once loved to stroll, and where 
 first germinated the splendid idea of Wilson, the 
 Ornithologist. From Market- street wharf, upon 
 which Franklin first landed, one has a fine view of 
 Jersey-shore opposite ; and of the Mariners Hotel, 
 fitted from the hull of a large ship, with an ensign for 
 a sign, and moored on the middle of the river. The 
 Delaware is daily crossed by steam-boats, with their 
 broad dusky pennons of steam trailing behind ; and by 
 team-boats, which wheel along the water, propelled 
 by horses on board in circular motion. About four 
 miles above the city, on the west banks ef the river, 
 are the almost forgotten ruins of the mansion of Wil- 
 liam Penn, upon whose top was once, it is said, a 
 leaden fish-pond. It is a curious fact in Natural 
 History, that the environs of this city, and of Jersey, 
 are visited, once in sevtntten years, with locusts in 
 Egyptian multitudes. Most places this way, even if 
 small, are chartered with their mayor, recorder, 
 aldermen, and common council ; and I trust that 
 Boston will soon persuade its honest township into a 
 lordly city ; inasmuch as green-turtles are plenty. 
 Soon after my arrival, a report of peace convulsed 
 the whole city into ecstacies. Illumination ! illumi- 
 nation ! Briareus, with his hundred hands, was 
 wanted to light the flambeaux of rejoicing. Soon, 
 however, a counter-report palsied the spirits, and 
 extinguished the tapers. 
 
 The Philadelphian Hospital, the Franklin Library, 
 the Academy of Arts, and Peale's Museum, are 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 9 
 
 noble and munificent institutions. The Hospital is 
 like a palace, and in its elegant garden-like front yard 
 stands upon a cubic pedestal, with a golden-lettered 
 scroll in his hand, a portly bronze statue of Penn. 
 In the anatomical theatre, over the circular table, is 
 pendent a human skeleton ; that the dead may in- 
 struct the living. Before I viewed the interior of 
 the Hospital, 1 made some inquiries of an alderman 
 who, although he had for many years lived near, had 
 never found leisure to visit it. This reminded me 
 of a dame, who had lived next door to St. Paul's 
 Cathedral, in London, for above thirty years, and 
 yet, although she had thus purposed almost every 
 day, had never entered it ; she knew that she might 
 go in at any time, and therefore had as yet been in 
 at no time. A stranger, who has but a few weeks in 
 which to visit all London, will visit Paul's during the 
 first days. I was told of an affecting reply made by 
 a son of a late famed physician of this city, a navy 
 lieutenant, who now suffers an alienation of mind, in 
 consequence of having shot his friend in a duel. 
 Since his residence in the Hospital, the tonsor once, 
 noticing that his hair was becoming very gray for a 
 young man, remarked : — " Sir, your hairs are turn- 
 ing quite gray ; but gray hairs are honourable.'' 
 " Yes," he replied with a sigh, ^^ honour has made 
 my hairs gray." In a niche over the entrance into 
 the Library stands, in a contemplative attitude, a 
 marble statue of Frankhn, sculptured in Italy. Into 
 this library, even more freely than into an Athenaeum, 
 
10 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 any stranger may daily enter, and call for any book, 
 or folio of prints, for perusal ; until the closing hour 
 is announced by Oliver Cromwell's clock. This 
 alone would make us proud to remember Franklin. 
 Although the English aflect to sneer at American 
 genius, yet, who has heretofore conquered their 
 conquerors ? Who has disarmed their forky light- 
 ning of its fangs? Who was the inventor of their 
 quadrant ? Who their philosopher for the poor ? 
 Who their steam instructer? Who could make 
 honest men of their counterfeiters? Who is their 
 royal president of painters ? Who their most author- 
 itative grammarian? Whence originated one of 
 their most revered London bishops? and one of 
 their poets? However, after this self-gnathonism, 
 we confess that, in literature, we have not above 
 half a score of authors worth recollecting ; but it 
 doth not yet appear, what we shall have. In Peale's 
 " School of Wisdom" is an entire skeleton, chiefly 
 of the real bones, of the huge mastodon ; and differ- 
 ent species of the superbly beautiful birds of Para- 
 dise; with about two hundred portraits, among 
 which, I sought for the mind in the faces of Priestly, 
 and of Paine. The painted man beckoning you to 
 follow him up stairs, deceives almost every one ; the 
 stairs are so natural, that I could not be undeceived, 
 until I had stooped down, and imprinted my nail 
 upon the canvass. In the Academy of Arts, are two 
 large early dramatic paintings by W^est ; Lear and 
 Cordelia, and Hamlet and Ophelia; purchased in 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 11 
 
 London by his friend Fulton, for about four hundred 
 guineas. West's great picture of " Christ healing 
 the sick in the Temple,"' is to be placed in a brick 
 edifice planned, as to the favourable disposition of 
 light, for this purpose. The prize painting of Als- 
 ton's, the Miracle of Elisha's bones, is expected to 
 be purchased for the Academy. Alston's pictures 
 have, I think, more of an antique cast in the colour- 
 ing than West's. Among the paintings here, is a 
 cartoon well done with the finger's end, and the 
 snufi" of a candle. The Witch of Endor, with her 
 chocolate cheek, her outspread leathern ears, and her 
 yellow jutting teeth ; is finely contrasted with the 
 portrait of the Albiness, with her beautiful luxuri- 
 ance of white silky glossy hair spread over her 
 shoulders and arms, and eye of a delicate pink iris. 
 Here are also, among the busts, two of those proud, 
 but perverted geniuses, Voltaire and Rousseau. 
 
 The Roman Catholics have four or five churches 
 in this city, as those of St. Augustine, St. Mary, and 
 other saints ; which form an extreme contrast to the 
 quakers. I know not whether you ever entered the 
 Church of the Holy Cross in Boston. A Catholic 
 church is usually known by a metallic cross on the 
 dome, or a marble one wrought into the front w^all. 
 The ceremonies, at first view, are quite imposing, 
 and somewhat ludicrously solemn. On the back wall, 
 behind the altar, is commonly a superb painting, on a 
 broad scale, of Christ upon the cross, and in the dis- 
 tance a view of Jerusalem as it was darkened at the 
 
12 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 crucifixion. Around, and upon the altar, stand the 
 pyx, and a hundred little gewgaws, or symbols, in pic- 
 ture frames. In front of the painting, along the altar, 
 and around the pulpit, are kept burning, during the 
 services, rows of magnificently tall wax- tapers ; some 
 a yard and a half erect, and as stout as a batoon ; 
 and lighted by a man with a high lifted rod, whose 
 unlighted point ignites them at a touch. Tapers are 
 in commemoration of the primitive converts, who 
 were obliged to meet in dark subterranean caverns ; 
 or a relic of those gothic abbeys, where religious awe 
 was inspired by the dimly admitted light through 
 their richly painted windows. The first duty of a 
 catholic, on entering the church, is to bend a passing 
 knee to the figure of Christ on the cross before men- 
 tioned ; and then to hasten and dip his finger-tips in 
 the holy-water, in the marble fonts near the doors, 
 and to cross himself ; that is, to touch the forehead, 
 the lower body, and each breast ; which is done in a 
 twinkling as by instinct ; the above movement of the 
 arm forming a cross upon the body. Not a catholic 
 finger, white or black, pure or impure, passes this 
 vase without a dip ; and even the infants are assisted 
 to cross their little breasts in the arms of their 
 nurses. There is something rather pleasing in this 
 memorial of the Saviour's sufferings. After this, the 
 worshippers enter their pews, except the discoloured 
 ones, who remain bowed down in the aisle, and, 
 dropping on their knees, repeat their pater- nosters, 
 credos, and ave-marias ; and count along the beads 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 13 
 
 of their rosaries, which represent so many saints and 
 saintesses ; and when they come to one they need, 
 they stop and keep rolling that bead over and over 
 between finger and thumb, until they have addressed 
 their petition unto him. This praying by proxy 
 must presuppose in the saints one of the attributes of 
 Deity, an auricular ubiquity, the being every where 
 present. Among the catholic ecclesiasticks, the 
 tonsure of the crown of the head, which is done with 
 prayers and benedictions, is the mark, and basis, of 
 all the orders ; and the circle of tonsure is enlarged 
 as they rise to higher degrees in the holy mother 
 church. The bishop, when ducking to and fro in 
 his conical cap, with his tall gilded crosier in his 
 hand, is attended by four, or half a dozen, small 
 handsome boys, in scarlet and white costume, to skip 
 about behind him, gingle the bell, and uplift the 
 skirt of his gorgeous cope, as he moves. But nothing 
 can be more grateful, or purifying, than the odo- 
 riferous incense steaming from the waving censer. 
 When the priest, within the chancel, chants the 
 masses in Latin, which not one in twenty understands, 
 he makes sweet musick, without intending any irrev- 
 erence in the comparison, not unlike the cut cut-dar- 
 cutting, that dame partlct makes after laying her 
 eggs. When the priest turns his countenance towards 
 the congregation, holding up before his breast the 
 sacred host, or one of his glittering crucifixes, and 
 muttering solemnly over it ; it unavoidably reminds 
 me of a toy-man in his shop, recommending one of 
 
14 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 his toys. In some countries, the bell tolls in such 
 a manner, as to inform those without, what part of 
 the service is commencing. The ignorant believe, 
 that after an image is consecrated, then the god re- 
 sides in it. There is, however, great appearance 
 of devotion in the worshippers ; and, I doubt not, 
 that there are many, who are what they appear. 
 But the catholic worship seems calculated to aft'ect 
 rather the senses, than the heart. The idea of auri- 
 cular confession, and absolution from sin, must have 
 a very demoralizing tendency. I was informed of 
 a fine lady of this city, who fell in love with one 
 of the young catholic priests ; and, although she 
 knew that the priests are not allowed to marry, pro- 
 fessed Catholicism, so as to have opportunities to 
 manifest her affection to him in private. The priests 
 do not approve of the laity attempting to understand 
 the bible for themselves, without the explanation of 
 the clergy. A short time ago, the catholics lost a 
 Bishop in this city. He was laid in state in rich 
 pomp for some days, decorated with his pontificalia, 
 tiara, and white satin sandals. His face and hands 
 were rouged like a waxen figure to represent life — 
 shocking counterfeit ! Around him, all day and all 
 night, burned wax-tapers ; and stood the priests 
 fanning, and perfuming the air with incense, and 
 chanting masses for his soul. I thought of the whited 
 sepulchre. Although the universal Father, who 
 holds the keys of St. Peter, resides at Rome ; yet 
 can the echoes of the thunders of the Vatican ver- 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 15 
 
 berate across the Atlantic. However the ignorant 
 may be deluded by ceremonies, the intelligent view 
 them only as the earthly medium, through which the 
 mind rises to the heavenly essences. Some think, 
 that tlie mind, while allied to matter, cannot identify 
 ideas without symbols to assist its operations ; that 
 spirit is too abstracted for common intellects. One 
 cannot reach the top of a tower, without the interven- 
 tion of steps. Nothing more liberalizes the heart, 
 than visiting, on proper occasions, the associations of 
 opposite sects. Most often, we discover that the 
 differences lie more in manner, than in matter. We 
 should remember that, for many hundred years, we 
 were all Roman Catholics ; nor can I ever forget, 
 that the great author of the admired Telemachus 
 was a Roman Catholic. 
 
 The Quakers, the worthy descendants of the colo- 
 nists of the admirable William Penn, of patriarchal 
 simplicity, were long dominant in this city. The 
 terra quaker is now an inappropriate appellation, for 
 most quaker men are stark as statues. There are 
 at present various species of this sect ; the starch 
 primitives in faith and practice ; and the hickory, 
 or half- blooded by intermarriages with the world's 
 people. Their largest meeting-house is a plain, but 
 neat, and very capacious brick edifice, without any 
 paint ; which, with the adjoining yard, where lie 
 the dead buried in white deal coffins, is encompassed 
 by a high brick wall ; back from the noise of the 
 streets, as all churches should be in populous cities. 
 
16 LETTERS PROM THE 
 
 Indeed, the annoyance to worship is too often but 
 partially prevented, by the iron chains hung across 
 the pavements on the sabbath. In public worship, 
 the men with their broad hats on, sit on one side, 
 and the women on the other side, of the house ; not 
 in pews, but upon long benches. The quakers here 
 seem to sit ruminating ; and the wonder is, that, in 
 ' Friends'-Mceting,' wherein women may exhort, 
 any female can allow any holiday to her tongue. The 
 quakers are a sage sect, to imagine that Inspiration 
 would prompt such incoherent sing-song ejaculations, 
 as we sometimes hear in their assemblies ; and how 
 happens it, if individually inspirited, that, more than 
 once, tioo approved preachers have unbonneted, and 
 uprisen together, and attuned their shrill organ-pipes 
 for exhortation ? This sect uses neither of the two 
 visible Seals of other christians, except by spiritual 
 acceptation. There is, however, an august feeling 
 of the Divine Presence in this stillness of the spirit, 
 often superior to any worship manifested by the 
 bodily organs. As a signal when the meeting is 
 done, two elders upon the upper high seat shake 
 hands. Notwithstanding Pope's ^ quaker sly,' they 
 are a quite industrious, beneficent, amiable folk. 
 They have, in common, plain useful educations ; but, 
 with some liberal exceptions, are more deficient than 
 others in elegant literature, and embellishments. 
 They have but little poetry, or romance, in their 
 jnatures. They labour to make no proselytes. In 
 their internal government, they have wise regularity. 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 17 
 
 and simplicity. In lieu of the lawyer, and the judge, 
 they settle all disputations by impartial referees. 
 Appeals may be made from their monthly, to their 
 quarterly, and finally to their yearly meetings ; at 
 which times, the quakeresses hold separate meetings, 
 in which to chatter over their own feminine matters. 
 They do not suffer a stranger of their persuasion to 
 lodge at a hotel, but welcome him to their homes. 
 They are enemies to every unnecessary form, in gos- 
 pel, or in law ; and, as they refuse to swear, they are 
 ineligible to any office of trust under government. 
 Indeed, their affinnation, or signature, is deemed 
 sufficient for all secular obligations amongst them- 
 selves. Instead of the " Know all men by these pre- 
 sents,'^ they once had their quaint and honest : — 
 
 *' Warranted, 
 " From me and mine, 
 " To thee and thine, 
 " Forever." 
 
 As to their not warring, and not voluntarily paying 
 for warring, as it is a matter of conscience, I have 
 only to remark that, if all nations were to become 
 quakers, there would be no more wars. The quakers, 
 emphatically, and to their unfading honour, have 
 ever been the foremost against slavery. Their phra- 
 seology is peculiar. They, very properly, call the 
 months, and days of the week, by first, second, third, 
 and the other ordinals ; as simpler, and discarding 
 Pagan derivation. They address a man "^'Friend such 
 a one," if they beshrew him ever so deeply, or know 
 
18 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 him to be an enemy ; and they generally adopt Bible 
 appellations, using the diminutives, even to adults, as 
 more endearing. They refuse to use Mr., because 
 they will call no man master, save the Saviour ; nor 
 will they sign themselves any one's *^ humble, or obe- 
 dient servant;" which they rightly say is an unmean- 
 ing form, or hypocrisy. They do not say you, be- 
 cause it is flattery to pluralize a person ; but many 
 say thee for thou and thy ; as, " wilt thee go with 
 me ?" ^^ a mote is on thee^s face." Their just so 
 garb, which, when adopted, was the court costume 
 of the time, makes them appear like antediluvians. 
 This drab dress changes not, whether for a wedding, 
 or a funeral. They tell you a cape is unnecessary ; 
 but they wear three inches more of brim of beaver 
 than is necessary. The quaker lads look like little 
 old men ; and the quaker maids like little old wo- 
 men ; unless you glance under their small dove- 
 coloured bonnets, and espy their bonny round faces. 
 Some of the young lasses, however, tastefully refine 
 upon too absolute simplicity. At the yearly-meeting, 
 I saw one of their matrons in Israel. On her small 
 brown shrivelled head was a man's broad out-flapping 
 white hat, the brim at least ten inches, with a 
 sugar-loaf crown. She wore a white stiff lawn apron, 
 a nice three-cornered white 'kerchief down her breast 
 and back in peaks, and had a plump pin-ball, and 
 scissors, dangling down her right side. She walked 
 in tall-heeled, blunt-toed brown prunello shoes, and 
 leaned her veiny, skinny right palm firmly upon a 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 19 
 
 smooth oaken staff ; her face, and the back of her 
 hands being puckered, like unto a nutmeg cantaleupe, 
 with age. However, she looked as if she covered a 
 kind old-fashioned heart ; and would ere long bloom 
 into heavenly beauty. There is a rather singular 
 custom among some of the friends, in their manner of 
 courting. As the young wooer is expected to stay 
 all night, the parents of the damsel place two sepa- 
 rate beds in the room, upon which the lovers lie down, 
 in their dress, and court across the interval. This 
 does not quite rival a mode of the Welch peasantry, 
 who innocently woo between two blankets. If a 
 quaker love a lady out of the society, he must ask 
 liberty, and pardon for the sin of loving one of the 
 world's people. Being published is called passing- 
 meeting ; and the quakers marry themselves, in pre- 
 sence of witnesses. In general, the quakers disap- 
 prove both of singing, dancing, and painting. But 
 why, in the name of nature, if these things be wrong, 
 doth the Creator beautify the fields with variegated 
 dyes ; why make the innocent lambs to skip upon 
 the hills ; and the birds to swell their little throats 
 in the fulness of praises ? 
 
 On a Saturday, the Jews' sabbath, you may, if intro- 
 duced, go and mourn in the Synagogue. Here you 
 may hear the Rabbi, in his ephod, chant, or rather 
 ululate a portion of the Levitical Law, from his un- 
 rolled parchment scroll, and expound in Hebrew 
 from the Targum. Here you see the deluded Jews, 
 in their scarfs and fringes, turn their faces to the east^ 
 
20 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 and imitate their march to their expected Canaan. 
 The Jews here sit in their seats below, the Jewesses 
 in the galleries. From the Synagogue, you may 
 walk to their burial-ground ; where, as with us, the 
 dead are laid with their heads to the west ; so as to be 
 upon their feet as the earth revolves on its axis ; or, 
 to face the Messiah as he appears in the east. In 
 token of mourning, the Jews, who in this country do 
 not wear long beards, walk unshaven for some weeks. 
 The Jews lose two secular days in each week, by 
 their sabbath, and our's. Among most nations, the 
 Jews are oppressed, and peeled, and hunted like a 
 partridge upon the mountains, by the government ; 
 and as they have not become so accustomed to per- 
 secution, as to like it, many fly to this country of 
 refuge. Yet the richest banker in England, if not 
 in the world, Rothschild, whose wand can call within 
 the circle of his control half a centenary of millions, 
 is a Jew. The Jews in this city are not in general 
 excluded from civil privileges. There is a kind of 
 dusky, hawkeyed, aquiline something very peculiar in 
 the physiognomy of most of these unbelieving Israel- 
 ites ; unto whom we are still indebted for the scru- 
 pulous transmission of the ancient Oracles of Truth. 
 
 At two extremes of the city, worship two churches 
 extreme in one point of doctrine ; the Humanitarians, 
 and the Swedenborgians. The latter mystical, meta- 
 physical sect believe the Saviour to have been, not 
 only the Son, but the Father, the absolute God, who 
 visited the earth in person for good. In their doc- 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 21 
 
 trine of correspondences, they also believe in the 
 communion of angels and men ; and that heaven is 
 like unto this earth, with animals and trees, only 
 uninvested in matter, existing in pure spirit. In 
 Sweden, the priests of the New Jerusalem Temples 
 wear scarlet robes. In Philadelphia, the morning, 
 and not the evening, as with country worshippers, is 
 the half of the sabbath, when the churches are most 
 filled, and when you hear the best sermon. After 
 dinner, the gentility qualT wine, court slumber, or 
 ride out to their villas. A practice here obtains 
 among most churches, excepting the quakers, who 
 disclaim any alliance of money and preaching, which 
 I do not commend. I mean that of the sabbath 
 money-dippers. As soon as, or even before, divine 
 service is closed, out start these dippers, with their 
 long lithe rods and green or black caps at the end, 
 and go traversing the aisles, scooping into each pew, 
 as a fisher scoops fishes, for charity's spare coins. 
 The close-net, however, is more liberal than the 
 open-charger; because conscience, rather than pride, 
 may be consulted. But I may not approve this com- 
 mingling of the sacred and secular offices. It often 
 occasions mortification to a stranger, if unprepared ; 
 and much reiterated trouble, and many money- 
 gingling thoughts, to the w^aiting assembly. It de- 
 grades religion to a level with the exhibitions of a 
 mountebank ; who, when he has done, waits impa- 
 tiently until his change come. There are quarterly, 
 or yearly opportunities for beneficence; and each 
 4 
 
23 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 society ought to support its own contingencies, by a 
 more independent method. But sui ctiique mos^ 
 says Terence. 
 
 Some days since, and I saw, in Chesnut street, 
 what would surprise you ; the funeral of a youth of 
 about ten years, whose bier was borne in the hands 
 of four young females, of fair seventeen, dressed all 
 in virgin white, with their curls of long hair drop- 
 ping aloose down the shoulders. There was an 
 agreeable melancholy about it, which interested me. 
 It is a relick of an ancient custom, now rare, that the 
 deceased youths should be supported to their graves 
 by the opposite sex. I wish that beautiful custom 
 were more common, in the summer, of strewing fresh 
 flowers upon the sods of those we love. In somo 
 parts of Wales, the graves are bordered and beauti- 
 fied with boxthrift, and other evergreens. The 
 snow-drop, violet, and primrose bloom over the 
 infant dust ; middle age is marked by the rocket, 
 the rose, and the woodbine ; while the tansy, rue, 
 and starwort mourn over old age. These little 
 evergreens are fond emblems of that state, where is 
 no more change. It is usual here to have the fune- 
 ral in the morning ; and for the porters to wear 
 long white scarfs of lawn twisted round the hat 
 crown, and streaming to the ground behind ; which 
 lawn is their perquisite. I have never seen here a 
 black coffin, nor a flat- topped one ; all are mahogany, 
 or cherry, or stained reddish, with a somewhat 
 gable-roof, and pentagonal ends ; they are frequently 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 23 
 
 costly, and do not look so dismal as ours ; although, 
 perhaps, the habiliments of death ought to look 
 gloomy. There is one green square in the city, 
 which is about to be rolled into gravel walks, and 
 set with trees, for a promenade, called now the 
 Potter's Field. In this field, were the dead buried 
 out of the sight of the living, when, near thirty years 
 ago, the yellow plague swallowed above five thou- 
 sand in three months. I may here relate two affect- 
 ing events, which occurred at that time of sackcloth. 
 One poor man, who was left almost dead a few hours 
 before, when the car called to take away his corpse, 
 the undertakers thinking of course that he was quite 
 dead now, crawled with great effort to the window, 
 and, in a low hollow voice, told them : — " He was 
 not quite dead yet, but to call on the next day.'' 
 They did call, and took his corpse for burial. The 
 other account, was of an aged woman, who thirsted 
 for drink ; and an old servant, who was afraid to 
 venture into the chamber, took a vessel of water, and 
 pushed it in with a long stick. The poor woman 
 crawled out of bed to get it, and was found dead, 
 with her pale thin arm stretched out towards the 
 water, almost to touch it. A frequent sign here, 
 over the work-shop of a cabinet-maker, is — a cradle 
 and a coffin. This leads to meditation. There 
 stands a man, equally ready to accommodate one into 
 the world, or to accommodate one out of the world. 
 
 There is always some new curiosity to be seen in 
 a large city. A few years ago, perhaps you saw, in 
 
24 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 Boston, a modern Greek, from the Morea. Whilst 
 now sitting, there is moving by a crowd of small 
 boys, buzzing after a Chinese mandarin. His tall 
 figure, little eye elliptical at the end next the nose, 
 high cheek bones, pointed chin, skin of the colour of 
 a new cent, long lank dark hair braided down his 
 back from the top of his shaven poll, leaving his 
 head shaped like an inverted cone ; together with 
 his novel costume, his rich knobbed velvet cap, his 
 shirt of thin silk, his tight-buttoned jerkin of purple 
 plush, with its wide expanding sleeves, his yellow 
 quilted philibeg or short petticoat, over his white 
 cotton swollen bag-drawers closed about the ankle, 
 his black satin boots, and his perfumed pipe ; are 
 quite a sight to the little mischievous urchins, that 
 compose his train. Immediately after eating, he 
 lies down to sleep. He eats with his pair of mottled 
 porcupine quills ; and, in China, his richest luxury 
 is the edible nest of the Indian swallow. He wishes 
 for a travelling companion, who is able to interpret 
 our language into his hieroglyphicks. Such is a 
 picture of this one of the higher ranks of that 
 ancientest, most peculiar, and most self-complacent 
 of people. 
 
 There are not so many men of letters in Philadel- 
 phia, nor in New York, in ratio of population, as in 
 Boston. Boston is the Edinburgh of literature in 
 America. Philadelphia and New A^ork are the 
 London and Liverpool of commerce. The Philadel- 
 phians, in reverse to the New Yorkers, are called 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 25 
 
 a cold, cautious, calculating, hard-to-be-acquainted- 
 with people ; especially to one of still, withdrawing 
 habitudes. Although a mottled mass of heterogene- 
 ous citizens, of all tongues and kindreds, yet they 
 appear, to use a phrase of one of their own late 
 nondescript pamphleteers, to unite into a peaceable 
 "reciprocity of commutuality." There are here 
 fewer distinctions of caste, than in other cities ; 
 owing probably to the equalizing doctrines of the 
 quakers. As Philadelphia is the great patroness of 
 the fine arts, a stranger of curiosity is tastefully 
 treated with the varied specimens of designing and 
 etching, at the artists' bay-windows ; and one who 
 is not opinion-bound, in this free country, where 
 knowledge is to be attained, or taste improved, may 
 pause gloating upon them as long as he pleases. 
 But a New England visiter is confounded at the 
 frequent pedantick and obtmsive " Franklin Acad- 
 emies," " Newtonian Seminaries," " Pestalozzian 
 Lyceums," ^^ Columbian Colleges;" painted over 
 some obscure-alleyed Abcdarian nurseries, where 
 little is taught, or perhaps known, beyond the sub- 
 lime mysteries of the alphabet, and the simple copu- 
 lation of digits and ciphers. The draymen in this 
 city have a method of arranging their draught- horses, 
 which are of enormous bone and thevves, m extenso ; 
 four, five, and six, one preceding the other ; and 
 not two abreast, as is usual with us when the number 
 exceeds three or four. These chains of horses they 
 control, and turn, at a full trot, on any curve or angle, 
 
26 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 without guiding* reins, with astonishing facility. 
 Whether this tandem custom economize the cojunc- 
 tion of power is a query. The Philadelphians are a 
 neat folk. Come Saturday evening, and every besom 
 in the city is alive ; every servant astir, out before 
 the front-door, to sweep the flag-stones, and bricked 
 sidewalks, for the sabbath. Better had one not 
 adventure along on that evening, as he would eschew 
 suffocation, or demolition by the whirligig besoms. 
 However, that one madam is not exactly as neat as 
 another madam here, more than in other cities, I 
 denote from the varying degrees of lustre upon the 
 brazen knockers, and bell- knobs. How such trivial 
 differences prejudice the taste towards the indwell- 
 ers. As you elbow along the lower, and more mer- 
 cenary squares, every citizen seems bandying cent 
 per cent, discount, advance sterling, invoices ; all as 
 uncongenial as hellebore to me ; who would rather see 
 a gallant book launch from the press, than a gallant 
 ship loom into port. In traversing populous cities, 
 how convenient were it to have lour faces, to avoid 
 the collision of the crowd ; but there appears to be 
 no prospect of there being any immediate improve- 
 ments in the species. An annoyance in most cities 
 is the populace of little curtail yelpers ; not alto- 
 gether, whether free or in vassalage, worth one groat 
 to any one person. If a dog have a real value, then 
 is there an excuse for keeping him ; but 07ie case of 
 hydrophobia, of late so frequent, is a powerful reason 
 for collaring and taxing the whole canine family. 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 27 
 
 As you muse along up out of these lower regions, 
 into the central wards, the heart is frequently re- 
 freshed by the sight of airy young misses sitting at 
 the open front doors, and windows. A few days 
 after I came here, as I went expatiating along the 
 sidewalks, near Chesnut and Fourth, I was startled 
 by a sudden snapping noise behind me, and stared 
 about for some varlet's whip. It was only two lov- 
 ing young ladies kissing each other upon meet- 
 ing ; a not uncommon, and a very sweet custom, 
 if also the gentlemen might partake with them. 
 As you approach towards the market- house, which 
 is supported by about three hundred brick pillars, 
 and extends up and down for half a mile, in its vari- 
 ous departments of flesh, fish, and fruit, and is one 
 of the most abundant and choice in the world, and 
 under an excellent police ; the ear is regaled with 
 cries of: — "pepper-pot, right hot;" <* hot corn, 
 hot corn ;" " oys, oys, poor Jack wants his money 
 for selling pickled oysters ;" softening the discordant 
 gutturals : — " uch, uch, uch, oaruch ;" of the half 
 naked sweeps. When will a lady Montague arise, 
 in this country, who will honour herself, by giving a 
 welcome festival to these half famished wretches, on 
 the return of each annual May-day ? Monopolizers 
 sometimes endeavour to circumvent the market, and 
 thus speculate upon the poor. It is an unfair sight, 
 to see women guiding their carry-alls to pamper the 
 city with their luscious melons, without a man ; 
 although, far in Maine, I once saw red-armed women^ 
 
28 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 plying the oar for a score of miles to market in an 
 open boat. The women of the city, and not the men, 
 do the chief chaffering, going with the sun to the 
 mart, with a servant behind elbowing the basket. 
 Here every article goes by Jtp^s, so many Ji'p^s 
 (about five pennies) a piece, or dozen. On one 
 side of the market, has sojourned for many years a 
 dwarf, as he is called, for exhibition ; but he is what 
 I call an imperfect man ; since his head and body are 
 stout as Samson's, his lower extremities dwindled 
 and twined into the fish-shape of a merman. Now I 
 comprehend a dwarf to be a minikin, a biped hu- 
 manly symmetrical, but in miniature. His ushering 
 cicerone looked like Death in the Primer. At first 
 view, the pygmean giant appeared to be so full of 
 health, as to be almost sick. But, indeed, he had 
 such a power of infirmities, each opposing the other, 
 that, to save his life, he could not die, until he got 
 the better of them. When I visit any such object of 
 commiseration, my rule is, to look sharp, but take 
 no notice. If he had lived in the days, and country, 
 of Scarron, he might have applied to be second vale- 
 tudinarian to her majesty. Near the lower market, 
 at a shop doori, in a cage has long hung a dusky 
 mocking-bird, which imitates the everchanging 
 noises, and cries, in the street, with wonderful accu- 
 racy. I thought of Sterne's pathetic starling : — 
 ^•^ I can't get out;" "I can't get out." It is diffi- 
 cult, for some time, for a rural stranger to sleep in a 
 city, on account of the rumbling, and rattling, in the 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 29 
 
 Streets ; but, after a while, if half the city were to 
 crash down, he would esteem it a matter of course, 
 and not awake. It is very agreeable to repose in 
 bed, and to hear the lanterned watchmen, as they 
 perambulate the wards, which in a dark evening are 
 lighted with near a thousand lamps, sing out : — " past 
 eleven o'clock, and a cloudy night ;" '^ three o'clock, 
 and a bright star-light ;" and thus to strike the slow- 
 passing note of time, through all the weary watches 
 of their walks. 
 
 I notice, in this city, the Eastern habit of balanc- 
 ing back upon the chair's hind legs ; a posture in 
 which Burns tells us he used to sit in his ruminat- 
 ing mood ; and also of vexing the living coals, al- 
 though they glow never so fiercely. Until you leave 
 home, you will not be aware how many provincial, 
 and fatherless and motherless heathenisms, are used 
 in daily parle by some New Englanders ; although 
 they justly take pride in being more literate than 
 most other states. For ensample : — they use the 
 word conduct as a neuter verb ; the substantive pro- 
 gress as a verb ; and stop short at the sign of the 
 infinitive mood, as, she can sing if she chooses to ; 
 i. e. to sing. They say, flowers wilt for wither, thus 
 used in Salmagundi ; tip up for tilt up, so used in 
 the Pilgrim's Progress ; transmogrified, used by 
 Smollet ; heft, old Saxon, for weight ; serious for 
 religious ; rungs for rounds of a ladder ; sauce for 
 vegetables ; gunning for shooting ; tackling for har- 
 ness ; notions for articles ; birth for office ; scrawls 
 5 
 
30 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 for faggots ; fix for fixure ; spry for nimble ; lengthy 
 for lengthened ; lick for strike ; hang the horse ; 
 had not ought; to convene for lobe convenient; 
 complected for complexioned ; slump ; jounce for 
 jolt; chunky for chubby ; slusliy for sloppy ; smash 
 for quash ; and so on. And in pronunciation, they 
 do not aspirate the h in many words, as wich for 
 which, were for where, Vi'en for when ; and they 
 flatten other words, as na-ter for nat-ure, vir-too for 
 virt-ue, with many more. Ail such backbiters of 
 the king's English should be eschewed by every 
 scholar, as he would eschew mejui company. How- 
 ever, you need not hence conclude all the rest of 
 the states to be perfect in phraseology. The Phila- 
 delphians, beside many of the above, have some 
 peculiarities of their own, as : — like I used, for as I 
 used ; did not let on, for did not explain ; get shut 
 of a thing, for get rid of a thing : durst I go, for 
 may I go? leave me do this, for permit me to do 
 this ; little bit of time ; this is queer, for this is 
 strange ; the dear knows, for the demon knows ; and 
 the flat emphasis of a, as payer for pa'a ; mayer for 
 ma'a. But, at the South, and the West, there may 
 you hear idiomatic vulgarisms rivalling the Eastern ; 
 and if I go thither, I will endeavour to turn the 
 tables upon them in these matters. Thus, as you 
 coveted notices, rather than sentiment, I have detail- 
 ed some of those minute insignificancies, which 
 arrest the observation of a stranger, but which, in a 
 few weeks, become familiarized ; and, I trust, a 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 31 
 
 livelier picture of the city is thus given, than would 
 be given from more general traits ; but, after all, 
 compared with the country, a city, as our friend the 
 doctor would say, is but a crucible of noxious gases. 
 Now, made virtute^ mi fratre^ vale atque vivef 
 
LETTER FROM WASHINGTON CITY. 
 
 mBdtQtatxmi^. 
 
 DEAR BROTHER, 
 
 AS Congress is now in session, I shall tarry 
 here two or three weeks, to catch the manners living 
 as they rise, before I proceed farther South. This 
 little District, of ten miles square, whose name is an 
 honour but too late paid to the great Columbus, is 
 the proud jewel in the ample ring of the union. 
 How ennobling to the feelings of an American Pre- 
 sident, to stand upon Capitol-Hill, and to cast his 
 thoughts northward, and southward, and westward, 
 over our vast and free continent, and to reflect that 
 he is the chosen monarch of all he surveys, and whose 
 right there is none to dispute. The Federal City is 
 nearly equi-distant from the northern and southern 
 extremities of the confederacy, from the cold Saint 
 Croix, to the warm Sabine ; and although, in the 
 west, the huge Alleghanies upheave their broad bare 
 backs between, yet is there but one vast expanse, 
 one peopled tract, over which delegated parental 
 domination extends, even across to the far Stony- 
 MountainS; and down to the Oregon of the Pacific. 
 
34 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 As the President's meditations circulate, his pro- 
 phetic eye views tlie opening canal, from the chain 
 of northern lakes, to the head waters of the western 
 rivers, and his far-spreading republic of states be- 
 comes an immense island. He beholds, in the clear 
 surrounding distance, the intelligent yeomen and 
 dauntless mariners of the East, the slave-lording na- 
 bobs of the South, and the pioneering colonists of the 
 West. Is not the union of the states somewhat like 
 the rich necklace of Pocahontas ? If we append too 
 many upon the same tie, is there not danger lest the 
 tie, unless its texture be very compacted, may 
 divide ? If not, will not the far-off delegates want 
 their seven mile boots, to arrive and return within 
 the year? It is but too apparent, at the Federal- 
 City, that our republican simplicity is gradually 
 changing. The first time that General Washington 
 met Congress, it is said, he went on foot, in a plain 
 domestic suit ; the second year, he went in a costly 
 foreign velvet dress, and in a carriage. The first 
 year, he delivered his speech in person ; the next 
 year, he sent it by his secretary. This aping of 
 European courtliness may, ere half a century, mor- 
 tify honest republicanism. I was told of a trait of 
 Mr. Jefferson, however, that when Mr. Madison 
 was inducted into the presidency, there stood, at his 
 side, the philosophic ex-president, in a home-wrought 
 brown great coat, scarce vicing with that of a thrifty 
 overseer. Was this true republican plainness and 
 equality ; a rare pattern of modesty and economy ; 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 35 
 
 the way to encourage domestic manufactures? It 
 were ill natured, to ask whether pride, or humility, 
 winked through tlie threads ? It is projected to 
 publish a splendid fac-simile of the Declaration of 
 Independence, with the autograph of the signers, 
 and allegorical designs, and portraits ; but who does 
 not feel humbled, that its projector is not an Ameri- 
 can, but a naturalized son of Erin ? Did you ever 
 hear of the witticisms of Jeffrey, the Edinburgh Re- 
 viewer, who, when lately in this country, where he had 
 been apotheosized by our grandees, being asked, how 
 President Madison appeared to him ? replied : — 
 " Why, quite a neat little trim looking man, dressed 
 in black, with his hands behind him ; like a country 
 apothecary going to a funeral." And being asked 
 his opinion of Mr. Secretary Monroe? "Not an 
 ignorant man," said he ; " somewhat galled before 
 and behind by the traces." He appears to have left 
 his devotees low in the vocative. But great minds 
 do not heed a pleasantry ; especially from a critic, 
 who, notwithstanding his quips and his quirks, is 
 thought to hold this risen republic, in moral and 
 physical pre-eminence, as the envy and dread of 
 monarchies. I should like to see his graduated scale 
 of the natural talents of all our excellent presidents. 
 I was informed, that, as a certain state secretary was 
 formerly prime toddy-maker to General Stirling : 
 so was a certain speaker of the house first egg-nog- 
 maker at Ghent. I have heard of the Delphian 
 oracle of Alberto Scipione to Sir Harry Wooton : — - 
 
36 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 " to keep your thoughts close, and your countenance 
 loose, to go round the world ;" and boast the neu- 
 trality of it. Therefore, instead of repeating evil of 
 dignities, like Nym, ^' I say nothing ; that's my hu- 
 mour." I bless myself, that this country is not sub- 
 ject to Gynsecocracy ; that, by our Salique law, no 
 woman is eligible to our presidency. In truth, 
 there have been a few queens of worthy memory, 
 from Zenobia of Palmyra, to Bess of England, and 
 Kate of Russia ; but the Bible saith, that the woman 
 should look to the man for counsel. Legislation, a 
 cynic might say, is too weighty for the sensitive fibres 
 of the female mind. He would not covet to be un- 
 der cestus government, even at home. The lance 
 should not yield to the distaff. His wish would echo 
 the advice of the wise and dying Antipater to his 
 successor. Yet I will that woman should rule, not 
 indeed in civil jurisdiction, which would unsphere 
 her, but in her vast natural province, the heart of 
 man. 
 
 Washington-City is about three hundred miles from 
 the sea, at the head of tide water, on the Maryland 
 side of the Potomac, which flows by the city through 
 the District. Its plan, by Pierre C. I'Enfant, is said 
 to be improved upon that of every other city in the 
 world. Its broad eccentric avenues, each called 
 after a state ; its transverse and conjugate intersec- 
 tions, alphabetically and numerically named ; uniting 
 the utile dulce ; present a facility of communication, 
 with extensive and beautiful prospects, and invite a 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 37 
 
 healthful and unopposed circulation of air. Wide 
 areas, of different dimensions and shapes, are left for 
 public squares, and future promenades. But although 
 the famous metropolis of our country, and notwith- 
 standing its boasted elevated centre, and diverging 
 radii of perspective avenues, the Federal-City is now 
 in semblance not unlike a rough chariot-wheel, hori- 
 zontal on the ground, with nothing but the nave, 
 and three or four spokes, yet apparent. As the 
 basis of the city- plan, of which, with its environs, 
 there is a beautiful engraving, a true meridional line 
 was drawn by celestial observation. On American 
 maps, longitude will hereafter be reckoned from this 
 metropolis. What this city is to be, is matter of 
 prophecy. The Capitol, of Corinthian order, its vast 
 central rotundo and dome being yet unbuilt between 
 the wings, is an enormous double-block of massive 
 free-stone, scathed and smutched by the late war-fire, 
 and scowling like desolation. The conflagration of 
 the library was a specimen of Vandalism — a literary 
 sacrilege. At this time, the English began to feel 
 like Van Tromp, the heroic Dutch admiral, in 1600, 
 who hoisted a broom at his mast head, to intimate 
 that he could sweep clear the British channel. But 
 soon did our slumbering spirit arouse, by sea and by 
 land ; and, like the fiery breath of the siroc, sweep 
 them with the besom of destruction. I was told of 
 an immigrant subaltern, who disguised his manhood 
 in maiden's apparel, to escape the conflict. But 
 Achilles hid himself in woman's attire, in the island 
 6 
 
38 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 of Scyros, to avoid going to the war of Troy. Some 
 think, that war is sent to punish and reform a people. 
 But, in a moral view, does it not make ten worse, 
 where it makes one better? In peace, says the 
 melancholy history of ages, sons bury their fathers ; 
 in war, fathers bury their sons. The climate of this 
 metropolis is called salutary, although, not far dis- 
 tant, are a few insalubrious swamps, whose exhaled 
 miasmata sometimes create intermittents, and pleuri- 
 sies. The Capitol square, of about twenty acres, is 
 to be enclosed by a costly iron paling, and peopled 
 with trees. Around the Capitol, instead of parks of 
 deer, on the one side, it is said, you may see, up the 
 summer hills, a few straggling flocks ; not rivalling 
 the sheep of Aleppo, whose broad and unctious tails 
 are lumbered along on little wagons fastened behind 
 them ; but, small scraggy animals, like the Scythian 
 moss-lambs, that would have puzzled the Sieur Dionis 
 to dissect them. And, instead of attendant minstrels, 
 on the other side, you may hear an evening meadow- 
 concert j in which, ever and anon, that venerable 
 gentleman, the paddock, closes in with the bass, to 
 his treble choir, as they shrilly chime in the old- 
 fashioned tune, of which the enamoured Aristophanes 
 took notes : — " BpcKeKext^- y.aoi^- x.a,x^ .'" As Scipio and 
 Lajlius were wont to unbend their minds from the 
 severer duties of the senate of Rome, and walk to 
 gather pebbles on the sea-shore ; so, it is said, will our 
 honoured and grave legislators, at times, condescend 
 to leave the debating hall, for the partridge covey in 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 39 
 
 the greenwoods. It has been disputed, whether the 
 partridge be a partridge ? It has been written, that 
 the quail of New England is the partridge of the 
 South ; but that, in propriety, it is neither. The 
 bird in dispute was thought peculiar to America. 
 The partridge of New England was said to be the 
 short-tailed pheasant of Pennsylvania, but to be mis- 
 called in both places. It is a cousin-german of the 
 grouse. Thus were pheasant, partridge, grouse, and 
 quail obliged to disown their christian names in Ame- 
 rica ; until later naturalists have restored them unto 
 their own distinct, but neighbouring families. There 
 has been a proposition, by a foreign citizen, to en- 
 close, and plant an extensive vineyard near the 
 Capitol, for the purpose of expressing wines ; and 
 he judges the climate to be sufficiently calorific. The 
 President's Ionic mansion is a minor palace, and the 
 domicils of the State Secretaries are suitably inferior. 
 The opening vistas from the Capitol are very grand ; 
 or rather, as Doctor Syntax would say, are very 
 picturesque. There runs a bridge, like a huge ma- 
 rine millepede, over the broad waters of the Poto- 
 mac for a weary length. About nine miles dowfi, 
 below Alexandria, and almost in sight, on the west 
 bank of the Potomac, is Mount Vernon ; which, here- 
 after, a freeman will visit, and hold sacred, as a mus- 
 sulman the shrine of his prophet at Mecca. It is 
 worthy of note, that the three, soon four, presiden- 
 tial seats in Virginia, Mount Vernon, Monticello, pro- 
 nounced Montichello, Ital. that is, little mountain, 
 
40 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 MoQtpelier, are but about a half day's ride apart, 
 and that two of them are near neighbours. I do not 
 admire this adopting of foreign names, as if we had 
 none appropriate at home. Mr. Secretary Monroe, 
 the next heir apparent to the presidency, is the son 
 of a brickmonger ; and it is a beautiful feature in 
 our constitution, that, not birth, but wisdom and in- 
 tegrity, in a superior degree, are the only enviable 
 characteristics, sought out for a ruler of this already 
 great, and powerful nation. Although many a 
 wealthy denizen would gladly volunteer his entire 
 fortune for the renown of being president, yet do 
 freemen pride themselves in heaping, not only the 
 renown, but an ample salary, upon the man, whom 
 they delight to honour. As our government is at 
 amity with our red tribes, the Great Father, or pre- 
 sident, often has the complacency of eating succatras 
 with his visiting Sagamores. There is here, on a 
 parchment grant of land, a curious sign-manual of a 
 sachem, who, being unskilled to write, drew out a 
 grotesque figure of himself. It must be a healthy 
 vocation, to be a President, if we may judge from 
 the cheerful otium cum digtiitate of those yet alive ; 
 although, we lament, that their sun is now sinking 
 far back o' th' hills for this world. Federal-City is 
 called a very dull place, except when Congress is in 
 session. Then, it is dignified, and enlivened, by the 
 thundering debates, the splendid equipages of foreign 
 ambassadors, and the smiling beauty of the presiden- 
 tial levees. 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 41 
 
 I went, for a number of days, into the galleries of 
 the Senate-Chamber, and of the Hall of Represen- 
 tatives, where strangers listen to the debates. The 
 heart is impressed with an emotion of awe, and noble 
 pride, when one beholds this venerable body, legis- 
 lating for the good of their country. Tbe silver is 
 spread over many of their aged locks, like the hoar 
 frost upon the thin dried winter grass. I heard but 
 one senator speak, at emulous length ; and his person 
 was more remarkable than his eloquence. His spare 
 sallow frame reminded me of Philsetes, counsellor to 
 Ptolemy Philadelphus, who was so slender naturally, 
 and so reduced by study, that, when he went abroad, 
 he affixed leaden plates to his sandals, and put pieces 
 of the same metal into his pockets, to prevent the 
 wind from wafting him away. In the Hall, along the 
 balustrade of the gallery, are seen rows of ladies 
 sitting up, and bending over, like chalk- pipes in a 
 box. In a picture gallery, I never before saw so 
 many fine pictures. Down in the body of the 
 House, you behold, from all points of compass, the 
 converging bodies of diverging minds. I do not 
 praise the modesty of the titles of these Honourable 
 Esquires ; for, since the greater includes the less, 
 we may as well say. Counsellor A. B. Attorney, as 
 Hon. A. B. Esq. But, perhaps, some could not bear 
 a title equably, without both ends being balanced. I 
 do not approve of long talks ; nor do those, who are 
 paid for listening to them, if we may judge from that 
 endemic of the muscles, the yawning of some, as they 
 
4a LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 stand, like Yahoos, rubbing their scorching thighs at 
 the fires ; and the apathy of others, in their seats, 
 reading their newspapers with one eye, and going 
 to sleep with the other. You may have heard, that, 
 to remedy this ennui, a member of congress from the 
 mountains, some sessions ago, wished it to be voted a 
 privilege for any representative to call, in the hall- 
 lobby, for what cordials he needed, at the public 
 charge ; and when it was queried, under what arti- 
 cle of contingencies it could be included ? '' 0," 
 said he, "charge it \fy fudP I fear that some, who 
 proiTer their services for congress, are as quixotic as 
 was Goldsmith, when he thought of decyphering the 
 Arabic inscriptions on the written mountains, though 
 he was ignorant of the language ; but the temptation 
 was three hundred pounds per annum. It is undig- 
 nified, for the Hon. Speaker, sitting under his stately 
 canopy, to call the house to order, like a parish- 
 moderator, by a key rapped on his desk. Anon, on 
 the floor, may you hear some, like descended sages, 
 with lordly brows elate, in dignified and grave 
 harangue ; and others, like monkies, with foreheads 
 villanous low, as Caliban says, moeing and chatter- 
 ing at each other. How they appear in the Hall"; 
 black, brown, and gray ; nothing to identify them 
 in their ofiicial capacity. I have ever thought, that 
 the American, or English dress of men, was very 
 undignified, and ungraceful. A small stiff round 
 topped hat perched on the crown, with a long nar- 
 row straight-bodied coat, with its tapered skirts 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 43 
 
 jutting out behind, like the tail of an ape ; and a 
 heavy shapeless pair of boots, as if one's feet were in 
 the stocks ; these, surely, cannot bear competition 
 with the ancient tunick, and toga ; the high-plumed 
 cap, and the tight-laced buskin about the w^ell-turned 
 ankle ; or the modern oriental costume, the plaited 
 turban, and the hanging mantle with its gathered 
 folds. I do not hanker after stars and garters ; but 
 I do think, that the delegated representatives of a 
 whole people, in congress, should have some badge, 
 some dignified, and uniform, and ocular seal of their 
 election. I do not wish to confound the disparity of 
 manners, and costume, of different states ; but only 
 wish a member to be known in the streets of the 
 capital ; and to be admonished by this badge, not to 
 be disregardful of his high constituted responsibility. 
 But, after all, we can no better judge of the mind by 
 the costume, than of a clock by the case. The 
 Southern delegates affect to despise the puritanical 
 prejudices of the New Englanders. That our Eas- 
 tern forefathers were, the most of them, book-learned, 
 enterprising, and pious, none may doubt; but that 
 they were also bigoted, and superstitious, and, on 
 some points, narrow-minded, perhaps we may admit. 
 They came to avoid persecution, and they began to 
 persecute ; they hung honest women for witches ; 
 and they enacted a black and blue code of by-laws. 
 It is probable, that their posterity may inherit, with 
 their virtues, some of their infirmities. If, however, 
 there be any disparity between the north and the 
 
44 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 south, we believe that impartiality would assign the 
 prt ference to the north. But it is as reasonable^ 
 for the features of minds, as for the features of faces, 
 to differ. A patriot, however, will ever disdain to 
 become a party minion ; to lackey a demagogue's 
 skirts through every thorn-hedge of opposition, and 
 slough of disgrace ; or to be coerced out of the way 
 of honour, by a fiery threat levelled at his fortune ; 
 but, notwithstanding his enemies may thrust at him 
 their forky tongues, he will hang on to his faith, 
 civil and religious, like grim death. A tampering 
 party-spirit is like two persons attempting to guide 
 one steed ; although they may at times between them 
 keep him in the right road ; yet, generally, they 
 will divert him into jeopardy of their safety. 
 
 In reading Ancient, or Modern History, it ap- 
 pears, that most Governments have not shunned, 
 less or more, to grind the face of the poor. Legis- 
 lators seem to have a distinct interest ; to look more 
 to themselves, than to the numerous body for whom 
 they legislate. It is not so in our Republic. Yet 
 I wish that the debaters would think more, and speak 
 less ; or, at least, put their thoughts into a vice, and 
 compress them ; or, one member not repeat what 
 another member has just spoken. If members of 
 congress were charged with the price of their time, 
 at the ratio of their pay ; would they often speak, 
 without something to say ? Are most speeches from 
 patriotism, or from selfism ? straws to tickle con- 
 stituents ? counters to induce re-election ? It is rer 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 45 
 
 marked of the Eastern orators, that they ever heiH;, 
 and clear their pipes, at the end of every sentence. 
 Some congress arguers are always beating about the 
 bush, but never close upon the game. Others clothe 
 an idea in as many words, as a Dutchman wears 
 breeches ; abounding in what the lawyers call sur- 
 plusage. Some speakers, as if to render confusion 
 worse confounded, seem to begin in the middle, and 
 to leave off at both ends. When auditors can tell what 
 dress an orator has on, he is not truly eloquent ; when 
 the impression left is of the subject only, he is truly 
 eloqiient. After Cicero, it was exclaimed : — " What 
 an elegant orator ; what learning ; what genius !" 
 After Demosthenes, it was vociferated : — ^' Let us 
 march against Philip 1" Of our eloquent statesmen, 
 speaker A. is now like the fawn, touching lightly on 
 every part ; and now like the elephant, making the 
 earth to tremble. Of speaker B., his display is like 
 the dress of a gala-lady ; so bedizened in ornament, 
 that we can with difficulty find the lady herself. B's 
 eloquence is very brilliant, and sometimes forcible ; 
 but it has no more effect on the depth and strength 
 of A's, than the twilight dews on the Potomac. 
 Heaven support the Speaker, to sit in state, two or 
 three months, listening, or appearing to listen, to 
 such drowsy, over-and-over-again prosings, as some- 
 times tantalize him. I have heard of a stupid mem- 
 ber, who once had been stammering away for about 
 four hours in the hall, on some trivial knap-worn 
 topic, and who, noticing the Speaker to turn away 
 7 
 
46 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 his head for a breath or two, stopped short, and 
 growled out : — " Fll thank Mr. Speaker for his 
 eye!" "Til thank Mr. Speaker for his eye 1" 
 Heaven support the Speaker, and elongate his pa- 
 tience. It is a regret, that votes, upon an important 
 question, cannot be taken by weight of character ; 
 and not an ignorant man's vote be as heavy as a wise 
 man's vote. It has been a question, whether an 
 elected representative should vote according to in- 
 structions from his constituents, as he attends as their 
 servant, to act for the states confederated, and for 
 his constituents in particular ? Or whether he may 
 exercise his own judgment, as he is the head placed 
 by them on their shoulders ; and which, if they dis- 
 like, they can exchange at the next poll ? I con- 
 ceive that, as he goes to act, not for himself, but for 
 them, his individual private judgment is merged in 
 the majority of theirs, when known ; and that thus 
 he should vote or resign ; and that, at such time, as 
 not to leave his district unrepresented. 
 
 While here, I have heard John Randolph speak 
 in the Hall twice. A slim, meagre, hollow-backed, 
 round-shouldered figure, with his lemon skin, and 
 little retreating nose, and sharp scooping chin, and 
 his smooth light brown hair kemped back from his 
 forehead, and gathered by a string aloose down his 
 back, with his shrill feminine voice, which can swell 
 to a wonderful compass, and his unabashable self- 
 possession, and searching twinkling eye, and his long 
 slender denoting finger. Although he boasts of 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 47 
 
 princely Indian blood, he has not much of Indian taci- 
 turnity. His querulous quality of mind, and eccen- 
 tricity of dress, made me think of the paradoxical 
 Rousseau, in his Armenian garb ; indeed, in some 
 particulars, there is a resemblance between the Ge- 
 nevan and American citizen ; however the latter 
 may be the better man. He has, perhaps, more 
 genius, than judgment ; ever vacillating, yet fixed; 
 he is a party by himself. He is fitter to pull down, 
 than to build up ; a clog to both parties ; to whom 
 he is a kind of amusing, yet dreaded Menippus. 
 Although his speeches want the lucidus ordo, yet 
 he always draws attention by the pungency of his 
 sarcasm, the raciness of his desultory matter, and the 
 unique spell of his manner. He is a bachelor, a 
 wealthy Virginian planter on the Roanoke, and said 
 to be a man of a noble spirit, a fine hunter, and a 
 Christian. 
 
 When I become a member of the House, I intend 
 to propose and advocate four great objects. First, a 
 JVational Observatory, whose top, with a sublimer 
 intent than that of ancient Babel, should look unto 
 the sky ; with complete astronomical apparatus, and 
 resident professors, and salaries so liberal as to induce 
 the most elevated intellects to devote their entire en- 
 ergies, during life, in tracing the marches and coun- 
 ter-marches of the planets, and decyphering the 
 golden hieroglyphics of heaven. Now Rittenhouse 
 is above the stars, let Doctor Bowditch sit up in the 
 top-tower, and be the first Herschel of America. 
 
48 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 I would also bring under debate a JVatlonal Univer- 
 sity, of which the President of the United States 
 should be, ex officio, the Provost, or Chancellor; 
 if such University would not become an oracle of 
 divination — a catapulta of party. As a prime object 
 of it should be to form statesmen, worthy of the 
 name, the text-book of the political classics should 
 be the Constitution of the United States ; whereby 
 might be demonstrated, from experience, the supe- 
 riority of a republic, for an enlightened and virtu- 
 ous people, to a monarchy, however limited ; or an 
 oligarchy, however wise. It might also tend to pro- 
 duce a uniform national character, as far as the dif- 
 ferent pursuits of the different states might allow. 
 The next thing should be a J^ational Monument 
 over the remains of our temporal saviour, on a scale 
 of amplitude, and grandeur, equal to that of Queen 
 Artemisia for Mausolus. I would model it into the 
 form of a Congressional Chapel, surmounted by a 
 colossal statue of the hero in bronze ; enshrining the 
 ashes of the dead under the grand altar ; over 
 which the chaplains of both houses, hence catching 
 a holy ardour, should reciprocally officiate. In front 
 of the massive altar should be lettered in wrought 
 gold, that trite, but matchless eulogium of him by 
 General Harry Lee : — ^' First in war, first in peace, 
 and first in the hearts of his countrymen." This 
 Chapel Mausoleum should be edified, not to honour 
 his memory — it does not need it — but to honour 
 ourselves. Finally, I would have instituted a J^a- 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 49 
 
 tional Literary Fund. There are, in these states, 
 very few, who can afford to be authors. Belles-Let- 
 tres, hitherto, need to quit the country, or to quit 
 writing. This ought not any longer so to be ; our 
 republic is now out of her nonage. Most of the 
 gifted authors of refined monarchies receive honorary, 
 unexacting pensions. Pensions upon men of talents 
 and taste, when they do not unworthily spread an 
 opiate over exertion, create for them that elaborate 
 leisure, without which no genius can perfect the 
 beauty of its promise. Noah Webster should have a 
 pension — although I am no proselyte to his short- 
 hand system of orthography, thus obscuring the 
 etymons, and consequently the prime significance of 
 words ; yet do his long and lonely sieges of toilsome 
 logomachy for the public deserve a reward. I 
 would have a Poet Laureate crowned in our Capitol, 
 from the leaves of our own magnolia. The Muses 
 are fair of face, and fair of fame ; bright of eye, and 
 bright of mind ; lovely of lip, and lovely of heart ; 
 but poor of portion. If unprotected, they may sing, 
 but they will be sad of soul ; their airs will be by 
 rote, and not by note ; they must descend from their 
 highest heaven of invention, to delve upon the bar- 
 ren surface of this visible diurnal sphere. The gal- 
 lantry of the age should avert this. 
 
 The gravity of congressional debate is likely soon 
 to be discomposed, by a bold Western projector, 
 Captain John Cleves Symmes, now at Saint Louis ; 
 who, it is reported, intends to petition congress to 
 
50 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 order him two frigates in aid of his matchless expe- 
 dition. He has publicly revived the idea, that 
 our planet is composed internally of concentric 
 spheres ; that it is open, for a certain number of 
 degrees, at the poles ; and states that he needs one 
 hundred able-bodied, and daring-minded men, to 
 start with him, in the autumnal season, from Siberia. 
 He has no doubt of being able to enter in at the 
 north pole ; to find a passage through these coats of 
 the earth, which he supposes to be stocked with ani- 
 mals, and vegetables, if not with men ; and to return 
 in fifteen months out at the opposite pole. This 
 theory is accompanied by diagrams, to shew how the 
 reflected light of the sun is admitted. He has ap- 
 pointed Baron Humboldt of Germany, Sir Hum- 
 phrey Davy of London, and Professor Mitchel of 
 America, his protectors. This bold, and fanciful, if 
 not original conception, of a world within a world, 
 might furnish a vigorous imagination, like that of 
 Swift, with a fabulous history, superior in interest to 
 Burnet's sublime romance, his ^^ Theory of the 
 Earth." Let not Europe hereafter tax America 
 with poverty of imagination. It is a regret, that 
 Captain John Cleves Symmes did not live in the 
 era of ancient Daedalus, or prelate Wilkins; that, 
 if congress should be slow in manning his fri- 
 gates, he might scale the everlasting icebergs on 
 artificial wings. Upon entering the pole, what 
 grand, what sublime discoveries, would he not 
 make ! Might he not trace along the roots of the 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 51 
 
 mountains, and disclose the sulphureous smithey of 
 the thunder-forging Cyclops ; and disturb the couch 
 of the giant Atlas, who heaves the earthquakes ? 
 Might he not gather golden ingots in the mines, or 
 penetrate even to the mount of magnet in the centre ? 
 Might he not pass by the prison of the Gnomes, or 
 visit the palaces of the Genii, and Fairie Queene, or 
 revel in the coral grottoes of the Water Nymphs ? 
 And, more than all, might he not discover a new 
 race of men and women, and animals, and trees, of 
 novel appearance and manners, but kindred to our 
 own ? I trust that no one will improve upon this 
 hint, before the return of Captain John Cleves 
 Symmes; from whose journal, I hope to compose a 
 work of marvel, such as has not been read, since 
 Gulliver. 
 
 One subject discussed in the House was manufac- 
 tures. Would not the most eligible mode for Con- 
 gress to encourage home manufactures be, for the 
 Legislatures of each state to oblige each member to 
 wear domestic wrought suits? When great men 
 thus agreed, would not the little men soon follow 
 suit? All congressional debates, which we read, 
 appear very similar in style, and lose their individu- 
 ality of phraseology, by their being reported by 
 stenographers, Vv'ho, too frequently, catch only the 
 thought, and clothe it themselves in their own man- 
 ner ; except the speeches of those, who have more 
 vanity, and incur pains to transcribe in full, and 
 transmit their copies to the printers. I wish that 
 
53 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 all editors were as assiduous, and impartial, as the 
 National Reporters ; and not too many of them the 
 veriest misreporters under the type. I wish that 
 newspapers would he, what they profess to be, news- 
 papers, rather than commentators. Let editors print 
 foreign and domestic, political and local events, and 
 leave it to the good sense of the reader to under- 
 stand them. From some states, nothing now comes, 
 until it be distorted, or gangrened, or amputated. 
 Each party strives which shall outbrave the other, in 
 *^ paper quillets of the brain." Like two colliers, 
 blacking not only themselves, but every thing they 
 touch. I have heard of one southern editor, who 
 avows himself to have two lobes to his brain ; one for 
 himself, and one for his party. Comment, when able 
 and honest, is edifying ; but as this, in our evil day, 
 is warped by policy, I know not but it were judi- 
 cious for Congress, totally, and peremptorily, to pro- 
 hibit any public editor of a political paper, from an- 
 nexing any paragraph of his own to the simple fact 
 simply given. Then, each man, reading equally on 
 each side, would give unbiassed suftrages according 
 to his unprejudiced judgment. If this would be 
 regarded as too close a restraint on the great palla- 
 dium of our rights, a free press ; let each writer 
 be no longer anonymous, but append his name to his 
 opinion ; that the community may weigh it in the 
 broad balance of disinterested polity. 
 
 The Heads of Departments, Supreme Judges, 
 Chaplains of both Houses^ Foreign Ambassadors, and 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 53 
 
 dther Dignitaries, are admitted into the Hall of 
 Legislation. I do not covet to have an ambassador 
 become a speculator ; receive the honour of the ap- 
 pointment, accept his nine thousand dollars outfit ; 
 perhaps, if he drops his congee at another court on 
 his way, a double one ; and demand his other thou- 
 sands salary ; when, after he has taken a pleasant 
 voyage in a gallant frigate across the Atlantic ; and 
 viewed the foreign countries in his tour, and been 
 honoured with a presentation to their majesties, and 
 nobilities ; suddenly, perchance, he has a headach 
 or a homeach ; or the climate docs not suit his 
 nerves ; and he must sail back again, and have 
 another appointment at home. This is all beginning 
 and ending, and leaving no time, either to learn, or 
 to execute his official duties ; and money is expended 
 to little purpose in new outfits, and infits. Ambas- 
 sadors should stay, alive or dead, under a forfeiture 
 of salary and reputation, until recalled. But these 
 are high matters ; and again, " I say nothing ; that's 
 my humour." 
 
 The Supreme Court v/as in session, and Chief 
 Justice Marshall, the biographer of Washington^ 
 somewhat resembles the late Justice Parsons, of 
 Massachusetts, but is of a less frame. There were 
 three other judges on the bench ; the Honourable 
 Bushrod Washington, a very small man in person, 
 with a colourless face, who now inherits the seat of 
 his great relative, at Mount Vernon ; Judge John- 
 son, of South Carolina, who is reported to be elabo- 
 8 
 
54 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 rating a splendid life of General Greene ; and, though 
 last not least, the once poetical Judge Story, of our 
 state. Lawyer Wirt, of Richmond, was in court ; 
 he is about publishing sketches of Patrick Henry. 
 Was not Henry, as a statesman, what Whitfield was, 
 as a preacher ? Both nearly self-taught, of peculiar, 
 and overwhelming magical eloquence, but whose 
 speeches, when printed, are ordinary ? Did Henry 
 propose one new feature to the constitution, which 
 he voted against ? Could Henry any more compete 
 with Franklin, in the steady light of reason, than a 
 blazing meteor with a fixed star? I was told, but it 
 is improbable, that the friends of Henry are endea- 
 vouring to recollect a portrait of his person, as no 
 one was painted in his life time. Since I have been 
 here, I have visited the late Jeffersonian, now Con- 
 gressional Library. An undue proportion of the 
 volumes are in French, and other foreign languages, 
 and antiquated editions ; and therefore are less use- 
 ful to most members of Congress. I have walked 
 down to the Navy Yard, where is mounted much 
 huge earthquaking ordnance ; and where is a decent 
 Monument to those, who fell before Tripoli, dying 
 in a good cause. I went into the Patent Office, and 
 there saw a variety of curious, but impracticable in- 
 ventions. Some are so old, it is believed, that they 
 were never new ; being made in the beginning. The 
 most trivial ingenuity was a machine, with which 
 to pare, quarter, and uncore quinces. As an instance 
 of the facetiousness of the Doctor, who superintends 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 55 
 
 the office, it is said that he once, in company of the 
 assembled grandees, remarked that he had found a 
 cheap sustenance for the poor, but could not devise any 
 method of cheapening the winter fuel ; and he pro- 
 posed, therefore, to freeze them up during the cold 
 season ; and he thought it more than probable, that, 
 by a certain chemical process of his, he could reani- 
 mate them in the spring. This more than rivals the 
 catholicon to prolong life of Paracelsus (Aurelius- 
 Philip-Theophrastus-Bombast de Hohenheim) of 
 Einfidlen in Switzerland, 1493 ; notwithstanding his 
 interminable name. The legislators here daily frank 
 home huge piles of pamphlets ; but I have not been 
 able to ascertain, that they often frank home their 
 linen to their laundress ; or that the honest quaker 
 member did actually, in former days, frank home his 
 iron-gray mare. Did you ever hear of the deriva- 
 tion of the christian name of the present Postmaster- 
 general Meigs ? Then you know not how near we 
 .came of losing, or rather, of never having his ser- 
 vices. His grandfather, it is said, went for many 
 weeks to pay his addresses to a young quaker lady, 
 and was for some time repulsed. At length, he re- 
 solved once more to try to win her affections. He 
 went, and sued, and pleaded, and conjured, but with- 
 out any visible effect ; and was going away from the 
 house, with a sinking heart ; when she relented, and 
 came to the door, and called out in her simple modest 
 phrase — " Return, Jonatlian." Her lover, out of the 
 fulness of his joy, then vowed to call his first-born, 
 
56 LETTERS, &C. 
 
 if a son — -^^ Return Jonathan." Thus, you perceive, 
 that our having our present honourable postmaster- 
 general depended upon the capricious yea or nay of 
 the fair young quakeress. I have not yet attended 
 at the President's levee ; which any citizen may do, 
 upon an easy introduction. I had not time, nor was 
 it the proper place, to render the president much 
 advice ; nor, perhaps, if I offered good counsels, 
 would he remember to follow them. Besides, I am 
 too proud, to enter a saloon of conspicuous person- 
 ages, while myself am but a musing recluse. Many 
 immigrants, guarded by poverty, and beckoned by 
 hope, itinerate through this metropolis, for the west- 
 ern land of promise. They would save much travel, 
 could they but push out a boat, hang upon a limb of 
 the eastern sun at his rising, and, after his daily 
 round, drop oif at sunsetting in the west. 
 
 As it is the season of snow and sleet, and my stay 
 is short, I shall defer more enlarged remarks, until 
 my second visit, next year. Ruinpe moras / dio 
 mihiy eras, eras, quid agis ; seternumque salve. 
 
LETTER FROM VIRGINIA. 
 
 mB(t<titxmK^. 
 
 DEAR BROTHER, 
 
 AS I have lately visited Richmond, and Peters- 
 burg, I will first give a slight sketch of those cities ; 
 and then date my remarks on this state, from a fine ^ 
 plantation on the banks of the Rappahannock. 
 
 Richmond, on the river James, is an irregular 
 city, populous with slaves, and mules ; but has many 
 beautifully picturesque seats in its environs, and along 
 the river, which is winding and broken, but roman- 
 tic in summer, when the midway rocks are covered 
 with anglers. The atmosphere is impregned with 
 the dense murky efiluvia of coal-smoke, which be- 
 grimes the pores of the skin, and affects respiration. 
 The coal is brought down a canal in barges, and 
 landed from a broad basin in the city. Could not 
 the citizens contrive, like the English artisans, to 
 consume the smoke? The mules in the streets, 
 wheeling tobacco, are sometimes four abreast. I 
 went to see where the awful fire appalled the Thea- 
 tre, and crowded above three score of shrieking vic- 
 tims from th.e scenes of time, into the scenes of eter- 
 
58 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 nity ; and among them the governor, and a brave 
 officer and his beloved. The new Monumental 
 Church, over the ruins and ashes of the dead, is 
 nearly completed, but is not to be compared with 
 many churches at the north. Nor can the cities of 
 the south bear a parallel, in architectural elegance, 
 with the cities of the middle, and eastern states. 
 The Capitol, on Capitol-hill, overlooking the city, is 
 a noble, substantial, but cumbrous, heaving-looking 
 edifice. In the inner-area of the Capitol, paled in by 
 iron-railing, peers a full length marble statue of 
 Washington, of Parisian sculpture. As he stands 
 martially erect, there swells a small protuberance of 
 body ; and there depends a stout qucu behind, very 
 like, if it were not on Washington, as it is of white 
 marble, a long lank taper. Is it congruous, in a war- 
 like costume, to combine the sword and cane ? In a 
 side niche of the area, is, moreover, a body-bust of the 
 gallant French Marquis de la Fayette, with his mild 
 physiognomy, and retreating forehead ; indeed, his 
 forehead is very peculiar, and looks as if a person 
 had put one palm on the lower part of the back of 
 his head, and the other on his brow, and pressed the 
 whole upper story of his poll backward. Between the 
 Bowling-Green and Richmond, the houses are very 
 few, mean, and scattered ; and I passed one or two 
 hippodromes. I also met, what would be a novelty 
 to you, a slave rolling tobacco to market, to Norfolk ; 
 the hogsheads are enormously large, from ten to 
 twenty hundred weight, and so screw- pressed, and 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 59 
 
 triple-]iooped, tliat they are revolved along the road 
 by an axle attached to a couple of mules. Peters- 
 burgh is thirty miles south of Richmond, with some 
 roofs covered like tliose near the Parthenon ; and is 
 in nothing remarkable, save that, it was in, or rather 
 near, this city, v^here once dwelt the fair and cou- 
 rageous Indian princess, Pocahontas ; the remote 
 grandmother of John Randolph, the Bowlings, and 
 other prominent characters. I have not yet walked 
 a mile under ground, among the fairy stalactites, in 
 the Blue Ridge Cavern ; nor stood, poised in air, 
 astride of the yawning ravine, on the Natural Bridge ; 
 both the sublime handywork of the sublime Creator. 
 But still-life, however grateful to the senses, is rather 
 dull in description. 
 
 This state, called after the virgin queen Elizabeth, 
 of glorious memory, appears like a new-settled, not 
 an old one. You pass no stone- walls ; but hedge, or 
 in-and-out zig-zag cedar rails, or wattled fences, if 
 indeed any, on the main roads. At the south, a few 
 houses, though not incorporated, are called a town. 
 If you visit a plantation, you strike off the main- road, 
 up or down the banks of the long rivers, that run 
 from the western mountains to the sea-coast ; or you 
 mount into the ridge-forests. You feel a solitary 
 emotion, as you find a house and out-buildings, on a 
 spot cleared in the middle of the woods, and sur- 
 rounded by broad wheat and corn fields ; not fifteen 
 or twenty acres of arable land, but from one to five 
 hundred ; not tilled by five or six hired men, but 
 
60 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 Ly from thirty to one or two hundred slaves ; and, in 
 harvest time, are in motion, from twenty to fifty 
 reapers, men, women, and children. They do not 
 reap with a sickle, as on the New England small 
 farms, and thresh with a flail ; but mow with a 
 scythe fitted into a wooden-cradle with five long 
 curved fingers to ingather the stalks ; and tread 
 out the grain in a wheat-ring, by ten or twenty 
 horses and mules. Although there is not, in this 
 vicinity, a stone big enough to kill a quail ; yet, 
 it is said that, near the mountains, the soil is so 
 plenteous with them, that one can hear their ploughs 
 for three miles. The Virginians usually plant 
 twice, and pull and reset their corn, which is 
 left five feet apart, and but one stalk, instead of 
 three or four, in a hill, as with us ; but that one 
 grows up like a tree. One gentleman, on this river, 
 who is wealthy beyond all reason, sold, one fall, 
 I am told, fifteen thousand bushels of grain. Colo- 
 nel Taylor, near Port Royal, a scientific planter, 
 and political author, who cultivates about eight hun- 
 dred of unctuous acres annually, in four shifts, is a 
 firm advocate for the use of gypsum ; not so much 
 as a manure, as a medium to draw manure from the 
 atmosphere ; so that one, he says, may include, fix, 
 and divide, and bestow to his children, atmosphere 
 to any enclosed extent. As the Virginians in com- 
 mon are called buckskins, so those, who live in poor- 
 er classes on the second-ridges from the river, are 
 called foresters. Over these ridges are commonly 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 61 
 
 soaring large turkey-buzzards, which are never shot, 
 as they gorge upon the carrion. Every thing here 
 has a certain loose, uncompacted, unappropriated 
 appearance. The ancient Episcopal churches, which 
 were once so predominant, are mostly in a state of 
 dilapidation. The rank reeds rustle round their 
 doors ; the fox looks out at their windows. But, as 
 a new bishop has been lately consecrated for Vir- 
 ginia, it is hoped that the churches will soon be 
 re-edified. Almost every gentleman's seat, even if 
 not presidential, has some romantic appellation, as — 
 Farmer's Hall, Hunter's Hill, Mount-Pleasant ; but 
 you need not suppose all these sivells to be moun- 
 tains. In Vv^alking round a plantation, you deviate 
 into a hundred narrow Indian-like foot, or bridle- 
 paths ; and, in going from one plantation to another, 
 you ride through an infinitude of swing-gates. Now, 
 for me, rather less land, and better cultivated. Hoc 
 erat in voiis, modus. It is delightful, to stroll 
 through the forests, and listen to the susurration of 
 the umbrageous branches, and to pause and admire 
 at trees, infrequent, if found, at the colder East : — 
 the dark glossy evergreen holly, with its scarlet 
 berry; the broad-leafed, long-podded catalpa ; the 
 persimmon, with its tap-root, on wiiich account it is 
 often left for shade in the wheat-iields ; the honey- 
 locust ; the chinquipin-bushes, which in the fall bear 
 a nut little inferior to the filbert, and which fattens 
 the gluttonous herds of swine, which run free ; the 
 gum-tree ; the Dutch-elm, with its beautiful thick 
 9 
 
62 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 foliage, and blotchy corky excrescences of bark ; the 
 willow-oak ; the superb fringe or snowdrop tree ; and 
 many others, of which I do not know the names. In 
 autumn, the tall climbing wild vines, with their yel- 
 lowy leaves, intermingled with the green of the forest 
 oaks, look a pleasing melancholy. In the sultry 
 months, the under-brushwood is powdered with chie- 
 goes, minim insects, too minute to be inspected, but 
 which get into the skin, and sting like nettles ; and 
 the tops of the trees are vociferous with sawyers, 
 other larger insects of the locusi tribe, called also kaf?/ 
 dicls ; because one seems to say " katy did,'' and the 
 other to reply ^« katy didn't." The plantation houses, 
 in general, are of frame, and unexpensive ; having 
 the chimneystacks outside, and therefore no closets 
 inside ; and the roof-shingles shelled on the edges. 
 The kitchen is usually detached a few rods from the 
 house. Mine Honourable Landlord's mansion, how- 
 ever, is of brick, and one hundred feet in front. In 
 his garden, and orchard, he has more fruits, than 
 most gentlemen in Virginia : — the fig bush, the hard 
 and soft shelled almond ; among the varieties of cher- 
 ries, the weeping-cherry, which bears blossoms when 
 a part of the fruit is ripe, and the fruit, which grows 
 at the end of the twig, having fins on each side ; 
 peaches, white-blossomed, and double-rose-blossomed, 
 from the cherry-peach, which ripens in June, to the 
 late peach of October; some of these rareripes so 
 rich and luscious, as to melt two inches before they 
 reach your lips. He has an apricot, and a nectarine 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 63 
 
 from Pope's garden at Twickenham. Peach orch- 
 ards, of from fifteen hundred to some thousands, are 
 common here ; for distillation into brandy. Pears, 
 but not apples, are scarce. Most planters have a 
 small patch of tobacco, and of cotton, for domestic 
 use ; the former plant being extensively cultivated 
 in the southern borders of this state. The white 
 vegetable wool of the cotton-plant is preferred to the 
 nankin-coloured boll. The young Virginian ladies 
 take pleasure in nurturing their hortulane shrubbery, 
 and fostering their parlour pot- plants. Here arc 
 breathing beds of mignionette, ^' the Frenchman's 
 darling," and there the geranium "boasts her crim- 
 son honours;" and here vie, in their ranges, the 
 orange-tree, the union or red and white York and 
 Lancaster rose, the moss rose, the yellow rose, the 
 undying globe amaranth, the Otaheite plant with its 
 long-hanging filmy veiny tendrils, the coiling snake- 
 plant, the sparkling ice or dewplant, the prickly pear 
 or bear's paw, whose beauty consists in its ugliness, 
 and the evervarying and superb hydrangea. Indeed, 
 the smiling little damsels run about among their 
 flowers, until they look as fresh and glowing, as their 
 own rosebushes. Hitherto, the season has been tardy, 
 and sleety ; but now, nature begins to change ; the 
 cowslip, the jonquille, and the double-flowering al- 
 mond, are putting forth : — redeunt — arhorihus comse. 
 As to the Manners of the Virginians, they are a 
 sallow, mercurial, liberal race ; having much of the 
 suaviter in modoj as well as the fortiter in re : 
 
64 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 abroad, extravagant in dress ; at home, slouching in 
 homespun ; the children of rich planters not disdain- 
 ing to wear check not quite tartan. They ride fine 
 horses ; a wealthy landlord keeping his saddle, his 
 racing, his carriage, and his plough horses, distinct. 
 They teach the riding horses to pace over their 
 smooth sands, and dislike trotters ; ride without 
 cruppers, and, about home, with 07ie spur; think- 
 ing, with Sir Hiidibras, that if they get one side 
 along, the other will not hang ashank. Instead of a 
 chaise, they use a chair, which is very light, but un- 
 social, as they are usually single ; and which, more- 
 over, being without top, exposes them to the wea- 
 ther. I here reprobate, as in other states, that, in- 
 stead of stamping their initials into the hoofs of their 
 horses, and horns of their kine, or upon the inner side 
 of the shoe ; some very savagely brand broad letters 
 into their flanks or shoulders, which disfigures them 
 for years, and answers only for one owner. Wherever 
 the Virginians go, a slave or two moves behind as 
 their shadow, to hold the horses, pull off their boots 
 and pantaloons at bed time, and, if cold, to blow up 
 the fire in their bed -rooms with their mouths ; bel- 
 lows being unknown in a slave state. All are fox- 
 hunters, and duck-shooters ; some keeping parks of 
 deer, and others a ducker for the season. As game 
 is plenteous near their enclosures, on a cloudy drizzly 
 day, or a clear frosty night, v.hen the hounds can 
 scent the trail along the dew, out start young lads and 
 bring home the partridge, the groundhog, the rabbit, 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 65 
 
 and the opossum with her ofFsprini^ not bigger than 
 a bean clinging to her teats in her false pouch. For- 
 merly, there was a small bounty given for each crow's- 
 scalp, and they were taken in part for county taxes. 
 Accustomed from boyhood to athletic sports, in an 
 infinite series, the Virginians are muscular and elastic 
 in limb ; and leaving draughts, whist, backgammon, 
 and chess, for the evening ; they are out at sling- 
 fist, and sling-foot; or outjumping, or outrunning 
 each other. I saw a young man betted upon, for 
 live hundred dollars, at a foot race. Indeed, every 
 thing is decided by a wager. Dr. and Maj. wagered, 
 whether a serpent ejected his poison from the sac 
 through a groove in the inner side of the tooth, or 
 through a hollow up the middle of the tooth ? Maj. 
 lost a year's medical attendance upon his family, 
 and Dr. won his gray poney. What would a northern 
 man think, to see a father, and a sensible, and a 
 respected one too, go out with a company, and play 
 at marbles ? At some cross-roads, or smooth-shaven 
 greens, you may see a wooden -wall, high and broad 
 as the side of a church, erected for men to play ball 
 against. Now I have no part nor lot in these mat- 
 ters. Most young Virginians are too convivial for 
 me ; and not a few, however splendid in talents and 
 fortune, if not open '•' votaries of the reeling god," 
 are too careless to " moderate the ardours of Bacchus, 
 by a communication with the Naiads ;" and become 
 too boastful devotees ^' of the Paphian Dame." But, 
 among the lower classes, worse than this is sometimes 
 
66 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 met, the pandemonium of a whiskey-shop ; where 
 houseless, pennyless, famished idlers endeavour to 
 ^^ keep their spirits up, by pouring spirits down." 
 The Virginians are fierce marksmen, and duelling is 
 not discountenanced. They sometimes meet, and 
 shoot at a target for a fish-fry. Fish-fries are held 
 about once in a fortnight, during the fish season ; 
 when twenty or thirty men collect, to regale on 
 whiskey, and fresh fish, and soft crabs just out of 
 their sloughs, cooked under a spreading tree, near a 
 running stream, by the slaves. Here you may see 
 a forester upsnatch a perch by the gills, and, at one 
 quick drawing through his teeth, strip it clean from 
 the spine ; then up with another, and so on to the 
 end. At these fries, the talk is of slaves, crops, 
 shooting- matches, and quaffing revels; their ideas 
 ever in a muddy channel. A more genteel festival 
 is the barbecue, expensive and elegant ; where a 
 numerous party of ladies and gentlemen assemble by 
 invitation, or ticket, and feast, and dance, in beau- 
 tiful decorum, under an artificial arbour. This, as 
 the Virginians, living so isolated, are fond of com- 
 pany, produces a course of visiting for weeks after- 
 wards. A Virginian visit is not an afternoon merely ; 
 but they go to week it, and to month it, and to sum- 
 mer it. Nothing is contracted about the Virginians. 
 Although all classes are proverbially hospitable, yet 
 there is a wide disparity between the different castes 
 in this state. The haughty and purse-proud land- 
 lords form an aristocracy over the dependent demo- 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 67 
 
 cracy of the poorer planters. Their gymnastic edu- 
 cation insures all to be bold riders, and brave fighters ; 
 but leaves a more than moiety surprisingly wanting 
 in literature. Latin is not uncommon, but rare is 
 any Greek. At William and Mary College, where 
 the course is but three, instead of four years as with 
 us, there is now no funded professorship of languages. 
 They boast of their Virginian Presidents, but by 
 whom were they educated ? They care but little 
 for belles-lettres. I heard a rich planter, who wish- 
 ed to sell a plantation near the Blowing Cave, and 
 was asked, among other kinds of wood, if there were 
 any laurel trees upon it, answer : — " Yes, but he had 
 ordered them all to be cut down ; the name was so 
 associated with poverty, that he could not bear to see 
 one.'' Orator Ogilvie once swayed the sceptre over 
 urchins near mine Honourable Host's. The Virgi- 
 nians are all politicians, and look to elections. Par- 
 ties at the south split perpendicularly ; as, at the 
 north, horizontally ; equal sides in one ; in the other, 
 all head and tail. A federalist in Virginia is a me- 
 dium between a federalist and a democrat at the 
 eastward. If one wishes to be elected to the state, or 
 confederate representation, he offers himself; and, 
 instead of doing this by proxy, as in New- England, 
 away he posts about the counties to visit each person, 
 and to solicit his vote. But the voters are very 
 capricious ; as was instanced this season. A citizen 
 had offered, and striven, purse and tongue, for three 
 years to get elected, and the people would not elect 
 
68 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 him. This year, he declined, and really did not 
 wish for the honour ; and the voters tore off his 
 coat in their zeal of putting him on the bench, and 
 would elect him. Another party ran, and snatched 
 up their candidate, and trotted away with him, 
 and hoisted him up into the air on their platted arms, 
 as the Gauls used to elevate their newly elected 
 monarch on the pavois, or large shield, to shew him 
 to the people, and poured a bowl of punch into him, 
 and — ^^ huzza for Tobit !'' — As to religion, the Vir- 
 ginians are less zealous, than were our Plymouth 
 sires, who, on the flat roof of the first meeting-house 
 they built, planted a battery of cannon for defence ; 
 but, being brought up without many churches, too 
 few regard the sabbath, except as a holiday ; or 
 wherein to begin or end a journey. In some places, 
 toward Norfolk, shops are kept open, only the buyer 
 may walk round to the side door, to evade the law. 
 Yet are the Virginians fast sticklers for orthodoxy. 
 For example, Richmond is faith without works ; 
 Boston works without faith. Richmond Antinomian 
 in principle ; Boston Arminian in practice. But do 
 not conclude, that there are no christians in Virginia. 
 There are many ; many, who will cheerfully ride 
 twenty miles to hear one sermon. And I know indi- 
 viduals, who have proffered to pay fifty, or a hun- 
 dred dollars a year, to encourage the procuring of a 
 christian minister. As they reside so far apart, each 
 plantation has its God's acre, or corner of gj-aves ; 
 and the funeral service is not infrequently performed 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 69 
 
 a month after the deceased is buried ; as they must 
 send, perhaps, a score or two of miles for a clergy- 
 man. It is very common for rich planters to remain 
 bachelors. In families, the mistress usually carries 
 about a ponderous bunch of keys ; as articles are kept 
 under lock from the slaves, and doled out each day 
 for use. Where there are children, each single babe, 
 if there be a dozen, has its particular nurse, or black 
 mamma ; to spy it, and to tote it up and down all 
 day upon her shoulder, until it is three or four years 
 old. The matrons, in the upper classes, are indus- 
 trious, affable, and accomplished, in a high degree. 
 The young ladies — " call them fair, not pale !" 
 — with their pensive, but imaginative countenances, 
 frequently dip into the heart. What is amiable, I 
 have seen a little miss sit down at the side-table, on 
 an evening, to instruct an aged house-slave to spell in 
 the Bible. When out on the green terraces, or in 
 the parterres, and orchards, the young girls run wild 
 as the boys ; wearing, to preserve their delicacy, 
 broad sun-bonnets, deep enough for small cradles ; 
 so that they apjjear all head and feet. They will 
 run up a tree like a squirrel. 
 
 The chief sickness, in this ancientest dominion^ 
 is in the autumn ; when you may chance to shake, on 
 one day, so that you cannot hold into your chair; 
 and, on the next, to burn so as to scorch your clothes. 
 In this vicinity, they do not often suffer from hydro- 
 phobia ; although surrounded by families of hounds, 
 pointers, and spaniels. They have a method of pre- 
 10 
 
70 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 venting a dog from running rabid, by cutting out the 
 worm under his tongue. Besides, near Loretto, they 
 have a reputed remedy against canine rabiosity ; two 
 mad-dog stones, of long-extolled efficacy. They are 
 a little similar to the cobra, or snake-stone ; came 
 from the East Indies, and were left in gratitude by 
 a foreigner, many years ago, with directions how to 
 be used, but were long neglected. At length, it 
 was resolved to make trial of one, and it succeeded ; 
 and has since succeeded in very many cases ; the 
 patients coming from a far land. The stones are 
 about an inch and an half cube ; resemble a piece of 
 hone, or hard soap ; and are powerful astringents 
 and absorbents. When put into warm water from 
 the wound, they discolour it with matter drawn from 
 the blood. One is owned by a company, who bought 
 it for four hundred dollars, and deposited it with a 
 physician, at Tappahannock, for the use of the pro- 
 prietors. The other is owned by a private man, 
 Mr. Sale ; who derives from it a revenue ; the 
 patient boarding with him, and paying twenty dol- 
 lars for the stone. All the danger is, lest there 
 should be some little scratch not perceived in time ; 
 or too many wounds for the stone to be applied to in 
 season, before the whole system be tainted. Although 
 somewhat incredulus odi myself, I have been thus 
 particular, because, relying on respectable and re- 
 ])eated testimonies, I deem it of the price of human 
 life, that such, if possible, be procured and experi- 
 mented in hospitals in populous cities. 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 71 
 
 As to the Diet of the Virginians, I may tell you 
 what I observe. Once for all, they are plentiful 
 livers. The first thing in the morning, with many, 
 is the silver goblet of mint-julap. At breakfast, be- 
 sides their wheaten rolls, they usually have, in their 
 seasons, apple-bread, or hominy, with a relish of 
 honey or herring ; and, for which they laugh at the 
 Yankees, I have seen some fond of treacle upon ham 
 or fish. They have none of the rye-and-indian loaves, 
 the rural ater panis, of New England. — At dinner, 
 which is at about three o'clock, whatever other 
 varieties they may have, a tureen of soup, and a 
 chine, jole, or ham of bacon, imbedded with greens 
 about it, are standing dishes. A meat-house is one 
 of the first houses built ; hung on all sides with 
 chines, middlings, joles, and hams ; perhaps finer 
 flavoured for having run wild, and fed chiefly upon 
 mast. One of the common petty larcenies of the 
 slaves is, breaking into the smoke-house. It is re- 
 marked that, north of the Potomac, one may find 
 good beef, and bad bacon ; and south of the Poto- 
 mac, good bacon and bad beef. They do not here 
 eat the terrapin, which is esteemed a luxury at the 
 north ; but they highly relish the sturgeon, which is 
 seldom eaten at the east. They never fail of having 
 hominy, which is broken corn and beans mixed ; 
 coarse or fine ground ; fried, baked, or boiled ; and 
 the dish is so popular in Virginia, that they have a 
 river named Chiok^ihominy ; and also an insect call- 
 ed the hominy-beater. It is a good substitute for 
 
72 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 potatoes, which do not here keep sound throughout 
 the winter, although fine in the summer ; especially, 
 the big anguilla, which will sometimes, it is said, 
 grow so large, that you may sit on one end, and roast 
 and eat the other. They also here cherish the sal- 
 sify, or oyster- plant, so called from its flavour when 
 fried. The Virginians think, that the most lamen- 
 table thing in eating is, that it palls the appetite ; 
 thus they frequently consume all the pickles, green, 
 white, or yellow-bleached, off the table before dinner 
 comes on, to provoke a relish ; as if any necessity to 
 eat, if one is not hungry. A philosopher eats that he 
 may live ; an epicure lives that he may eat. Ventre 
 nihil novi frugalior, says Juvenal. They seldom 
 have any puddings, or pastries ; but have, for varie- 
 ty, six or eight kinds of meats, flesh, fowl, and fish ; 
 frequently, in its season, the exquisite canvass-back 
 duck ; with rich catsups, and anchovies. I doubt 
 whether so unvaried living on animal food does 
 not tend to deaden the sensibilities, and to sharpen 
 the ferocities. They have no cider, perry, or com- 
 mon beverage for table-drink; but, instead, for the 
 ladies, water unqualified, weak toddy, or sangre ; 
 and for the gentlemen, either whiskey, or apple or 
 peach brandy, of their own distilling. Instead of a 
 glass before the plate of each person, as with us, the 
 decanters rest upon the sideboard until you call upon 
 the waiter. Most planters have an ice-house, and 
 contrive to keep the ice cool all summer. As the 
 kitchens are some rods removed from the dining-hall. 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 73 
 
 at dinner-hours you may count long trains of slaves 
 pacing to and fro, with the different viands, for a 
 long time ; for, although they have so much help, 
 they are ever in getting a thing done ; and thus the 
 dinner is comfortably cool before you sit down to it. 
 And one need not to be over-fastidious, since, how- 
 ever neat the mistress, good luck is it if the kitchen 
 is not lined with little half-naked smutchy implings, 
 rolling and clawing about, and listening with impa- 
 tient delight to the slow revolutions of the spits, and 
 the soft warblings of the caldrons. It is difficult to 
 get over first prejudices against black servants. — As 
 the Virginians expend all their strength upon dinner, 
 their supper is a mere ceremony. They have not, 
 as we have, a table, and toast, and pies, and cake ; 
 but, at about dusk, is sent around to each one, as he 
 sits in the hall, or under the piazza, a cup of coffee, 
 or tea, or both. Then follows round a plate of bis- 
 cuits on a tray, hot, and about as large as a small 
 letter-wafer; and perhaps a Virginian may sip a 
 whole cup, and nibble a half or even a whole biscuit ; 
 but as frequently neither. Some epicures in gas- 
 tronomic, after this apology, have a flesh, or crawfish 
 supper, at ten o'clock, to sleep upon, and to accom- 
 modate them with the fashionable dyspepsy. But, 
 in general, their maxim appears to be that of Psal- 
 manazar : — 
 
 Ut sis node levis^ 
 
 Sit tibi ccena brevis. 
 " To sleep easy at nighl, 
 " Let your supper be light." 
 
74 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 You will expect me to say something of the Slaves. 
 The plantations are blotched over, every twenty or 
 forty rods, with slave-cabins. These cabins, as they 
 are called, are built of small straight timbers, crossed 
 four-square, and interlocked at the corners, very like 
 children's cob-houses ; and daubed at the interstices 
 with clay, having a chimney of rough stones at one 
 end outside, and a hard dry ground floor. They 
 are cheap and mean, but healthy and comfortable. 
 The industrious slaves have little garden-plats, and 
 keep poultry. The tasteful slave makes, perchance, 
 a martin-house, by erecting a high pole having a 
 number of hollow calabashes hung around the top of 
 it* The field-slaves are allowed a cap, shirt, and 
 drawers, and a blanket in winter. Their winter 
 shoes are made so huge and stout, that a pigmy 
 might attempt to cross a creek in one. The field- 
 slaves are the plebeians ; the house-slaves the patri- 
 cians. It is amusing that the blacks monopolize the 
 most classical and romantic names ; Caesar, Plato, 
 Pompey, Cato ; Flora, Florilla, Rose and Lily ; our 
 cook is Minerva, and our waiting-boy Mc. Ivor, out 
 of Waverly. On a plantation, is usually one of each 
 trade ; a coachman, a gardener, and a vulcan ; and 
 if one breaks off a leg, they make a tailor, or a shoe- 
 maker, out of him. In keeping accounts, the vul- 
 cans, when they do job-work for neighbours, tally a 
 shop-board of hieroglyphics ; as the policy is, to 
 keep the slaves ignorant of every thing, but their 
 own work. The house-servants and nurses, although 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 75 
 
 they do not work so hard as a labouring-slave, and 
 live better, yet are they more stinted in leisure. 
 The house slaves frequently sleep down before the 
 embers, in a row, on rough rugs. With the field- 
 slaves, Sunday is usually a holiday ; wherein they 
 deck themselves out for frolic, or for their unintel- 
 ligible niethodist meetings ; where those, who are 
 tender in spirit, are said to be ^' seeking." Where 
 they have kind masters, the slaves look cheerful, and 
 happy ; and do not labour harder than a free white 
 labourer. The little ones, which in summer wear 
 nothing more than a remnant of a shirt, and not 
 infrequently go literally nude, and look like little 
 imps, will yet be seen singing, and kicking, and wal- 
 lowing about in the yellow sand right merrily. The 
 slaves, being educated in ignorance, are therefore 
 very superstitious ; having their poison-doctors, and 
 their conjurers. Some become wizards, by chewing 
 live coals, first gathering the saliva. There was 
 here, a few years ago, a cripple, who, for a trifling 
 boon, would gladly snap any of the bones of his fin- 
 gers, or small joints, which, like Pope's sylphs, 
 would in a short time become reunited. The female 
 slaves are fond of knic-knacs ; and make for them- 
 selves knitting-sheaths of the very glossy and beauti- 
 fully green and golden gorgets of wild -drakes. Be- 
 ing born smokers, they make pouches of the inner 
 leaf-skin of a swine, peeled thin, which is soft, trans- 
 parent, and tough ; and they contrive a comfortable 
 pipe, with an inch of corn-cob hollowed out, and 
 
76 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 fitted on to the end of a joint of reed. In s\immer, 
 all turn out into the fields to labour ; and it is a 
 novel sight to a New Englander, to see a negro 
 tvoman ride standing up behind a carriage as out- 
 tender ; or delving on the highways ; but more so, 
 to see a woman holding plough, and, at the same 
 time, and alone, to be guiding the mules by a line ; 
 and, in the other parts of the wide-extended planta- 
 tion, a dozen of little black children, about waist- 
 high, tottering over the furrows, and dropping seed- 
 grain. They begin to plant in April, and continue 
 it through May. As here the grazing lands are 
 scarce, and there has, for some years, been a distem- 
 per among the cattle, their oxen are not smaller than 
 large bull- dogs; although, beyond the Blue-Ridge, 
 the inhabitants rear noble bullocks. This is a reason, 
 why they here chiefly use horses and donkies. There 
 is one advantage in the mules ; that when they go 
 towards the sun, their long broad ears cast a cool 
 shadow over the driver. The toughest, and longest- 
 lived field horses are said to be the Chickasaws, or 
 small calico- coloured ponies ; often serving for thirty 
 years. In slave states, there is little economy of 
 labour ; and, although overrun with help, it seems as 
 if nothing could ever be done in season. Although 
 extravagant, and even princely, in many expendi- 
 tures, the planters seldom have a well, or pump, 
 near the house ; but the slaves must go twenty or 
 thirty rods, twenty or thirty times every day, to a 
 spring-house, and tote up a tub, or huge stone-jar, 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 77 
 
 upon their heads, on which they sustain all weights. 
 Instead of having a cheap apple- mill for cider, they 
 scoop out a long trough, and into this empty the 
 apples ; and then may you see long rows of slaves, of 
 both sexes, arranged up and down the sides, with 
 ponderous pounders, and their shining black arms 
 lifted up and down in order, as they quash the 
 pomace ; and, as they drink what juice they please, 
 they get merry, and sing lustily to the strokes of their 
 tall weighty wooden pestles. Sometimes, you will 
 see three or four slaves on . each side of a long hori- 
 zontal tree-body, cutting in a row ; one axe playing 
 up, as the other axe is playing down, in alternation ; 
 so that, when the logs are of equal diameter, they all 
 get done at one time. When a slave dies, the mas- 
 ter gives the rest a day, of their ow^n choosing, to 
 celebrate the funeral. This, perhaps a month after 
 the corpse is interred, is a jovial day with them ; 
 they sing and dance and drink the dead to his new 
 home, which some believe to be in old Guinea. In- 
 deed, a wedding, and a funeral, are equally agreea- 
 ble to those not personally interested in them, as 
 then comes a holiday. It appears to be an instinct 
 of these creatures to dance, to equivocate, and to 
 pilfer ; but, for the two latter propensities, ignorance 
 and necessity plead loudly. The slaves have black 
 tempers when aifronted, and no white man is near 
 by ; they will jabber, and rave, and fight, like mad- 
 men. Sometimes, when I look and contemplate on 
 one of these wretched shapeless beings, my pride 
 11 
 
78 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 can hardly be willing to allow him to be a brother. 
 He looks as if sun-scorched to a cinder ; his shin- 
 bones bandy as ram's horns, his legs stuck into the 
 feet like the helve into the middle of a pick-axe, or 
 claw-hammer ; and then his uncouth facial angle and 
 pericranium, as anatomists say, more like an ape's, 
 than a white man's. And then, to look at the fair sex, 
 or wenches, as they are here civilly called, with their 
 dark globose hanging fountains ; and the shining white 
 of their eye, which is always yellow. Yet, if they 
 might only cast their skins, as a snake, and wash 
 away the dark fragrant pigment underneath, and 
 draw them on again, they would perhaps be as white 
 as their masters. I wish they knew this. There 
 was a piece of an Afric's skin tanned into kid, in 
 Peale's Museum, Philadelphia ; and, it is said, that 
 they are used to make razor-strops, and saddle-cloths 
 in the West-Indies. The treatment of the slaves is 
 quite different under different masters, and over- 
 seers. It is certified, that a black overseer is always 
 more domineering, and more of an eye-servant, in 
 the bad sense of the word, than a white one. This 
 is true also in their treatment of their own children, 
 and dogs ; which they frequently delight to abuse. 
 What slaves I have seen, have fared coarsely, upon 
 their hoe-cakes and ash- pone ; but have been treated 
 humanely, and not hard tasked. But in some coun- 
 ties, and especially in some states further south, 
 they are trodden under foot ; a man and woman 
 manacled together, and thus sent in droves to mar- 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 79 
 
 ket ; tied down upon a log, and their naked backs 
 incarnadined, with a raw hide thong, into sanguine 
 welts, into which nitre is rubbed to heal them ; and 
 divorced from their husbands and wives by auction. 
 In Georgia, T have heard, they sometimes sell slaves 
 by the pound ; where one woman-slave was so gross, 
 that they were obliged to weigh one side of her at a 
 time. Some buyers inquire, whether a slave bolts, 
 or chews ? because those that bolt, i. e. throw down 
 huge collops at a jerk without mastication, eat much 
 more in a given time, than the others. A slave 
 infant, in good health, and weaned, is worth from 
 seventy to eighty dollars. I never yet have seen 
 any of those facetious barbarisms exhibited, that 
 I have smiled, and shuddered, at hearing related ; 
 such as grinding away their heels in winter, so 
 as to prevent their wearing out their socks ; slit- 
 ting their ears as they mark sheep ; sticking up 
 black babies on a pole, tied fast, in a corn-field, 
 for a screaming scarecrow ; and what is the most 
 ludicrous, but horrid, the cat-haul ; that is, to fasten 
 a slave down flatwise upon the ground; with stakes 
 and cords, and then to take a huge fierce tom- 
 cat by the tail backward, and haul him down along 
 the screeching wretch's bare back, with his claws 
 clinging into the quick all the way. No wonder, that 
 the slaves often will elope, and hide for weeks in 
 the swamps and bushes, and feed upon nuts and 
 berries, till famished back to their cruel taskmasters 
 again. It is common for the slaves to keep dogs. It 
 
80 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 is said, tliey hate spaniels, which will fawn upon them 
 when no white man is near ; but when a white man 
 comes up, will snap and show their white teeth at 
 them. A slave's dog usually cows down his ears, and 
 slinks his tail, caudam remulcens, between his legs ; 
 as if ashamed of his master, seeing him so slavishly 
 regarded. It often makes me feel disagreeably, when 
 I pass a slave, to see him cringingly let off his hat, if 
 he has any, and say — " sarvant, master ;" and when 
 he enters his master's door, to see him drop off his 
 piece of a cap outside, and crouch along, as if he 
 were in presence of his maker. We are only above 
 them by comparison. I have felt my heart ache, 
 when one of these poor creatures has come, and 
 brought me a fine peach, or some plums, as all the 
 little way he had to please ; one, who is all his hard 
 life slaving without a dime's reward, to make a pre- 
 sent to one, who is faring plentifully every day upon 
 his drudgery. The African slaves live the longest ; 
 sometimes to a very unprofitable age. There are 
 many planters, who wish there never had been a 
 slave brought into the country ; and who would 
 make great sacrifices to emancipate them, if it could 
 be safely done. But this must be done gradually, 
 and provision be made for them when free ; or 
 they would soon wish to be re-inthralled. The plan- 
 ters stand in dread of the free blacks in the state, 
 who act as a kind of medium of intrigue between the 
 slaves and the whites ; and on this account they ap- 
 prove of a Colonization Society, in order to induce 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 81 
 
 the free negroes to quit the country. I heard a rich 
 planter say^ that if Capt. Paul CufFee, the well known 
 coloured shipmaster^ would engage to export them 
 to Sierra Leone, he would fit out his quota of three 
 cargoes a year ; but I suppose that he would accept 
 a little quid pro quo, however, as his chief estate is 
 in slaves. After all, although the planters talk of 
 their slaves, as they do of their other stock ; and the 
 hie niger est of Horace seems to apologize for any 
 species of contempt, and abuse ; yet, I know not 
 whether the slaves, in general, are not as happy as 
 their masters. They have no thought of to-morrow for 
 a whole life, and have provision for sickness, and for 
 old age ; whereas, a poor white, or black free labour- 
 er, if sick for a week, or when become infirm from 
 age, perhaps breaks the hopes and dependance of a 
 whole family, or casts them upon the county. In 
 fine, although I certainly hold a high estimation of 
 the Virginian character, in many respects ; and of 
 their thousand-and-one acre plantations ; yet, I never 
 should covet to live so secluded in the woods ; and 
 to have my eye offended, and my heart pained, by 
 the degradation of so many of the human species. 
 
 The Virginian phraseology sounds a little peculiar 
 to a northern ear at times. There is the executive 
 belittle for demean, which, however, being an ex- 
 pressive word, the ex-president hath rather bclarged 
 his fame by adding it to our vocabulary. As 
 the New Englanders guess, so do the Virginians 
 reckon. What in New England is called the husk 
 
82 LETTERS, &C. 
 
 of corn, in Virginia is called the shuck ; and what we 
 call cob, they call husk ; as also the external envelope 
 of the kernel, which cannot be reduced to meal, and 
 which makes the bran ; they also call, what we call the 
 spindle, the tassel. The Virginians use clever for 
 intelligent ; whereas we use it for a kind of negative 
 character of weak intellect, but good disposition ; 
 the correct meaning is rather with them, than with 
 us, as shrewd, cunning, dexterous. What they call 
 chamber, is the room where the madam sleeps, and 
 is usually below stairs ; and what we call afternoon, 
 they call evening, making no quarter divisions of the 
 day. Tote, a slave word, is much used ; implying 
 both sustentation and locomotion, as a slave a log, 
 or a nurse a babe. They say — to grow a crop, for, 
 to raise a crop ; he was raised, for, he was educated ; 
 mad for angry, as do the Irish ; gear for harness ; lines 
 for reins ; and madam and mistress, instead of our 
 abbreviations. Children learn from the slaves some 
 odd phrases ; as, every which way ; will you all do 
 this? for, will one of you do this? and the epithet 
 mighty is quite popular with old and young, as, for 
 instance, mighty weak. Nor is their pronunciation 
 without some slight peculiarities, as, stars for stairs, 
 arr for air, bar for bear ; and Talliaferro, a surname, 
 of which they had a governor, is pronounced Tolli- 
 fer. — t,S.di€u ! 
 
LETTER FROM KENTUCKY. 
 
 m'B<s:(t(txmmif^. 
 
 DEAR BROTHER, 
 
 ON the map, this country appears like a new 
 world, divided from the Atlantic states by the ever- 
 lasting Alleghanies, which seem to uplift an impass- 
 able separation wall between the east, and the west : 
 and a ship would be as rare a novelty to a western in- 
 lander, as would a wild Indian to an eastern mariner. 
 Of this state, and some other of the western states, 
 the growth is almost a miracle. About thirty years 
 ago, there were only one hundred and seventy re- 
 turned militia, on the east side of Kentucky river. 
 I was informed, by lawyer W. of Lexington, that, 
 thirty years ago also, three thousand acres of prime 
 land, but ten miles from the town, were sold by a 
 young woman, for as little money as would buy her a 
 7iew silk gown to attend a ball in. Patrick Henry, 
 of Virginia, moreover, sold, to his brother-in-law, 
 about fifty years since, two surveys, one of more than 
 three thousand acres, and the other of more than two 
 thousand acres of land, in this Scott county, for two 
 brood mares. Olden Daniel Boone, the first settler 
 
84 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 of this State, who, like a true pioneer, kept migrating 
 farther west as settlers surrounded him, being unable 
 to live in sight of houses ; has thus just died in the 
 prints : — " We are informed, by a gentleman direct 
 from Boone's settlement on the Missouri, that, early 
 in August, Col. Boone rode to a deer-lick, and seated 
 himself within a blind raised to conceal him from the 
 game. That while sitting thus concealed, with his 
 old trusty rifle in his hand, pointed towards the lick, 
 the muzzle resting on a log, his face to the breech 
 of the gun, his rifle cocked, his finger on the trigger, 
 one eye shut, the other along the barrel through the 
 sights j in this position, without struggle or motion, 
 and of course without pain, he breathed his last.'' 
 However, we are pleased, that the above account is 
 a characteristical anticipation ; and that the intrepid 
 settler had not then taken his last transmigration. 
 
 The larger towns in this state, as Lexington and 
 Frankfort, and especially Cincinnati, in a neighbour- 
 ing state, across the Ohio river, about eighty miles 
 hence, are very city-like, and thriving ; and in 
 them, as also among many of the planters, is much of 
 wealth, and gentility. Lexington was named from 
 this circumstance ; the settlers, having marked out 
 the town, were seated on the ground in deliberation 
 about a name ; when they had news brought them of 
 Lexington battle, in Massachusetts ; in honour of 
 which event, they immediately decided to call their 
 new town Lexington. One indication of a new coun- 
 try is, that the shops are variety- shops ; each one 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 83 
 
 keeping piece-goods, groceries, cutlery, porcelain, 
 and stationary, in different corners ; there not yet 
 being that partition in trade, which we meet in older 
 states. In Lexington is a college of a classic-sound- 
 ing name, Transylvania, i. e. Backwoods College ; 
 which, as it is now to be under the presidency of the 
 Rev. Horace Holley of Boston, and to be reorganized 
 upon the model of Cambridge University, will soon 
 invigorate new energies ; when, like ancient Har- 
 vard, Learning and Liberality may exclaim : — 
 '^ JS^ster jam regnat Apollo P^ In Frankfort, the 
 State-house vaulting is covered with little ruddy 
 chubby cherubs. This country conceals strata of 
 limestone, which spread about six feet below the 
 surface, and render the fountains somew^hat cathartic 
 for a time to most strangers. In this vicinage, the 
 champaign lands are undulating, which causes a 
 wholesome ventilation of atmosphere. The western 
 roads, from their rich loamy soil, after a rain, be- 
 come very miry ; but soon dry under a hot sun, or 
 brisk air. In Kentucky, their east wind is our west 
 wind ; the eastern breezes, instead of being damp 
 and threatening storms, being the most fair and re- 
 freshing. In traversing this state, you meet many 
 names of places, indicative of the early history of the 
 country; Great-Crossing, Blue-Licking, Blue-Spring, 
 Stamping-Ground, Bears'-Wallow ; around some of 
 which, for miles, the hills are covered with large 
 loose stones, almost impassable for wheels. Around 
 the Blue-Licks, there is scarcely soil enough to hide 
 12 
 
86 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 a mole at ten rods distance. This was done by the 
 bisons, which used to resort thither for salt ; and 
 to root, and trample the soil off the hills, until it 
 became washed down by rains into the creeks. Aged 
 hunters can yet remember when they saw two thou- 
 sand buffaloes there at a time. Along these rough 
 roads, the mall-carrier rides upon one horse, with 
 long reins and whip, guiding and driving another 
 horse before him, which bears the mail-bag. Ken- 
 tucky is a wonderful tree-country. On the banks of 
 the Ohio river, the sycamore is president of the 
 forest ; and it is beautiful to behold them, in their 
 full umbrage, when the outer gray bark shells off, 
 and the moon rays shoot through their white limbs, 
 as their towering shadows lie undulating on the 
 waters. The trunks of the sycamores are sometimes 
 almost incredibly large ; and, it is said, that an apo- 
 thecary once kept his shop in a hollow one. The 
 tops of the sycamores are frequently ornamented with 
 the evergreen tufts of mistletoe, which, in winter, 
 look like so many large eagles' nests on the leafless 
 branches. Of this mistletoe, or viscum, are near 
 twenty species ; it resembles boxwood, and bears a 
 whitish viscous berry ; and the seed is supposed to 
 be scattered by the wind, or carried in the beaks 
 of birds, where it roots into the bark, and robs the 
 tree on which it flourishes of its sap. This parasi- 
 tical plant, especially that upon the oak and silver 
 fir, was held sacred by the ancient Druids; and is 
 consecrated by its similitude to the golden bough of 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 87 
 
 tlie pious hero of Virgil. It is said to possess medi- 
 cinable qualities, and to be used for female cattle. 
 Further down this river, on the border of Illinois, 
 the ground is strown with a gently falling wiiite 
 down, canentia lana, from the capsules of the tall 
 Cottonwood trees, which covers the snail- peopled 
 grass like flakes of summer snow. The tops of these 
 cottonwoods are all alive with loquacious, and gay- 
 plumaged paroquets. The sweet maple is here a 
 tree of profit ; and it is very picturesque to spy 
 the evening fires in the forests, and the hale youths 
 and maidens, like gypsies, around their sugar-camps? 
 on the green sward. The black-barked maple is 
 said to yield the sweetest sap-water. As you range 
 the woods, the eye is delighted with the novelty of 
 strange trees ; among others, the hackberry, whose 
 berries are not distasteful ; the papau, bearing a pon- 
 derous insipid pear-shaped fruit ; the hickory, yield- 
 ing nuts as large as an egg ; the buck-eye, or horse- 
 chesnut of Europe, with its fruit like a buck's eye, 
 which swells cattle into the blind staggers, and whose 
 wood is proverbial for making a dull fire ; the honey- 
 locust, with its long sharp interlocking spines, exem- 
 plifying the curse of Eden ; the pecan-nut tree ; 
 the evergreen temple-wreathing laurel; the haw- 
 thorn of classic blossom ; the beautiful red -bud, like 
 a peach in bloom ; and, in some counties, the mock- 
 coffee, the umbrella-leafed, and the cucumber- podded 
 trees. Up the branches of many of these wood- 
 land trees, without touching the trunks, are to be 
 
88 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 seen gigantic grape-vines, thick as a child's hody, 
 coiling, like enormous dark serpents, fifty feet from 
 the ground, arid their deep urabrage overhanging in 
 a canopy. In the forests, the lover of rural sounds is 
 entertained by the frequent small sap-suckers ; and 
 the great and varied wood-peckers, tapping the tall 
 hollow beech trees ; and by the gentler plainings of 
 the mated turtle-doves, cooing from the low branches. 
 In the southern parts of this state, there were, 
 formerly, extensive cane-brakes, which were ever- 
 green, when other herbage was sere and brown ; 
 and in which cattle were wont to browse during the 
 winter. On this account, being able to subsist 
 throughout the whole year in woods, and swamps, 
 and therefore less dependant upon man ; some do- 
 mestic animals here were less docile, than in the 
 middle states. The land for a circuit of ten or 
 twelve miles radius around Lexington is called the 
 heart of Kentucky. The Kentuckians need not to 
 bury defunct fishes in their cornhills, nor to adopt 
 Dr. Darwin's project of enriching land with the cast- 
 ofT unctuous perukes of England. They plough with 
 horse-teams their mellow loam, which, if left fallow, 
 runs rank with inextricable weeds. The strength of 
 the soil sometimes leads the planters to dispense with 
 our precautionary maxim, that — " One year's good 
 weeding will prevent seeding ; but one years seed- 
 ing makes seven years' weeding." As there are in 
 the western states no marshes, it is needful that the 
 herds and flocks be seasoned every few weeks. The 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 89 
 
 woods are sufTered to run peopled with swine, and, 
 what is noticable in so impure a creature, a swine's 
 breath is as sweet as new hay, as you pass between 
 the wind and their nobility. In the autumn, the 
 owners, with their dogs, collect them by scores and 
 hundreds, and slay them by shooting them in the 
 head. Kentucky is a good poor man's country ; for, 
 in truth, the clusters are clusters of Eshcol, the land 
 foams with creamy milk, and the hollow trees trickle 
 with wild honey. Nor, in this climate, do the lean 
 months eat up the fat months. The rank luxuri- 
 ance of the undershrubbery here is manifested in the 
 tall mulleins and elder-stalks, which shoot upward 
 like saplings. There are now growing, around 
 springs, low-bushed ground-cherries, of a light trans- 
 parent yellow when ripe, of a sweet flavour, eaten 
 by children. Here also is met that curious, but ill- 
 omened flower, called " cuckhold's horns ;" leaving 
 a large blackish seed-vessel, not smaller than a com- 
 mon hammer-head, with two long and strong horny 
 claws. If I believed in the sensitive doctrine of the 
 perceptivity of plants, how would humanity shudder 
 at the pangs of every blade of grass, wherever a steed 
 grazes ; nor would conscience scarce permit me to 
 trample over these bosky acres. 
 
 The plantation-mansions are in general mean ; so 
 that many a rich planter, were it not for his far- 
 spreading fields, would, by a northern man, be ac- 
 counted poor. It was this incongruity, that caused a 
 Monsieur, who was travelling in the back country, 
 
90 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 to remark that, if a Frenchman have ten acres of 
 land, he has every thing ; if an American have ten 
 hundred acres, he has nothing. The houses are usu- 
 ally of hewn-timber, with stone chimnies outjutting 
 from the end walls, and the out-doors opening direct- 
 ly into the parlours, so that in winter they are quite 
 comfortless. Some few of the plantation-seats, how- 
 ever, are of brick, and accommodated with ample 
 out-buildings. The egg-houses, for the laying and 
 incubation of fowls, are as capacious as cots. There 
 is commonly in the front yard a horse-rack, with bri- 
 dle pins over head for a dozen of steeds ; and upon 
 one of which, from ray casement, I now see a peacock 
 perched on his long black legs, and screeching for 
 joy; and now gracefully veering his ever- changeful 
 neck, and outspreading his golden eyes to the sun. 
 As men of New England, or the Middle States, would 
 appear to a polished and learned Englishman, or 
 Frenchman ; so do our Western brethren appear to 
 a New England, or Middle States visitor. There is 
 more seeming, than real difference ; and this rather 
 in exterior, than in interior advantages ; in acquire- 
 ments, than in sense. The Southern and Western 
 people do not think that Dr. Morse has flattered 
 them in character, and impute to him local preju- 
 dices ; but, I trust that he has set down naught in mal- 
 ice ; but, like Griffith, wished to be an honest chron- 
 icler. This is not yet a country of books. Most 
 professional gentlemen here, for want of early oppor- 
 tunities, have little taste for literature ; but the law- 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 91 
 
 yers are well grounded in land-claims, the most gen- 
 eral and lucrative part of their practice. In lieu of 
 three or five years, as they have or have not received 
 degrees, of laborious systematic study, as in our 
 state ; county pettifoggers here sometimes come forth 
 to plead, and to counsel, after perhaps six months of 
 desultory reading. As to Latin, ten years ago, very 
 few were the youths, who advanced farther than the 
 licet recedere ; and, as to Greek, rare was the native 
 minister, attorney, or physician, that ever dreamed 
 in any language but English. Such are now entitled 
 buck-eyes ; yet often well succeed, by an undiverted 
 application of their mental faculties, and an unabash- 
 ed assurance. Most young men here are accurate 
 land surveyors. The Hon. Speaker C. and the Hon. 
 Col. R. M. J. of this state had little above English 
 educations ; but it is not to their dispraise, but hon- 
 our, that their native vigour of intellect has risen so 
 high above this early defect. In the lower counties, 
 you may meet vvith young men, urbane, fashionable, 
 and enterprising, who cannot indite a familiar epistle 
 passably ; and others, who cannot read nor w^rite ; 
 as one of wealthy exterior said to me, vv'hen I offered 
 him a state-trial, that I was perusing : — " He was 
 not scribe enough to read.^' This is not mentioned 
 from marvel, but from regret ; since the deficiency 
 originated in the paucity of means in the early modes 
 of a new country, and is a constant disquietude to 
 them. In the towns, and among rich planters, no 
 people are more liberal in support of public, and 
 
92 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 private tutors. Indeed, there are, in this state, 
 many individuals of rare worth ; gentlemen of as 
 highly liberal sentiments, and of as attaching quali- 
 ties, as heart can wish ; and maidens, who run among 
 the wild-flowers, or ring the piano, with smiles 
 made of sweetness, and dark eyes of love. If the 
 young men cannot easily translate the Iliad of War, 
 they can readily construe the Oeilaid of Love. The 
 Kentuckians frequently marry very young ; men at 
 eighteen or twenty ; girls at fourteen or sixteen ; and, 
 on the day after the wedding, at the bridegroom's 
 father's hall, is usually a sumptuous festival, called an 
 inn-fare. The men of this state have iron-bound 
 constitutions ; they are a people of enterprise, and of 
 bravery ; none were braver in the last war. Mili- 
 tary titles are here inflicted upon one ; few escap- 
 ing the honour of either captain, major, colonel, or 
 general. A gun is a child's play-thing. Let a little 
 Western lad espy but the velvet ear of a gray- 
 squirrel, which he has tree'd, on the top bough of a 
 hackberry, and he dmmis him, as he calls it. I have 
 lately seen a couple of beautifully delicate ground- 
 squirrels, which were caught here, of an ermine 
 whiteness, and pink eyes. Instead of a lap-dog favou- 
 rite, you may here meet, perchance, with a pet- 
 bear ; and there are, at this time, at my next door 
 neighbour's, a pair of nearly grown cubs, which play 
 like conies; come and rear on their shaggy hind 
 legs, and peep in at your windows ; and anon caper, 
 and climb, and push each other off" the limbs of oaks j 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 93 
 
 the victor backing his chimsy rugged self down the 
 trunk, hugging like a boy, in pastime. These early 
 habits of the youths lead to a venturousness of dispo- 
 sition, which is not found in more refined, and effem- 
 inate states, where sedentary philosophy and litera- 
 ture have prevailed. Among the lower classes of 
 society, the Canaan richness of the land is produc- 
 tive, among better fruits, of much indolence. They 
 attend rather to the esse, than to the bene or melius 
 esse. Too many, instead of resting on one day in 
 seven, w ork only on one day in six ; and therefore 
 ever remain poor. In some of the inferior hovels, 
 are seen little once-white boys sitting at table in their 
 long shirts ; and running half the summer with noth- 
 ing else on ; which freedom renders them hardy. 
 Some mothers here hip their infants ; as do the 
 Sumatrans. Men of this rank, if they cannot thrive 
 in one occupation, often commute it for another ; 
 never distrusting their capabilities. Thus a creature 
 of bombast, as prince Hal says, has recently bought 
 one of the Eastern wooden and brazen grammar- 
 machines ; and, from overseeing a plantation, has de- 
 scended into the Green-river country, to grind gram- 
 mar. In their chaffering, as they never have essayed 
 latinity, and the words are german in sound, some 
 of them do not always accurately f'istingnish between 
 the meum and tuum. Among this class, the riotous 
 roisters, or, as they are here called, rowdies, will 
 fight, not only from patriotism, but from mere love 
 of fighting ; it being one of their habitual amuse- 
 13 
 
94 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 ments. These merry Shamgars are said to have 
 fifteen ribs upon each side. A pistol, and a dirk, 
 are as familiar, as a watch, and a penknife. When 
 maddened, like the savage, an affront is followed by 
 a battery upon the bones ; for, as they cannot com- 
 prehend reason, their arguments are generally palpa- 
 blco I have heard of more pugnacious affrays dur- 
 ing the past year, than in all my life before. The 
 impious, and senseless duel-murder is frequent in 
 this state. About two months since, two blackamoors 
 fought a duel, near Frankfort. Instead of two 
 seconds, they had one third ; and, as white gentlemen 
 usually cross over the Ohio, so did they cross over 
 the Kentucky river near by; and, it is reported, 
 that they stood their ground quite Othello-like, and 
 each eyed the other with unblanched cheek. One of 
 them was honoured with a bullet in his teeth. As 
 duellists fight for honour, ought they not previously 
 to practise falling, so as to fall gracefully ? For my 
 part, I ever had a constitutional antipathy to being 
 sliot. Fines will never stop duelling; it must be 
 made inglorious, as well as criminal ; incarcerate 
 duellists in the penitentiary ; that will stop duelling. 
 Whiskey slays many a strong man here ; and too 
 many of the groceries are grogeries. I lately saw 
 an advertisement, in a neighbouring state, for a ped- 
 agogue ; and, in a nota bene : — '^' One that is not 
 addicted to ardent spirits would be preferred." At 
 elections, where they vote viva voee, not by ballot, 
 you may see a barrel afloat, offered by the successful 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 95 
 
 candidates, and the vulgar portion of the voters 
 crowding, and dipping up the spirit, if not in their 
 hats and shoes, in their pahns. At such times, they 
 feel their freedom, and vociferate their propensities. 
 At the polls, not an age since, as the candidates sat 
 in the clerk's office, to thank each voter for his suf- 
 frage, according to custom, one voter cried out, as 
 he obliquely eyed them : — " I vote for that little 
 black man, over that huge yellow man." The for- 
 mer was a smart small swarthy lawyer ; the latter 
 a tawny tall Eagle-Creek wagoner. Most wealthy 
 planters, in this state, keep their coach and pair j 
 their chaises are here called gigs. But, on account 
 of the roughness of the roads in a lately settled coun- 
 try, the men, in general, travel on horseback, with 
 their valise behind them, and no cruppers. To pre- 
 vent the mire from dishonouring their legs, the 
 horsemen wear short galligaskins, or long cherevalls ; 
 though they mar these words into uncouth sounds. 
 The youths, from early practice, ride gracefully ; not 
 like clodhoppers, the rider in a gallop, the horse in 
 a long trot. Like their progenitors, the Virginians, 
 they are partial to pacers. Some of these are so 
 natural pacers, that, it is said, they go pacing as they 
 graze along the meadows. The little maidens h?re, 
 of eight or ten years old, will pace, or canter off, on 
 their side-saddles, like young huntress Dianas. You 
 meet, in this country, with more renowned names, 
 than a late wilderness might promise. Scarce a 
 lad, or damsel, but is called after some redoubtable 
 
96 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 scholar, philosopherj statesman, or warrior ; some 
 nymph of mythology, or maid of romance ; Cyrus, 
 Junius, Newton, Manlius Valerius, Euclid, Darwin, 
 Napoleon ; characters, which frequently were all 
 '^ unknown to mara', or daddy 0." Not far hence, is 
 a young lady, just entering her teens, named Edward 
 Ann. The Kentuckians in general have numerous 
 families, the fruitfulness of the climate extending 
 even to the wives ; and, it is noticed, that brides, 
 who were as Rachels in the Atlantic states, having 
 migrated to the west, become as Leahs ; and that 
 they esteem it no unusual compliment to receive 
 even the double blessing of Rebeccahs. From the 
 poorer states, when there is a famine in the land, 
 they are fain to send to this Egypt to buy corn. In 
 this state, all are plentiful, and bountiful livers. 
 Sugar is eaten by spoonfuls, the maple- sugar not 
 cloying like the cane-sugar. Melons here ofttimes 
 expand their cheeks to unedible compass. At table, 
 is a huge pitcher of mantling milk, towering in the 
 middle of a circle of glasses. Here is sometimes 
 used frumenty, a pottage of wheat and milk seethed. 
 Bonny-clabber, in its season, is with some a favourite 
 cooling dish. If their coarse ash-pones irritate the 
 palate as they descend, their soft wafles, with their 
 hollow checks floating in honey, soothe all again. In 
 fine, the rich Kentuckians live like lords. 
 
 Camp- meetings are common in Kentucky, and are 
 doleful curiosities. The ministers are a species of 
 without- method Methodists ; happy compounds of 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 97 
 
 illiterateness and fanaticism. If the weather be 
 rainy, and it be convenient, they enter a meeting- 
 house ; many of which are built with a door back of 
 the pulpit, so that the preacher may turn, and exhort 
 those, who choose to lie grouped out on the grass ; 
 and which houses have long parallel seats, instead of 
 pews, which are deemed too aristocratical. But, in 
 fine weather, the preachers, and their followers, en- 
 camp in the woods, or fields, for some days, or even 
 weeks ; migrating from one county to another. Many, 
 who thus carry on the preaching business, are more 
 pious, than wise, we doubt. Others, it is to be fear- 
 ed, are as degenerate as were the ancient clergy of 
 England ; when the younger sons were not only born, 
 but begotten, for the church. If they have any 
 human acquirements, it is with their devotees a mat- 
 ter of regret, because their dehortations appear the 
 less supernatural. They preach in parti-coloured 
 suits, gray or drab, with yellow or white buttons ; 
 but a button doth not test the heart, would ask 
 honest corporal Trim, doubtingly? With most of 
 these apostles, the text is but a pitching of the tones 
 to the nasal key ; for, although they name a text 
 when they commence, that is commonly the last you 
 hear of it. Their long harangues are ludicrously 
 solemn, and sometimes accidentally sensible. They 
 draw after them very large motley concourses, by 
 their obstreperousness, and their notable faculty of 
 making you laugh, when they intend you shall cry. 
 It is not uncharitable to surmise, that their ambitious 
 
98 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 hope is, to touch a live coal to the passions, and the 
 orphans of sense. When the whole vast circuravened 
 crowd lift up their voices, they outsing all music. 
 Like preacher, like hearer. They not seldom, be- 
 tween sabbath services, do secular business ; de- 
 nounce intemperance, yet aid and abet in the means 
 of it, by distilling into whiskey the staff of life ; and 
 restrain not their children from hunting, angling, 
 and batting the ball, upon the sabbath. Although 
 they do not profess to new-knead their old leaven, 
 they appear to imagine an immersion into a creek an 
 ablution of sin. Thus are the duties of the church 
 too often lamentably divided between the induction, 
 and ejection, of members. At a baptism, the shores 
 are lined with the picturesque multitudes, and you 
 would smile in sadness, at the blushing unhallowed 
 mode of submerging the women. For, as they do not 
 close gather the borders of their white flannel robes, 
 nor sink them by leaden knobs, when a female wades 
 into the stream, her robe opens, and spreads, like an 
 umbrella. The gospel is indeed, in a too literal 
 sense, revealed unto babes and sucklings, if such 
 have it ; and truly, without a sacred irony, are they 
 converted by the foolishness of preaching. How- 
 ever, although such zeal is not according to know- 
 ledge, there may be many sincere christians among 
 the professors ; nor need it to be supposed, that 
 camp- meetings are more unapostolical in this, than 
 in other states. I once saw, in the Academy of 
 Arts, in Philadelphia, a ludicrous painting of a 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 99 
 
 camp-meeting, sketched with Hogarthian humour ; 
 but which w\is soon removed, as it gave offence to 
 some, if we may accommodate an idea from Burnsj 
 to see themselves as others see them. 
 
 It is but about thirty years since the Kentuckians 
 lived in fortified ^' stations," to avoid the lurking 
 tomahawk of the Indian. In the last winter, mine 
 Host, a brave Colonel, received an Indian visit from 
 some of his red friends in the late war. There 
 were two sanhops, two squaws, a young sanhop, and 
 a pappoose. One squaw was widow of Logan, a 
 friendly Shawanese chief, slain in the war ; but 
 since married to an Indian, called Capt. Perry. 
 Speaking of the Indians not having so many chil- 
 dren as the whites : — " Me too much warriour ;'^ 
 replied Capt. Perry. These copper-cheeked visi- 
 tors rode upon small chubby hardy Indian ponies. 
 There is an Indian-school about four miles from 
 Great-Crossing. Although I deem it a prior duty 
 to expend mission-money upon our own heathen In- 
 dians, to exporting it to the Eastern Indies ; yet, 
 how happens it, that philanthropists, so zealous to 
 civilize the Indians, do not strive to ameliorate the 
 condition of their own slaves at home ? But better 
 one good effected, than neither attempted ; al- 
 though, I fear that they will find it difUcult to make 
 chickens of partridges. We complain of the In- 
 dians, but have not tiiey stronger reason to complain 
 of us ? Our fathers came over, and, by forced pur- 
 chases, drove them from their hunting-grounds, that 
 
100 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 God had given their progenitors ; and we are yearly 
 driving them farther, and farther westward, until, at 
 last, they must cross the Stony-Mountains, and bury 
 their wrongs in the Pacific Ocean. My heart has 
 always leaned towards these mighty hunters before 
 the Lord ; these most singular, red-skinned, straight- 
 limbed, long-haired, half- clad people, whose origin 
 is unknown. There is somewhat of fine romance in 
 the lights of their council fires, and their burial 
 mounds, in the wilderness ; their rovings forth with 
 their bows and arrows across this immense continent 
 for game ; and an elevation, and eloquence, in their 
 high-toned spirit and speeches, which is rarely reach- 
 ed by our professed orators. I should lament to 
 have them gone from the face of the earth. It 
 would be the public loss of a species in the wonder- 
 ful varieties of man. 
 
 Although this is another of those states, which 
 give the lie practical to the Preamble of our nation- 
 al Declaration of Rights, that " all men are created 
 equal ;" that they are endowed by the Creator with 
 liberty, as one of their inalienable rights ; yet, slaves 
 live with tenser skins in Kentucky, than in Virginia. 
 There is no marking of meat here, as they say. In 
 ^^ shucking^^ seasons, the slaves split the welkin 
 with their boisterous glee. When a slave visits from 
 home, he must carry "a pass"' from his owner ; or 
 he is liable to be detained as a runaway. As copper 
 coin is too weighty to be often transported hither, 
 and much cut-silver is passed, a slave would spurn 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 101 
 
 at less than a dime. In slave states, the white con- 
 versation is apt to be darkened in its complexion ; 
 indeed, three quarters of sociable discourse is often 
 engrossed by the topic of slaves. If a young widow 
 be inquired of, it is asked, is she a good manager ? 
 and instead of the phrase, how rich ? how many 
 slaves has she ? Although, south and west, men 
 boast of being most democratic, yet what is more 
 contradictory to their principles, than their tyranny 
 over three fifths of their population ? I saw one 
 slave corded up to a tree, with his hands above his 
 head, for wagging an evil tongue at a white man, 
 and stripped, and knouted with a raw-hide thong, 
 until his back was carbonadoed into ridges, and 
 crimson. If two slaves are found quarrelling, it is 
 customary to tie their left wrists together, and order 
 them to lash each other, until one asks of the other 
 pardon. A mistress is obliged often to wield the 
 cowskin over her refractory young female house ser- 
 vants ; and the practice is, when they scream aloud, 
 to chastise them until they smother their sobs. Yet, 
 in truth, as might be expected, almost every slave is 
 an eye-servant, more easily governed by fear, than 
 by affection ; and, as the mansion, and yard, and 
 plantation, are overrun with them, there could be, 
 perhaps, no safety without severity. A dishonoura- 
 ble trait of character, not, however, peculiar to the 
 Kentuckians, is, that here are some young men, who 
 make fortunes by slave-traflicking. They purchase 
 all they can obtain, thrust them into prison for safe- 
 14 
 
102 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 keeping, drive them handcuffed through the coun- 
 try, like cattle, and boat them down the river to 
 Natchez, New-Orleans, and other cotton and sugar 
 climates. Such is the effect of custom, that church 
 communicants are cordial with them ; and, in other 
 respects, these slave-jockies appear like humane, and 
 amiable men. Far more honourable, and satisfac- 
 tory, to a virtuous reflecting mind, were poverty, 
 and its attendant reproach ; than riches acquired by 
 buying and selling human flesh. 
 
 In order to give you an idea of the fearful simpli- 
 city of a public execution in this state, I will detail, 
 what I now lament to have ever witnessed. In Au- 
 gust, I rode down to Frankfort, to see Wharton 
 Ransdale expiate with his own life, the taking of the 
 life of another. He had ever been a notorious bully ; 
 being educated in ignorance, and defiance of the 
 laws of God, and of man. I shuddered, and yet 
 wished, for once, to behold the end of the law. At 
 about eleven, the light- horse, artillery, and infantry 
 drew up before the brick prison ; and, at about 
 twelve, as if to mark his end with more ignominy, 
 there moved up to the steps a low two-wheeled cart, 
 with a little mean scraggy yellowish-white deathlike 
 liorse, which just before we had seen p;;ss along 
 with a load of loam ; and in the cart were a shroud, 
 and a cofiin. After a little waiting, Ransdale walked 
 down the steps, pale as a spectre, dressed in a clean 
 white shirt, waistcoat, and pantaloons, with his collar 
 open, so as to exhibit the fatal noose upon his neck. 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 103 
 
 He had on no coat, it being an intensely hot day ; so 
 hot as to parch my hands, as I sat upon my horse in 
 the sun. He seated himself of his own accord on his 
 coflin, alone in the cart. The guard having formed a 
 hollow square around the vehicle, it was led along for 
 half a mile, up a hill on the public road, overlooking 
 the town. When the cart, surrounded by pale thou- 
 sands, arrived up under the low cedar one-legged 
 gallows-tree, it halted. The neighbouring hills were 
 crowned with witnesses — all in breathless silence. 
 Three ministers of religion attended, two of whom 
 faithfully harangued the people, and prayed over 
 the dying malefactor ; who, for the last few days, 
 had become penitent, and willing to die. They 
 warned the youths, as his request, to shun bad com- 
 pany, and whiskey, which had brought him to that 
 disgraceful end : bad company, and whiskey, which 
 destroyed more souls than war, famine, and pesti- 
 lence ; yes, said he, if bad company has slain its 
 thousands, whiskey has slain its ten thousands. 
 The prisoner then stood erect on his coffin, his arms 
 being pinioned above the elbows, and addressed the 
 witnesses of his shame ; warning them by his exam- 
 ple, forgiving his enemies, and craving their forgive- 
 ness ; and shaking his former comrades by the hand, 
 as they reached around the cart. He requested to 
 be buried in a certain spot, and that the minister, 
 who first spake, should preach a funeral sermon at 
 his mother's, in three weeks from his death. He 
 then took a long deep draught of cold water from a 
 pail, which was handed up to him. Then he sat 
 
104 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 down on his coffin, and sang a hymn aloud, and 
 alone ; and a melancholy sound it was, to hear a fel- 
 low mortal in fall health, and strength, sing his own 
 funeral dirge. After this, having signified that he 
 was ready, although his glass had yet a few more 
 sands, the deathsman mounted the cart, and, uncoil- 
 ing the cord from his body, slipped the noose up 
 tight about his neck — what must have been the 
 horror of his sensations ! — and, having bandaged his 
 eyes, and upper half of his face, with a white 'ker- 
 chief, he tossed the loose end of the cord over the 
 gallows-arm above, and fastened it. Ransdale stood 
 a moment with his hands upraised as high as he was 
 able in prayer ; and then, when he had ceased, and 
 heard the tall grim black leader smite the horse, with 
 a moral courage worthy of a better destiny, he ran 
 and jumped forcibly into the air. For a little time, 
 he swung to and fro without the slightest struggle ; 
 then drawing up, and clinching his hands slowly, 
 and stiffly spreading and raising his feet a little once, 
 he gave up the ghost, seemingly without much pain ; 
 and every heart responded to his prayer : — May 
 God have mercy on thy soul. He was spared three 
 last indignities ; that of being hung in a two-coloured 
 cap ; of being cut down at a jerk with a sword ; and 
 of being buried under the gibbet, and his body given 
 to the surgeons for dissection. After about twenty 
 minutes, when his lips and chin were deeply empur- 
 pled, and no muscular motion remained, he was taken 
 down, shrouded, and coflined, and borne in a wagon 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 105 
 
 to his agonized mother's ; whence he was, next morn- 
 ing, carried to the spot, which he had chosen, and 
 there buried. His brothers kept watch by night, 
 over his sod-wrapt grave, for a week, to protect his 
 remains from the doctors. The low cedar one-legged 
 gallows-tree, I regret, is to be left, on the death-spot, 
 for some time; a standing satire on human nature. 
 Thus awfully ended this human being his mortal life, 
 ^^ with edge of penny-cord, and vile reproach ;" and 
 I feel a recoiling of heart, that I went with the mul- 
 titude to behold it, and have been able thus minutely 
 to describe it. This wretched man charged all his 
 crimes upon a bad education ; and, as Dr. Paley, in 
 his Moral Philosophy, says, a man is to be blamed 
 for having contracted bad habits, rather than for the 
 eifects of them after they are contracted. If peniten- 
 tiary incarceration for life were chosen, and would 
 not weaken the salutary energy and majesty of the 
 laws ; my heart's desire would be, that another hu- 
 man being might never be hung — leave them to the 
 Judge of judges. 
 
 Although we cross the mountain-barrier between 
 distant states, yet do we not escape from needed 
 sympathy at human suiTering. Not long since, there 
 died, in this county, aged about twenty years, a 
 man so weak from his youth upward, that, in his 
 latter years, his father had contrived for him an iron 
 machine, to upstay his body. A long rod ran up his 
 back, banded with side-rods, jointed at the hips, and 
 knees ; with a supporter of wire and leather, elas- 
 
106 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 tic, coTiing over from the top of this rod to the 
 front of him, to uphold his chin. Thus braced, he 
 used to sit, and read, at a table fitted with wheels 
 and pullies, wherewith he could trundle himself 
 about the room. How ought such a living lesson to 
 teach us the invaluable blessing of a sound mind in a 
 sound body. 
 
 The Phraseology in this state is sometimes novel. 
 When you arrive at a house, the first inquiry is, 
 where is your plunder? as if you were a bandit; 
 and out is sent a slave to bring in your plunder; 
 i. e. your trunk, or valise. Instead of saying of a 
 promised mother, with Shakspearean delicacy, that 
 she is <'nigh fainting under the pleasing punishment, 
 that women bear ;" the hint is quite Shaker-like, 
 that she is ^^ about to tumble in pieces." I have 
 often heard the word human used here as a noun. 
 The word great is sometimes used to signify little ; 
 as, that lady has a great foot, meaning, without irony, 
 a little foot. Many from habit, like the Virginians, 
 tuck a ^ at the end of such words as onct, twict, 
 skifTt. They here call a river, a run ; a lot, a sec- 
 tion of land ; they say to stall, i. e. overload, a horse; 
 and cupping for milking. In the fields, a kind of 
 foxtail grass here becomes timothy ; and our blaek- 
 and-yellow caterpillar is named fever-and-ague. In 
 the garden, they cultivate their collards, i. e. proba- 
 bly coleworts, and kashaws ; and, at the oven, chil- 
 dren wait f(U' their crablanterns, and cobble. Some 
 words are used, even by genteel people, from their 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 107 
 
 imperfect educations, in a new sense ; and others, 
 by the lower classes in society, pronounced very 
 iincouthly, as : — to eat a liquid, to quile for to quiet, 
 to suspicion one, to legerize an account, to prize for 
 to raise by lever, to fayz for to fix, oifer for the can- 
 didacy, best book I ever read after, well liked of, 
 steed too gayly, heap of times, did done do it, done 
 done did it, painter for panther, varmont for vermin, 
 contrary, hymn, brgethren, an oxen, I seen, 1 brung, 
 exhibitation, schrovvd, yearth, yearn for earn, bresh, 
 hommer, sketes, drap, fotch, mought, and so forth ; 
 which corruptions I have noted for Mr. Pickering's 
 very useful "Vocabulary." — Farewell ! 
 
LETTER FROM NEW-ORLEANS. 
 
 fKBareexKX. 
 
 DEAR BROTHER, 
 
 AFTER a steam-boat passage of fifteen hun- 
 dred miles down the Ohio, and Mississippi, frequent- 
 ly interrupted, and delayed, by the low state of the 
 two rivers at this season of the year, and a short eall 
 at Natchez, I arrived at this city, on Independent 
 Day, it being also Sunday. Having now been here 
 a few weeks, I can oifer you a slight sketch of at- 
 mospherical and vegetable nature, and of men and 
 manners, in this torrid and insalubrious region. As 
 it is less common for an Eastern visitor to descend to 
 New-Orleans by the western rivers, than to ascend 
 to it from the Gulf: perhaps I had better commence 
 my descriptions at Natchez, three hundred miles 
 above this city, and thus have the gratification of 
 picturing to you the extensive and luxuriant ranges 
 of plantations, which enrich and beautify the oppo- 
 site banks of the Mississippi ; and which are seen to 
 fine advantage, as you majestically glide down be- 
 tween them towards the city of New-Orleans. 
 15 
 
110 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 Natchez is a city set on a hill, and yet hid. It 
 stands two hundred feet above the river, on a bluff 
 of almost perpendicular ascent, back of a low land- 
 ing place, which intervenes ; thus it cannot be view- 
 ed from the river. The few mansions are open with 
 windows, and doors, for ventilation. Near Natchez, 
 are some Indian tumuli, not unlike many in the 
 west. The levee, or embankment, commences, on 
 one side, at Natchez. What flat lands are in New- 
 England called intervales, the Western planters call 
 botto7ns, or prairies ; and the Southern, natural 
 meadows, or savannahs. The intervales between 
 pine tracts and the savannahs, are called ham- 
 raocks ; and, except that they have wood, are sim- 
 ilar to the latter. The plantations here are gener- 
 ally sold in form of a parallelogram ; forty arpents 
 (French acres) deep from front to rear. The river 
 alluvion is the best arable soil. The western-side 
 plantations are the most valuable ; being less frost- 
 bitten by north- winds ; as the vapours from the 
 river are warmer than the air. The plantation 
 mansions are commonly of one story, light and airy, 
 with surrounding piazzas, and delightfully fragrant 
 orangeries. You can imagine nothing more grate- 
 ful, than to walk among these orange groves. Not 
 far from the mansions, may be seen immense sugar- 
 houses ; and long rows, or squares, like a fort, of 
 slave- quarters ; with a tall belfry in the midst, to 
 summon the slaves from their repose to their tasks 
 at day- break. It appears rather a paradox, that a 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. Ill 
 
 planter, although he may buy slaves, yet has an ab- 
 horrence of a slave-dealer. I learnt many particu- 
 lars about the living, and punishment, of slaves. 
 The planters, although kind and hospitable to visi- 
 tors, are, perhaps more from custom and policy, 
 than inhumanity, cruel task-masters to their slaves ; 
 or boys and wenches, as they call them, however 
 old. A su,u;ar planter is discouraged, if he cannot 
 pay for his plantation in five or six years ; and 
 thinks, if he gets ten years labour from a slave, he 
 does well, although the slave then die. The slaves 
 have three distinct tasks on every day ; the before- 
 sun task, the day-task, and the evening-task. A plan- 
 ter is not rich, unless he owns a hundred slaves ; and, 
 in the cotton season, may be seen, sometimes, four 
 or five hundred at once in a field, in their loose 
 gabardines, picking the bolls. Little children can do 
 this work ; and small boys go entirely nude, in some 
 places. Under some masters, the slaves, unless they 
 raise poultry themselves, which they are permitted 
 to do, receive flesh only three times a year, and this 
 on holidays. Their usual fare is, a peck of corn in 
 the ear a week, which they must break in their 
 hand-mills ; and the grit, or refuse, of rice, like the 
 western screenings of wheat ; and, for relish, a salt 
 herring. I regret to say, that the slaves will fre- 
 quently exchange even this their scanty unsavoury 
 meal for whiskey, which is sometimes distilled from 
 the Carolina potatoe ; any expedient to aid them to 
 forget themselves. When they proceed in droves 
 
112 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 to their several tasks, a driver follows, with a huge 
 long heavy stimulator. If a slave be slack in his 
 labour, his feet are locked in the stocks, and his 
 back answers it. A girl, for running out at nights, 
 may wear, for a week, under her chin, an iron ruif, 
 v/ith a sharp-peaked border. My desire is not, 
 that the Creator would have mercy on the masters, 
 as they have mercy on their suffering slaves. Even 
 female nature here sometimes loses its commiseration 
 for the slave, as may be exemplified by the follow- 
 ing unfeeling story. A rich planter's lady had long 
 been in a consumption, and was now in the last 
 stages of life ; when, one day, one of her old slaves 
 came to the gate, nearly blind, and bending down 
 under the burthen of almost one hundred years of 
 faithful service for herself, and her father, and her 
 grandfather, before her. His remnants of clothing 
 were so patched, that you could hardly tell what 
 patch was ever of any colour, or substance. On his 
 woolly head, all gray with age, was a cap of straw 
 of his own twisting. He stood, weeping like a child, 
 and said, that he had crept up once more from the 
 cotton field, and had been three days coming, to see 
 his sick mistress before she died. His mistress sent 
 for him to come in, and spake kindly unto him ; and 
 when he v^'as going to try to walk back again, he 
 turned, and begged of his sick mistress to give him 
 a little salt to put into his grit, or small hominy of 
 rice. " Begone ;" cried the almost dying mistress, 
 flying into a deep rage ; " Begone ; out this in- 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 113 
 
 Slant, you old white-vvooUed skeleton ; out, out, I 
 say ; or FlI send you to the driver/' No words 
 can add to this. It is painful to reflect, that, from 
 the sweat of the brows of these trampled wretches, 
 do we receive many of the comforts, and luxuries, 
 of life. This tropical climate is favourable to vege- 
 table nature. As the productions of these immense, 
 and lucrative fields, of cotton, rice, and sugar-cane, 
 up and down the borders of lower Mississippi, do not 
 grow in our latitude, perhaps you would like, in im- 
 agination, to ride out with me, and see how they 
 appear, and are cultured. — The two principal kinds 
 of Cotto7i are the yearly, and the West Indian pe- 
 rennial. The former, of w hich are several varieties, 
 is low, the bolls large, the phlox long, strong, and 
 very white ; the latter is a tall, somewhat shrubby 
 plant, the bolls not so large, the phlox delicately 
 fine and silky. There is also a species from one of 
 the Marquesas. The green-seed cotton, of which 
 are two species, is said to be suited to the upper- 
 country ; and the black-seed to the sea-islands. The 
 Louisiana cotton is planted in drills. At the age of 
 four months, it is topped, to induce the sprouts to 
 throw out lateral branches. The stalks of cotton, I 
 think, much resemble the stout low-bush bean-vine ; 
 and the blossom the large white hollyhock. The 
 capsule continues of the size of a pigeon's egg, until 
 the ripening of the seeds, when its sutures open into 
 three partitions, and expose a snow-white, or, some- 
 times, a nankin-coloured, fibrous, extensible, glossy 
 
114 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 down. One pound of raw-cotton has been spun into 
 a thread, which would have extended one hundred 
 and sixty-nine miles. Kine and swine will eat the 
 seeds, which yield a useful oil. — The Rice stalk 
 loves a swampy ground. The planters sulTer the 
 waters to overflow it for six or ten days after hoeing ; 
 and when the ear is formed, they let the waters con- 
 tinue on it till ripe. It is then threshed, double- 
 winnowed, and ground, or beaten in a hand- mortar. 
 The whole rice is barrelled, the small serves for 
 food, the flour for provender, the chaff for compost, 
 and the straw for fodder. In growing, I think it 
 looks like a field of oats ; and the blade is said to be 
 green and fresh, while the ear is ripe. — The Su- 
 gar- Cane, which thrives lower down the river, is a 
 native of the East, and probably has been cultivated 
 in India, and Arabia, from time immemorial. The 
 cane is now about two feet high. It has a beautiful 
 fresh appearance, somewhat like flags, when young ; 
 but when grown, is a tall jointed reed, terminating 
 at top in a tuft of deep grass-green blades, with 
 edges finely and sharply serrated. Its height is 
 from three to seven feet, and the intermediate dis- 
 tance between the joints from one to three inches. 
 Cane is cultivated by laying the stalk in furrows, 
 and from the joints rise new stems, or suckers, 
 which answer for two or three years. The cane is 
 strong, but brittle ; containing a soft substance, 
 which affords a copious supply of uncloying saccha- 
 rine juice, which is very nutritive. The season of 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 115 
 
 granulating the juice is a time of gladness, and fes- 
 tivity, to man and beast. From the molasses is dis- 
 tilled rum, and from the scummings, says Darby, a 
 meaner spirit. The top of the canes, and the leaves 
 of the joints, are salutary for cattle ; and the mace- 
 rated rind serves for fuel to seeth the fluid ; so that 
 no part is useless. — The Tobacco-plant, so prevail- 
 ing here, you have seen in its stinted northern 
 growth ; it resembles the mullein in appearance, 
 and is much less beautiful than the former produc- 
 tions. — The /nf//^o shrub is, of late years, neglect- 
 ed. Of this plant are three kinds ; it will thrive 
 on mean soil, but requires a tropical heat. It grows 
 about two and an half feet high, and is cut, two or 
 three times in a season, with reaping-hooks. The 
 stems of the plant are steeped, precipitated, sun- 
 dried, and cut into square pieces for use. The 
 vapour of the fermented liquor is deleterious to the 
 health of the slaves. — Much has been said about the 
 cultivation of the olive in this climate ; and the tea- 
 plant lias thriven in Savannah. — Having thus de- 
 tained you, as long as possible, in the verdant plan- 
 tations, and fresh air ; let us now re-approach the 
 sultry and dusty, but lively and wealthy, city of 
 New-Orleans. At a little distance, as you draw 
 nigh, the tall masts bordering along the levee, ap- 
 pear like a long grove, or avenue, of Lombardies, 
 with their leaves off. 
 
 New-Orleans stands upon an island, called the 
 Delta of the Mississippi ; which, however, is not in. 
 
116 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 shape much like a delta. The city is in form of a 
 crescent, the harbour being made by a curve in the 
 river. It is protected on one side by the river ; 
 on the other by irreclaimable swamps ; there being 
 left no approach, but through a defile three quarters 
 of a mile in breadth, which breastwork, manned by 
 five thousand men, it is thought, would make it, 
 however unlike in its site, impregnable as another 
 Gibraltar. It is judged, that the greatest chain of 
 inland navigation in the world might, and, in time, 
 will be between New- York and this city ; as in that 
 vast northern route, there is now only twenty-seven 
 miles of portage, and that may be opened by a canal. 
 This city, with a community of about forty thou- 
 sand, is laid out in squares. In front, is an embank- 
 ment, called the Levee, along which are ranged 
 hundreds of vessels, and steam-boats ; not as at 
 wharves, but in doubling files, prow to stern, and 
 broadside to broadside, for half a mile. The river 
 opposite is one mile and an half wide. Though one 
 hundred miles from the sea, and a swift current, the 
 Gulf tide perceptibly ebbs and flows up to the city. 
 On the north, is the Fauxbourg St. Mary ; on the 
 South, the Fauxbourg Marigny ; and, back of the 
 city, near the swamp, is a Basin, whence sail steam- 
 boats for the Bay of St. Louis, and Mobile, through 
 Lake Pontchartrain. The great western mail is 
 about to be transported down the Mississippi, in 
 steam-packets, to Natchez, and New-Orleans New- 
 Orleans has been called the Alexandria of America. 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 117 
 
 Mr. Jefferson was no false prophet, when he fore- 
 saw, and foretold, the immense value to the country, 
 of this vast reservoir, and outlet, of the West. Half 
 a dozen miles helow the city? on the left banks of 
 the Mississippi, is the laurelled Battle-Ground. 
 
 New-Orleans appears less American, than any 
 city I have visited. It reminded me of prints of 
 French and Spanish cities. The citizens may be 
 divided into four great classes ; the European whites ; 
 the Creoles, or native whites ; the Quarterons, of 
 mixed blood ; and free native mulattoes, and blacks ; 
 and the negroes in slavery. Also there are some 
 immigrants, and Jews. The houses, which in gen- 
 eral are of one story, with an airy piazza round 
 three sides, are elevated on piles, with cellars above 
 ground. You see here no gable roofs, or luthern 
 windows ; but in general flat roofs covered with 
 tiles, or with rows of red semi-cylindrical interlock- 
 ing shards ; and the outer walls with a weather- 
 proof, white, bloom-coloured, or yellow stucco. 
 Their tall folding-doors, and broad casements, both 
 open outwards ; each being furnished with long 
 white muslin curtains, for screens, and coolness. 
 Most of the houses and yards are enclosed by high 
 pickets. There is now finishing a superb Theatre, 
 erected by a private gentleman, and expected to 
 cost over a hundred and twenty thousand dollars. 
 It contains four tiers of boxes, with balconies, and 
 balustrades, like the Theatre Francaise, in Paris. 
 French and Englisii actors are engaged for it. Near 
 16 
 
118 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 this, is a splendid Assembly- Hall, painted in land- 
 scape, walled with mirrors, and hung with a long 
 row of starry cut-glass chandeliers. Here is also a 
 Circus ; where the trained animals often deserve 
 more applause than their riders. Back of the city, 
 with a flesh-coloured outside, is the Hospital. A 
 new brick Presbyterian Meetinghouse has just been 
 here dedicated ; the materials of which were ship- 
 ped from Boston. The minister also was imported 
 from Massachusetts, and is promised a salary of 
 three thousand dollars. The Episcopal Church is 
 of brick, and elliptical ; with a cenotaph to a late 
 governor in the front yard. Although the Ken- 
 tuckians and Louisianians decry the New-England- 
 ers ; yet, when they need a president of a college, 
 or a clergyman, thither do they lock for them. Not- 
 withstanding the city is crowded with edifices of 
 dwellers, and traders, yet have most of the houses 
 sm.all gardens, and yards, thickset with native and 
 exotic evergreens, flowering shrubbery, and wicker- 
 ed espaliers, overhanging the gates, and pickets ; 
 and refreshing the heart with a breath of nature. 
 In the yards, frequently spread their umbrage, the 
 pride of China, and the broad-leafed catalpa. In al- 
 most every garden, you meet the sweet, the sour, 
 and the small myrtle orange, and often lemons, and 
 limes, with their white blossoms. "The scent of 
 the orange flower,'' expatiates a lively French wri- 
 ter, Du Tour, "is regarded as a standard of perfec- 
 tion in its kind. It has not, like that of many flow- 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 119 
 
 erS;, a deceitful sweetness, which pleases only to in- 
 jure. It is not faint, like the scent of jasmine or 
 reseda ; it does not affect the head like narcissus 
 or tuberose ; it does not weaken the nerves, but 
 rather strengthens them ; it is a salutary odour, 
 which refreshes the senses, and enlivens the brain. 
 In fine, it has no rival, and is as salutary as it 
 is delicious.'' Intermingled with these, grow the 
 purple, and the yellow fig ; and, more rarely, the 
 pomegranate. The fig-trees, of which there are, in 
 different countries, above one hundred species, bear 
 no visible blossom, the flower being within the fruit; 
 which, under their broad irregular-shaped leaves, 
 resembles our early pears in form ; but is of a sick- 
 ening spiritless flavour, until preserved. They are, 
 however, much liked by some, and sought after by 
 a little bird, a kind of becaficoes. I took untiring 
 pains to find a pomegranate tree with its fruit on. 
 It is leafed like the peach tree, and bears a bell- 
 shaped blossom, of a large size, and a bright scarlet ; 
 more rarely, white, striped, or double-blossomed. 
 The fruit, which is not much esteemed, is somewhat 
 like a large pear, with a long trumpet-mouthed 
 snout, which it can rest upon. The inside is cellu- 
 lar, and full of seeds, inclosed in a pulp, which is the 
 part eaten. A cleft pomegranate has a lovely tinge, 
 like a virgin's blush. Most of the flower-yards are 
 at the mansion of some French Madame ; for, let 
 them have a Monsieur living, or not, the house 
 usually goes by the name of the Madame's. Here 
 
120 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 range borders of boxwood, nine or ten feet high ; 
 and there rise the tomato, and castor, like trees. 
 Among shrubs less familiar, you may see the althea, 
 with its lilach small rose-like blossoms ; the spread- 
 ing smoke or cobweb Venetian shrub ; the mock- 
 pineapple, with its large white conical flower at 
 top ; the banane, from St. Domingo, where it bears 
 a fruit, its leaf being a very long broad whitish- 
 yellow transparent blade ; and, among a curious 
 variety of French shrubs, with delicate stems and 
 catkins, I noticed a strange plant, called tricolour ; 
 having each of its broad blade-leaves of three un- 
 blended hues, green, scarlet, yellow ; and no flower. 
 These colours in the blade are dull at bottom, but 
 keep brightening towards the top, until, at the head 
 of the plant, they are of a most vivid hue. 
 
 Central in the city, stands the Spanish Roman 
 Catholic Cathedral of St. Louis. It is very spacious, 
 and appears majestically grand at a distance, but 
 does not bear scrutiny. The materials, which at first 
 view appear marble, are a kind of stone, covered 
 with a once white cement. The inner vault is sup- 
 ported by a dozen massive columns, of ten or twelve 
 feet circumference. On the left, in a niche, stands 
 an image of Saint Francis, in an old rent black cas- 
 sock, like a true mendicant friar. On the right, in 
 another niche, stands the Virgin Mary, with her 
 blessed infant, arrayed like one of the tawdriest 
 waxen-figures in museums. The ofiiciating Spanish 
 Father, whom I saw, had a long scraggy grizzly 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 121 
 
 beard. At the street-entrance of the aisle, with his 
 eye fixed steadily on the holy altar at some distance 
 before him, stood, motionless and blank as dead, a 
 catholic sentinel, in a blue coat with red cape and 
 cuffs ; a thick lank coal-black sleek shining queu pon- 
 derating down his back ; a silver laced belt, and tall 
 steel-headed glittering pontoon in his right hand 
 erect. — In the catholic burial-ground, which is in a 
 swampy enclosure, the tombs, obelisks, and grave- 
 stones, are each surmounted by an iron cross, and 
 motto. The ground is so low, and overburied, that 
 many discoloured bones, in monitory ghastlincss, lie 
 strovvn about the turf; and I saw a slave digging a 
 grave, which kept half filling itself with offensive 
 water. On a certain holy-day, in each year, the 
 catholics dig up, and burn, the bones of the canon- 
 ized dead, with solemn rites. — There were formerly, 
 in this city, under pay of the crown, a few capou- 
 chins, and friars, of the Order of the Carmelites. 
 
 The Convent of Ursuline Nuns is at the lower part 
 of the city. It was built by the French, and has 
 extensive gardens, with high close walls. The edi- 
 fice was once a white gray ; but its whiteness is long 
 since sullied by time into smut and gloominess. At- 
 tached to the convent is a small house, with three 
 rooms divided longitudinally from each other by 
 double gratings, or walls, about six inches apart, 
 each having apertures of not more than two inches 
 square, through which friends may converse with the 
 nuns, and boarders, on urgent business. There are 
 
122 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 valuable fiindsj as each nun, if able, on taking the 
 final vow, or black veil, deposits fifteen hundred 
 dollars ; which, it is said, becomes inalienable com- 
 mon stock. Many young females resort hither for 
 education. I went tui'je into the chapel, at vespers. 
 In an inner apartn^ent, stands, on a decorated table, 
 or altar, a massy full length iniage of Virgin Mary, 
 or Saint Ursula, richly molten, or graven, and 
 gilded ; for I could only glance at it through the lat- 
 ticed partition. The nuns of the black veil are not 
 admitted to be seen on any occasion. A stranger 
 can only hear the Abbess rapidly repeating mass, at 
 matins, and vespers, after the chant of the superior, 
 joined by the shriller voices of the nuns, and nov- 
 ices ; and catch a glimmei'ing of them, through the 
 narrow checks of the double black bars, as they enter, 
 and retire. Although thus in banishment from the 
 world, the nuns are not useless ; for they do fine 
 needle-work. Neither are all faded, or uncomely ; 
 for some are said to be both rich, and young, and 
 lovely. Since it is so uncommon in a female to be 
 unwilling to be seen, had I been of susceptible heart, 
 as I caught the eye of one of the novices through the 
 lattice-work, I might have been half enamoured, 
 merely from the workings of imagination. 
 
 The Levee is crowded all day with people of all 
 kindreds, and tongues ; and of all complexions, from 
 dark black, to light white. Among the foreign pen- 
 dants on the shipping, on the fourth of July, was seen 
 waving the tri-colourcd flag. Here are met hun- 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 123 
 
 dreds of West-country boatmen, who often, after 
 selling their boats, rather than row up the never- 
 returning current, walk back, with knapsacks on 
 their shoulders, upwards of a thousand miles through 
 the prairies, and wilderness. Quarrelling is their 
 chief delight ; despising the pacific overture of the 
 two Eastern cravens, once in disputation on the 
 levee ; when one, on seeing opposite the sign of a 
 justice of the peace, in French, Juge de Paix ; 
 " Here," said he, " let us leave it to Judge Pax." 
 The levee is all bustle, and novelty. Here I saw a 
 number of Creek, and Chickasaw Indians, strolling 
 and idling ; and, among these, I remarked two of 
 uncommonly fine limb ; both half naked ; the chief 
 with tall white feathers in his long coarse black hair, 
 and his breast quite tattooed over in half circles ; 
 the squaw ornamented with rows of large loose brass 
 armlets, and anklets. Here also I passed a drove of 
 forty slaves, chained by the waist and leg, driven 
 under the scourge to labour upon the flag-stones, as 
 a punishment ; and doomed, at night, to the calabose, 
 whither all vagrants, taken after the nine o'clock 
 signal gun is fired, are sent. As you walk up and 
 down the levee, the eye and the ear are frequently 
 arrested. Here you see huge bulging octagonal 
 pitchers, that would contain half a barrel of punch ; 
 and there earthen water-jars, of a half- puncheon 
 capacity. At short intervals, you pass domes and 
 pyramids of the largest, and most luscious melons. 
 It was upon the levee, that I saw a crowd around a 
 
124 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 foreign charlatan, holding high his rich articulating 
 horologe, who proposed, for fifty dollars, to initiate 
 any man into a secret of taming the wildest animals 
 to future docility, in a quarter of an hour. Along 
 the levee, hang cages of canary, and mocking birds, 
 for sale. Here may you see the little Congoese 
 parrots, not bigger than sparrows, of a fine shape, 
 with their gaudy, but beautiful plumage. I saw 
 here a China macaw, larger than a pheasant, with 
 twelve inches of sweeping tail feathers, and a superb 
 vivid plumage of red, yellow, green, blue, and their 
 shades. It was said, that he could talk Chinese with 
 his deep hooked ivory beak ; but he spake not a 
 word unto me. The owner asked thirty dollars for 
 the bird, and would not abate above twenty-five. I 
 also saw here, a curious animal from the south of 
 Georgia, called sapajou, which suspends itself by its 
 tail. The gentlemen carry sun-umbrellas. The levee 
 is a fine evening promenade for the ladies. The 
 ladies wear no head-dresses, in fair sky ; but mod- 
 est becoming white or black lace veils. There 
 are some beautiful brunette girls here ; and the 
 French mademoiselles have a peculiar soft drawling, 
 but rather insinuating tone of voice. The negresses 
 wear checked turbans, of gay colours. This climate 
 makes the aged women appear older than they are. 
 I saw one unreasonably aged, and wealthy French 
 Madame, too hideous to be described, waddle by, 
 with a moon-sized jewelled repeater at her waist. 
 How much grander, instead of the watch, if she had 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 125 
 
 ordered a tall oldfasliioned eiglit day house-clock to 
 be lumbered along behind her by a pair of stout 
 black slaves, to tell her how much older she grew. 
 The other evening, on the levee, I met a Highlander 
 playing on his Scotch bagpipe ; or, bag of pipes, as 
 the clown called it. He held the inflated bag aslant 
 beneath his arms, as if a child ; and, compressing it, 
 reached over to play the stop-notes ; holding a short 
 pipe in his lips, and letting the long pipe shoot back- 
 ward over his left shoulder, like a firelock. This 
 instrument has three pipes, besides the little port- 
 vent. The music is something between a flute and 
 a violin, with a humdrum drone to it. When near, 
 the sounds are powerful ; and the player would lift 
 high his legs, and briskly step backward and for- 
 ward in fine enthusiasm. 
 
 As to the morals of this city, the word is obsolete. 
 On the Sunday we arrived, a balloon, with a live 
 lamb in the car, and aerial fireworks, were to be 
 exhibited, by permission of the mayor. It is said, 
 that there has never been an unpleasant day for In- 
 dependence, which is a good omen for this country. 
 This day, however, is not statedly celebrated at the 
 south, and west. All proclamations and newspapers 
 here are printed with parallel sides, or columns, of 
 English, French, and some of Spanish. Sunday is 
 the busy holiday, when the theatre, and the circus, 
 have most spectators, as then they least value the 
 time. Duels are very fashionable, if they can con- 
 trive an affront ; such as : — ^' How dared you to spit 
 17 
 
126 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 as I was passing ?" — ^' How dared you to pass as I 
 was spitting ?'' or, '" You shall not sneeze where I 
 am !" This would make a pleasant duel. There is 
 a corner called Cadiz, a rendezvous for assassins, and 
 no inquiry made. As the good people of New Eng- 
 land are scandalized by their travelling pedlers, so 
 are the Kentuckians dreaded on account of their 
 swaggering boatmen ; and as the Western people 
 call all the Eastern travellers Yankees, so do the citi- 
 zens of New-Orleans call all the up-river boatmen 
 Kentuckians. I would not, because it were unjust, 
 entitle New-Orleans a pandemoniusii of devils, a 
 limbo of vanity, or a paradise of fools. But is it not 
 a thoroughfare of speculators, and brief sojourners, 
 going and coming, whence and where, few know, 
 and few care ; a place in which, if a man is not 
 fleeced, more or less, it is his own fault? In some 
 streets, you can hardly pass a door, or corner, but 
 you will see a party sitting at some game. The 
 Museum CofFee-House, opposite the levee, is illumi- 
 nated, and enlivened by a band of musicians, on every 
 evening. It is a splendid resort, with a small, but 
 choice collection of stuffed birds, and some minerals, 
 in glass cases. As this is a coffee-house, you can 
 here find all cordials, but coffee. Here meet, every 
 night, on the balcony, or level roof of the piazza, in 
 the open air, behind brilliant transparencies, hun- 
 dreds of people, from the novice shop- boy, to the 
 gray man in spectacles. And here, arranged round 
 small square tables, each with a decanter and goblets, 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 127 
 
 do they speculate upon the doctrine of chances, from 
 infamous billiards, down to childish domino. If it 
 has been rumoured, it is not to be believed, much 
 less repeated, that, to be a gentleman here, like 
 foreign princes, and lords of the nobility, one must 
 patronize a yellow miss, even if only for the name of 
 the thing ; and that if a young buck has one or two 
 discarded lemans, his credit rises in proportion to the 
 number. The wealthy planters, in this vicinity, can 
 more easily bestow upon their daughters slaves, than 
 educations ; and the daughters too often are satisfied 
 with the frivolous, instead of the solid accomplish- 
 ments. It is common to ask a young gallant, who is 
 about to marry : — '' how much ?" rather than : — 
 <^^whom?" And too frequently do insolvent liber- 
 tines come from the north to the south, to speculate 
 into a lady's heritage. On sabbath evening, the 
 African slaves meet on the green, by the swamp, 
 and rock the city with their Congo dances. Near 
 the green, is a horizontal fandango of four wooden 
 horses, sorrel, white, bay, and black, each pendent 
 by an iron rod, and affixed to stout wheel-machinery 
 ill the centre. Upon these, children canter and cir- 
 culate for exercise, by paying a half-bit, here called 
 a pecune. A bit is the Pennsylvanian eleven-pence, 
 the New York shilling, and the New England 7ii?ie- 
 pence. In this city, are hundreds of Eastern mer- 
 chants ; and, notwithstanding the foregoing remarks, 
 many lovers of morality, and reverers of religion. 
 The southern natives marvel at the New England 
 
128 LETTERS rUOM THE 
 
 visitors, for being so inquisitive. But this inquisi- 
 tiveness is a trait indicative of an active mind ; and 
 is one reason, among others, why that people are 
 generally better informed than, perhaps, any nation 
 in the world. 
 
 There is more difference of climate between Nat- 
 chez and New-Orleans, than would be expected 
 from the difference of latitude. Though the atmos- 
 pheric temperature here be high, there is less of the 
 unfanned intensity of heat, and the process of respi- 
 ration is less difficult, owing to the breezes from the 
 sea, than in many healthier climes. The winter in 
 New-Orleans is said to be delightful. Since I have 
 been here, the breathless air has often been fresh- 
 ened and cooled, by "the svt^eet aspersions, which 
 the heavens let fall." The summer and autumnal 
 sickness, which is so fatal, is generated from the 
 effluvia of corrupting vegetable and animal matter, 
 and the stagnant fenny lakes and swamps, which sur- 
 round the city ; and thus compose an atmosphere, 
 " that eateth up the inhabitants." At such crises, 
 the physicians charge exorbitantly ; but one moiety, 
 perhaps, like a certain benevolent doctor, for anxie- 
 ty of mind. In the yellow death-months, it is usual 
 to dig graves beforehand. To avoid the disease, 
 those, who are unacclimated, and have ways and 
 means, commonly sail across the lake to the salubri- 
 ous Bay of St. Louis ; or backward up the Rouge, 
 or Red River, to the Opelousas country. It is dan- 
 gerouS; to be exposed to the evening dews, which 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 129 
 
 are sometimes so profuse, as to be wrung from your 
 hair ; and to run in streams out of tlie ship-scup- 
 pers. Even the clergy adapt themselves to the cli- 
 mate^ and walk the squares in their thin black short 
 jerkins. That I had gotten into a sultry region, I 
 soon discovered by my chin germinating so perplex- 
 ingly fast ; that scarcely could I get one side reap- 
 ed, ere the other was ripe unto the harvest. A 
 person does not here need being plilebotomized by a 
 chirurgeon, for this is done gratuitously by the 
 gnats, who absorb one's blood and patience all night 
 long. I invented a moscheto-screen for street-use ; 
 it was to be suspended from a ring round the hat, 
 and to droop adown the body to the ankles, and to 
 be so thin, that the eye might see through it. But 
 the moschetoes do not bite unanimously until even- 
 ing ; when they are in no wise mealy-mouthed, but 
 steal upon the skin like the daughters of the horse- 
 leech. The beds are here guarded by a cobweb- 
 gauze, or muslin barrier, which depends on all sides 
 from a tester above, and shuts out the invaders. As 
 you thus repose upon your moss-mattress, you behold 
 the moschetoes play round the bar, but come not to 
 the skin. In the morning, you may behold some of 
 them hanging in the gauze-screen by the bill ; when, 
 perchance, up may come the steward, pick out two 
 or three of the plump gallinippers, sling them against 
 the bedposts by the hind legs, and pluck off the 
 feathers, to make gumbo of them. Were it not for 
 these screens, you might awake in the morning, and 
 
130 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 find yourself gone ; the tormentors may have con- 
 sumed you. If Pharaoh had felt the New-Orleans' 
 moschetoes, he surely would have let the Israelites 
 go the first time. In New-Orleans, the hotel-masters 
 are peculiarly ingenious in charging ; you cannot 
 turn round under a dollar. My opulent Boniface 
 accepts eighteen guineas a month, if other cordials, 
 beside water, are included. And if you come at 
 six o'clock in the evening, he deducts five dimes for 
 the first day ; and if you leave after breakfast on 
 your last day, he adds the whole day. This pleases 
 one exceedingly ; it is making both ends meet. The 
 river-water, which is drunk here, is impure, until 
 after filtration, or precipitation by alum ; and luke- 
 warm, unless frigerated in porous-jars. As this is 
 not the oyster season, the epicures are content with 
 a trencher of shrimps, a minim lobster, of a bright 
 scarlet, not above two inches long. The crimson 
 tomato, the dusky egg-plant, split and spiced, and the 
 green fig, are common at table. A turbaned demoi- 
 selle trips by every morning early, singing out in her 
 Babel tongue, what sounds like pine- apple-tarts ; 
 but which we found to mean hot sijmiels. But the 
 dish of dishes in New^-Orleans is a French dish, called 
 gumbo. It is a kind of save-all, salmagundi soup, 
 made of the refuse ends of every variety of flesh, 
 mingled with rice, and seasoned with chopped sassa- 
 fras, or with okra, a vegetable esculent. This soup 
 will string from your lips down to your plate ; and I 
 should scarcely be credited, if I told, that a harle- 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 131 
 
 quin once walked the slack-rope upon a strand of 
 gumbo. At a belle-assemblage, the sultry saloon of 
 the nabobs is cooled by iced-creams. 
 
 If you quit the city, and traverse the vicinity ; or, 
 more contrastedly, if you cross over towards the load- 
 stone-veins of the Texas, or down towards the lagoons 
 of the Floridas ; you will meet many wonders of the 
 tree-kind ; and I doubt not, that you would gladly 
 leave the dust of the city, to stroll on the green grass, 
 under the green trees. Among the hortulane plasits, 
 rise artichokes fifteen feet high ; and bean-sfalks, 
 which live several years ; realizing the story of Jack 
 and his Bean, whose vine he clomb, and found a 
 giant's house in one of its blossoms. Among the 
 proud strength of the wilderness, in low ground, 
 tower the cypresses, the largest of American trees ; 
 of the trunks of which, southern Indians used to form 
 canoes a hundred feet long. The stem of the cypress 
 rises from the apex of a stout conical base ; above 
 which frequently eight or ten slaves erect a scaffold, 
 upon which they cut, until they fell the tree. From 
 the roots grow up conical excrescences, called cypress 
 knees ; which being large, and hollow, are used for 
 beehives. Dry cypress roots are said to make fine 
 hones. From the majestic evergreen tops of these 
 cone-based trunks, depends, in thick festoons, the 
 long Spanish moss, like the venerable gray beards of 
 patriarchal times. This long hanging moss is seen, 
 in vast quantities, hundreds of miles up the river, at 
 the Spanish Moss Bend ; and is there also gathered 
 
132 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 for New-Orleans' mattresses. One root contains such 
 trailing masses, that it appears to have no connection 
 with the tree on which it hangs ; but it is nurtured 
 by rooting fibres, and will not live long on dead trees. 
 This curious moss flowers yearly, of a yellow cup ; it 
 bears a delicate pod a short inch long, of the size of a 
 darning-needle, full of almost invisible seeds. It is 
 pulled from the trees with long hooks ; put under 
 water for a few days to rot the outer coat ; then 
 beaten, and a fine soft elastic black incorruptible fibre, 
 like horse hair, with minute joints, is left. This 
 moss does not grow hard so soon as hair ; but will 
 become dusty, and require often to be opened, and 
 beaten. Another noble tree is the cottonwood, which 
 sheds a soft snowy down, that whitens the luxuriant 
 green grass beneath ; and whose shafts are sometimes 
 as immense as HerscheFs telescope, in whose body 
 king George III. and half a dozen of his plump 
 daughters breakfasted. Here spread the vast in- 
 valuable live-oaks, with their almost incorruptible 
 wood, and evergreen leaf. The form of this tree is 
 peculiar ; the lateral limbs diverging almost horizon- 
 tally from the short enormous trunk ; so that it were 
 easy to build a cottage upon them, and live standing 
 in the air. And here also, to name no more, bloom 
 in their glory, the gay liriodendi^on, or tulip-tree, 
 with its aromatic bark, its abruptly-obtuse elliptical 
 leaves, and variegated, but scentless, flowers ; and 
 some of the richest species of the peerless amaran- 
 thine magnolia. The magnolia grandiflora, or 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 133 
 
 laurel-leaved magnolia, tlie superbest tree of the 
 forest^ rises in a fair attitude of, sometimes, a hundred 
 feet, and swells its noble head into an obtuse cone. 
 Its foliage is of a deep glossy green on the upper sur- 
 face of the rigid, veiny, long leaf, and of a downy 
 rust-colour on the under side. Its flowers grow on 
 the extremity of the branches ; are from six to nine 
 inches in diameter, of a velvety white, and expanded 
 like a rose, and are the largest and most complete 
 yet known, and of a delicious fragrance, ^^ like the 
 flavour of cold lemonade." But I now forbear de- 
 lineating the sublime and beautiful of southern nature, 
 lest you should be tempted to come out to this region 
 of dissipation and death ; since you will find it far 
 more grateful to be here in imagination only, than to 
 experience the torments, and debilitation, of stinging 
 myriads, and an almost tropical sun. As I have 
 visited New-Orleans at an unadviseable season of the 
 year, I intend speedily to double the Cape north- 
 wardly. — Adieu ! 
 
 18 
 
LETTER FROM THE GULF OF MEXICO. 
 
 ^lece^xix. 
 
 DEAR BROTHER, 
 
 I LEFT New-Orleans in the regular packet 
 ship Orleans, to bound over the seas, and far away, 
 from the land of oranges. In a few miles after leav- 
 ing the Levee, we passed the deathless Battle- 
 Ground. A ship draws more water, and a man 
 sinks quicker, in a fresh river, than in the salt ocean ; 
 the specific gravities being disproportionate in the 
 two elements. Near this, is the seat of the present 
 Governor of Louisiana. Between this, and Fort 
 Plaquemine, we passed the sugar plantations of Law- 
 yer Batture Livingston, and of Colonel Sandusky 
 Croghan. Below the Fort, we saw, looming on the 
 right bank, where he is stationed. General Wilkin- 
 son. About three leagues further down, we saw, 
 near the shore, three live alligators. As this river 
 is the American Nile, so is the alligator the Ameri- 
 can crocodile. Some of these dangerous animals are 
 long and lean, some fat and short, with black backs 
 and white bellies ', and, at times, they roar like bulls. 
 
136 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 About fifty miles down, on the left bank, we espied 
 a very large pelican, watching to fill his capacious 
 hanging pouch with fishes. A passenger would 
 have fired at him, but he stood so far distant, that he 
 would have been obliged to shoot twice — one shot 
 would not have reached liim. As we veered down 
 the trendings of the channel, it was not uncommon to 
 see blue, or white cranes, or brandt, standing on one 
 leg upon the swimming drift-wood, and looking at a 
 distance like a Lilliputian fleet. As our ship in 
 floating down this noble river — which, as Cowley 
 might say, from the creation has flowed, and flowed, 
 and as it flows, forever shall flow on — with the fel- 
 lowship of the wind, outglided the current, it made 
 the stream appear to run upwards. In the star-light 
 of the evening, the prow of our ship was in a shower 
 of spangles, and the wake was a foam of amber. After 
 we moored until dawn, we were re-greeted by those 
 minim humming-birds of the south, the moschetoes ; 
 while, from the right reed- mantled pools, w^as heard 
 harmonious discord from ^' the green silken frogs, 
 who, whistling forth their shrill notes, strove to bear a 
 part in the music, not much unlike the Lancashire 
 bagpipe, while in the mean time the larger sort were 
 bellowing out their sackbut diapason." Below Pla- 
 quemine, and between the many Nile-like mouths, 
 that disgorge into the Gulf of Mexico, are no plan- 
 tations, nor dwellers, save the remains of an old 
 Spanish Fort, and a few block-houses for pilots and 
 fishers. The land here is nothing but flat swampy 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 137 
 
 reedy prairies. The distance from the city to the 
 mouth of the river is upwards of a hundred miles. 
 On leaving the mouth of the Mississippi^ by the Ba- 
 lise [beacon or mast), which^ on a small new formed 
 island, is the useless Fort, named St. Carlos ; there 
 are no boat-shaped, or huge demijohn-buoys, to guide 
 the ship ; but the adventurous pilot steers her 
 through a rapid deep channel, between immense 
 mud-ranges walling the sides ; while, on each gloomy 
 turning of the eye, is seen nought but desolation; 
 the m^sts of ships stranded and sunken, peering 
 above the waters ; and thousands of gigantic logs, and 
 uprooted trees, that have been floated dow^i, some of 
 them thousands of miles, to lumber currents not their 
 own. Well may one imagine himself to be passing 
 the last verge of terrestrial existence. I thought of 
 the times after the Deluge. I also moralized, of our 
 going down the Mississippi of time, through the 
 Gulf-straits of death, into the Atlantic of eternity. 
 
 After this " Meeting of the Waters," it is many 
 leagues before the muddy colour of the river is lost 
 in the green of the Gulf. The hue of the waves 
 kept deepening as the sea deepened ; from olive, to 
 glass-green, to indigo-blue, to black. There is said 
 to be but one flow and ebb of tides in twenty-four 
 hours in the Gulf of Mexico. We are now between 
 the two Americas. How inferior the natural gran- 
 deur of the old world, to that of the new. Where, 
 cries the enthusiast, where shall \\q find, in the old 
 world, a river so broad as the La Plata ? where one 
 
138 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 SO swift as the Oronoko ? where one so long as the 
 Missouri? where a cataract like Niagara? where a 
 mountain so high as Cliimborazo ? where a cavern so 
 prodigious as in Virginia ? Jefl'erson, and other philo- 
 sophers, have marvelled, whether the whole bay of 
 Mexico, from the cape of Florida, through Cuba, 
 Hispaniola, and other islands of our Western Archi- 
 pelago, were not once a champaign country, with a 
 continued range of mountains to the opposite coast ; 
 broken through by some tremendous concussion of 
 nature, and deluged till it reached the foot of the 
 Andes ? Who knows, but that the incessant abrasion 
 of the waves, aided by some internal disruption of 
 nature, may hereafter disjoin the northern and south- 
 ern continents ? As a canal across the isthmus is said 
 to be practicable, by a junction of the lakes, and head 
 waters ; I have wondered, that the grandeur of the 
 idea has not prompted its execution ; and thus a ten 
 thousand miles of doubling the cape been reduced to 
 a short strait. I have often wished to expand^ and 
 to elevate my conceptions, by standing an hour upon 
 the heaven-kissing bills, that ridge the long and nar- 
 row Isthmus of Darien ; and there, with a world be- 
 fore me, and a world behind me ; with the Atlantic on 
 the right, and the Pacific on the left ; rolling, and 
 roaring their eternal weight of multitudinous waves 
 in my view ; to adore that stupendous Power, who 
 said: — ^'Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther 5 
 and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 139 
 
 For a steam-boat passage down the INIississippi, I 
 paid sixty dollars ; for a passage in tliis packet-ship, 
 I pay one hundred dollars ; both, I doubt, like King 
 Stephen's breeches, sixpence all too dear, for one, 
 who went only to spy the land. Our ship has the 
 martial Maid of Orleans, Joan la Pucelle, on her prow, 
 and, up her shrouds, spiring above the topmast, and 
 pointing its guardian fingers to the clouds, one of 
 Franklin's rods. We had on board about thirty souls, 
 or, more evidently, bodies. Of cabin passengers we 
 had seven ; a Spaniard, a German, a Frenchman, an 
 Englishman, an Irishman, a Missouriman from the lead 
 mines, and myself a New Englander. The more the 
 merrier, the fewer the better cheer. There v^^cre ten 
 steerage- passengers ; a yellow steward, and a black 
 cook. We have, on the after deck, a broad white 
 awning ; and, above and below, five compasses, those 
 mute mysterious Oracles of the ocean. On board, 
 was a female swine, with her not quite Virgilian 
 number of offspring ; two dogs, half rabid with the 
 heat ; and four green-painted coops of crestfallen 
 chanticleers with their partlets, and loquacious half- 
 blooded mallards with their mates. We had no milch 
 goat, as they are poor seaboys. Near the binnacle, 
 stands a drop-stone font, to filtrate our lukewarm 
 water. How often sighed I, that we could have 
 taken a cool spring on board ! On the first morn in the 
 gulf, while some of our passengers of the cabin were 
 clattering about the quarter-deck in their patent 
 heels, shod like the mailhoofed reasoners of Swift, 
 
140 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 or copper-fastened like our ship ; and the little 
 Monsieur sat aiding to quicken a dogvane, of cork- 
 body and feather- wings ; I stood with folded arms, 
 wrapt in awe and contemplation, gazing abroad on 
 the illimitable expanse of ocean ; until my mind 
 reeled with the ^^ immensity of her own conceptions." 
 Did it require so vast a saline surface to be sun- 
 drawn, and freshened into wandering clouds, to fer- 
 tilize the dusty and thirsty ground? Or was it ne- 
 cessary that nations, born from the same parents, 
 should be thus unapproachably separated, to prevent 
 their mutually quarrelling, and encroaching upon 
 each other's rights ? While admiring at the large 
 ships in sight, those masterpieces of human art, which 
 bring distant and unknown worlds together ; the 
 Captain ludicrously described the ungainly Chinese 
 junks, that he had seen on India voyages ; which are 
 shaped somewhat like the wooden bowls, in which 
 the three wise men of Gotham went to sea ; and 
 which they ofttimes navigate without a compass ; 
 heaven's moon being their lighthouse, and heaven's 
 stars their charts. 
 
 Our ship began now, in a calm, to rock like a cra- 
 dle ; and now, in a breeze, to bound into a curvet ; 
 and now began my brain to rock, and to curvet, with 
 it. The broad gentle sidewise swell is more dizzy- 
 ing, than the strong straightforward ridges of ocean. 
 I was the only one in the cabin, who had not before 
 been on the great deep, and who had not an " un- 
 dergoing stomach." The imagination ran on cas- 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 141 
 
 cades, and cataracts. Thus was my lot, day after 
 day, moping and musing through the watches of the 
 night; while others were supine in their crimson- 
 curtained births, which to me were deaths, sleeping 
 and purring in feline quietude. Franklin's drops of 
 oil might assuage tiie fury of the waves : but the 
 captain's oil of vitriol would not appease the tumult 
 in my breast. Sea-qualms, though effecting an 
 earthquake of ribs, and threatening the parting of 
 soul and body, like the hypochondria, meet little sym- 
 pathy. It is, however, some vain self-condolence, 
 that bosoms of the finest sensibility are most predis- 
 posed to them. When one asked of the son of green 
 Erin, who had purposely sickened his breast to dis- 
 possess it of acrid humours, how he felt ? he repli- 
 ed : — ^'' I am sick very well." To counteract the 
 effects of the saline atmosphere, take agreeable 
 prunes to sea with you ; they are a friendly fruit. 
 The captain had two cages of gray mocking-birds, 
 to which, if taken sea-sick, he was directed by the 
 bird-seller to administer a spider to cure them. 
 
 Before entering the Gulf, the passengers had 
 loaded their rifles, carabines, and pistols ; as, on the 
 week preceding, two vessels had been boarded and 
 plundered, even in the mouth of the river, by coi"- 
 sairs. The Bluebeard of these unprincipled adven- 
 turers was quite courtly in his splendidum fitrium, 
 as king James used to call it: — ^^Good day, my 
 friends ; hard times ; we request a few of your light 
 articles, if you please (presenting arms) : take care 
 19 
 
142 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 of your helm, steersman ; pray, captain, what o'clock 
 is it?" and thus conversing, he adroitly borrowed 
 their trunks, watches, and specie. They did not 
 molest the lady passengers. Formerly, buccaneers 
 in this Gulf, and also in the Caribbean sea, used to 
 teach a captive to ivalh the plank ; that was, they 
 propped a narrow plank over the side of the picka- 
 roon, and then very gracefully led him, blindfolded, 
 until he walked into the sea. Others, to extort 
 money, they would l)ind, back to back, and set them 
 to diving, until nearly drowned. On the sixth day 
 out, we saw a brig, like a man-of-war, bearing down 
 upon us. She had black port-holes, a bell striking, a 
 drum beating to quarters, and shewed no ensign. 
 Then, like Gonzalo, would I have given a thousand 
 furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, long 
 heath, brown furze, any thing. We entrusted our 
 money to our yellow steward to secrete in his latent 
 7ioli me tangere. When within hailing distance, 
 the imagined man-of-war hoisted the Albion red- 
 cross ; and, after a few sarcastic salutations from our 
 captain's speaking-trumpet, we sailed in company 
 for some leagues. She told not her name. How 
 incongruous to call ships feminine in gender, and yet 
 to give them masculine names ; they are of common 
 gender. Speaking of names, some of our early colo- 
 nists were visited by a vessel presumptuously named 
 the ^^ Angel Gabriel ;" which tutelar angel, how- 
 ever, did not, for the compliment, interpose to rescue 
 her from dasliing upon the rocks. Does our national 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 143 
 
 star-spangled banner show as noble as most other 
 banners ? The stripes are so narrow, and the stars 
 so small, that it does not discover its appropriateness 
 in distance. However, I approve of the retaining 
 the thirteen stripes, in allusion to the thirteen origi- 
 nal states ; and of adding a new star for every new 
 state. When the sun is over the yard-arm of the 
 ship, is the nunc est bibcndum ; in wliich the niari^ 
 ners too often prefer the pure alco3iol, to the ele- 
 mentary lymph of the potation. The aquatic plirase- 
 ology is as strange to a landsman, as legal technology 
 would be to a mariner; helm-a-lee, abaft, belay, 
 loofe, avast, careen, capsize, logboard, deadeyes, 
 reefe, rowse, and other barbarisms, which it would 
 require the nautical muse of a Falconer to explain. 
 Among all the complicated interlacing tackle and 
 braces, on board of the bravest ships, there is but 07ie 
 rope ,* that is, but one, which has not an appropri- 
 ated name. When otherwise unemployed, the mari- 
 ners are ordered to calking the hatchseams, paying 
 the masts, and trimming tiie ship's gear. Inter- 
 changeably, every two hours, they are called to stand 
 watch, day and night, in their water- proof tar paw- 
 lings. One day, when the watch was called to heave 
 the leaded logline, and count the speedknots, a mid- 
 dle-aged bushy-faced mariner, whose turn it was, 
 was missing for about half an hour, and was conjec- 
 tured to have toppled overboard ; and meanwhile a 
 strange mariner appeared to do his duty, like an 
 apparition : — the swarthy bristly-cheeked Portu- 
 
144 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 guese had shaved himself. Most mariners have a 
 custom of needling India-ink figures into their skin. 
 One of ours has his brawny arm purpled over with a 
 flag, an eagle, an anchor, and, what is less character- 
 istic in a son of ocean, a tall tree of knowledge, with 
 an open-lipped serpent coiling down its truiik, and a 
 long haired Eve uplistening under it. I was informed 
 of one of our naval officers, who has a whole line of 
 battle-ships thus tattooed around his body. A pas- 
 senger mentioned, that Admiral Cochrane, when his 
 war-ship was trending along our coast, had sent to 
 him from England, by a lady, a haunch of a-la-mode 
 venison preserved, rivalling that sent by Lord Clare 
 to Goldsmith ; and, in the centre, some vials of cor- 
 dials, and a silver-enchased box with a chain-edged 
 billet-doux in it, and a hope that, when he tasted and 
 perused her compliment, he would not forget the 
 \ows of auld lang syne. Such love has some sub- 
 stance in it. As this story was in telling, at din- 
 ner, our ship on tacking suddenly heaved, and ca- 
 reened ; and dance went the eggs as if quilled with 
 quicksilver; and slide went the barricado- table, that 
 is, one having circular orifices to receive the bases 
 of all the trenchers ; and lo ! the wreck of pullets, 
 and the crash of plates ! We daily espied some 
 white spots, like swans with outspread pinions, afar 
 on the dark waters, which were vessels proudly 
 riding over the ocean waves ; going to do business 
 on the mighty main. I marvel, that any woman will 
 marry a ship-commander, ** whose house is on the 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 145 
 
 mountain waves, whose home is on the deep ;'^ thus 
 so often, and so long, widowing his solicitous wife. 
 It requires practice, to be able to walk the deck at 
 sea. For myself, the bounding of the surges at first 
 occasioned such incessant ludicrous vacillations from 
 a central basis, that I misstepped as one maudled. 
 The ocean boys step wide, and firm, and sway the 
 body to the motion of the ship, i^ll my short ambu- 
 lation has been, first from the cabin-door on one side 
 of the quarter-deck to the tiller-rope ; then, from 
 the cabin-door on the other side of the quarter-deck 
 to the tiller-rope again ; so that, if I could walk from 
 the cabin-door on both sides of the deck at once, I 
 should meet myself at the tiller-rope. 
 
 The uniformity on the ocean is tedious even for 
 one well ; we seem to be always in one place. A 
 rich merchant of Boston used to say, that he could 
 not have an ill wind ; he had so many Ophir-men 
 going out, and coming in, that, blow^ whatever wind 
 might, it was favourable for some one of them. But 
 we, every day, were doomed to beat in an indirect 
 direction ; or had a breeze that blew a calm ; or a 
 puff of empty air, so ethereal, that it required a spy- 
 glass to see which way it did blow. We reckon 
 our leagues long or short, according as we have a 
 brisk breeze, or a breathless calm ; a short league is 
 under the former, a long league is under the latter; 
 time counted with progress. How often, in such a 
 breathless pause, did I sigh : — shall we ever get ani/ 
 wheres ? ! sighed I again, for Ulysses' bag of 
 
146 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 winds ! for Neptune to give us a shove with his 
 trident ; or his Tritons to blow us a blast with their 
 conchs ! But I anticipate the time, when steam- 
 balloons, with their elastic radiation of paddles, will 
 V\"ait for neither winds, nor tides. The tripartite 
 recreation of our rich Potosi Spaniard has been, to 
 muse along the quarter deck under the shadow of his 
 broad yellow vegetable hat ; now glancing at the 
 small compass in his watch-seal, now chiming his 
 musical segar-box, and now drawing and poising his 
 stiletto- cane with a spy-glass in it ; or to order 
 his habitual lemon-syrup from his Sancho Panza of a 
 servant ; and to indulge in his daily siesta. Since 
 we left the land for the ocean, what with the season, 
 and what with the latitude, we have but little cooled 
 our heat, which has scarcely been mitigated by the 
 shadows of evening. Sol occubuit — nullum frigus 
 sequitur. The Briton and Missouriman, of our 
 cabin-comrades, have daily buoyed down their bodies 
 by cords from the prow, and bathed in the salt waves. 
 Every one, who sails upon the sea, ought to be skill- 
 ed to swim. Our jovial Falstaff of a captain told us 
 of three fair sisters, he was sure the two eldest, who 
 could swim like mermaids. They lived near the 
 Schuylkill, in a retired spot, and were accustomed to 
 swim in every summer day. It was a healthy beauty- 
 heightening practice ; and one of our gallant passen- 
 gers would have liked to learn from them. The 
 German had with him two musical instruments ; one 
 unnamed, and unopened, in a long black case like an 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 147 
 
 infant coffin ; the other a clarionet, with which he 
 could blow the air into any shape he pleased. As 
 he often applied his moistened lips, I could realize 
 what was meant by liquid sound, as I saw it ooze in 
 dew-drops from the open end of the tube. As he 
 breathed, and the airs floated over the waters, in 
 reverie I could fancy the boisterous ocean to be a 
 calm inland lake, softened by the yellow full-orbed 
 twilight ; and our high ship, and hardy crew, to be a 
 gay pleasure-yatch, graced vvitli a bright bevy of 
 maidens ; whose fair hair in the breeze would spread 
 like the moon-beams, as they gleamed up their blue 
 eyes most meltingly, and their songs and their vows 
 fell balmily upon the waters. Anon, at the boat- 
 swain's whistle, long and shrill — a fog would creep 
 over the lake, the barge and the maidens would fade 
 from my vision, and I find myself in the middle of 
 the wide sea. 
 
 We had not been in the Gulf long, before the 
 commander found that he had shipped Death among 
 his steerage passengers. The yellow plague was on 
 board. At the moon's first quarter, and within three 
 hours of each other, two died. When a man dies at 
 sea, a couple of mariners roll up the dead body in a 
 sheet, or blanket ; and, with their stout steel three- 
 edged marline-needles, seam it tight, so as to shape 
 it to the head and trunk. A plank is laid from the 
 head of a barrel to the leeward side of the ship, upon 
 which the corpse is extended, having an iron fifty- 
 six appended to the feet. Then, while the officers, 
 
148 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 and the blue-jerkined shipmen, all stand solemnly 
 roiindj with their heads uncovered, the burial-service 
 is read at the head of the dead, and the corse is slowly, 
 and sacredly launched overboard, and sinks standing, 
 and floating, at a certain number of fathoms deep, in 
 the ocean ; there to remain, until the sea shall give 
 up her dead. Mariners are contradictory beings ; 
 these bibulous hearts of oak would feelingly render 
 any, the most menial, service to the sick ; and some- 
 times would their rough hands dash a tear from their 
 weather-beaten cheeks ; and yet would they, per- 
 haps, jest on the body as they were seaming up the 
 corse. In about a week after the first two, and again 
 within a few hours of each other, in the morning, 
 died two more, and were buried in the sea. A day 
 after, a fifth steerage passenger died also on deck, 
 and followed his four dead messmates into the over- 
 whelming abysses. Thus, within ten days, died, of 
 this most repelling, and fatal disease, five men, being 
 one half of the steerage passengers ; leaving two 
 others sick. One that died was a lusty pillar of 
 strength, and portrait of health ; and yet he fell, and 
 faded, in 07ie day. These sad deaths will quarantine 
 us, for a half month or more, at Tinicum Island. 
 These unhappy men seemed little affected at their 
 fate ; and why was it, that I myself was more affect- 
 ed at the death of the first, than of the last one : 
 when, assuredly, my grief ought to have increased 
 with the increased cause for sorrow. I repeated the 
 sublime and solemn burial-service over the dead 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 149 
 
 bodies of the two last ; as we committed ^^ the bodies 
 to their place, tlieir souls to heaven's grace, and the 
 rest in God's own time.'' Every packet-ship should 
 be required to carry a physician, in the sickly sea- 
 son ; or the commander to be an apothecary in the 
 knowledge of his medicine-chest. Every comman- 
 der ought, also, to read, or cause to be read, on board 
 of his ship, in a chaplain-like manner, the church- 
 service, on every sabbath on the ocean. 
 
 We had been in the Gulf above two weeks, wait- 
 ing for the moving of the waters, and the winds ; 
 and often spying in vain for the Tortugas, and the 
 white foam over the dreaded Martyrs' Reef; when, 
 at last, we gained the straits between the Florida 
 Cape, and the Island of Cuba ; nearly in sight of 
 Moro Castle at the Havannah, which lay under the 
 yellow plague. To pass through this Gulf, and round 
 this Cape, demands more of nautical skill, and is 
 fuller of open and lurking perils, than a voyage to 
 Europe. These straits are about twenty leagues 
 wide. A bark once got over on the Bahama banks, 
 by having a nail under her compass. A ship is kept 
 in the current of the Gulf by a thermometer ; as there 
 is a difference of temperature between the water and 
 air in and out of the stream. We beat the latitude 
 as far South as 23° 26'; just upon the Tropic of 
 Cancer. When a fresh- water novice, for the first 
 time, crosses the equatorial line, or sometimes the 
 tropics, the ocean boys aspire to become particularly 
 20 
 
150 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 inebriated. For the two last days, clouds and haze 
 had been round about us, but now the ^' bridgroonie 
 of the earth" and ocean burst forth in his glory. 
 Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is 
 for the eyes to behold the sun. On this day, at 
 meridian, as the commander and mate were each 
 taking the sun's declination, there arose a mutual 
 wager between three of us about the degree of lati- 
 tude ; and as the Spaniard came the least near being 
 right ; and as we were now almost within the fra- 
 grance of the tropical fruits of Cuba ; our Don brought 
 out to us his remainder pineapple, which had been 
 sent to him from the Matanzas, and was nearly de- 
 cayed. This West Indian fruit [ananas) in its per- 
 fection contains the quintessence of all delightful 
 flavours. It is regaling, to imagine oneself off the 
 water, and to taste them even in description. The 
 forms of the pineapples differ as much as the cones 
 of the fir tribe. It is an herbaceous plant, peren- 
 nial, and bearing leaves about two feet long, upright, 
 or curled backwards ; for the most part saw-edged ; 
 and sometimes purple-striped on the inside of the 
 light-green blades. The different varieties have dif- 
 ferent names, as the king, the queen, the large sugar- 
 loaf, and the Montserrat. The two principal sorts 
 are the red, and the yellow pineapple. Each knob 
 on the fruit bears a long purplish, or bluish blossom ; 
 the bottom ring of knobs beginning first to bloom. 
 When fully ripe, the edible part is about the size of 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 151 
 
 a tennis-ballj and if you impress the knobs softly with 
 your finger and thumb, they will return again. The 
 rind is yellow, and the flesh firm and fibrous. To 
 be perfect, they must attain a fine gold in colour, and 
 be richly fragrant in smell ; but if changing to brown, 
 they are past excellence. The pineapple is cut from 
 the plant with a long stalk, so as to sit upright in a 
 pyramid of fruits. You first twist off the crown of 
 leaves at top, and pare off the outside rind ; then 
 cut it cross-wise, and lay the slices on a plate singly ; 
 else, being of a gummy nature, they will stick to- 
 gether. Whoever, says a former English professor 
 of Botany, if I recollect aright, once tastes the pine- 
 apple, will undoubtedly allow, that, as well for its 
 beautiful appearance, as for its delicious flavours, it 
 deserves a place above all other fruits. 
 
 Although canopied and bounded by the vast firma- 
 mental concave above, and the huge heavy-heaving 
 convex, melting into the gray far-circling horizon, 
 below ; I can stand at the side of the after- deck, and 
 behold fowl and fish after a kind, which are new 
 to me. While the booby — pelecmms sula, Span. 
 hohoj foolish, because they come and alight upon the 
 ship's nettings, and are easily taken — will come and 
 rest upon our boom ; the tropic-bird — phccton, called 
 by the mariners boatswain — with his long tail of two 
 naked feathers, will fly over our heads, or sometimes, 
 it is said, perch upon the backs of the porpoises. 
 The mariners told many an omen of those tempest- 
 
152 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 loving birds, Mother Carey's chickens. The spe- 
 cific name is the stormy-petrel, so called from its 
 appearing to walk the wave, like St. Peter. It can 
 spout oil from its bill, and is so unctuous, that the 
 women of the Feroe islands draw a wick through the 
 body, to make a light. They hover round the sterns 
 of vessels, presaging storms. They are silent during 
 the day, but pierce the ear of night with clamour. 
 The mariners think they have no blood, that they 
 lay and hatch upon the top of the waves, and, it is 
 well for the poor birds, they are very superstitious 
 about killing one. These sportive sea-birds some- 
 times adventure, like Noah's dove, to fly hundreds of 
 leagues over the vexed abysses, before they find rest 
 for the sole of their feet. As to ichthyology, it 
 appears, to an unchemical mind, rather paradoxical, 
 that a fresh animal should be taken out of a salsu- 
 ginous element. We have seen two whales, or rather 
 grampuses, those immense unwieldy leviathans of 
 the deep, upspouting fountains of waters out of their 
 huge heads. Also, shoals of clumsy porpoises, which 
 flounder, and blow, and snort, like so many swine ; 
 they are very chubbed, and black with white bellies ; 
 are said to be a prognostic of wind ; and are har- 
 pooned for their blubber. We have daily seen, and 
 the mariners have caught, many blue-black sharks, 
 with their long pointed noses. After the mariners 
 have hauled them in, they will barbarously run a 
 yard-arm, as they term it, through the thick skin 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 153 
 
 across their eyes, and then heave them out agahi. 
 The captain, with the missile steel-barbed grains, has 
 caught a number of dolphins, which chase the flying- 
 iish, as we saw ; and which last is taken by torch- 
 light. The dolphin is a fish superb in its hues, which 
 gleam vividly through the waves, in everchang- 
 ing green, and silver, and ruby, and gold ; but, like 
 some other beauties, is more beautiful, than estima- 
 ble. It is thought, that the first sail-barge ever 
 modelled was after the curvy form of the dolphin. 
 I saw one little nautilus, fearlessly navigating 
 his scanty shallop, which was about the size of a 
 sea-gull's egg-shell, or small barnacle. The ma- 
 riners have sometimes multiplied life, by dividing 
 that wonderful creature, the polype, which often 
 attaches itself to the ship's bottom, each section 
 of which would soon reproduce itself into a perfect 
 animal. We have also passed numerous sea-nettles, 
 urticsB solutse, a kind of floating-jelly, supposed by 
 the mariners to be formed by the sun. They are, 
 however, zoophytes, or living plant-animals. They 
 are of different forms, and hues, some beautifully 
 banded, others spotted ; and elevating, or dilating 
 their convexity in swimming ; and having long loose 
 hanging feelers, which can eject an infinitude of ex- 
 ceedingly minute suckers, which are tenacious, and 
 thus erroneously imagined to sting the tender parts 
 of the flesh of persons in bathing. The sea-nettle 
 feeds upon sea-snails, and the young zoophyte is 
 
151 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 born out of the central contractible and dilatable 
 mouth of its mother. It possesses a phosphoric (qual- 
 ity, and, in the night, shows like an unquenched 
 fallen star. When it sinks to the bottom of the sea, 
 it portends ill weather. Although a perfect animal, 
 it will melt aw^ay in your hand. On the bottom of 
 the sea, are sometimes found rolling about, those 
 curious marine fungi, called Neptune's caps. Also, 
 along many coasts, and extending for leagues under 
 the sea, are found deep beds of corallines ; those 
 curiously beautiful sea-f;ins, and shrubs, of stony 
 jointed cellular stems, and variegated net-work 
 leaves, of white or vermillion. The stalks have a 
 calcareous bark, and a cartilaginous and tubular in- 
 ternal structure. This sea-plant is made by minute 
 animals, which live in the pores ; in some species, 
 the animals so small as to be invisible without a mi- 
 croscope. Some corallines, when first taken out of 
 the sea, are covered with a richly tinged transparent 
 jelly, which, in the sun and air, soon dissolves away. 
 Corals and corallines are said to have the property of 
 rendering sea water fresh, and giving it in mists to 
 the clouds, whence it descends in rain. The broad 
 expanse of tlie sea h.as sometimes a luminousness, 
 which has been resolved by different theorists into 
 different causes: by some, it has been attributed to 
 electricity ; by others, to the effluvia of insects, or lu- 
 minous animalcules, which, being disturbed, suddenly 
 expand their tiny fins, or phosphorcnt parts, like 
 
SOUTTI AND WEST. 155 
 
 glow-worms ; by others, to tlie gelatinous spawn of 
 the sea-blubber ; but latterly, to tlie floating slime of 
 putrescent substances. The sea has thus a splendid 
 surface, and if the hand be let down, it comes up 
 glittering over with little silvery globules. Manifold, 
 and mysterious, are thy creations, thou uncreated 
 Essence ! in wisdom hast thou made them all. But 
 I would willingly exchange the sublime and beauti- 
 ful, but wearisome uniformity of a water-scape ; for 
 the more varied, and no less sublime and beautiful 
 scenery of a landscape. 
 
 You would smile in sadness, to behold your buoy- 
 ant brother, hour after hour, silent and motionless, 
 sitting upon the long green-painted coop, leaning his 
 back against the binnacle ; his brow scorched by the 
 blaze of the day, and his locks wet with the dews of 
 the night. Here sit I, in moody humour, like Impa- 
 tience on a capon-coop, scowling at a calm. Here 
 recline I, spying up tlie shrouds at the small ship- 
 boy on the high and giddy mast ; which, at that 
 height from the centre, reels an increased arc of 
 motion. But there's ^' a sweet little cherub, that 
 sits up aloft, will look out for the soul of poor Jack." 
 My heart often pants to outfly the ship, which, with 
 her broad -spread white -woven wings, walks the 
 waves like a gallant thing of life ; and to repose 
 itself on the cool green grass under the tall branch- 
 ing buttonwood at home, and to watch the coming of 
 the golden-robin to her hanging-nest over head. 
 
156 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 Now my eye stretches in the distance, and my imagi- 
 nation fancies some small dark ridge in the horizon 
 to be a sleeping kraken, a floating Delos, or a deso- 
 late beach. Then I muse upon the unfortunate La 
 Perouse ; the solitary Selkirk and his faithful Man 
 Friday, who never heard the sound of the church- 
 going bell. Then I revolve the marvels of Quarles, 
 and of Sinbad. And then I dream of Prospero, and 
 Ariel, with the foul witch Sycorax, and the hag-seed 
 Caliban, on the enchanted island ; and delightedly 
 listen to the brave prince Ferdinand, who plights his 
 vows to the lovely Miranda, who, although the first 
 she had ever beheld, desired not to see a goodlier 
 man ; and, at whose love, she called herself a fool to 
 weep at what she was glad of; and even at the imag- 
 inary breeze wafted from such an island, and such a 
 scene, " heaven's breath smells wooingly." Now I 
 awake from my reverie, and turn my view opposite, 
 and I spy afar the mast of " some great ammiral ;" 
 and the dark hulls of many rich and portly argosies. 
 From these, I spread my gaze over the vast expanse 
 of ocean, and the touching address of Keate comes 
 with force to my mind : — " Hail, thou inexhaustible 
 source of wonder, and contemplation ! whose waves 
 chase one another down, like the generations of men." 
 If we might walk on the bottom of the ocean, depth 
 beneath depth, unfathomable, as on dry land, what 
 wonders, what riches, what sublimities, what horrors, 
 should we not find ! " The ocean, with its forests 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 157 
 
 of coral, where the sea-wrack collects its moss, and 
 the fucus its complicated threads ; the ocean, which 
 conceals a Flora in its deserts, and Zephyrs in its 
 grottoes, possesses also its Philomelas." Who would 
 not delight to range through the gardens of sea-flow- 
 ers, and to pick up the drops of seed-pearl ; to dally 
 with the green- haired merniaidens, and to repose 
 upon the beds of sponges ? At noon, I lift my gaze 
 unto the heavens, and apostrophize with lofty Ossian : 
 — "0 thou, that rollest above, round as the shield 
 of my fathers ! whence are thy beams, sun ! thy 
 everlasting light? who can be a companion of thy 
 course ? The ocean shrinks, and grows again ; but 
 thou art forever the same. But thou art, perhaps, 
 like me, for a season, and thy years will have an 
 end." And after the open eye of day is quenched 
 in the ocean, observing how sweet the moonlight 
 sleeps upon the wave, I look again upward, and 
 behold the broad round orb emerging from behind a 
 dark cloud, like a barge from behind a wave ; and I 
 admire at her far off sombre lakes, and marvel if yet 
 there be any steam-boats there ? Now I recognize 
 with awe the myriad stars, rolling, and shining in 
 their unfading robes of glory ; and glowing like 
 living carbuncles in the waters below ; and anon I 
 trace the meteors, like rockets, shooting down the 
 southern sky ; and the paler reflexions darting under 
 the billows. Now, perchance, I hear deep calling 
 unto deep, at the noise of a water-spout, uprushing to 
 21 
 
158 LETTERS FROM THE 
 
 meet its counterpart from the clouds, and then loud 
 bursting its perilous column of rainbow spray in the 
 cast ; and now I point at the deceitful eddying of a 
 whirling syrtis, tunnelling the glassy water. In the 
 evening horizon, the west is streaked with shades of 
 blue and saffron, blending into an intervening line 
 of rare and beautiful green ; while below, the still 
 waters mingle tlie rose-tinge of pearl with the deep- 
 ening glow of purple ; dropped in the distance with 
 spray from the light ridges, like flakes of falling 
 melting snows. I love to gaze on the gorgeous and 
 shifting scenery of the clouds ; and stretch in fancy, 
 with the poet, through the golden vistas into heaven. 
 I love also to gaze in awe upon the dark dense 
 masses, when the cloud-compeller is gathering in his 
 wrath ; when the vivid glance, and the " deep and 
 dreadful organ-pipe" of the Almighty are abroad. 
 At dim midnight, the ship seems struggling amid a 
 foam of phosphoric fire, surging against her prow, 
 and glaring in her wake. It is an august, yet a fear- 
 ful thing, to be riding on the convex of the world ; 
 tossing over ships long sunken, and soulless bodies 
 floating beneath us ; afar from those we hold most 
 dear ; and separated from eternity, only by a few 
 frail barriers. On this morn, from a haze, and a 
 water of a lighter blue, we feared being too near the 
 coast of Cuba ; the little rising scpiall is not a wind- 
 killer ; the horizon becomes more dim and circum- 
 scribed, and the vexed seas more convex ; terror is 
 
SOUTH AND WEST. 159 
 
 riding on the wings of mighty winds ; the ship 
 groans in every seam ; no friendly pharos is near ; 
 and now the prow pkinges down, down, down, and I 
 think of despair ; and now the prow looms up, up, 
 up, and I think of hope. Two carracks, and a rich 
 argosie, into one of which I had well nigh stepped for 
 a waftage, are lost in the gale ; but our Joan la Pu- 
 celle is more '^^ tightn and yare, and bravely rigged.'^ 
 Thus, tempest-driven, am I left, after six years 
 absence from my native state, to the tender mercies 
 of the Ruler of the waves, and the winds, in the 
 Gulf- Straits of Mexico ! 
 
 THE END. 
 

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