YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY LETTERS OF A TMYELLER ; T. NOTES OF THINGS EUROPE AND AMERICA. BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1850. LONDON : Printed by Schulze and Co., 13, Poland Street. TO THE READER. The letters composing this -volume were -written at various times, during the last sixteen years, and during journeys made in different countries. They contain, however, no regular account of any tour or joumey made by the writer, but are merely occa sional sketches of what most attracted his attention. The greater part of them have already appeared in print. The author is sensible that the highest merit such a work can claim, if ever so well executed, is but slight. He might have made these letters more in teresting to readers in general, if he had spoken of distinguished men to whose society he was admitted; but the limits within which this may be done, with TO THE READER. propriety and without offense, are so narrow, and so easily overstepped, that he has preferred to abstain altogether from that class of topics. He offers his book to the public, with expectations which will be satisfied by a very moderate success. Ne-57 Yoke, April, 1850. CONTENTS. FAGE To the Reader 3 Letter L— First Impressions of an American in France. — Tokens of An tiquity: churches, old towns, cottages, colleges, costumes, donkeys, shep herds and their flocks, magpies, chateaux, formal gardens, vineyards, fig-trees. — First Sight of Paris ; its Gothic churches, statues, triumphal arches, monumental columns. — Parisian gaiety, public cemeteries, bm*ial places of the poor 9 Letter II. — Joumey from Paris to Florence. — Serenity of the Italian Climate. — Dreary country between Paris and Chalons on the Saone. — Autun. — Cha lons. — l-.yons. — Valley of the Rhine.— Avignon. — Marseilles ; its growth and prosperity. — Banking in France. — Journey along the Mediterranean. — American and European Institutions 15 Letter DL — Tuscan Sceneiy and Climate. — Florence in Autumn. — Defor mities of Cultivation. — Exhibition of the Academy of the Fine Arts. — Re spect of the Italians for Works of Art 24 Letter IV. — A Day in Florence. — Bustle and Animation of the Place. — Sights seen on the Bridges. — Morning in Florence. — Brethren of Mercy. — Drive on the Cascine. — Evening in Florence. — Anecdote of the Passport System. — Mildness of the CUmate of Pisa S^ Letter V. — Practices of the Italian Courts. — Mildness of the Penal Code in Tuscany. — A Royal Murderer.— Ceremonies on the Birth of an Heir to the Dukedom of Tuscany. — Wealth of the Grand Duke 37 Letter VI. — Venice. — Its peculiar Architecture. — Arsenal and Navy Yard. — The Lagoons. — Ceneda.— Serra vaile. —Lago Morto. — Alpine Scenery. — A June Snow-Storm in the Tyrol. — Splendor of the Scenery in the Sunshine. — Landro.—A Tyrolese Holiday. — Devotional Character of the People.— Numerous Chapels.— Sterzing. — Bruneck.— The Brenner.- Innsbruck.— Bronze Tomb of Maximilian I. — Entrance into Bavaria 42 Letter VII. — An Excursion to Rock River in Illinois.— Birds and Quadru peds of the Prairies. — Dad Joe's Grove. — Beautiful Landscape. — Traces of the Indian Tribes.- Lost Rocks.— Dixon.— Rock River ; beauty of its banks. —A Horse-Thief.— An Association of Felons.-A Prairie Rattlesnake.— The Prairie-Wolf; its habits.- The Wild Parsnip 55 Letter VIIL— Examples of Lynch Law.— Practices of Horse-Thieves in Il linois.— Regulators.— A Murder.— Seizure of the Assassins, their trial and execution.- One of the Accomplices lurking in the Woods.— Anotlier Horse-Thief shot • • C4 6 CONTENTS. FAGE Letter IX.-An Example of Senatorial Decorum.-The National Mu'eum Ht w»<.hmE.tnn.-M„uSt Vernon.-Viririnia Plantations.— Beauty of Rich at Washington.— Mount Vernon.— Virginia Plantations. mond.-l8lands of James River.- An Old Church.-Inspe......" „. ^----^^ Tobacco Factory.-Work and Psalmody.-Howden's Statue of Washington. Letter X.-Joumey from Richmond to Charleston.-Pine Forests of North Carolina.-Collection of Tarpentine.-Harbor of Charleston.-Aspect of ^ the City It-TTER XI— Interi»r of South Carolina.— Pine Woods.- Plantations.— Swamps.-Birds.-A Corn-Shucking.-Negro Songs.-A Negro Military Parade.— Character of the Blacks.— Winter Climate of South Carolina 82 Letter XIL— Picolata.— Beauty of the Season.— The St. John's.— A Ham- mook.— Voyage from Charleston to Savannah.— City of Savannah.— Ouoit Club.— A Negro Burial-Place.— Curious Epitaphs.— Bonaventure.— Majestic Avenues of Live-Oaks.- Alligators.- Black Creek 90 Letter XIII.— Woods of Florida.— Anecdotes of the Florida War.— Aspect of St. Augustine.— Its Streets.— Former Appearance of the City.— Orange Groves.— Fort of St. Mark.— Palm Sunday.— A Frenchman preaching in Spanish 99 Letter XIV.— Climate of St. Augustine.— Tampa Bay.— Melons in January. —Insects in Southern Florida.— Healthfulness of East Florida.— A Sugar Plantation.— Island of St. Anastasia.— Quan-ies of Shell-Rock.— Customs of the Mahonese. — A Mahonese or Minorcan hymn 106 Letter XV.— Florida the "Poor Man's Country."— Settlement ofthe Penin sula. — The Indian War. — Its Causes. — Causes of the Peace. — ^The Ever glades.— St. Mary's in Georgia.— Plague of Sand-Flies.— Alligator Shooting. — Tobacco Chewing 121 Letter XVI. — The Champlain Canal. — Beauty of its Banks. — Whitehall. — Canadian French. — A Family setting out for the West. — The Michigan Lay. — Vermont Scenery 128 Letter XVII. — Grasshoppers. — "White Clover. — Domestic Arrangements of t\v6 unmarried Ladies. — Canadian French Laborers. — Quakers. — A Pretty Mantua Maker. — Anecdote told by a Quakeress. — Walpole. — Keene. — A Family of healthy young Women 134 Letter XVIII. — A Voyage to Liverpool. — Mountains of Wales. — Growth of liverpool. — Aspect of the Place. — Zoological Gardens. — Cemetery among the Rocks. — Ornamental Cultivation. — Prince's Pai-fc. — Chester. — Manches ter. — Calico Printing 144 Letter XIX. — Edale in Derbyshire. — A Commercial Tr.iveller. — Chapel-en- lo-Frith.— The Winnets.— Mam Tor.— Heathy Hills.— The Lark.— Caverns of the Peak of Derbyshire. — Castle of the Peverils. — People of Derbyshire. —Matlock.— Derby 154 Letter XX.— Works of Art.— Power's Greek Slave.— Exhibition of the Royal Academy.— Turner's late Pictures.— Webster.— Thorburn. — New Houses of Parliament.— Artists in Water-Colors 164 Letter XXI.— The Parks of London.— Their Extent.— Want of Parks in New York.— Sweeping of the Streets.— Safety from Housebreaking.— Beggars. — Increase of Poverty jgg Letter XXII.— Edinburg.— The Old Town.— The Castle.— Solid Architec ture of the New Town.— Views from the different Eminences.- Poverty in the Wynds and Alleys.— Houses of Refuge for the Destitute.— Night Asy lums for the Houseless.— The Fi-ee Church.— The Maynooth Grant.— Effect of Endowments 174 CONTENTS. / FAOE Letter XXUI.— Fishwomen of Newhaven. — Frith of Forth. — Stirling. — Callander.— The Trosachs. — Loch Achray. — Loch Katrine. — Loch Lomond. — Glenfalloch. — Dumbarton. — The Leven 181 Letter XXIV.— Glasgow.— Its Annual Fair.— Its Public Statues.- The Free Church.— Free Church College. — Odd Subject of a Sermon. — AUoway. — Burns's Monument.— The Doon.— The Sea.^Burns's Birthplace. — The River Ayr 191 Letter XXV.— Voyage to Ireland.— Ailsa Craig. — County of Down. — County of Lowth.— Difference in the Appearance ofthe Inhabitants.—Peat-Diggers. — A Park. — Samples of different Races of Men. — Round Towers.- Valley of the Boyne.— Dublin. — Its Parks. — O'Connell.— The Repeal Question. — Wall, the Artist. — Exhibition of the Royal Hibernian Society 200 Letter XXVI. — Lunatic Asylum at Hanwell.— Humanity and Skill.— Quiet Demeanor of the Patients. — Anecdotes of the Inraates. — The Corn-law Question. — Coleman's Improvement on the Piano 210 Letter XXVII. — Changes in Paris. — Asphaltum Pavements. — New and Showy Buildings. — Suppression of Gaming-llouses. — Sunday Amusempnts. — Physical Degeneracy. — Vanderlyn's Picture ofthe Landing of Columbus 219 Letter XXVTII.- A Journey through the Netherlands.— Brussels.— Water- loo.— Walloons and Flemings.- Antwerp.— Character of Flemish Art.— The Scheldt.— Rotterdam.— Country of Holland.- The Hague.— Scheveling. — .¦Vmsterdam. — Broek Saardam. — Utrecht ^3 Letter XXIX. — American Artists abroad. — Diisseldorf: Leiitze. — German Painters. — Florence : Greenough, Powers, Gray, G. L. Brown. — Rome : H. K. Brown, Rossiter, Lang 234 Letter XXX. — Buffalo. — The New Fort. — Leopold de Meyer.— Cleveland. —Detroit 241 Letter XXXL— Trip from Detroit to Mackinaw.— The Chippewa Tribe.— The River St. Clair. — Anecdote.— Chippewa Village.— Forts Huron and Saranac. — Bob Low Island. — Mackinaw 248 Letter XXXH. — Journey from Detroit to Princeton, — Sheboygan. — Mil- waukie. — Chicago. — A Plunge in the Canal.— Aspect ofthe Country 256 Letter XXXIII. — Return to Chicago.— Prairie-Hen8.~Prai rie Lands of Lee County.— Rock River District 264 Letter XXXIV.— Voyage to Sault Ste. Marie.— Little Fort.— Indian Women gathering Rice. — Southport. — Island of St. Joseph. — Muddy Lake.— Gir dled Trees 269 Letter XXXV. — Falls of the St. Mary.— Masses of Copper and Silver.- Drunken ludians. — Descent of the Rapids.— Warehouses of the Hudson Bay Company.— Canadian Half-breeds.— La Maison de Pierre.— Tanner the Murderer 277 Letter XXXVI.— Indians at the Sault.— Madeleine Island.- Tndian Dan cing-girls. — Methodist Indians.— Indian Families.— Return to Mackinaw. . 287 Letter XXXVII.— The Straits of Mackinaw.— American Fur Company.— Peculiar Boats.— British Landing.— Battle-field.— Old Mission Church.— Arched Rock 296 Letter XXXVIII.— Excursion to Southem New Jersey.- Easton.— The Del- oware.—The Water Gap.— Bite of a Copper-head Snake 303 8 CONTENTS. PAGE Letter XXXIX.— The Banks ofthe Pocano.— Deer in the Laurel Swamps.— Cherry Hollow.— The Wind Gap.— Nazareth.— Moravian Burying Grounds. — A Pennsylvania German Letter XL.— Paint on Brick Houses.- The New City of Lawrence.— Oak Grove ^-^ Letter XLI.— Islands of Casco Bay.— The Building of Ships.— A Seal in the Kennebeck.— Augusta. — Multitude of Lakes. — Appearances of Thrift 325 Letter XLII.— The Willey House.- Mount Washington.— Scenery of the White Mountains.- A Hen Mother of Puppies 331 Letter XLIII. — Passage to Savannah. — Passengers in the Steamer. — Old Times in Connecticut. — Cape Hatteras. — Savannah. — Bonaventure. — Charleston. — Augusta 336 Letter XLIV. — Southei-n Cotton Mills. — Factory Girls. — Somerville 345 Letter XLV. — ^The Florida Coast. — Key West. — Dangerous Navigation. — A Hurricane and Flood. — Havana 351 Letter XLVI. — Women of Cuba. — Airy Rooms. — Devotion ofthe Women. — Good Friday. — Caecarilla. — Cemetery of Havana. — Funerals. — Cock-flght- ing.— Valla de Callos.-A Masked Ball 358 Letter XLVII. — Scenery of Cuba. — Its Trees. — Sweet-Potato Plantation. — San Antonio de los Barios. — Black and Red Soil of Cuba. — A Coffee Estate.— Attire of the Cubans 370 Letter XLVIII. — Matanzas. — Valley of Yumuri. — Cumbre. — Sugar Estate. — Process of its Manufacture 381 Letter XLIX. — Negroes in Cuba. — Execution by the Garrote. — Slave Mar ket. — African, Indian, and Asiatic Slaves. — Free Blacks in Cuba. — Annex ation of Cuba to the United States 389 Letter L.— English Exhibitioris of Works of Art.— The Society of Arts. — Royal Academy. — Jews in ParUament 402 Letter H. — A Visit to the Shetland Isles.— Highland Fishermen. — Ler- wick.— Church-goers in Shetland.— H.abitations of the Islanders.— The Noup of the Noss.- Sheep and Ponies.— Pictish Castle.— The Zetlanders. —A Gale in the North Sd.— Cathedral of St. Magnus.— Wick 408 Letter LIL— Europe under the Bayonet.— Uses of the State of Siege.— Stuttgart.— The Hungarians.— Bavaria.— St. Gall.— Zurich.— Target-shoot- mg.— France.— French Expedition to Rome 426 Letter LIII.— Volterra ; its Desolation.- The Balza.— Etruscan Remains — Fortress of Volterra 43g LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. LETTER I. FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF AN AMERICAN IN FRANCE. Pakis, August 9, 1834. Since -we first landed in France, every step of our joumey has reminded us that -we -were in an old country. Every thing -we saw spoke of the past, of an antiquity without hmit ; everywhere our eyes rested on the handi work of those who had been dead for ages, and -we were in the midst of customs -which they had bequeathed to their descendants. The churches -were so vast, so solid, so venerable, and time-eaten ; the dwellings so gray, and of such antique architecture, and in the large to-wns, like Rouen, rose so high, and overhung with such quaint projec tions the narrow and cavernous streets ; the thatched cots were so mossy and so green -with grass ! The very hills about them looked scarcely as old, for there -was youth in their vegetation — their shrubs and flowers. The coun trywomen wore such high caps, such long waists, and 10 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. such short petticoats ! — ^the fashion of bonnets is an innova- tion of yesterday, which they regard vMi scom. We passed females riding on donkeys, the Old Testament beast of bur den, with panniers on each side, as. -was the custom hun dreds of years since. We saw ancient dames sitting at their doors -with distaffs, twisting the thread by t-wirl- ing the spindle between the thumb and finger, as they did in the days of Homer. A flock of sheep was grazing on the side of a hUl ; they were attended by a shepherd, and a brace of prick-eared dogs, which kept them fi-om straying, as. was done thousands of years ago. Speckled birds were hopping by the sides of the road ; it was the magpie, the bird of ancient fable. Flocks of what I at first took for the crow of our country were stalking in the fields, or sailing in the air over the old elms ; it was the rook, the bird made as classical by Addison as his cousin the raven by the Latin poets. Then there were the old chateaus on the hills, built with an appearance of miUtary strength, their towers and battlements telling of feudal times. The groves by which they were surrounded were for the most part clipped into regular walls, and pierced with regularly arched passages, leading in various directions, and the trees compelled- by the shears to take the shape of obe lisks and pyramids, or other fantastic figures, according to the taste of the middle ages. As we drew nearer to Paris, we saw the plant which Noah first committed HISTORICAL MONUMENTS. 11 to the earth after the deluge — ^you know what that was I hope — ^trained on ^w stakes, and grovidng thickly and luxuriantly on the slopes by the side of the highway. Here, too, was the tree which was the subject of the first Christian miracle, the fig, its branches hea-vy with the bursting fruit just beginning to ripen for the mar ket. But when we entered Paris, and passed the Barriere d'Etoile, with its lofty triumphal arch ; when we swept through the arch of Neuilly, and came in front of the Hotel des Invahdes, where the aged or maimed soldiers, the living monuments of so many battles, were walking or sitting under the elms of its broad esplanade ; when we saw the colossal statues of statesmen and warriors fi-owning firom their pedestals on the bridges which be stride the muddy and narrow channel of the Seine ; when we came in sight of the gray pinnacles of the Tuilleries, and the Gothic towers of Notre-Dame, and the Roman ones of St. Sulpice, and the dome of the Pantheon, under which lie the remains of so many of the great men of France, and the dark column of Place Vendome, wrought -with figures in rehef, and the obelisk brought from Egypt to omament the Place Louis Gluatorze, the associations with antiquity whioh the country pre sents, from being general, became particular and historical. They were recoUections of power, and magnificence, and extended empire ; of valor and skill in war which had 12 LETTEKS OF A TRAVELLER. held the world in fear ; of dynasties that had risen and passed away ; of battles and victories which had left no other fruits than their monuments. The solemnity of these recollections does not seem to press with much weight upon the minds of the people. It has been said that the French have become a graver nation than formerly ; if so, what must have been their gayety a hundred years ago ? , To me they seem as hght- hearted and as easily amused as if they had done nothing but make love and quiz their priests since the days of Louis XIV. — as if their streets had never flowed with the blood of Frenchmen shed by their brethren — as if they had never won and lost a mighty empire. I can not imagine the present generation to be less gay than that which hstened to the comedies of Moliere at their first representation ; particularly when I perceive that even MoUere's pieces are too much burdened with thought for a Frenchman of the present day, and that he prefers the Ughter and more frivolous vaude-vdUe. The Parisian has his amusements as regularly as his meals, the theatre, music, the dance, a walk in the Tuilleries, a refection in the cafe, to which ladies resort as commonly as the other sex. Perpetual business, perpetual labor, is a thing of which he seems to have no idea. I wake in the middle of the night, and I hear the fiddle going, and the sound of feet keeping time, in some of the dependencies of the large builduig near the TuiUeries, in which I have my lodgings. CEMETERIES. 13 When a generation of Frenchmen " Have played, and laughed, and danced, and drank their fill" — when they have seen their allotted number of vaude-villes and swaUowed their destined allowance of weak wine and bottled smaU-beer, they are swept off to the cemetery of Montmartre, or of Pere la Chaise, or some other of the great burial-places which lie just -without the city. I went to visit the latter of these the other day. You are re minded of your approach to it by the rows of stone-cutters' shops on each side of the street, with a glittering display of polished marble monuments. The place, of the dead is almost a gayer-looking spot than the ordinary haunts of Parisian Ufe. It is traversed with shady walks of elms and limes, and its inmates he amidst thickets of orna mental shrubs and plantations of the most gaudy flowers. Their monuments are hung with wreaths of artificial flowers, or of those natural ones which do not lose their color and shape in drying, like the amaranth and the ever lasting. Parts of the cemetery seem like a city in minia ture ; the sepulchral chapels, through the windows of which you see crucifixes and tapers, stand close to each other bsside the path, intermingled with statues and busts. There is one part of this repository of the dead which is Uttle visited, that in which the poor are buried, where those who have dwelt apart from their more fortunate fellow- creatures in hfe lie apart in death. Here are no walks, 14 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. no shade of trees, no planted shrubbery, but ridges of raw earth, and tufts of coarse herbage show where the bodies are thrown together under a thin covering of soil. I was about to walk over the spot, but was repeUed by the sickening exhalations that rose from it. THE ARNO. 15 LETTER n. A JOUENET TO FLORENCE. Florence, Sept 21, 1834. I HA-VE now been in this city a fortnight, and have estab lished myself in a suite of apartments lately occupied, as the landlord told me, in hopes I presume of getting a higher rent, by a Russian prince. The Arno flows, or rather stands still, under my windows, for the water is low, and near the western wall of the city is frugally dammed up to preserve it for the pubUc baths. Beyond, this stream so renowned in history and poetry, is at this season but a feeble riU, almost lost among the pebbles of its bed, and scarcely sufiicing to give drink to the pheasants and hares of the Grand Duke's Cascine on its banks. Opposite my lodgings, at the south end of the Ponte alia Carraia, is a Uttle oratory, before the door of which every good Catholic who passes takes off his hat -with a gesture of homage ; and at this moment a swarthy, weasel-faced man, with a tin box in his hand, is gathering contributions to pay for the services of the chapel, rattUng his coin to attract the attention of the pedestrians, and caUing out to those who seem disposed to pass -without payuig. To the north and west, the peaks 16 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. of the Appenines are in full sight, rismg over the spires of the city and the groves of the Cascine. Every evening I see them through the soft, delicately-colored haze of an ItaUan sunset, looking as if they had caught something of the transparency of the sky, and appearing hke mountains of fairy-land, instead of the bleak and barren ridges of rock which they reaUy are. The weather since my arrival in Tuscany has been continually serene, the sky whoUy cloud less, and the temperature uniform — oppressively warm in the streets at noon, delightful at morning and evening, -with a long, beautiful, golden twilight, occasioned by the reflec tion of light firom the orange-colored haze which invests the atmosphere. Every night I am reminded that I am in the land of song, for until two o'clock in the morning I hear " aU manner of tunes" chanted by people in the streets in all manner of voices. I beUeve I have given you no account of our journey from Paris to this place. That part of it which lay between Paris and Chalons, on the Saone, may be described in a very few words. Monotonous plains, covered with vme yards and wheat-fields, with very few trees, and those spoiled by being lopped for fuel — sunburnt women driving carts or at work in the fields — gloomy, cheerless-looking to-wns, -with narrow, filthy streets — ^troops of beggars sur rounding your carriage whenever you stop, or whenever the nature of the roads obUges the horses to waUc, and chanting their requests ui the most doleful whme imaginable— such AUTUN. CHALONS. 17 are the sights and sounds that meet you for the greater part of two hundred and fifty mUes. There are, however, some exceptions as to the aspect of the country. Autun, one of the most ancient towns of France, and yet retaining some remains of Roman architecture, lies in a beautiful and picturesque region. A Uttle beyond that to-wn we ascended a hill by a road -winding along a glen, the rocky sides of which were clothed with an unpruned wood, and a clear stream ran dashing over the stones, now on one side of the road and then on the other — the first instance of a brook left to follow its natural channel which I had seen in France. Two young Frenchmen, who were our fellow-passengers, were -wild -with deUght at this glimpse of unspoUed nature. They foUowed the meanderings of the stream, leaping from rock to rock, and shouting tiU the woods rang again. Of Chalons I have nothing to tell you. Abelard died there, and his tomb was erected with that of Eloise in the church of St. Marcel ; but the church is destroyed, and the monu ment has been transported to the cemetery of Pere la Chaise, and with it all the poetry of the place is vanished. But if you would make yourself supremely uncomfortable, travel as I did in a steamboat down the Saone from Chalons to Lyons, on a rainy day. Crowded into a narrow, dirty cabin, with benches on each side and a long table in the middle, at which a set of Frenchmen -with their hats on are playing cards and eating dejeuners a la fourchette all day long, and deafening you with their noise, while waiters are 2* 18 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. ranning against your legs and treading on your toes every moment, and the water is dropping on your head through the cracks of the deck-floor, you would be forced to ad mit the superlative misery of such a mode of travelhng. The approach to Lyons, however, made some amends for these inconveniences. The shores of the river, hither to low and level, began to rise into hiUs, broken with precipices and cro-wned by castles, some in ruins and others entire, and seemingly a part of the very rocks on which they stood, so old and mossy and strong did they seem. What struck me most in Lyons was the supe riority of its people in looks and features to the inhabit ants of Paris — ^the clatter and jar of silk-looms with which its streets resounded — and the picturesque beauty of its situation, placed as it is among steeps and rocks, -with the quiet Saone on one side, and the swiftly-running Rhone on the other. In our joumey from Lyons to MarseiUes we traveUed by land instead of taking the steamboat, as is commonly done as far as A-vignon. The coramon books of travels wiU teU you how numerous are the ruins of feudal times perched upon the heights all along the Rhone, remnants of fortresses and castles, overlooking a vast extent of country and once serving as places of refuge to the culti vators of the soil who dwelt in their vicinity — ^how frequently also are to be met with the earlier yet scarcely less fresh traces of Roman colonization and dominion, in gateways, triumphal arches, walls, and momiments — ^how on entering MAR.^EILLES. 19 Provence ycu find juurself among a people of a difierent physiognomy from those of the northern provinces, speaking a language which rather resembles Italian than French — how the beauty of the women of Avignon stiU does credit to the taste of the clergy, who made that city for more than half a century the seat of the Papal power — and how, as you approach the shores of the Mediterranean, the moun tains which rise from the fruitful valleys shoot up in wilder forms, until their summits become mere pinnacles of rock whoUy bare of vegetation. Marseilles is seated in the midst of a semicircle of moun tains of whitish rock, the steep and naked sides of which scarce afibrd " a footing for the goat." Stretching into the Mediterranean they inclose a commodious harbor, in front of which are two or three rocky islands anchored in a sea of more vivid blue than any water I had ever before seen. The coimtry immediately surrounding the city is an arid and dusty valley, intersected here and there with the bed of a brook or torrent, dry during the summer. It is carefully cultivated, however, and planted with vineyards, and orchards of olive, fig, and pomegranate trees. The trees being smaU and low, the foliage of the olive thin and pale, the leaves of the fig broad and few, and the soil appearing everywhere at their roots, as well as between the rows of vines, the vegetation, when viewed from a little distance, has a meagre and ragged appearance. The whiteness of the hills, which the eye can hardly bear to rest upon at 20 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. noon, the intense blue of the sea, the pecuUar forms of the foliage, and the deficiency of shade and verdure, made me almost fancy myself in a tropical region. The Greeks judged well of the commercial advantages of MarseiUes when, they made it the seat of one of their early colonies. I found its streets animated -with a bustle which I had not seen since I left New York, and its port thronged with vessels from all the nations whose coasts border upon the great midland sea of Europe. Marseilles is the most flourishing seaport in France ; it has already become to the Mediterranean what New York is to the United States, and its trade is regularly increasing. The old to-wn is ugly, but the lower or new part is nobly built of the Ught-colored stone so commonly used in France, and so easily wrought — with broad streets and, what is rare in Frenoh tovi^ns, convenient sidewalks. New streets are laid out, gardens are converted into building-lots, the process of leveling hiUs and filUng up hollows is going on as in New York, the city is extending itself on every side, and large fortunes have been made by the rise in the value of landed property. In a conversation with an intelUgent gentleman resident at Marseilles and largely engaged in commercial and moneyed transactions, the subject ofthe United States Bank was mentioned. Opinions in France, on this question of our domestic politics, differ according as the opportimities of information possessed by the individual are more or less APPROACH^ TO ITALY. 21 ample, or as he is more or less in favor of chartered banks. The gentleman remarked that without any reference to the question of the United States Bank, he hoped the day would never come when such an institution would be established in France. The project he said had some advocates, but they had not yet succeeded, and he hoped never would succeed in the introduction of that system of paper currency which prevaUed in the United States. He deprecated the dangerous and uncertain facihties of obtaining credit which are the fruit of that system, which produce the most ruinous fluctuations in commerce, encourage speculation and ex travagance of all kinds, and involve the prudent and labo rious in the ruin which falls upon the rash and reckless. He declared himself satisfied -with the state of the currency of France, with which, if fortunes were not suddenly built up they were not suddenly overthro-wn, and periods of ap parent prosperity were not followed by seasons of real distress. I made the joumey from MarseiUes to Florence by land. How grand and -wild are the mountains that overlook the Mediterranean ; how intense was the heat as we wound our way along the galleries of rock cut to form a road ; how ex cellent are the fruits, and how thick the mosquitoes at Nice ; how sumptuous are the palaces, how narrow and dark the streets, and how paUid the dames of Genoa ; and how beautiful we found our path among the trees overrun with vines as we approached southem Italy, are matters which I 22 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. wiU take some other opportunity of relating. On the 12th of September our vetturino set us down safe at the Hotel de V Europe in Florence. I think I shall return to America even a better patriot than when I left it. A citizen of the United States travel ling on the continent of Europe, finds the contrast between a government of power and a government of opinion forced upon him at every step. He finds himself delayed at every large town and at every frontier of a kingdom or princi pahty, to submit to a strict examination of the passport -with which the jealousy of the rulers of these countries has com pelled him to furnish himself. He sees everywhere guards and sentinels armed to the teeth, stationed in the midst of a population engaged in their ordinary occupations in a time of profound peace ; and to supply the place of the young and robust thus withdrawn from, the labors of agriculture he beholds women performing the work of the fields. He sees the many retained in a state of hopeless dependence and poverty, the effect of institutions forged by the ruhng class to accumulate wealth in their own hands. The want of self-respect in the inferior class engendered by this state of things, shows itself in the acts of rapacity and fraud which the traveller meets with throughout France and Italy, and, worse stiU, in the shameless cormption of the ItaUan custom-houses, the officers of which regularly soUcit a paltry bribe from every passenger as the consideration of leaving his baggage unexamined. I am told that in this BRIBERY IN TIIE COURTS. 23 place the custom of giving presents extends even to the courts of justice, the officers of which, from the highest to the lowest, are in the constant practice of recei-ving them. No American can see how much jealousy and force on the one hand, and necessity and fear on the other, have to do with keeping up the existing governments of Europe, -without thanking heaven that such is not the condition of his o-wn country. 24 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. LETTER III. TUSCAN SCENERY ANIT CLIMATE. Florence, October 11, 1834. The bridge over the Arno, immediately under my -window, is the spot from which Cole's fine landscape, which you per haps remember seeing in the exhibition of our Academy, was taken. It gives, you may recollect, a view ofthe Arno travel ling off towards the west, its banks overhung with trees, the mountain-ridges rising in the distance, and above them the sky flushed with the colors of sunset. The same rich hues I behold every evening in the quarter where they were seen by the artist when he made thera perraanent on his canvas. There is a great deal of prattle about ItaUan skies : the skies and clouds of Italy, so far as I have had an opportu nity of judging, do not present so great a variety of beau tiful appearances as our own ; but the Itahan atmosphere is far more uniforraly fine than ours. Not to speak of its astonishing clearness, it is pervaded by a certain warmth of color which enriches every object. This is more remark able about the time of sunset, when the mountains put on an aerial aspect, as if they belonged to another and fairer AUTUMN IN FLORENCE. 25 world ; and a httle after the sun has gone down, the air is flushed with a glory which seems to transfigure all that it incloses. Many of the fine old palaces of Florence, you know, are built in a gloomy though grand style of architec ture, of a dark-colored stone, massive and lofty, and over looking narrow streets that Ue in almost perpetual shade. But at the hour of which I am speaking, the bright warm radiance reflected from the sky to the earth, fills the dark est lanes, streams into the most shadowy nooks, and makes the prison-like structures glitter as with a brightness of their o-wn. It is now nearly the middle of October, and we have had no frost The strong summer heats which prevailed when I came hither, have by the slowest gradations subsided into an agreeable autumnal temperature. The trees keep their verdure, but I perceive their foliage growing thinner, and when I walk in the Cascine on the other side of the Arno, the rusthng of the Uzards, as they run among the heaps of crisn leaves, reminds me that the autumn is wearing away, though the ivy which clothes the old ehns has put forth 3 profuse array of blossoms, and the walks murmur with beei ; like our orchards in spring. As I look along the decfi-vitie ; of the Appenines, I see the raw earth every day morj visible between the ranks of ohve-trees and the well-pruned maples which support the vines. If I have found my expectations of Itahan scenery, in some respects, below the reality, in other respects they 3 26 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. have been disappointed. The forms of the mountains are wonderfully picturesque, and their effect is heightened by the rich atmosphere through which they are seen, and by the buildings, imposing from their architecture or venera- able from tirae, which crown the eminen-ces. But if the hand of man has done something to embelhsh this region, it has done more to deform it. Not a tree is suffered to re tain its natural shape, not a brook to flow in its natural channel. An exterminating war is carried on against the natural herbage of the soil. The country is without woods and green fields ; and to him who -views the vale of the Arno " from the top of Fiesole," or any of the neighboring heights, grand as he will aUow the circle of the mountains to be, and magnificent the edifices with which the region is adorned, it appears, at any tirne after midsummer, a huge valley of dust, planted with low rows of the paUid and thin-leaved oUve, or the more d-warfish maple on which the vines are trained. The simplicity of nature, so far as can be done, is destroyed ; there is no fine sweep of forest, no broad expanse of meadow or pasture ground, no ancient and towering trees clustered about the -viUas, no rows of natural shrubbery following the course of the brooks and rivers. The streams, which are often but the beds of tor rents dry during the summer, are confined in straight channels by stone walls and embankments ; the slopes are broken up and disfigured by terraces ; and the trees are kept down by constant pruning and lopping, until half way up the sides FLORENTINE ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS. 27 ofthe Appenines, where the limit of cultivation is reached, and thence to the summit is a barren steep of rock, without herbage or soil. The grander features of the landscape, however, are fortunately beyond the power of man to in jure ; the lofty mountain-summits, bare precipices cleft -with chasms, and pinnacles of rock piercing the sky, betokening, far more than any thing I have seen elsewhere, a breaking up of the crust of the globe in some early period of its exist ence. I am told that in May and June the country is rauch more beautiful than at present, and that owing to a drought it now appears under a particular disadvantage. The Academy of the Fine Arts has had its exhibition since I arrived. In its rooms, which were gratuitously open to the public, I found a large crowd of gazers at the pic tures and statues. Many had come to look at some work ordered by an acquaintance ; others made the place a morn ing lounge. In the collection were some landscapes by Morghen, the son of the celebrated engraver, very fresh and clear ; a few pieces sent by BezzoU, one of the most erai nent Italian painters of his time ; a statue of GalUeo, not without merit, by Costoli, for there is always a GaUleo or two, I beUeve, at every exhibition of the kind in Florence ; por traits good, bad, and indifferent, in great abundance, and many square feet of canvas spoiled by atterapts at historical painting. Let me reraark, by the way, that a work of art is a sacred thing in the eyes of Italians of aU classes, never to be de- 28 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. faced, never to be touched, a thing to be looked at merely. A statue may stand for ages in a pubhc square, -within the reach of any one who passes, and with no sentinel to guard it, and yet it shall not only be safe from mutilation, but the surface of the marble shall never be scratched, or even irreverently scored with a lead pencil. So general is this reverence for art, that the most perfect confidence is re posed in it. I remember that in Paris, as I was looking at a colossal plaster cast of Napoleon at the Hotel des In vahdes, a feUow arraed with a musket who stood by it bolt upright, in the stiff attitude to which the soldier is driUed, gruffly reminded rae that I was too near, though I was not within four feet of it. In Florence it is taken for granted that you will do no raischief, and therefore you are not watched. A DAY IN FLORENCE. 29 LETTER IV. A DAY IN FLORENCE. Pisa, December 11, 1834. It is gratifying to be able to communicate a piece of po litical intelligence from so quiet a nook of the world as this. Don Miguel arrived here the other day from Genoa, where you know there was a story that he and the Duchess of Berri, a hopeful couple, were laying their heads together. He went to pay his respects to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who is now at Pisa, and it was said by the gossips of the place that he was coldly received, and was given to under stand that he could not be allowed to remain in the Tuscan territory. There was probably nothing in all this. Don Miguel has now departed for Rome, and the talk of to-day is that he wUl return before the end of the winter. He is doubtless wandering about to observe in what manner he is received at the petty courts which are influenced by the Austrian policy, and in the mean time lying in wait for some favorable opportunity of renewing his pretensions to the crown of Spain. Pisa offers a greater contrast to Florence than I had im agined could exist between two Italian cities. This is the 3* 30 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. very seat of idleness and slumber ; while Florence, from being the residence of the Court, and from the vast number of foreigners who throng to it, presents during several months of the year an appearance of great bustle and animation. Four thousand EngUsh, an Araerican friend tells rae, visit Florence every -winter, to say nothing of the occasional residents from France, Gerraany, and Russia. The number of visitors fi-om the latter country is every year increasing, and the echoes of the Florence gaUery have been taught to repeat the strange accents of the Sclavonic. Let me give you the history of a fine day in October, passed at the window of my lodgings on the Lung' Arno, close to the bridge Alia Car raj a. Waked by the jangling of all the bells in Florence and by the noise of carriages departing loaded with travellers, for Rome and other places in the south of Italy, I rise, dress myself, and take my place at the window. I see crowds of men and women from the country, the former in brown velvet jackets, and the latter in broad-brimmed straw hats, driving donkeys loaded -with panniers or trundUng hand-carts before thera, heaped with grapes, figs, and aU the fruits ofthe orchard, the garden, and the field. They have hardly passed, when large flocks of sheep and goats raake their appearance, attended by shepherds and their famUies, driven by the approach of winter from the Appenines, and seeking the pastures of the Maremma, a rich, but, in the summer, an unhealthy tract on the ooast. The men and boys are dressed in knee- MORNING IN FLORENCE. 31 breeches, the women in bodices, and both sexes wear capotes with pointed hoods, and felt hats with conical crowns ; they carry long staves in their hands, and their arms are loaded with kids and lambs too young to keep pace with their mothers. After the long procession of sheep and goats and dogs and men and woraen and chil dren, come horses loaded -with cloths and poles for tents, kitchen utensils, and the rest of the younglings of the flock. A little after sunrise I see well-fed donkeys, in coverings of red cloth, driven over the bridge to be milked for invalids. Maid-servants, bareheaded, with huge high carved combs in their hair, waiters of coffee-houses carrying the morning cup of coffee or chocolate to their customers, baker's boys with a dozen loaves on a board balanced on their heads, milkmen with rush baskets filled with flasks of milk, are crossing the streets in all directions. A Uttle later the bell of the smaU chapel opposite to my window rings furiously for a quarter of an hour, and then I hear mass chanted in a deep strong nasal tone. As the day advances, the English, in white hats and white pantaloons, come out of their lodgings, accompanied sometimes by their hale and square-built spouses, and saunter stiffly along the Arno, or take their way to the public galleries and museums. Their massive, clean, and brightly-polished carriages also begin to rattle through the streets, setting out on excursions to some part of the en-virons of Florence — ^to Fiesole, to the Pratolino, to the BeUo Sguardo, to the Poggio Imperiale. Sights of a 3a LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. different kind now present theraselves. Sometimes it is a troop of stout Franciscan friars, in sandals and brown robes, each carrying his staff and wearuig a bro-wn broad- brimmed hat with a hemispherical cro-wn. Sometimes it is a band of young theological students, in purple cassocks with red coUars and cuffs, let out on a holiday, attended by their clerical uistractors, to ramble in the Cascine. There is a priest coming over the bridge, a man of venerable age and great reputation for sanctity — ^the common people crowd around him to kiss his hand, and obtain a kind word from him as he passes. But what is that procession of men in black gowns, black gaiters, and black masks, moving swiftly along, and bearing on their shoulders a Utter covered -with black cloth ? These are the Brethren of Mercy, who have assembled at the sound of the cathedral bell, and are conveying sorae sick or wounded person to the hospital. As the day begins to decline, the numbers of carriages in the streets, filled with gaily-dressed people attended by servants in livery, increases. The Grand Duke's equipage, an ele gant carriage drawn by six horses, with coachmen, footraen, and outriders in drab-colored livery, coraes from the Pitti Palace, and crosses the Amo, either by the bridge close to my lodgings, or by that caUed Alia Santa Trinita, which is in fuU sight from the windows. The Florentine nobiUty, with their families, and the EngUsh residents, now throng to the Cascine, to drive at a slow pace through its thickly- planted walks of elms, oaks, and Uexes. As the sim is EVENING IN FLORENCE. 33 sinking I perceive the Q,uay, on the other side of the Arno, filled with a moving crowd of well-dressed people, walking to and fro, and enjoying the beauty of the evening. Travel lers now arrive from all quarters, in cabriolets, in calashes, in the shabby vettura, and in the elegant private carriage drawn by post-horses, and driven by postillions in the tight est possible deer-skin breeches, the smallest red coats, and the hugest jack-boots. The streets about the doors of the hotels resound with the cracking of whips and the stamping of horses, and are encumbered with carriages, heaps of bag gage, porters, postiUions, couriers, and travellers. Night at length arrives — the time of spectacles and funerals. The carriages rattle towards the opera-houses. Trains of people, sometimes in white robes and sometimes in black, carrying blazing torches and a cross elevated on a high pole before a coffin, pass through the streets chanting the service for the dead. The Brethren of Mercy may also be seen engaged in their office. The rapidity of their pace, the flare of their torches, the gleam of their eyes through their raasks, and their sable garb, give thera a kind of supernatural appear ance. I return to bed, and fall asleep araidst the shouts of people returning frora the opera, singing as they go snatches of the music with which they had been entertained during the evening. Such is a picture of what passes every day at Florence — in Pisa, on the contrary, all is stagnation and repose — even the presence of the sovereign, who usually passes a part of 34 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. the winter here, is incompetent to give a momentary hveh- ness to the place. The city is nearly as large as Florence, with not a third of its population ; the number of strangers is few ; most of them are invalids, and the rest are the quietest people in the world. The rattle of carriages is rarely heard in the streets ; in some of which there prevaUs a stillness so complete that you raight imagine them desert ed of their inhabitants. I have now been here three weeks, and on one occasion only have I seen the people of the place awakened to soraething like animation. It was the feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin ; the Lung' Arno was strewn with boughs of laurel and myrtle, and the Pisan gentry promenaded for an hour under rny -window. On my leaving Florence an incident occurred, which wiU illustrate the manner of doing public business in this country. I had obtained my passport from the PoUce Office, vised for Pisa. It was then Friday, and I was told that it would answer untU ten o'clock on Tuesday morning. Unluckily I did not present myself at the Leghorn gate of Florence until eleven o'clock on that day. A young raan in a military hat, sword, and blue uniforra, came to the carriage and asked for my passport, which I handed him. In a short time he appeared again and desired me to get out and go with him to the apartment in the side of the gate. I went and saw a middle-aged man dressed in the same manner, sitting at the table with my passport before hira. " I am sorry," said he, " to say that your passport is USES OP A PASSPORT. 35 not regular, and that my duty compels rae to detain you." " What is the raatter with the passport?" "The vise is of more than three days standing." I exerted all my elo quence to persuade him that an hour was of no consequence, and that the pubhc welfare would not suffer by letting me pass, but he remained firm. " The law," he said, " is positive ; I am compelled to execute it. If I were to suffer you to depart, and my superiors were to know it, I should lose my office and incur the penalty of five days' im prisonment." I happened to have a few coins in my pocket, and put ting in my hand, I caused them to jingle a Uttle against each other. " Your case is a hard one," said the officer, "I suppose you are desirous to get on." "Yes — my preparations are aU made, and it will be a great incon venience for me to remain." "What say you," he called out to his companion who stood in the door looking into the street, " shaU we let thera pass ? They seem to be decent people." The young man raurabled some sort of answer. "Here," said the officer, holding out to .rae my passport, but still keeping it between his thumb and finger, " I give you back your passport, and consent to your lea-vin~ Florence, but I wish you particularly to consider that in s doing, I risk the loss of my place and an imprisonment o five days." He then put the paper into my hand, and I put into his the expected gratuity. As I went to tl carriage, he followed and begged me to say nothing of tLi. 36 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. matter to any one. I was admitted into Pisa with less difficulty. It was already dark ; I expected that my bag gage would undergo a long examination as usual ; and I knew that I had some dutiable articles. To my astonish ment, however, my trunks were aUowed to pass without being opened, or even the payment of the custoraary gratuity. I was told afterwards that my Italian servant had efiected this by telling the custom-house ofiicers some lie about my being the American Minister. Pisa has a delightful winter climate, though Madame de Stael has left on record a condenination of it, having passed here a season of unusually bad weather. Orange and lemon trees grow in the open air, and are now loaded with ripe fruit. The fields in the environs are green -with grass nourished by abundant rains, and are spotted with daisies in blossom. Crops of flax and various kinds of pulse are showing themselves above the ground, a circumstance sufficient to show that the cultivators expect nothing like what we call winter. PRACTICES OF THE ITALIAN COURTS. 37 LETTER V. PRACTICES OF THE ITALIAN COURTS. Florence, May 12, 1833. Night before last, a man-chUd was born to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and yesterday was a day of great rejoi cing in consequence. The five hundred bells of Florence kept up a horrid ringing through the day, and in the even ing the public edifices and many private houses were il luminated. To-day and to-morrow the rejoicings continue, and in the mean time the galleries and museums are closed, lest idle people should amuse theraselves rationally. The Tuscans are pleased with the birth of an heir to the Duke dom, first because the succession is hkely to be kept in a good sort of a family, and secondly because for want of male chUdren it would have reverted to the House of Aus tria, and the province would have been govemed by a foreigner. I am glad of it, also, for the sake of the poor Tuscans, who are a mild people, and if they must be under a despotism, deserve to Uve under a good-natured one. An Austrian Prince, if he were to govern Tuscany as the Emperor governs the Lorabardo- Venetian territory, would introduce a more just and efficient system of administering 38 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. the laws between man and man, but at the same time a more barbarous severity to political offenders. I saw at Volterra, last spring, four persons who were condemned at Florence for an alleged conspiracy against the state. They were walking with instmments of music in their hands, on the top ofthe fortress, which commands an extensive view of mountain, vale, and sea, including the lower Val d'Amo, and reaching to Leghorn, and even to Corsica. They were weU-dressed, and I was assured their personal comfort was attended to. A different treatment is the fate of the state prisoners who languish in the dungeons of Austria. In Tus cany no man's life is taken for any offense whatever, and banishment is a common sentence against those who are deemed dangerous or intractable subjects. In aU the other provinces a harsher system prevaUs. In Sardinia capital executions for political causes are frequent, and long and mysterious detentions are resorted to, as in Lombardy, with a view to strike terror into the minds of a discontented people. The royal family of Naples kUl people by way of amuse ment. Prince Charles, a brother of the king, sometirae in the month of April last, found an old man cutting myrtle twigs on some of the royal hunting-grounds, of which he has the superintendence. He directed his attendants to seize the offender and tie him to a tree, and when they had done this ordered them to shoot him. This they refused, upon whioh he took a loaded rausket frora the hands of one of thera, and with the greatest deliberation shot him A ROYAL MURDERER. 39 dead upon the spot. His Royal Highness soon after set out for Rome to amuse himself with the ceremonies of the Holy Week, and to figure at the balls given by Torlonia and other Roman nobles, where he signaUzed himself by his at tentions to the EngUsh ladies. Of the truth of the story I have related I have been as sured by several respectable persons in Naples. About the middle of May I was at the spot where the murder was said to have been comraitted. It was on the borders of the lake of Agnano. We reached it by a hollow winding road, cut deep through the hiUs and rocks thousands of years ago. It was a pretty and solitary spot ; a neat pavilion of the royal family stood on the shore, and the air was fragrant with the blossoms of the white clover and the innumerable flowers which the soU of Italy, for a short season before the summer heats and drought, pours forth so profusely. The lake is e-vidently the crater of an old volcano : it lies in a perfect bowl of hiUs, and the perpetual escape of gas, bubbling up through the water, shows that the process of chemical de composition in the earth below has not yet ceased. Close by, in the side of the circular hill that surrounds the lake, stands the faraous Grotto del Cane, closed with a door to enable the keeper to get a Uttle money from the foreigners who come to visit it. You may be sure I was careful not to trim any of the myrtles with my penknife. But to retum to Tuscany — it is after all little better than an Austrian province, Uke the other countries of Italy. The 40 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. Grand Duke is a near relative of the Emperor ; he has the rank of colonel in the Austrian service, and a treaty of offense and defense obUges him to take part in the wars of Austria to the extent of furnishing ten thousand soldiers. It is well understood that he is watched by the agents of the Austrian Government here, who form a sort of high poUce, to which he and his cabinet are subject, and that he would lot venture upon any measure of national policy, nor even iisplace or appoint a minister, without the consent of Met- ;ermch. The birth of a son to the Grand Duke has been signal- zed, I have just learned, by a display of princely mimifi- ;enoe. 'Five thousand crowns have been presented to the \.rchbishop who performed the cereraony of christening the ¦hild ; the servants of the ducal household have received wo months' wages, in addition to their usual salary ; five lundred young women have received marriage portions of hirty crowns each ; all the articles of property at the ^eat pa-wnbroking estabhshments managed by goverment, iledged for a less sum than four li-vres, have been restored 0 the owners without payment; and finally, aU persons lonfined for larceny and other offences of a less degree than lomicide and other enormous crimes, have been Uberated .nd turned loose upon society again. The Grand Duke an weU afford to be generous, for from a miUion and three lundred thousand people he draws, by taxation, four mil- ions of crowns annually, of which a milhon only is com- wealth OF THE GRAND DUKE. 41 puted to be expended in the mUitary and civU expenses of his government. The remainder is of course applied to keeping up the state of a prince and to the enriching of his family. He passes, you know, for one of the richest potentates in Europe. 4* 12 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. LETTER VI. VENICE. THE TYROL. Munich, August 6, 1835. Since my last letter I have visited Venice, a city whicb realizes the old mythological fable of beauty born of the sea. [ must confess, however, that my first feeling on entering t was that of disappointment. As we passed in our gon- lola out of the lagoons, up one of the numerous canals, svhich permeate the city in every direction in such a nanner that it seems as if you could only pass your time jither within doors or in a boat, the place appeared to me a j^ast assemblage of prisons surrounded with their moats, ind I thought how weary I should soon grow of my island prison, and how glad to escape again to the main-land. But ;his feeling 'quickly gave way to delight and admiration, ivhen I landed and surveyed the clean though narrow streets, never incommoded by dust nor disturbed by the loise and jostUng of carriages and horses, by which you nay pass to every part of the city — when I looked again It the rows of superb buildings, with their marble steps as- jending out of the water of the canals, in which the jondolas were shooting by each other — when I stood in the VENETIAN ARCHITECTURE. 43 immense square of St. Mark, surrounded by palaces resting on arcades, under which the shops rival in splendor those of Paris, and crowds of the gay inhabitants of both sexes as semble towards evening and sit in groups before the doors of the coffee-houses — and when I gazed on the barbaric magnificence of the church of St. Mark and the Doge's palace, surrounded by the old emblems of the power of Venice, and overlooking the Adriatic, once the empire of the republic. The architecture of Venice has to my eyes, something watery and oceanic in its aspect. Under the hands of PaUadio, the Grecian orders seemed to borrow the hghtness and airiness of the Gothic. As you look at the numerous windows and the multitude of columns which give a striated appearance to the fronts of the palaces, you think of stalactites and icicles, such as you might imagine to orna ment the abodes of the water-gods and sea-nymphs. The only thing needed to complete the poetic illusion is trans parency or brilliancy of color, and this is wholly wanting ; for at Venice the whitest marble is soon clouded and blackened by the corrosion of the sea-air. It is not my intention, however, to do so hackneyed a thing as to give a description of Venice. One thing, I must confess, seemed to me extraordinary : how this city, de prived as it is of the commerce which built it up from the shallows of the Adriatic, and upheld it so long and so proudly, should not have decayed even raore rapidly than it has done. Trieste has drawn from it almost all its trade. 44 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. md flourishes by its decline. I waUted through the arsenal rf Venice, which comprehends the Navy Yard, an enormous structure, -with ranges of broad lofty roofs supported by oiassive portions of waU, and spacious dock-yards ; the whole large enough to build and fit out a navy for the British empire. The pleasure-boats of Napoleon and his smpress, and that of the present Viceroy, are there : but ;he ships of war belonging to the republic have mouldered iway -with the Bucentaur. I saw, however, two Austrian vessels, the same which had conveyed the PoUsh exiles to New York, lying under shelter in the docks, as if placed ;here to show who were the present masters of the place." [t was melancholy to wander through the vast unoccupied spaces of this noble edifice, and to think what must have been the riches, the power, the prosperity, and the hopes of Venice at the time it was built, and what they are at the present moment. It seems almost impossible that any thing should take place to arrest the ruin which is graduaUy Bonsuming this renowned city. Some writers have asserted that the lagoons around it are annually growing shaUower by the depositions of earth brought down by streams from the land, that they must finally become marshes, and that their consequent insalubrity wUl drive the inhabitants from Venice. I do not know how this may be ; but the other causes I have mentioned seem likely to produce nearly the same effect. I remembered, as these ideas passed through my mind, a passage in which one of the sacred poets fore- CENEDA. 45 tells the desertion and desolation of Tyre, " the city that made itself glorious in the midst ofthe seas." " Thy riches and thy fairs, thy merchandise, thy mariners and thy pilots, thy calkers and the occupiers of thy merchandise, and aU thy men of -war that are in thee, shall fall into the midst of the seas in the day of thy ruin." I left this most pleasing of the Italian cities which I had seen, on the 24th of June, and took the road for the Tyrol. We passed through a level fertUe country, formerly the territory of Venice, watered by the Piave, which ran blood in one of Bonaparte's battles. At evening we arrived at Ceneda, where our ItaUan poet Da Ponte was born, situated just at the base of the Alps, the rocky peaks and irregular spires of which, beautifully green with the showery season, rose in the background. Ceneda seems to have something of German cleanliness about it, and the floors of a very com fortable inn at which we stopped were of wood, the first we had seen in Italy, though common throughout the Tyrol and the rest of Germany. A troop of barelegged boys, just broke loose from school, whooping and swinging their books and slates in the air, passed under my window. Such a sight you -wiU not see in southem Italy. The education of the people is neglected, except in those provinces which are under the governraent of Austria. It is a government se vere and despotic enough in all conscience, but by provi ding the means of education for all classes, it is doing more 46 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. than it is aware of to prepare them for the enjoyment of free institutions. In the Lombardo- Venetian kingdom, as it is called, there are few children who do not attend the pub lic schools. On leaving Ceneda, we entered a pass in the mountains, the gorge of which was occupied by the ancient town of Serravalle, resting on arcades, the architecture of which denoted that it was built during the middle ages. Near it I remarked an old castle, which forraerly commanded the pass, one ofthe finest ruins ofthe kind I had ever seen. It bad a considerable extent of battlemented wall in perfect preservation, and both that and its circular tower were so luxuriantly loaded with ivy that they seemed almost to bave been cut out of the living verdure. As we proceeded we becarae aware how worthy this region was to be the birthplace of a poet. A rapid streara, a branch of the Piave, tinged of a light and somewhat turbid blue by the soil of the mountains, came tumbling and roaring down the aarrow valley ; perpendicular precipices rose on each side ; md beyond, the gigantic brotherhood of the Alps, in two ong files of steep pointed summits, divided by deep ravines, itretched away in the sunshine to the northeast. In the ace of one the precipices by the way-side, a marble slab is ixed, informing the traveller that the road was opened by ;he late Emperor of Germany in the year 1830. We »llowed this romantic vaUey for a considerable distance, passing several Uttle blue lakes lyuig in their granite A SNOW STORM IN JUNE. 47 basins, one of which is called the Lago morto or Dead Lake, from having no outlet for its waters. At length we began to ascend, by a -winding road, the steep sides of the Alps — the prospect enlarging as we went, the raountain summits rising to sight around us, one behind another, some of them white with snow, over which the wind blew with a -wintery keenness — deep valleys opening below us, and gulfs yawning between rocks over which old bridges were thrown — and solemn fir forests clothing the broad declivi ties. The farm-houses placed on these heights, instead of being of brick or stone, as in the plains and valleys below, were principally built of wood ; the second story, which served for a barn, being encircled by a long gallery, and covered -with a projecting roof of plank held down with large stones. We stopped at Venas, a wretched place -with a wretched inn, the hostess of which showed us a chin swollen with the goitre, and ushered us into dirty comfort less rooms where we passed the night. When we awoke the rain was beating against the windows, and, on looking out, the forest and sides of the neighboring mountains, at a Uttle height above us, appeared hoary with snow. We set out in the rain, but had not proceeded far before we heard the sleet striking against the windows of the carriage, and soon carae to where the snow covered the ground to the depth of one or two inches. Continuing to ascend, we passed out of Italy and entered the Tyrol. The storm had cea.sed before we went through the first Tyrolese -village. IS LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. md we could not help being struck with the change in the ippearance of the inhabitants — the different costume, the ess erect figures, the awkward gait, the lighter com- alexions, the neatly-kept habitations, and the absence of Deggars. As we advanced, the clouds began to roll off from ;he landscape, disclosing here and there, through openings n their broad skirts as they swept along, glimpses of the profound valleys below us, and of the white sides and sum- nits of mountains in the mid-sky above. At length the sun appeared, and revealed a prospect of such wildness, grandeur, and splendor as I had never before seen. Lofty peaks of the most fantastic shapes, with deep clefts between, sharp needles of rocks, and overhanging crags, infinite in multitude, shot up everywhere around us, glistening in the aew-fallen snow, with thin wreaths of mist creeping along th«ir sides. At intervals, swollen torrents, looking at a dis tance like long trains of foam, came thundering down the mountains, and crossing the road, plunged into the verdant valleys which winded beneath. Beside the highway were ields of young grain, pressed to the ground with the snow ; md in the meadows, ranunculuses of the size of roses, large jrellow violets, and a thousand other Alpine flowers of the most brilliant hues, were peeping through their white jovering. We stopped to breakfast at a place called Lan- iro, a solitary inn, in the midst of this grand scenery, -with 1 little chapel beside it. The water frorn the dissolving snow was dropping merrily from the roof in a bright June A TYROLESE HOLIDAY. 49 sun. We needed not to be told that we were in Germany, for we saw it plainly enough in the nicely-washed floor of the apartment into which we were shown, in the neat cup board with the old prayer-book lying upon it, and in the general appearance of housewifery, a quality unknown in Italy ; to say nothing of the evidence we had in the beer and tobacco-smoke of the traveUers' roora, and the guttural dialect and quiet tones of the guests. Frora Landro we descended graduaUy into the beautiful valleys of the Tyrol, leaving the snow behind, though the white peaks of the mountains were continually in sight. At Bruneck, in an ion resplendent with neatness — so at least it seeraed to our eyes accustomed to the negligence and dirt of ItaUan housekeeping — we had the first specimen of a German bed. It is narrow and short, and made so high at the head, by a number of huge square bolsters and piUows, that you rather sit than lie. The principal cover ing is a bag of down, very properly denominated the upper bed, and between this and the feather-bed below, the traveller is expected to pass the night. An asthmatic patient on a cold winter night might perhaps find such a couch tolerably comfortable, if he could prevent the narrow covering from slipping off on one side or the other. The next day we were afforded an opportunity of observing raore closely the inhabitants of this singular region, by a festival, or holiday of some sort, which brought them into the roads in great numbers, arrayed in their best dresses — the men in 50 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. short jackets and small-clothes, with broad gay-colored sus penders over their waistcoats, and leathern belts ornamented with gold or sUver leaf — the women in short petticoats composed of horizontal bands of different colors — and both sexes, for the raost part, wearing broad-brimmed hats with hemispherical crowns, though there was a sugar-loaf variety much affected by the men, adomed with a band of lace and sometimes a knot of flowers. They are a robust, healthy- looking race, though they have an awkward stoop in the shoulders. But what struck me most forcibly was the devotional habits of the people. The Tyrolese might be cited as an illustration of the remark, that mountaineers are more habitually and profoundly religious than others. Persons of all sexes, young and old, whom we meet in the road, were repeating their prayers audibly. We passed a troop of old women, all in broad-brimmed hats and short gray petticoats, carrying long staves, one of whom held a bead-roll and gave out the prayers, to which the others made the responses in choras. They looked at us so solemnly frora under their broad brims, and marched along with so grave and deliberate a pace, that I could hardly help fancying that the -wicked Austrians had caught a dozen elders of the respectable society of Friends, and put them in petticoats to punish them for their heresy. We afterward saw persons going to the labors of the day, or re tuming, telling their rosaries and saying their prayers as they went, as if their devotions had been their favorite NUMEROUS CHAPELS. 51 amusement. At regular intervals of about half a mile, we saw wooden crucifixes erected by the way-side, covered from the weather with little sheds, bearing the image of the Saviour, crowned with thorns and frightfully dashed -with streaks and drops of red paint, to represent the blood that flowed from his wounds. The outer walls of the better kind of houses were ornamented with paintings in fresco, and the subjects of these were mostly sacred, such as the Virgin and Child, the Crucifixion, and the Ascension. The number of houses of worship was surprising ; I do not mean spacious or stately churches such as we meet with in Italy, but raost commonly little chapels dispersed so as best to accommodate the population. Of these the smallest neighborhood has one for the morning devotions of its in habitants, and even the solitary inn has its little consecrated buUding -with its miniature spire, for the convenience of pious wayfarers. At Sterzing, a little village beautifiiUy situated at the base of the mountain called the Brenner, and containing, as I should judge, not more than two or three thousand inhabitants, we counted seven churches and chapels -within the compass of a square mile. The observ ances of the Roman Catholic church are nowhere more rigidly compUed -with than in the Tyrol. When we stop ped at Bruneck on Friday evening, I happened to drop a word about a little raeat for dinner in a conversation -with the spruce-looking landlady, who appeared so shocked that I gave up the point, on the proraise of sorae exceUent and 52 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. remarkably weU-flavored trout from the stream that flowed through the -viUage — a promise that was literally fulfiUed. At the post-house on the Brenner, where we stopped on Saturday evening, we were absolutely refused any thing but soup-maigre and fish ; the postmaster telling us that the priest had positively forbidden meat to be given to traveUers. Think of that I — that we who had eaten wild-boar and pheasants on Good Friday, at Rome, under the very nostrUs of the Pope himself and his whole conclave of Cardinals, should be refused a morsel of flesh on an ordinary Saturday, at a tavern on a lonely mountain in the Tyrol, by the orders of a parish priest I Before getting our soup-maigre, we witnessed another example of Tyrolese devotion. Eight or ten travellers, apparently laboring men, took possession of the entrance hall of the inn, and kneeling, poured forth their orisons in the Gerraan language for half an hour with no smaU appearance of fervency. In the morning when we were ready to set out, we inquired for our coachman, aa Italian, and found that he too, although not remarkably re ligious, had caught something of the spirit of the place, and was at the Gotteshaus, as the waiter caUed the tavern chapel, offering his morning prayers. We descended the Brenner on the 28th of June iu a snow-storm, the wind whirling the light flakes in the air a.s it does with us iu winter. It changed to rain, however, as we approached the beautiful and picturesque valley watoro.l by the river Inn, on the banlcs of -which stand? the fi.ie cl,l INNSBRUCK. 53 town of Innsbruck, the capital of the Tyrol. Here we vis ited the Church of the Holy Cross, in which is the bronze tomb of MaximiUan I. and twenty or thirty bronze statues ranged on each side of the nave, representing fierce warrior chiefs, and gowned prelates, and stately damsels of the mid dle ages. These are all curious for the costume ; the war riors are cased in various kinds of ancient armor, and brandish various ancient weapons, and the robes of the females are flowing and by no means ungraceful. Almost every one of the statues has its hands and fingers in some constrained and awkward position ; as if the artist knew as little what to do with them as some awkward and bashful people know what to do -with their o-wn. Such a crowd of figures in that ancient garb, occupying the floor in the midst of the living worshipers of the present day, has an effect which at first is startling. From Innsbruck we climbed and crossed another mountain-ridge, scarcely less wild and majestic in its scenery than those we had left behind. On descending, we observed that the crucifixes had disappeared fi-ora the roads, and the broad-brimmed and sugar-loaf hats from the heads of the peasantry ; the men wore hats con tracted in the middle of the crown like an hour-glass, and the women caps edged with a broad band of black fur, the frescoes on the outside of the houses becarae less frequent ; in short it was apparent that we had entered a different region, even if the custom-house and police officers on the frontier had not signified to us that we were now in the 5* 54 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. kingdom of Bavaria. We passed through extensive forests of fir, here and there checkered with farms, and finally came to the broad elevated plain bathed by the Isar, in which Munich is situated. QUADRUPEDS AND BIRDS OF THE PRAIRIES. 55 LETTER VIL AN EXCURSION TO ROCK RIVER. Princeton, Illinois, Jwne 21, 1841. I HAVE just returned from an excursion to Rook River, one of the most beautiful of our western streams. We left Princeton on the 17th of the month, and after passing a belt of forest which conceals one of the branches of the Bureau River, found ourselves upon the wide, un- fenced prairie, spreading away on every side until it met the horizon. Flocks of turtle-doves rose from our path scared at our approach ; quaUs and rabbits were seen run ning befbre us ; the prairie-squirrel, a little striped animal of the marmot kind, crossed the road ; we started plovers by the dozen, and now and then a prairie-hen, which flew off heavily into the grassy wilderness. With these animals the open country is populous, but they have their pursuers and destroyers ; not the settlers of the region, for they do not shoot often except at a deer or a wild turkey, or a noxious animal ; but the prairie-hawk, the bald-eag].e, the mink, and the prairie-wolf, which raake merciless havoc among them and their brood. About fifteen mUes we came to Dad Joe's Grove, in the 56 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. shadow of which, thirteen years ago, a settler named Joe Smith, who had fought in the battle of the Thames, one of the first white inhabitants of this region, seated himself, and planted his corn, and gathered his crops quietly, through the whole Indian war, without being molested by the savages, though he was careful to lead his -wife and famUy to a place of security. As Smith was a settler of such long standing, he was looked to as a kind of patriarch in the county, and to distinguish him from other Joe Smiths, he received the venerable appellation of Dad. He has since removed to another part of the state, but his weU- known, hospitable cabin, inhabited by another inmate, is still there, and his grove of tall trees, standing on a ridge amidst the immense savannahs, yet retains his name. As -we descended into the prairie we were struck with the novelty and beauty of the prospect which lay before us. The ground sank gradually and gently into a low but immense basin, in the midst of which Ues the marshy tract called the Winnebago Swamp. To the northeast the sight was intercepted by a forest ui the midst of the basui, but to the northwest the prairies were seen swelling up again in the smoothest slopes to their usual height, and stretching away to a distance so vast that it seemed bold ness in the eye to foUow them. The Winnebagoes and other Indian tribes which forraerly possessed this country have left few memorials of their existence, except the names of places. Now and then, as LOST ROCKS. DIXON. 57 at Indianto-wn, near Princeton, you are sho-wn the holes in the ground where they stored their maize, and soraetiraes on the borders of the rivers you see the trunks of trees which they feUed, evidently hacked by their tomahawks, but perhaps the most reraarkable of their remains are the paths across the prairies or beside the large streams, caUed Indian trails — narrow and weU-beaten ways, sometimes a foot in depth, and raany of them doubtless trodden for hun dreds of years. As we went down the ridge upon which stands Dad Joe's Grove, we saw many boulders of rock lying on the surface of the soil of the prairies. The western people, naturally puzzled to teU how they came there, give them the expressive narae of " lost rocks." We entered a forest of scattered oaks, and after travelling for half an hour reached the Winnebago Swamp, a tract covered with tall and luxuriant water-grass, which we crossed on a causey built by a settler who keeps a toU-gate, and at the end of the causey we forded a small stream called Winnebago Inlet. Crossing another vast prairie we reached the neigh borhood of Dixon, the approach to which was denoted by groves, farm-houses, herds of cattle, and inclosed corn fields, checkering the broad green prairie. Dixon, named after an ancient settler of the place stiU Uving, is a country town situated on a high bank of Rock River. Five years ago two log-cabins only stood on the soUtary shore, and now it is a considerable -village, with 58 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. many neat dwellings, a commodious court-house, several places of worship for the good people, and a jail for the rogues, built with a triple wall of massive logs, but I was glad to see that it had no inmate. Rock River fiows through high prairies, and not, like most streams of the West, through an allu-vial country. The current is rapid, and the pellucid waters glide over a bottom of sand and pebbles. Its admirers declare that its shores unite the beauties of the. Hudson and of the Con necticut. The banks on either side are high and bold ; sometimes they are perpendicular precipices, the base of which stands in the running water ; sometimes they are steep grassy or rocky bluffs, with a space of dry aUuvial land between thera and the stream ; sometunes they rise by a gradual and easy ascent to the general level of the region, and sometimes this ascent is interrupted by a broad natural terrace. Majestic trees grow solitary or in clumps on the grassy acchvities, or scattered in natural parks along the lower lands upon the river, or in thick groves along the edge of the high country. Back of the bluffs, extends a fine agricultural region, rich prairies with an undulating surface, interspersed with groves. At the foot of the bluffs break forth copious springs of clear water, which hasten m httle brooks to the river. In a drive which I took up the left bank of the river, I saw three of these ra the space of as many mUes. One of these is the spruig which suppUes the town of DLxon with water ; the next is a beautifiil fountain ROCK RIVER. 59 rushing out from the rocks in the midst of a clump of trees, as merrily and in as great a hurry as a boy let out of school ; the third is so remarkable as to have received a name. It LS a little rivulet issuing from a cavern six or seven feet high, and about twenty from the entrance to the further end, at the foot of a perpendicular precipice covered with forest-trees and fringed with bushes. In the neighborhood of Dixon, a class of emigrants have estabUshed themselves, more opulent and more luxurious in their tastes than most of the settlers of the western country. Sorae of these have built elegant mansions on the left bank of the river, amidst the noble trees which seem to have grown up for that very purpose. Indeed, when I looked at them, I could hardly persuade myself that they had not been planted to overshadow older habitations. From the door of one of these dwellings I surveyed a prospect of exceeding beauty. The windings of the river allowed us a sight of its waters and its beautifully diversified banks to a great distance each way, and in one direction a high prairie region was seen above the woods that fringed the course of this river, of a lighter green than they, and touched with the golden light of the setting sun. I am told that the character of Rock River is, throughout its course, rauch as I have described it in the neighborhood of Dixon, that its banks are high and free frora marshes, and its waters rapid and clear, from its source in Wisconsin to where it enters the Mississippi araidst rocky islands. 60 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. What should make its shores unhealthy I can not see, yet they who inhabit them are much subject to intermittent fevers. They tell you very quietly that every body who comes to live there must take a seasoning. I suppose that when this country becomes settled this wiU no longer be the case. Rock River is not much subject to inundations, nor do its waters become very low in summer. A project is on foot, I am told, to navigate it with steam-vessels of a light draught. When I arrived at Dixon I was told that the day before a man named Bridge, Uving at Washington Grove, in Ogle county, came into town and complained that he had re ceived notice from a certain association that he must leave the county before the seventeenth of the month, or that he would be looked upon as a proper subject for Lynch law. He asked for assistance to defend his person and dwelling against the lawless violence of these men. The people of Dixon county came together and passed a resolution to the effect, that they approved fully of what the inhabitants of Ogle county had done, and that they aUowed Mr. Bridge the term of four hours to depart from the town of Dixon. He went away immediately, and in great trepidation. This Bridge is a notorious confederate and harborer of horse- thieves and counterfeiters. The thinly-settled portions of lUinois are much exposed to the depredations of horse- thieves, who have a kind of centre of operations in Ogle county, where it is said that they have a justice of the HORSE-THIEVES. 61 peace and a constable among their own associates, and where they contrive to secure a friend on the jury when ever any one of their nuraber is tried. Trial after trial has taken place, and it has been found impossible to obtain a conviction on the clearest evidence, untU last April, when two horse-thieves being on trial eleven of the jury threat ened the twelfth -with a taste of the cowskin unless he would bring in a verdict of guilty. He did so, and the men were condemned. Before they were removed to the state- prison, the court-house was burnt do-wn and the jail was in flames, but luckily they were extinguished without the liberation of the prisoners. Such at length becarae the general feeling of insecurity, that three hundred citizens of Ogle county, as I understand, have formed themselves into a company of volunteers for the purpose of clearing the county of these raen. Two horse-thieves have been seized and flogged, and Bridge, their patron, has been ordered to reraove or abide the consequences. As we were returning from Dixon on the morning of the 19th, we heard a kind of humming noise inthe grass, which one of the company said proceeded from a rattlesnake. We dismounted and found in fact it was made by a prairie- rattlesnake, which lay coiled around a tuft of herbage, and which we soon dispatched. The Indians call this small variety of the rattlesnake, the Massasauger. Horses are fre quently bitten by it and corae to the doors of their owners with their heads horribly sweUed but they are recovered by 62 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. the appUcation of hartshorn. A little further on, one of the- party raised the cry of wolf, and looking we saw a prairie- wolf in the path before us, a prick-eared aniraal of a reddish- gray color, standing and gazing at us with great coraposure. As we approached, he trotted off into the grass, -with his nose near the ground, not deigning to hasten his pace for our shouts, and shortly afterward we saw two others ranning in a different direction. The prairie-wolf is not so formidable an animal as the name of wolf would seem to denote ; he is quite as great a coward as robber, but he is exceedingly mischievous. He never takes fuU-gro-wn sheep unless he goes with a strong troop of his friends, but seizes young lambs, carries off sucking-pigs, robs the henroost, devours sweet corn in the gardens, and plunders the water-melon patch. A herd of prairie- wolves wUl enter a field of melons and quarrel about the division of the spoUs as fiercely and noisUy as so many politicians. It is their way to gnaw a hole immediately into the first melon they lay hold of. If it happens to be ripe, the inside is devoured at once, if not, it is dropped and another is sought out, and a quarrel is picked -with the dis coverer of a ripe one, and loud and shriU is the barking, and fierce the growling and snapping which is heard on these occasions. It is surprising, I ara told, with what dexterity a wolf will make the most of a melon, absorbing every rem nant of the pulp, and hoUowing it out as clean as it could be scraped by a spoon. This is when the allowance of THE WILD PARSNIP. 63 melons is scarce, but when they are abundant he is as care less and wasteful as a government agent. Enough of natural history. I will finish my letter an other day. Ju'ne 26th, Let me caution all emigrants to Ilhnois not to handle too faraiharly the "wild parsnip," as it is commonly called, an umbeUiferous plant growing in the moist prairies of this region. I have handled it and have paid dearly for it, having such a sweUed face that I could scarcely see for several days. The regulators of Ogle county removed Bridge's family on Monday last and demolished his house. He made prepara tions to defend himself, and kept twenty armed men about him for two days, but thinking, at last, that the regulators did not mean to carry their threats into effect, he dismissed them. He has taken refiige with his friends, the Aikin faraUy, who live, I believe, in Jefferson Grove, in the sarae county, and who, it is said, have also received notice to quit. 64 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. LETTER VIII. EXAMPLES OF LYNCH LAW. Princeton, Illinois, July 2, 1841. In my last letter I mentioned that the regulators in Ogle county, on Rock River, in this state, had pulled down the house of one Bridge, living at Washington Grove, a weU- known confederate of the horse-thieves and coiners with which this region is infested. Horse-thieves are numerous in this part of the country. A great number of horses are bred here ; you see large herds of them feeding in the open prairies, and at this sea son of the year every full-grown mare has a colt running by her side. Most of the thefts are committed early in the spring, when the grass begins to shoot, and the horses are turned out on the prairie, and the thieves, having had Uttle or no employment during the winter, are needy ; or else in the autumn, when the animals are kept near the dweUings of their owners to be fed -with Indian com and are in excellent order. The thieves select the best from the drove, and these are passed from one station to another till they arrive at some distant market where they are sold. It is said that they have their regular lines of communication REGULATORS. 65 from Wisconsin to St. Louis, and from the Wabash to the Mississippi, In Ogle county they seem to have been bolder than elsewhere, and more successful, not-withstanding the notoriety of their crimes, in avoiding punishment. The impossibility of punishing thera by process of law, the burning of the court-house at Oregon City last April, and the threats of deadly vengeance thrown out by them against such as should attempt to bring them to justice, led to the formation of a company of citizens, " regulators" they call themselves, who resolved to take the law into their own hands and drive the felons from the neighborhood. This is not the first instance of the kind which has happened in IlUnois. Some twenty years since the southem counties contained a gang of horse-thieves, so numerous and well- organized as to defy punishment by legal means, and they were expeUed by the same method which is now adopted in Ogle county. I have just learned, since I -wrote the last sentence, that the society of regulators includes, not only the county of Ogle, but those of De Kalb and Winnebago, where the depredations of the horse-thieves and the perfect impunity -with which they manage to exercise their calling, have ex hausted the patience of the inhabitants. In those counties, as well as in Ogle, their patrons live at some ofthe finest groves, where they o-wn large farms. Ten or twenty stolen horses -will be brought to one of these places of a night, and before sunrise the desperadoes employed to take them are 6* 66 LETTER SOFA TRAVELLER. again mounted and on their way to some other station. In breaking up these haunts, the regulators, I understand, have proceeded with some of the formalities commonly used in administering justice. The accused party has been allowed to make his defense, and witnesses have been examined, both for and against him These proceedings, however, have lately suffered a most tragical mterruption. Not long after Bridge's house was pulled down, two men, mounted and carrying rifles, caUed at the dwelling of a Mr Campbell, living at Whiterock Grove, in Ogle county, who belonged to the company of regulators, and who had acted as the messenger to convey to Bridge the order to leave the county. Meeting Mrs. Campbell without the house, they told her that they wished to speak to her husband. CampbeU made his appearance at the door and immediately both the men fired. He feU mortally wounded and lived but a few minutes. "You have kiUed my husband," said Mrs. Campbell to one of the murderers whose name was DriscoU. Upon this they rode off at full speed. As soon as the event was known the whole country was roused, and every man who was not an associate of the horse-thieves, shouldered his rifle to go in pursuit of the murderers. They apprehended the father of DriscoU, a man nearly seventy years of age, and one of his sons, Wil Uam DriscoU, the former a reputed horse-thief, and the latter, a man who had hitherto bome a tolerably fair char- AN EXECUTION BY THE REGULATORS. 67 acter, and subjected them to a separate examination. The father was wary in his answers, and put on the appear ance of perfect innocence, but William DriscoU was greatly agitated, and confessed that he, with his father and others, had planned the murder of Campbell, and that Da-vid DriscoU, his brother, together -with another associate, was employed to execute it. The father and son were then sentenced to death ; they were bound and made to kneel ; about fifty men took aim at each, and, in three hours from the time they were taken, they were dead men. A pit was dug on the spot where they feU, in the midst of a prairie near their dwelling ; their corpses, pierced with bullet-holes in every part, were thro-wn in, and the earth was heaped over them. The pursuit of Da-vid DriscoU and the fellow who was -with him when CampbeU was killed, is still going on with great acti-vity. More than a hundred men are traversing the country in different directions, determined that no lurking- place shaU hide them. In the mean time various persons -who have the reputation of being confederates of horse- thieves, not only in Ogle county, but in the adjoining ones, even in this, have received notice frora the regulators that they cannot be allowed to remain in this part of the state. Several suspicious-looking men, supposed to be fugitives from Ogle county, have been seen, within a few days past, lurking in the woods not far from this place. One of them who was seen the day before yesterday evidently thought 68 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. himself pursued and slunk from sight ; he was followed, but escaped in the thickets lea-ving a bundle of clothing behind him. Samonok, Kane County, Illinois, July 5 th. I have just heard that another of the DriscoUs has been shot by the regulators. Whether it was Da-vid, who fired at CampbeU, or one of his brothers, I can not leam. GREENOUGH'S WASHINGTON. 69 LETTER IX. RICHMOND IN VIRGINIA. Richmond, Virginia, March 2, 1843. I ARRIVED at this place last night from Washington, where I had observed little worth describing. The statue of our first President, by Greenough, was, of course, one of the things which I took an early opportunity of looking at, and although the bad hght in which it is placed prevents the spectator from properly appreciating the features, I could not help seeing with satisfaction, that no position, however unfavorable, could impair the majesty of that noble work, or, at all events, destroy its grand general effect. The House of Representatives I had not seen since 1832, and I perceived that the proceedings were conducted with less apparent decorum than formerly, and that the members no longer sat with their hats on. Whether they had come to the conclusion that it was well to sit uncovered, in order to make up, by this token of mutual respect, for the too frequent want of decorum in their proceedings, or whether the change has been made because it so often happens that aU the members are talking together, the rule being that the person speaking must be bareheaded, or whether, finally, it 70 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. was found, during the late long summer sessions, that a hat made the wearer really uncomfortable, are questions which I asked on the spot, but to which I got no satisfactory answer. I visited the Senate Chamber, and saw a member of that dignified body, as somebody calls it, in preparing to make a speech, blow his nose with his thumb and finger without the intervention of a pocket-handkerchief. The speech, after this ^graceful preUminary, did not, I confess, disappoint me. Whoever goes to Washington should by all means see the Museum at the Patent Office, enriched by the collections lately brought back by the expedition sent out to explore the Pacific. I was surprised at the extent and variety of these collections. Dresses, weapons, and domestic imple ments of savage nations, in such abundance as to leave, one would almost think, their little tribes disfurnished ; birds of strange shape and plumage ; fishes of remote waters ; whole groves of different kinds of coral ; sea-shells of rare form and singular beauty from the most distant shores ; mummies from the caves of Peru ; curious minerals and plants : whoever is interested by such objects as these should give the museum a more leisurely examination than I had time to do. The persons engaged in arranging and putting up these collections were still at their task when I was at Washington, and I learned that what I saw was by no means the whole. The night before we set out, snow fell to the depth of VIRGINIA PLANTATIONS. 71 three inches, and as the steamboat passed down the Potomac, we saw, at sunrise, the grounds of Mount Vernon lying in a covering of the purest white, the snow, scattered in patches on the thick foliage of cedars that skirt the river, looking like clusters of blossoras. About twelve, the stearaboat came to land, and the railway took us through a gorge of the woody hills that skirt the Potomac. In about an hour, we were at Fredericksburg, on the Rappa hannock. The day was bright and cold, and the wind keen and cutting. A crowd of negroes came about the cars, with cakes, fruit, and other refreshments. The poor fel lows seemed collapsed with the unusual cold ; their faces and lips were of the color which drapers call blue-black. As we proceeded southward in Virginia, the snow gradu aUy became thinner and finally disappeared altogether. It was impossible to mistake the region in -which we were. Broad inclosures were around us, with signs of extensive and superficial cultivation ; large dwellings were seen at a dis tance from each other, and each with its group of smaUer buildings, looking as solitary and chilly as French chateaus ; and, now and then, we saw a gang of negroes at work in the fields, though oftener we passed miles without the sight of a Uving creature. At six in the afternoon, we arrived at Richmond. A beautiful city is Richmond, seated on the hUls that overlook the Jaraes River. The dwellings have a pleasant appearance, often standing by theraselves in the midst of 72 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. gardens. In front of several, I saw large magnolias, their dark, glazed leaves glittering in the March sunshine. The river, as yellow as the Tiber, its waters now stained -with the earth of the upper country, runs by the upper part of the town in noisy rapids, embracing several islands, shaded with the plane-tree, the hackberry, and the elm, and prolific, in spring and summer, of wild-flowers. I went upon one of these islands, by means of a foot-bridge, and was pointed to another, the resort of a quoit-club comprising some of the most distinguished men of Richmond, among whom in his lifetime was Judge Marshall, who sometimes joined in this athletic sport. We descended one of the hiUs on which the town is built, and went up another to the east, where stands an ancient house of religious worship, the oldest Episcopal church in the state. It is in the midst of a bury ing-ground, where sleep some ofthe founders of the colony, whose old graves are greenly overgrown "with the trailing and matted periwinkle. In this church, Patrick Henry, at the commencement of the American Revolution, made that celebrated speech, which so vehemently moved aU who heard him, ending with the sentence : " Give me liberty or give me death." We looked in at one of the -windows ; it is a low, plain room, with smaU, square pews, and a sound ing board over the Uttle pulpit. From the hiU on which this church stands, you have a beautiful view of the sur rounding country, a gently undulating surface, closed ra by hiUs on the west ; and the James River is seen wandering A TOBACCO FACTORY. 73 through it, by distant plantations, and between borders of trees. A place was pointed out to us, a little way down the river, which bears the name of Powhatan ; and here, I was told, a flat rock is stiU sho-wn as the one on which Captain Smith was placed by his captors, in order to be put to death, when the intercession of Pocahontas saved his life. I went -with an acquaintance to see the inspection and sale of tobacco. Huge, upright columns of dried leaves, firmly packed and of a greenish hue, stood in rows, under the roof of a broad, low buUding, open on all sides — these were the hogsheads of tobacco, stripped of the staves. The inspector, a portly man, with a Bourbon face, his white hair gathered in a tie behind, went very quietly and ex peditiously through his task of deterraining the quality, after which the vast bulks -were disposed of, in a very short tirae, with surprisingly little noise, to the tobacco merchants. Tobacco, to the value of three mUUons of dollars annually, is sent by the planters to Richmond, and thence distributed to different nations, whose merchants frequent this mart. In the sales it is always sure to bring cash, which, to those who detest the weed, is a little difRcult to understand. I went afterwards to a tobacco factory, the sight of which amused rae, though the narcotic furaes made me cough. In one room a black man was taking apart the small bundles of leaves of which a hogshead of tobacco is com posed, and carefully separating leaf from leaf ; others were 74 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. assorting the leaves according to the quality, and others again were arranging the leaves in layers and sprinkling each layer with the extract of liquorice. In another room weie about eighty negroes, boys they are called, from the age of twelve years up to manhood, -who received the leaves thus prepared, roUed them into long even rolls, and then cut them into plugs of about four inches in length, which were afterwards passed through a press, and thus became ready for market. As we entered the room we heard a murmur of psalmody running through the sable assembly, which now and then sweUed into a strain of very tolerable music. "Verse s-^reetens toil — " says the stanza which Dr. Johnson was so fond of quoting, and reaUy it is so good that I -wiU transcribe the whole ofit— " Verse s-weetens toil, ho'^'ever rude the sound — All at her -work the Tillage maiden sings, Wor, -while she turns the giddy -wheel around. Revolves the sad vicissitudes of things." Verse it seems can sweeten the toil of slaves in a tobacco factory. " We encourage their singing as much as we can," said the brother of the proprietor, himself a dUigent masticator of the weed, who attended us, and politely explained to us the process of making plug tobacco ; " we encourage it as WORK AND PSALMODY. 75 much as we can, for the boys work better while singing. Sometimes they will sing all day long with great spirit ; at other times you will not hear a single note. They must sing whoUy of their own accord, it is of no use to bid them do it." "What is remarkable," he continued, "their tunes are all psalm tunes, and the words are from hymn-books ; their taste is exclusively for sacred music ; they wiU sing nothing else. Almost aU these persons are church-members ; we have not a dozen about the factory who are not so. Most of them are of the Baptist persuasion ; a few are Metho dists." I saw in the course of the day the Baptist church in which these people worship, a low, plain, but spacious brick builduig, the same in which the sages of Virginia, a genera tion of great men, debated the provisions of the constitution. It has a congregation of twenty-seven hundred persons, and the best choir, I heard somebody say, in all Richmond. Near it is the Monumental church, erected on the site of the Richmond theatre, after the terrible fire which carried mourning into so many famiUes. In passing through an old part of Main-street, I was sho-wn an ancient stone cottage of rude architecture and humble dimensions, which was once the best hotel in Richraond. Here, I was told, there are those in Rich mond who remember dining -with General Washington, Judge Marshall, and their cotemporaries. I could not help 76 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. comparmg it with the palace-like building put up at Rich mond within two or three years past, named the Exchange Hotel, with its spacious parlors, its long dining-rooms, its airy dormitories, and its ample halls and passages, echoing to the steps of busy waiters, and guests coming and depart ing. The Exchange Hotel is one of the finest buUdings for its purpose in the United States, and is extreraely well- kept. I paid a -visit to the capitol, nobly situated on an emi nence which overlooks the city, and is planted with trees. The statue of Washington, executed by Houdon for the state of Virginia, in 1788, is here. It is of the size of life, representing Gen. Washington in the costume of his day. and in an ordinary standing posture. It gratifies curiosity, but raises no particular moral emotion. Compared -with the statue by Greenough, it presents a good exaraple of the difference between the work of a mere sculptor — skillful ui- deed, but still a mere sculptor — and the work of a man of genius. I shaU shortly set out for Charleston, South Carolina. CROSSING THE ROANOKE BY NIGHT. 77 LETTER X. A JOURNEY FROM RICHMOND TO CHARLESTON. Charleston, March 6, 1843. I LEFT Richmond, on the afternoon of a keen March day, in the railway train for Petersburg, where we arrived after dark, and, therefore, could form no judgment of the appear ance of the town. Here we were transferred to another train of cars. Among the passengers was a lecturer on Mesmerism, with his wife, and a young woman who ac companied them as a mesmeric subject. The young woman, accustomed to be easily put to sleep, seemed to get through the night very comfortably ; but the spouse of the operator appeared to be much disturbed by the frequent and capri cious opening of the door by the other passengers, which let in torrents of intensely cold air from without, and chid the offenders with a wholesome sharpness. About two' o'clock in the morning, we reached Blakely on the Roanoke, where we were made to get out of the cars, and were marched in long procession for about a quar ter of a mile down to the river. A negro walked before us to light our way, bearing a blazing pine torch, which scat tered sparks Uke a steam-engine, and a crowd of negroes 7* 78 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. followed us, bearing our baggage. We went down a steep path to the Roanoke, where we found a little old steamboat ready for us, and in about fifteen rainutes were struggling upward against the muddy and rapid current. In little more than an hour, we had proceeded two miles and a half up the river, and were landed at a place called Weldon. Here we took the cars for Wilmington, in North CaroUna, and shabby vehicles they were, denoting our arrival in a milder cUraate, by being extremely uncomfortable for cold weather. As morning dawned, we saw ourselves in the midst ofthe pine forests of North Carolina. Vast tracts of level sand, overgrown with the long-leaved pine, a tall, stately tree, with sparse and thick twigs, ending m long brushes of leaves, murmuring in the strong cold -wind, ex tended everywhere around us. At great distances from each other, we passed log-houses, and sometimes a dwelhng of more pretensions, with a piazza, and here and there fields in which cotton or maize had been planted last year, or an orchard with a few smaU mossy trees. The pools beside the roads were covered with ice just formed, and the negroes, who like a good fire at almost any season of the year, and who find an abundant supply of the finest fuel in these forests, had made blazing fires of the resinous wood of the pine, wherever they were at work. The tracts of sandy soU, we perceived, were interspersed with marshes, crowded with cypress-trees, and verdant at their borders with a growth of evergreens, such as the swamp-bay, the gall- MODE OP COLLECTING TURPENTINE. 79 berry, the hoUy, and various kinds of evergreen creepers, which are unknown to our northern climate, and which be came more frequent as we proceeded. We passed through extensive forests of pine, which had been boxed, as it is called, for the coUection of turpentine. Every tree had been scored by the axe upon one of its sides, some of them as high as the arm could reach down to the roots, and the broad wound was covered with the turpen tine, which seems to saturate every fibre of the long-leaved pine. Sometimes we saw large flakes or crusts of the tur pentine, of a light-yellow color, which had faUen, and lay beside the tree on the ground. The collection of turpentine is a work of destruction ; it strips acre after acre of these noble trees, and, if it goes on, the time is not far distant when the long-leaved pine wUl become nearly extinct in this region, which is so sterile as hardly to be fitted for producing any tiling else. We saw large tracts covered with the standing trunks of trees already killed by it ; and other tracts beside them had been freshly attacked by the spoiler. I am told that the tree which grows up when the long- leaved pine is destroyed, is the loblolly pine, or, as it is sometimes called, the short-leaved pine, a tree of very infe rior quality and in little esteem. About half-past two in the afternoon, we came to Wil mington, a little town built upon the white sands of Cape Fear, some of the houses standing where not a blade of grass or other plant can grow. A few evergreen oaks, in 80 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. places, pleasantly overhang the water. Here we took the steamer for Charleston. I may as weU mention here a fraud which is sometimes practiced upon those who go by this route to Charleston. Advertisements are distributed at New York and elsewhere, informing the public that the fare from Baltimore to Charles ton, by the railway through Washington and Richmond, is but twenty-two doUars. I took the railway, paying from place to place as I went, and found that this was a false hood ; I was made to pay seven or eight dollars more. In the course of my joumey, I was told that, to protect myself from this imposition, I should have purchased at Baltimore a " through ticket," as it is caUed ; that is, should have paid in advance for the whole distance ; but the advertisement did not inform me that this was necessary. No wonder thaf " tricks upon traveUers" should have become a pro verbial expression, for they are a much-enduring race, more or less plundered in every part of the world. The next morning, at eight o'clock, we found ourselves entering Charleston harbor ; SulUvan's Island, with Fort Moultrie, breathing recollections of the revolution, on our right ; James Island on our left ; in front, the stately dwell ings of the town, and all around, on the land side, the hori zon bounded by an apparent belt of evergreens — ^the live-oak, the water-oak, the palmetto, the pine, and, planted about the dweUings, the magnoUa and the wild orange — giving to the scene a sumraer aspect. The city of Charleston strikes CHARLESTON, 81 the visitor from the north most agreeably. He perceives at once that he is in a different climate. The spacious houses are surrounded with broad piazzas, often a piazza to each story, for the sake of shade and coolness, and each house generally stands by itself in a garden planted with trees and shrubs, many of which preserve their verdure through the winter. We saw early flowers already opening ; the peach and plum-tree were in full bloom ; and the wild orange, as they call the cherry-laurel, was just putting forth its blossoms. The buildings — some with stuccoed walls, some built of large dark-red bricks, and some of wood — are not kept fresh with paint like ours, but are aUowed to become weather-stained by the humid climate, like those eff the European towns. The streets are broad. and quiet, unpaved in some parts, but in none, as with us, offensive both to sight and smell. The public buildings are numerous for the size of the city, and weU-built in general, with sufficient space about them to give them a noble aspect, and all the advantage which they could derive from their architecture. The inhabitants, judg ing from what I have seen of them, which is not much, I confess, do not appear undeserving of the character which has been given them, of possessing the most poUshed and agreeable manners of aU the Araerican cities. I may shortly write you again from the interior of South CaroUna. 82 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. LETTER XI. THE INTERIOR OF SOUTH CAROLINA. A CORN-SHUOKING. Baen-well District, j South Carolina, March 29, 1843. ) Since I last wrote, I have passed three weeks in the interior of South CaroUna ; -visited Columbia, the capital of the state, a pretty town ; roamed over a considerable part of BarnweU district, with sorae part of the neighboring one of Orangeburg ; enjoyed the hospitahty of the planters — very agreeable and intelhgent men ; been out in a racoon hunt ; been present at a corn-shucking ; hstened to negro ballads, negro jokes, and the banjo ; witnessed negro dances ; seen two aUigators at least, and eaten bushels of hominy. Whoever comes out on the railroad to this district, a dis tance of seventy miles or more, if he were to judge only by what he sees in his passage, might naturally take South Carolina for a vast pine-forest, with here and there a clear ing made by some enterprising settler, and would wonder where the cotton which clothes so many milUons of the hu man race, is produced. The railway keeps on a tract of sterile sand, overgrown with pines ; passing, here and there, along the edge of a morass, or crossing a stream of yeUow- SOUTH CAROLINA PLANTATIONS. 83 water. A lonely log-house under these old trees, is a sight for sore eyes ; and only two or three plantations, properly so called, raeet the eye in the whole distance. The cultivated and more productive lands lie apart from this tract, near streams, and interspersed with more frequent ponds and marshes. Here you find plantations comprising several thousands of acres, a considerable part of which always lies in forest ; cotton and corn fields of vast extent, and a negro vUlage on every plantation, at a respectful distance fi-om the habitation of the proprietor. Evergreen trees of the oak family and others, which I mentioned in my last letter, are generaUy planted about the mansions. Some of them are surrounded with dreary clearings, full of the standing trunks of dead pines ; others are pleasantly situated in the edge of woods, intersected by winding paths. A ramble, or a ride -^a ride on a hand-gallop it should be — in these pine woods, on a fine March day, when the weather has all the spirit of our March days without its severity, is one of the most delightful recreations in the world. The paths are upon a white sand, which, when not frequently traveUed, is very firm under foot ; on aU sides you are surrounded by noble stems of trees, towering to an immense height, from whose summits, far above you, the wind is drawing deep and grand harmonies ; and often your way is beside a marsh, verdant with magnolias, where the yellow jessamine, now in flower, fills the air with fragrance, and the bamboo- briar, an evergreen creeper, twines itself with various other 84 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. plants, which never shed their leaves in winter. These woods abound in game, which, you wUl believe me when I say, I had rather start than shoot, — ^flocks of turtle-doves, rabbits rising and scudding before you ; bevies of quails, partridges they caU them here, chirping almost under your horse's feet ; wild ducks swimming in the pools, and -wild turkeys, which are frequently shot by the practiced sports man. But you must hear of the corn-shucking. The one at which I was present was given on purpose that I might witness the humors of the Carolina negroes. A huge fire of light-wood was made near the- corn-house. Light- wood is the wood of the long-leaved pine, and is so caUed, not be cause it is light, for it is almost the heaviest wood in the world, but because it gives more light than any other fuel. In clearing land, the pines are girdled and suffered to stand ; the outer portion of the wood decays and faUs off; the inner part, which is saturated with turpentine, remains upright for years, and constitutes the planter's pro- -vision of fuel. When a supply is wanted, one of these dead trunks is felled by the axe. The abundance of light-wood is one of the boasts of South Carolina. Wherever you are, if you happen to be chilly, you may have a fire extempore ; a bit of light-wood and a coal give you a bright blaze and a strong heat in an instant. The negroes make fires of it in the fields where they work ; and, when the mornings are wet and chiUy, m the pens where they are milking the NEGRO SONO 3. 85 COWS. At a plantation, where I passed a frosty night, I saw fires in a small inclosure, and was told by the lady of the house that she had ordered thera to be made to warm the cattle. The light-wood fire was made, and the negroes dropped in from the neighboring plantations, singing as they came. The driver of the plantation, a colored man, brought out baskets of corn in the husk, and piled it in a heap ; and the negroes began to strip the husks from the ears, singing -with great glee as they worked, keeping time to the music, and now and then thro-wing in a joke and an extravagant burst of laughter. The songs were generally of a comic charac ter ; but one of thera was set to a singularly wild and plaintive air, which sorae of our musicians would do weU to reduce to notation. These are the words : Johnny come down de hollow. Oh hoUow 1 Johnny come do-wn de hollow. Oh hollow 1 De nigger-trader got me. Oh hollow 1 De speculator bought me. Oh hoUow I I'm sold for sUver dollars. Oh hollow 1 ¦ Boys, go catch de pony. Oh hollow 1 Bring him round de corner. Oh hollow ! 8 86 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. I'm goin' away to Georgia. Oh hollow ! Boys, good-by forever ! Oh hollow ! The song of " Jenny gone away," was also given, and another, called the monkey-song, probably of African origin, in which the principal singer personated a monkey, with all sorts of odd gesticulations, and the other negroes bore part in the chorus, " Dan, dan, who's de dandy?" One of the songs, commonly sung on these occasions, represents the various animals of the woods as belonging to sorae profession or trade. For example — De cooter is de boatman — The cooter is the terrapin, and a very expert boatman he is. De cooter is de boatman. John John Crow. De red-bird de soger. John John Crow. De mocking-bird de la-wyer. John John Crow. De alligator sawyer. John John Crow. The alligator's back is furnished with a toothed ridge, like the edge of a saw, which explains the last Une. When the work of the evening was over the negroes adjourned to a spacious kitchen. One of them took his NEGRO MILITARY PARADE. 87 place as musician, whistling, and beating time with two sticks upon the floor. Several of the men came forward and executed various dances, capering, prancing, and drumming with heel and toe upon the floor, with astonishing agility and perseverance, though aU of them had performed their daily tasks and had worked aU the evening, and some had walked from four to seven miles to attend the corn-shucking. From the dances a transition was made to a mock military parade, a sort of burlesque of our militia trainings, in which the words of command and the evolutions were extremely ludicrous. ' It became necessary for the commander to make a speech, and confessing his incapacity for public speaking, he called upon a huge black man naraed Toby to ad dress the company in his stead. Toby, a man of powerful frame, six feet high, his face ornamented with a beard of fashionable cut, had hitherto stood leaning against the waU, looking upon the frolic with an air of superiority. He consented, came forward, demanded a bit of paper to hold in his hand, and harangued the soldiery. It was evident that Toby had listened to stump-speeches in his day. He spoke of " de majority of Sous Carolina," " de interests of de state," " de honor of ole Ba'nwell district," and these phrases he connected by various expletives, and sounds of which we could make nothing. A length he began to falter, when the captain -with admirable presence of mind came to his relief, and interrupted and closed the harangue with an hurrah from the company. Toby was allowed by all the 88 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. spectators, black and white, to have made an exceUent speech. The blacks of this region are a cheerful, careless, dirty race, not hard worked, and in many respects indulgently treated. It is, of course, the desire of the master that his slaves shall be laborious ; on the other hand it is the deter mination of the slave to lead as easy a life as he can. The master has power of punishment on his side ; the slave, on his, has invincible incUnation, and a thousand expedients learned by long practice. The result is a compromise in which each party yields something, and a good-natured though imperfect and slovenly obedience on one side, is pur chased by good treatment on the other. I have been told by planters that the slave brought from Africa is much more serviceable, though more high-spirited and dangerous than the slave born in this country, and early trained to his condition. I have been impatiently waiting the approach of spring, since I came to this state, but the weather here is stUl what the inhabitants call winter. The season, I am told, is more than three weeks later than usual. Fields of Indian corn which were planted in the beginning of March, must be re planted, for the seed has perished in the ground, and the cotton planting is deferred for fine weather. The peach and plum trees have stood in blossom for weeks, and the forest trees, which at this time are usually in full foUage, are as bare as in December. Cattle are dying ia the fields for want of pasture. WINTER CLIMATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA- &? I have thus had a sample of the winter climate of South Carolina. If never raore severe or stormy than I have already experienced, it mus! be an agreeable one. The cus tom of sitting with open doors, however, I found a little dif ficult to like at first. A door in South Carolina, except perhaps the outer door of a house, is not made to shut. It is merely a sort of flapper, an ornamental appendage to the opening by which you enter a room, a kind of moveable screen made to swing to and fro, but never to be secured by a latch, unless for some pui-pose of strict privacy. A door is the ventilator to the room ; the windows are not raised ex cept in warm weather, but the door is kept open at all seasons. On cold days you have a bright fire of pine-wood blazing before you, and a draught of cold air at your back. The reason given for this practice is, that fresh air is whole some, and that close rooms occasion colds and consumptions. 8* 90 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. LETTER XII. SAVANNAH. Picolata, East Florida, April 1, 1843. As I landed at this place, a few hours since, I stepped into the midst of sumraer. Yesterday morning when I left Savannah, people were complaining that the -winter was not over. The temperature which, at this time of the year, is usually warm and genial, continued to be what they called chilly, though I found it agreeable enough, and the showy trees, called the Pride of India, which are planted all over the city, and are generally in bloom at this season, were stUl leafless. Here I find every thing green, fresh, and fragrant, trees and shrubs in fiiU foliage, and wild roses in flower. The dark waters of the St. John's, one of the noblest strearas of the country, in depth and width like the St. Lawrence, draining alraost the whole extent of the peninsula, are flo-wing under my window. On the opposite shore are forests of tall trees, bright in the new verdure of the season. A hunter who has ranged them the whole day, has just arrived in a canoe, bringing with him a deer, which he has killed. I have this moment returned frora a ramble -with my host through a hammock, HAMMOCKS IN FLORIDA. 91 he looking for his cows, and I, unsuccessfully, for a thicket of orange-trees. He is something of a florist, and gathered for me, as we went, some of the forest plants, which were in bloom. " We have flowers here," said he, " every month in the year." I ha?e used the word hammock, which here, in Florida, has a peculiar meaning. A hammock is a spot covered with a growth of trees which require a richer soil than the pine, such as the oak, the mulberry, the gum-tree, the hickory, &c. The greater part of East Florida consists of pine barrens — a sandy level, producing the long leaved pine and the dwarf palmetto, a low plant, with fan-Uke leaves, and roots of a prodigious size. The hammock is a kind of oasis, a verdant and luxuriant island in the midst of these sterile sands, which make about nine-tenths of the soil of East Florida. In the hammocks grow the wild lime, the native orange, both sour and bitter-sweet, and the various vines and gigantic creepers of the country. The hammocks are chosen for plantations ; here the cane is cultivated, and groves of the sweet orange planted. But I shall say more of Florida hereafter, when I have seen more of it. Mean time let me speak of my journey hither. I left Charleston on the 30th of March, in one of the steamers which ply between that city and Savannah. These steamers are among the very best that float — quiet, commodious, clean, fresh as if just built, and fumished with civil and ready-handed waiters. We passed along the 92 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. narrow and winding channels which divide the broad islands of South Carolina from the main-land — islands famed for the rice culture, and particularly for the exceUent cotton with- long fibres, named the sea-island cotton. Our fellow-passengers were mostly planters of these islands, and their families, persons of remarkably courteous, frdffik, and agreeable manners. The shores on either side had little of the picturesque to show us. Extensive marshes waving with coarse water-grass, sometimes a cane-brake, sometimes a pine grove or a clump of cabbage-leaved pahnettoes ; here and there a pleasant bank bordered with live-oaks streaming with moss, and at wide intervals the distant habitation of a planter — these were the elements of the scenery. The next morning early we were passing up the Savannah river, and the city was in sight, standing among its trees on a high bank ofthe stream. Savannah is beautifully laid out ; its broad streets are thickly planted with the Pride of India, and its frequent open squares shaded with trees of various kinds. Ogle thorpe seems to have understood how a city should be buUt in a warm climate, and the people of the place are fond of reminding the stranger that the original plan of the founder has never been departed from. The to-wn, so charmingly embowered, reminded me of New Haven, though the variety of trees is greater. In my walks about the place I passed a large stuccoed building of a dull-yellow color, with broad arched windows, and a stately portico, on each side SAVANNAH QUOIT-CLUB. 93 of which stood a stiff-looking palmetto, as if keeping guard. The grim aspect of the building led me to ask what it was, and I was answered that it was " the old United States Bank." It was the building in which the Savannah branch of that bank transacted business, and is now shut up until the time shall Come when that great institution shall be revived. Meantime I was pained to see that there exists so little reverence for its memory, and so little grati tude for its benefits, that the boys have taken to smashing the windows, so that those who have the care of the build ing have been obliged to cover them with plank. In another part of the city I was shown an African church, a neat, spacious wooden building, railed in, and kept in ex ceUent order, with a piazza extending along its entire front. It is one of the four places of worship for the blacks of the town, and was built by negro workmen with materials pur chased by the contributions ofthe whites. South of the town extends an uninclosed space, on one side of which is a pleasant grove of pines, in the shade of which the merabers of a quoit-club practice their athletic sport. Here on a Saturday afternoon, for that is their stated time of assembling, I was introduced to some of the most distinguished citizens of Savannah, and -witnessed the skill with which they threw the discus. No apprentices were they in the art ; there was no striking far from the stake, no sending the discus roUing over the green ; they 94 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER, heaped the quoits as snugly around the stakes as if the amusement had been their profession. In the same neighborhood, just without the town, lies the public cemetery surrounded by an ancient waU, built before the revolution, which in some places shows the marks of shot fired against it in the skirmishes of that period. I entered it, hoping to find some monuments of those who founded the city a hundred and ten years ago, but the in scriptions are of comparatively recent date. Most of them commemorate the death of persons born in Europe, or the northern states. I was told that the remains of the early inhabitants lie in the brick tombs, of which there are many -without any inscription whatever. At a little distance, near a forest, lies the burial-place of the black population. A few trees, trailing with long moss, rise above hundreds of nameless graves, overgrown with weeds ; but here and there are scattered memorials of the dead, some of a very humble kind, with a few of marble, and half a dozen spacious brick tombs Uke those in the ceraetery of the whites. Sorae of them are erected by masters and mistresses to the memory of favorite slaves. One of them coraraeraorates the death of a young woman who perished in the catastrophe of the steamer Pulaski, of whom it is recorded, that during the whole time that she was in the service of her mistress, which was many years, she never comraitted a theft, nor uttered a falsehood. A NEGRO BURIAL-PLACE. 95 brick monument, in the shape of a little tomb, -with a mar ble slab inserted in front, has this inscription : " In memory of Henrietta Gatlin, the infant stranger, bom in East Florida, aged 1 year 3 months." A graveyard is hardly the place to be merry in, but I could not help smiling at some of the inscriptions. A fair upright marble slab commemorates the death of York Fleming, a cooper, who was killed by the explosion of a powder-magazine, while tightening the hoops of a keg of powder. It closes with this curious sentence : " This stone was erected by the members of the Axe Company, Coopers and Committee of the 2nd African Church of Savannah for the purpose of having a Herse for benevolent purposes, of which he was the first sexton." A poor feUow, who went to the other world by water, has a wooden slab to mark his grave, inscribed with these words : " Sacred to the memory of Robert Spencer who came to his Death by A Boat, July 9th, 1840, aged 21 years. Reader as you am now so once I And as I am now so Mus you be Shortly. Amen." Another monument, after giving the name of the dead, has this sentence : "Go home Mother dry up your weepmg tears. Gods will be done." 96 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. Another, erected to Sarah Morel, aged six months, has this ejaculation : " Sweet -withered UUy farewell." One of the monuments is erected to Andrew Bryan, a black preacher, of the Baptist persuasion. A long inscrip tion states that he was once imprisoned " for preaching the Gospel, and, without ceremony, severely whipped ;'' and that, while undergoing the punishment, ' ' he told his perse cutors that he not only rejoiced to be whipped, but was willing to suffer death for the cause of Christ." He died in 1812, at the age of ninety-six ; his funeral, the inscrip tion takes care to state, was attended by a large concourse of people, and adds : " An address was delivered at his death by the Rev. Mr. Johnson, Dr. KoUock, Thomas WiUiams, and Henry Cunningham." While in Savannah, I paid a visit to Bonaventure, for merly a country seat of Governor Tatnall, but now aban doned. A pleasant drive of a mile or two, through a bud ding forest, took us to the place, which is now itself almost grown up into forest. Cedars and other shrubs hide the old terraces of the garden, which is finely situated on the high bank of a river. Trees of various kinds have also nearly filled the space between the noble avenues of Uve-oaks which were planted around the mansion. But these oaks — I never saw finer trees — certainly I never saw so many BONAVENTURE. 97 majestic and venerable trees together. I looked far do-wn the immense arches that overshadowed the broad passages, as high as the nave of a Gothic cathedral, apparently as old, and stretching to a greater distance. The huge boughs were clothed -with gray moss, yards in length, which clung to them like mist, or hung in still festoons on every side, and gave them the appearance of the vault of a vast vapory cavern. The ca-wing of the crow and the scream of the jay, however, reminded us that we were in the forest. Of the mansion there are no reraains ; but in the thicket of raagnoUas and other trees, among rosebushes and creeping plants, we fomid a burial-place with monuments of some persons to whom the seat had belonged. Savannah is raore healthy of late years than it formerly was. An arrangement has been raade with the o-wners of the plantations in the immediate vicinity, by which the culture of rice has been abandoned, and the lands are no longer allowed to be overflowed within a mile from the city. The place has since become much less subject to fevers than in former years. I left, -with a feeUng of regret, the agreeable society of Savannah. The steamboat took us to St. Mary's, through passages between the sea-islands and the main-land, similar to those by which we had arrived at Savannah. In the course of the day, we passed a channel in which we saw several huge aUigators basking on the bank. The grim crea tures slid slowly into the water at our approach. We passed 98 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. St. Mary's in the night, and ui the morning we were in the main ocean, approaching the St. John's, where we saw a row of pelicans standing, hke creatures who had nothing to do, on the sand. We entered the majestic river, the vast current of which is dark with the infusion of the swamp turf, from which it is drained. We passed Jackson-viUe, a Uttle town of great acti-vity, which has sprung up on the sandy bank within two or three years. Beyond, we swept by the mouth of the Black Creek, the water of which, prob ably from thc color of the raud which forms the bed of its channel, has to the eye an ebony blackness, and reflects objects -with all the distinctness of the kind of looking-glass called a black mirror. A few hours brought us to Picolata, lately a mUitary station, but now a place with only two houses. FORESTS IN FLORIDA. 99 LETTER XIII. ST. AUGUSTINE. St. Augustine, ) East Florida, April 2, 1843. ) When we left Picolata, on the 8th of April, we fouud ourselves journeying through a vast forest. A road of eighteen railes in length, over the level sands, brings you to this place. Tall pines, a thin growth, stood wherever we turned our eyes, and the ground was covered with the dwarf palmetto, and the whortleberry, which is here an evergreen. Yet there were not wanting sights to interest us, even in this dreary and sterUe region. As we passed a clearing, in which we saw a young white woman and a boy dropping corn, and some negroes covering it with their hoes, we beheld a large flock of white cranes which rose in the air, and hovered over the forest, and wheeled, and wheeled again, their spotless pluraage ghstening in the sun hke new- fallen snow. We crossed the track of a recent hurricane, which had broken off the huge pines midway from the ground, and whirled the summits to a distance from their trunks. From time to time we forded little streams of a deep-red color, flowing frorn the swamps, tinged, as we were told, with the roots of the red bay, a species of raag- 100 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. nolia. As the horses waded into the transparent crimson, we thought of the butcheries committed by the Indians, on that road, and could almost fancy that the water was still colored -with the blood they had shed. The driver of our wagon told us many narratives of these murders, and pointed out the places where they were com mitted. He showed us where the father of this young woman was shot dead in his wagon as he was going from St. Augustine to his plantation, and the boy whom we had seen, was wounded and scalped by thera, and left for dead. In another place he showed us the spot where a party of players, on their way to St. Augustine, were surprised and kUled. The Indians took possession of the stage dresses, one of thera arraying himself in the garb of OtheUo, another in that of Richard the Thfrd, and another taking the cos tume of Falstaff. I think it was Wild Cat's gang who engaged in this affair, and I was told that after the capture of this chief and sorae of his warriors, they recounted the cir cumstances with great glee. At another place we passed a small tlucket in which several arraed Indians, as they after ward related, lay concealed while an officer of the United States army rode several times around it, without any sus picion of their presence. The same raen committed, immediately afterward, several murders and robberies on the road. At length we emerged upon a shrabby plain, and finally came in sight of this oldest city of the United States, seated STREETS OF ST. AUGUSTINE. 101 among its trees on a sandy swell of land where it has stood for three hundred years. I was struck with its ancient and homely aspect, even at a dista.nce, and could not help hkening it to pictures which I had seen of Dutch to-wns, though it wanted a windmill or two, to make the resem blance perfect. We drove into a green square, in the midst of which was a monument erected to comraeraorate the Spanish constitution of 1812, and thence through the narrow streets of the city to our hotel. I have called the streets narrow. In few places are they wide enough to aUow two carriages to pass abreast. I was told that they were not originally intended for carriages, and that in the tirae when the town belonged to Spain, many of them were floored with an artificial stone, com posed of shells and mortar, which in this climate takes and keeps the hardness of rock, and that no other vehicle than a hand-barrow was allowed to pass over them. In some places you see remnants of this ancient pavement, but for the most part it has been ground into dust under the wheels of the carts and carriages, introduced by the new inhab itants. The old houses, built of a kind of stone which is seemingly a pure concretion of sraall shells, overhang the streets with their wooden balconies, and the gardens between the houses are fenced on the side of the street with high walls of stone. Peeping over these walls you see branches of the poraegranate and of the orange-tree, now fragrant -with flowers, and, rising yet higher, the leaning 9* 102 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. boughs of the fig, with its broad luxuriant leaves. Occa sionally you pass the rains of houses — walls of stone, with arches and staircases of the same material, which once be longed to stately dwellings. You meet in the streets with men of swarthy complexions and foreign physiognomy, and you hear them speaking to each other in a strange language. You are told that these are the remains of those who in habited the country under the Spanish dominion, and that the dialect you have heard is that of the island of Minorca. " Twelve years ago," said an acquaintance of mine, " when I first visited St. Augustine, it was a fine old Spamsh town. A large proportion of the houses, which you now see roofed hke barns, were then flat-roofed, they were all of shell-rock, and these modern wooden buildings were not yet erected. That old fort, which they are now repairing, to fit it for recei-ving a garrison, was a sort of ruin, for the outworks had partly fallen, and it stood unoccupied by the military, a venerable monument of the Spanish dominion. But the orange-groves were the ornament and wealth of St. Augustine, and their produce maintahied the inhabitants in comfort. Orange-trees, of the size and height of the pear- tree, often rising higher than the roofs of the houses, em bowered the town in perpetual verdure. They stood so close in the groves that they excluded the sun. and the atmosphere was at all times aromatic with their leaves and fruit, and in spring the fragrance of the flowers was almost oppressive." PORT ST. MARK. 103 These groves have now lost their beauty. A few years since, a severe frost killed the trees to the ground, and when they sprouted again from the roots, a new enemy made its appearance — an insect of the coccus family, with a kind of sheU on its back, which enables it to -withstand all the com mon applications for destroying insects, and the ravages of which are shown by the leaves becoming black and sere, and the twigs perishing. In October last, a gale drove in the spray from the ocean, stripping the trees, except in sheltered situations, of their leaves, and destroying the upper branches. The trunks are now putting out new sprouts and new leaves, but there is no hope of fruit for this year at least. The old fort of St. Mark, now called Fort Marion, a fool ish change of name, is a noble work, frowning over the Ma tanzas, which flows between St. Augustine and the island of St. Anastasia, and it is worth making a long journey to see. No record remains of its original constraction, but it is sup posed to have been erected about a hundred and fifty years since, and the sheU-rock of which it is buUt is dark with time. We saw where it had been struck -with cannon-balls, which, instead of splitting the rock, becarae imbedded and clogged among the loosened fragments of shell. This rock is, therefore, one of the best materials for a fortification in the world. We were taken into the ancient prisons of the fort — dungeons, one of which was dimly lighted by a grated -window, and another entirely without hght ; and by the 104 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. flame of a torch we were sho-wn the half-obliterated inscrip tions scrawled on the walls long ago by prisoners. But in another corner of the fort, we were taken to look at two secret cells, which were discovered a few years since, in consequence of the sinking of the earth over a narrow apartment between them. These ceUs are deep under ground, vaulted overhead, and without windows. In one of them a wooden machine was found, which some supposed might have been a rack, and in the other a quantity of human bones. The doors of these ceUs had been walled up and concealed with stucco, before the fort passed into the hands of the Americans. " If the Inquisition," said the gentleman who accom panied us, " was estabUshed in Florida, as it was in the other American colonies of Spain, these were its secret chambers." Yesterday was Palm Sunday, and in the morning I at tended the services in the Catholic church. One of the ceremonies was that of pronouncing the benediction over a large pile of leaves of the cabbage-palm, or palmetto, gathered in the woods. After the blessing had been pro nounced, the priest called upon the congregation to come and receive them. The men came forward first, in the order of their age, and then the women ; and as the con gregation consisted mostly of the descendants of Minorcans, Greeks, and Spaniards, I had a good opportunity of observ ing their personal appearance. The younger portion of the TEMPERANCE. 105 congregation had, in general, expressive countenances. Their forms, it appeared to me, were generally slighter than those of our people ; and if the cheeks of the young women were dark, they had regular features and brilliant eyes, and finely formed hands. There is spirit, also, in this class, for one of them has since been pointed out to me in the streets, as ha-ving drawn a dirk upon a young officer who presumed upon some improper freedoms of behavior. The services were closed by a plain and sensible dis course in EngUsh, from the priest, Mr. Rampon, a worthy and useful French ecclesiastic, on the obligation of tem perance ; for the temperance reforra has penetrated even hither, and cold water is aU the rage. I went again, the other evening, iato the same church, and heard a person declaiming, in a language which, at first, I took to be Minorcan, for I could raake nothing else of it. After listen ing for a few minutes, I found that it was a Frenchman preaching in Spanish, -with a French mode of pronunciation which was odd enough. I asked one of the old Spanish inhabitants how he was edified by this discourse, and he acknowledged that he understood about an eighth part of it. I have much raore to write about this place, but raust reserve it for another letter. 106 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. LETTER XIV. ST. AUGUSTINE. St. Augustine, April 24, 184S You can not be m St. Augustine a day without hearing some of its inhabitants speak of its agreeable climate. Du ring the sixteen days of my residence here, the weather has certainly been as delightful as I could iraagine. We have the teraperature of early June, as June is known in New York. The mornings are sometimes a little sultry, but after two or three hours, a fresh breeze comes in frora the sea, sweeping through the broad piazzas and breathing in at the windows. At this season it coraes laden with the fragrance of the flowers of the Pride of India, and soraetiraes of the orange-tree, and soraetiraes brings the scent of roses, now in full bloom. The nights are gratefully cool, and I have been told, by a person who has lived here many years, that there are very few nights in the summer when you can sleep without a blanket. An acquaintance of mine, an invahd, who has tried va rious climates and has kept up a kind of running fight with Death for many years, retreating from country to country as he pursued, declares to me that the winter cliraate of St. Au- EQUABLE CLIMATE. 107 gustine is to be preferred to that of any part of Europe, even that of Sicily, and that it is better than the climate of the West Indies. He finds it genial and equable, at the same time that it is not enfeebling. The summer heats are pre vented from being intense by the sea-breeze, of which I have spoken. I have looked over the work of Dr. Forry on the climate of the United States, and have been surprised to see the uniformity of climate which he ascribes to Key West. As appears by the observations he has coUected, the seasons at that place ghde into each other by the softest gradations, and the heat never, even in midsummer, reaches that extreme which is felt in higher latitudes of the Araeri can continent. The climate of Florida is in fact an insular cUmate ; the Atlantic on the east and the Gulf of Mexico on the west, temper the airs that blow over it, raaking them cooler in summer and warmer in winter. I do not wonder, therefore, that it is so rauch the resort of invalids ; it would be more so if the softness of its atmosphere and the beauty and serenity of its seasons were generally known. Nor should it be supposed that accommodations for persons in deUcate health are wanting ; they are in fact becoraing better with every year, as the deraand for them increases. Among the acquaintances whom I have raade here, I re member many who, having come hither for the benefit of their health, are detained for life by the amenity of the climate. " It seeras to me," said an intelligent gentleman of this class, the other day, " as if I could not exist out of 108 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. Florida. When I go to the north, I feel raost sensibly the severe extremes of the weather ; the cliraate of Charleston itseU", appears harsh to me." Here at St. Augustine we have occasional frosts in the winter, but at Tampa Bay, on the western shore of the pen insula, no further from this place than from New York to Albany, the dew is never congealed on the grass, nor is a snow-flake ever seen floating in the air. Those who have passed the winter in that place, speak with a kind of rap ture of the benignity of the cliraate. In that country grow the cocoa and the banana, and other productions of the West Indies. Persons who have explored Florida to the south of this, during the past winter, speak of having re freshed themselves with melons in January, growing where they had been self-sown, and of ha-ving seen the sugar-cane where it had been planted by the Indians, towering un cropped, almost to the height of the forest trees. I must tell you, however, what was said to me by a person who had passed a considerable time in Florida, and had journeyed, as he told rae, in the southern as well as the northern part of the peninsula, " That the cUmate is mild and agreeable,'' said he, " I admit, but the annoyance to which you are exposed from insects, counterbalances aU the enjoyment of the chmate. You are bitten by mosquitoes and gallinippers, driven mad by clouds of sand-flies, and stung by scorpions and centipedes. It is not safe to go to bed in southern Florida without looking between the sheets, HEALTHFULNESS OF EAST FLORIDA. 109 to see if there be not a scorpion waiting to be your bed-fellow, nor to put on a garment that has been hanging up in your room, without turning it -wrong side out, to see if a scorpion has not found a lodging in it." I have not, however, been incommoded at St. Augustine with these " varmint," as they caU thera at the south. Only the sand-flies, a smaU black midge, I have sometimes found a little importunate, when waUdng out in a very calm evening. Of the salubrity of East Florida I must speak less posi tively, although it is certain that in St. Augustine emigrants from the north enjoy good health. The owners of the plantations in the neighborhood, prefer to pass the hot sea son in this city, not caring to trust their constitutions to the experiment of a suramer residence in the country. Of course they are settled on the richest soils, and these are the least healthy. The pine barrens are safer ; when not inter spersed with marshes, the sandy lands that bear the pine are esteemed healthy all over the south. Yet there are plantations on the St. John's where emigrants frora the north reside throughout the year. The opinion seems every where to prevail, and I beheve there is good reason for it, that Florida, notwithstanding its low and level surface, is much more healthy than the low country of South Carolina and Georgia. The other day I went out with a friend to a sugar plan tation in the neighborhood of St. Augustine. As we rode into the inclosure we breathed th© fragrance of young 10 110 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. orange-trees in flower, the glossy leaves of which, green at all seasons, were trembling in the wind, A troop of negro chUdren were at play at a Uttle distance frora the cabins, and one of them ran along with us to show us a grove of sour oranges which we were looking for. He pointed us to a copse in the middle of a field, to which we proceeded. The trees, which were of considerable size, were fuU of flowers, and the golden fruit was thick on the branches, and lay scattered on the ground below. I gathered a few of the oranges, and found them ahnost as acid as the leraon. We stopped to look at the buUdings in which the sugar was manufactured. In one of them was the mUl where the cane was crushed -with iron roUers, in another stood the huge cauldrons, one after another, in which the juice was boiled down to the proper consistence ; in another were bar rels of sugar, of syrup — a favorite article of consumption in this city — of molasses, and a kind of spirits resembling Jamaica rum, distUled from the refuse of the molasses. The proprietor was absent, but three negroes, weU-clad young men, of a very respectable appearance and intelligent physiognoray, one of whora was a distUler, were occupied about the buildings, and showed them to us. Near by in the open air lay a pUe of sugar cane, of the ribbon variety, striped with red and white, which had been plucked up by the roots, and reserved for planting. The negroes of St. Augustine are a good-looldng speciraen of the race, and have the appearance of being very weU treated. You rarely see QUARRIES OF SHELL-ROCK. Ill a negro in ragged clothing, and the colored children, though slaves, are often dressed with great neatness. In the colored people whom I saw in the CathoUc church, I remarked a more agreeable, open, and gentle physiognomy than I have been accustomed to see in that class. The Spanish race blends more kindly with the African, than does the English, and produces handsomer men and women. I have been to see the quarries of coquina, or shell-rock, on the island of St. Anastasia, which hes between St. Augustine and the main ocean. We landed on the island, and after a walk of some distance on a sandy road through the thick shrubs, we anived at some huts buUt of a frame work of poles thatched with the radiated leaves of the dwarf palmetto, which had a very picturesque appearance. Here we found a circular hollow in the earth, the place of an old excavation, now shaded with red-cedars, and the pal metto-royal bristling -with long pointed leaves, which bent over and erabowered it, and at the bottom was a spring -within a square curb of stone, where we refreshed ourselves -with a draught of cold water. The quarries were at a little distance from this. The rock Ues in the ridges, a Uttle below the surface, forming a stratum of no great depth. The blocks are cut out with crowbars thrust into the rock. It is of a delicate cream color, and is composed of mere sheUs and fragments of shells, apparently cemented by the fresh water percolating through them and depositing cal careous matter brought from the sheUs above. Whenever 112 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. there is any mixture of sand with the shells, rock is not formed. Of this material the old fort of St. Mark and the greater part of the city are buUt. It is said to become harder when exposed to the air and the rain, but to disintegrate when frequently raoistened -with sea-water. Large blocks were lying on the shore ready to be conveyed to the fort, which is undergoing repairs. It is some consolation to know that this fine old work will undergo as Uttle change in the original plan as is consistent with the raodern ira proveraents in fortification. Lieutenant Benham, who has the charge of the repairs, has strong antiquarian tastes, and -will preserve as rauch as possible of its original aspect. It raust lose its battlements, however, its fine mural crown. Battlements are now obsolete, except when they are of no use, as on the roofs of churches and Gothic cottages. In another part of the same island, which we -visited afterward, is a dwelling-house situated amid orange-groves. Closely planted rows of the sour orange, the native tree of the country, intersect and shelter orchards of the sweet orange, the leraon, and the lime. The trees were all young, having been planted since the great frost of 1835, andmany of them still show the ravages of the gale of last October, which stripped thera of their leaves. " Come this way," said a friend who accompanied me. He forced a passage through a tall hedge of the sour orange, and we found ourselves in a Uttle fragrant inclosure, in the MINORCANS, 113 midst of which was a tomb, formed of the artificial stone of which I have heretofore spoken. It was the resting-place of the former proprietor, who sleeps in this Uttle circle of perpetual verdure. It bore no inscription. Not far from this spot, I was shown the root of an ancient palm-tree, the species that produces the date, which formerly towered over the island, and served as a sea-mark to vessels approaching the shore. Some of the accounts of St. Augustine speak of dates as among its fruits ; but I believe that only the male tree of the date-palm has been introduced into the country. On our return to the city, in crossing the Matanzas sound, so named probably from some sanguinary battle with the aborigines on its shores ; we passed two Minorcans in a boat, taking home fuel from the island. These people are a mUd, harmless race, of civil raanners and abstemious habits. Mingled with them are many Greek famUies, with names that denote their origin, such as Geopoh, Cercopoli, &c., and with a cast of features equally expressive of their descent. The Minorcan language, the dialect of Mahon, el Mahones, as they caU it, is spoken by more than half of the inhabitants who remained here when the country was ceded to the United States, and all of them, I believe, speak Spanish be sides. Their children, however, are growing up in disuse of these languages, and in another generation the last traces of the majestic speech of Castile, wiU have been effaced frora a country which the Spaniards held for raore than two hundred years. 10* 114 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. Some old custoras which the Minorcans brought -with them from their native country are still kept up. On the evening before Easter Sunday, about eleven o'clock, I heard the sound of a serenade in the streets. Going out, I fomid a party of young men, with instruments of music, grouped about the -window of one of the dweUings, singing a hjrran in honor of the Virgin in the Mahonese dialect. They began, as I was told, -with tapping on the shutter. An answering knock within had told thera that their -visit was welcorae, and they immediately began the serenade. If no reply had been heard they would have passed on to another dweUing. I give the hymn as it was kindly taken down for me in -writing by a native of St. Augustine. I presurae this is the first time that it has been put in print, but I fear the copy has several corruptions, occasioned by the unskiUfulness of the copyist. The letter e, which I have put in itaUcs, represents the guttural French e, or perhaps more nearly the sound of u in the word but. The sh of our language is represented by sc followed by an i or an e; the g both hard and soft has the same sound as in our language. Disciarem lu dol, Cantar«m anb' alagria, Y n'arem a d4 Las pascuas a Maria. 0 Maria ! Sant Grabiel, Qui portaba la anbasoiada ; SERENADE. Des nostro rey del eel Estarau vos prenada. Ya omiUada, Tu o vais aqui serventa, Fia del Deu contenta. Para fe lo que el vol Disciarem lu dol, &c. Y a miUa nit, Pariguero vos regina ; A uu Deu infinit, Dintra una establina. Y a mUlo dia, Que los Angles van cantant Pau y abondant De la gloria de Deu sol. Disciarcm lu dol, &o. Y a Libalam, AUA la terra santa, Nus nat Jesus, Anb' alagria tanta. Infant petit Que tot lu mon salvaria ; Y ningu y bastaria, Nu mes un Deu tot sol Disciarcm lu dol, nd scouring and scrubbing, the pave- 20 230 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. ment with great energy. Close at hand was the shore ; a strong west wind was driving the surges of the North Sea against it. A hundred fishing vessels rocking in the surf, moored and lashed together with ropes, formed a line along the beach ; the men of Scheveling, in knit wooUen caps, short blue jackets, and short trowsers of prodigious -width, were walldng about on the shore, but the wind was too high and the sea too wild for them to venture out. Along this coast, the North Sea has heaped a high range of sand hills, which protect the low lands within from its own inundations ; but to the north and south the shore is guarded by embankments, raised by the hand of man with great cost, and watched and kept in constant repair. We left the Hague, and taking the railway, in a Kttle more than two hours were at Amsterdam, a great commer cial city in decay, where nearly half of the inhabitants live on the charity of the rest. The next morning was Sunday, and taking advantage of an interval of fair weather, for it still continued to rain every day, I went to the Oudekerk, or Old Church, as the ancient Cathedral is caUed, which might have been an impressive building in its original con struction, but is now spoiled by cross-beams, paint, galleries, partitions, pews, and every sort of architectural enormity. But there is a noble organ, with a massive and lofty front of white marble richly sculptured, occupying the west end of the chancel. I hstened to a sermon in Dutch, the de livery of which, owing partly to the disagreeable voice of BROEK. 231 the speaker and partly no doubt to my ignorance of the language, seemed to me a kind of barking. The men all wore their hats during the service, but half the women were without bonnets. When the sermon and prayer were over, the rich tones of the organ broke forth and flooded the place with melody. Every body visits Broek, near Amsterdam, the pride of Dutch vUlages, and to Broek I went accordingly. It stands like the rest, among dykes and canals, but consists alto gether of the habitations of persons in comfortable circum stances, and is remarkable, as you know, for its scrupulous cleanliness. The common streets and footways, are kept in the same order as the private garden-walks. They are paved -with yellow bricks, and as a fair was to open in the place that afternoon, the most public parts of them were sanded for the occasion, but elsewhere, they appeared as if just washed and mopped. I have never seen any collection of human habitations so free from any thing offensive to the senses, SUardam, where Peter the Great began his appren ticeship as a shipwright, is among the sights of Holland, and we went the next day to look at it. This also is situated on a dyke, and is an extremely neat little village, but has not the same appearance of opulence in the dwellings. We were shown the chamber in which the Emperor of Russia lodged, and the hole in the wall where he slept, for in the old Dutch houses, as in the modern ones of the farmers, the bed is a sort of high closet, or, more properly speaking, a shelf within 232 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. the waU, from which a door opens mto the room, I should have mentioned that, in going to Broek, I stopped to look at one of the farm-houses of the country, and at Saardam I visited another. They were dairj- houses, in which the milk of large herds is made into butter. The lower story of the dwelling, paved with bricks, is used in winter as a stable for the cattle ; in the summer, it is carefully cleansed and painted, so that not a trace of its former use remains, and it then becomes both the dairy and the abode of the family. The story above is as neat as the hands of Dutch housewives can make it ; the parlor, the dining-room, the little boxes in the wall which hold the beds,' are resplendent with cleanhness. In going from Amsterdam by railway to Utrecht, -we per ceived the canals by which the plains were intersected be came fewer and fewer, and finally we began to' see crops of grain and potatoes, a sign that we had emerged from the marshes. We stopped to take a brief survey of Utrecht. A part of its old cathedral has bben converted into a beau tiful Gothic church, the rest having been levelled many years ago by a whirlwind. But what I found most remark able in the city was its public walks. The old walls by which Utrecht was once inclosed ha-ving been thrown down, the rubbish has formed ' hillocks and slopes -\vhich almost surround the entire city and border one of its principal canals. On these hillocks and slopes, trees and shrubs have been planted, and walks laid out through the green turf, untU it PUBLIC WALKS OF UTRECHT. 233 has become one of the most varied and charming pleasure- grounds I ever saw — swelling into little eminences, sinking into httle valleys, descending in some places smoothly to the water, and in others impending over it. We fell in with a music-master, of whom we asked a question or two. He happened to know a little German, by the help of which he pieced out his Dutch so as to make it tolerably intelli gible to me. He insisted upon showing us every thing re markable in Utrecht, and finally walked us tired. The same evening the diligence brought us to Arn- heim, a neat-looking town with about eighteen hundred inhabitants, in the province of Guelderland, wnere the region retains not a trace of thc peculiarities of Holland. The country west of the town rises into commanding emi nences, overlooking the noble Rhine, and I feel already that I am in Germany, though I have yet to cross the frontier. 20* '231 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. LETTER XXIX. AMERICAN ARTISTS ABROAD. Rome, October, 1845. You would perhaps like to hear what the American ar tists on the continent are doing. I met with Leutze at Diisseldorf. After a sojourn of some days in Holland, in which I was obliged to talk to the Dutchmen in German and get my answers in Dutch, with but a dim apprehen sion of each other's meaning, as you may suppose, on both sides ; after being smoked through and through like a her ring, -with the fumes of bad tobacco in the railway wagons, and in the diligence which took us over the long and monotonous road on the plains of the Rhine between Arnheim and Diisseldorf — after dodging as well as we -were able, the English travellers, generally the most disagreeable of the travelling tribe, who swarm along the Rhine in the summer season, it was a refreshment to stop a day at Diisseldorf and take breath, and meet an American face or two. We found Leutze engaged upon a picture, the sub ject of which is John Knox reproving Glueen Mary. It promises to be a capital work. The stern gravity of Knox, the embarrassment of the Glueen, and the scorn with which DUSSELDORF. 235 the French damsels of her court regard the saucy Reformer, are extremely well expressed, and teU the story impressively. At Diisseldorf, which is the residence of so many eminent painters, we expected to find some collection, or at least some of the best specimens, of the works of the modem German school. It was not so, however — fine pictures are painted at D-iisseldorf, but thej' are immediately carried elsewhere. We visited the studio of Schrbter — a man -with humor in every line of his face, who had nothing to show us but a sketch, just prepared for the easel, of the scene in Goethe's Faust, where Mephistophiles, in Auer- bach's ceUar, bores the edge of the table with a gimlet, and a stream of champagne gushes out, Kohler, an eminent artist, allowed us to see a clever painting on his easel, in a state of considerable forwardness, representing the rejoicings of the Hebrew maidens at the victory of David over Goliath. At Lessing's^a painter whose name stands in the first rank, and whom we did not find at home — we saw a sketch on which he was engaged, representing the burning of John Huss ; yet it was but a sketch, a painting in embryo. But I am wandering from the American artists. At Cologne, whither we were accompanied by Leutze, he pro cured us the sight of his picture of Colambus befbre the CouncU of Salamanca, one of his best, Leutze ranks high in Germany, as a young man of promise, devoting himself with great energy and earnestness to his art. At Florence we found Greenough just returned from a 236 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. year's residence at Graefenberg, whence he had brought back his wife, a patient of Priessnitz and the water cure, in florid health. He is now applying himself to the comple tion of the group which he has engaged to execute for the capitol at Washington. It represents an American settler, an athletic man, in a hunting shirt and cap, a graceful garb, by the way, rescuing a female and her mfant from a savage who has just raised his tomahawk to murder them. Part of the group, the hunter and the Indian, is already in marble, and certainly the effect is wonderfully fine and noble. The hunter has approached his enemy unexpectedly from behind, and grasped both his arms, holding them back, in such a manner that he has no command of their muscles, even for the purpose of freeing himself. Besides the par ticular incident represented by the group, it may pass for an image of the aboriginal race of America overpowered and rendered helpless by the civilized race. Greenough's statue of Washington is not as popular as it deserves to be ; but the work on which he is now engaged I am very sure will meet with a different reception. In a letter from London, I spoke of the beautiful figure of the Greek slave, by Powers. At Florence I saw in his studio, the origiflal model, from which his workmen were cutting two copies in marble. At the same place I saw his Proserpine, an ideal bust of great sweetness and beauty, the fair chest sweUing out from a circle of leaves of the acan thus. About this also the workmen were busy, and I . POWERS. 237 learned that seven copies of it had been recently ordered from the hand of the artist. By its side stood the unfinished statue of Eve, -with the fatal apple in her hand, an earlier work, which the world has just begun to admire, I find that connoisseurs are divided in opinion concerning the merit of Powers as a sculptor. AU aUow him the highest degree of skill in execution, but some deny that he has sho-wn equal ability in his con ceptions. "He is confessedly," said one of them to me, who, however, had not seen his Greek slave, '.' the greatest sculptor of busts in the world — equal, in fact, to any that the world ever saw ; the finest heads of antiquity are not of a higher order than his." He then went on to express his regret that Powers had not confined his labors to a department in which he was so pre-eminent. I have heard that Powers, who possesses great mechanical sltill, has devised several methods of his own for giving precision and perfection to the execution of his works. It may be that my unlearned eyes are dazzled by this perfection, but really I can not imagine any thing more beautiful of its kind than his statue ofthe Greek slave. Gray is at this moment in Florence, though he is soon coming to Rome. He has made some copies from Titian, one of which I saw. It was a Madonna and child, in which the original painting was rendered with all the fidehty of a mirror. So indisputably was it a Titian, and so free from the stiffness of a copy, that, as I looked at it, I 238 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. fully sympathized -with the satisfaction expressed by the artist at having attained the method of gi-ving -with ease the peculiarity of coloring which belongs to Titian's pictures. An American landscape painter of high merit is G. L. Bro-wn, now residing at Florence. He possesses great knowledge of detaU, which he knows how to keep in its place, subduing it, and rendering it subservient to the general effect, I saw in his studio two or three pictures, in which I admired his skill in copying the various forms of foliage and other objects, nor was I less pleased to see that he was not content with this sort of merit, but, in going back from the foreground, had the art of passing into that appearance of an infinity of forms and outhnes which the eye meets with in nature, I could not help regretting that one who copied nature so well, should not prefer to rep resent her as she appears in our own fresh and glorious land, instead of living in Italy and painting Italian landscapes. To refer again to foreign artists — ^before I left Florence I -visited the annual exhibition which had been opened in the Academy of the Fine Arts. There were one or two land scapes reminding me somewhat of Cole's manner, but greatly inferior, and one or two good portraits, and two or three indiflerent historical pictures. The rest appeared to me decidedly bad ; wretched landscapes ; portraits, some of whioh were absolutely hideous, stiff, iU-colored, and full of grimace.Here at Rome, we have an American sculptor of great brown's statue of RUTH. 239 abUity, Henry K. Bro-wn, who is just beginning to be talked about. He is executing a statue of Ruth gleaning hi the field of Boaz, of which the model has been ready for some months, and is also modelling a figure of Rebecca at the WeU. When I first saw his Ruth I was greatly struck with it, but after visiting the studios of Wyatt and Gibson, and observing their sleek imitations of Grecian art, their learned and faultless statues, nymphs or goddesses or gods of the Greek mythology, it was -with infinite pleasure that my eyes rested again on the figure and face of Ruth, perhaps not inferior in perfection of form, but certainly mformed -with a deep human feehng which I found not in their elaborate works. The artist has chosen the moment in which Ruth is addressed by Boaz as she stands among the gleaners. He quoted to me the hnes of Keats, on the song of the nightingale — " Perchance the self-same song that found a path To the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home, She stood in tears amid the aUen's com." She is not in tears, but her aspect is that of one who listens in sadness ; her eyes are cast do-wn, and her thoughts are ofthe home of her youth, in the land of Moab, Over her left arm hangs a handfid of ears of wheat, which she has gathered from the ground, and her right rests on the drapery about her bosom. Nothing can be more graceful than her attitude or more expressive of melancholy sweet ness and modesty than her physiognomy. One of the 240 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. copies which the artist was exeoutuig — ^there were two of them — is designed for a gentleman in Albany. . Brown will shortly, or I am greatly mistaken, achieve a high reputation among the sculptors ofthe time. Rosseter, an American painter, who has passed six years in Italy, is engaged on a large picture, the subject of which is taken from the same portion of Scripture history, and which is intended for the gaUery of an American gentleman. It represents Naomi with her two daughters-in-law, when " Orpah kissed her, but Ruth clave unto her," The princi pal figures are those of the Hebrew matron and Ruth, who have made their simple preparations for their journey to the land of Israel, whUe Orpah is turning sorro-wfuUy away to join a caravan of her country people. This group is well composed, and there is a fine effect of the rays of the rising sun on the mountains and rocks of Moab. At the studio of Lang, a Philadelphia artist, I saw two agreeable pictures, one of which represents a young woman whom her attendants and companions are arraying for her bridal. As a companion piece te this, but not yet finished, he had upon the easel a picture of a beautiful girl, decked for espousals of a different kind, about to take the veil, and kneeling in the midst of a crowd of friends and priests, while one of them is cutting off her glossy and flow ing hair. Both pictures are designed for a Boston gentle man, but a duplicate of the first has already been painted for the King of Wirtemberg. buppalo. 24: LETTER XXX. buffalo. — cleveland. — detroit. Steamer Oeegon, Lake Hueon, ) Off Thunder Bay, July 24, 1846. ) As I approached the city of Buffalo the other morning, from the east, I found myself obliged to confess that much of the beauty of a country is owing to the season. ^Foi twenty or thirty miles before we reached Lake Erie, the fields of this fertUe region looked more and more arid ano sun-scorched, and I could not but contrast their appearance -with that of the neighborhood of New York, where in a district comparatively sterile, an uncommonly showery season has kept the herbage fresh and deep, and made the treet hea-vy -with ¦ leaves. Here, on the contrary, I saw meadowE tinged by the drought with a reddish hue, pastures grazet' to the roots of the grass, and trees spreading what seemed to me a meagre shade. Yet the harvests of wheat, and even of hay, in western New York, are said to be by no means scanty. Buffalo continues to extend on every side, but the late additions to the city do not much improve its beauty. Its nucleus of well-built streets does not seem to have gro-wn much broader -within the last five years, but the suburbs 21 242 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. are rapidly spreading — small wooden houses, scattered or in clusters, built hastily for emigrants along unpaved and powdery streets. I saw, however, on a little excursion which I made into the surrounding country, that pleasant httle neighborhoods are rising up at no great distance, with their neat houses, their young trees, and their new shrub bery. They have a fine building material at Buffalo — a sort of brown stone, easily wrought — ^but I was sorry to see that most of the houses built of it, both in the town and countiy, seemed to have stood for several years. We visited the new fort which the government is erecting on the lake, a httle to the north of the to-wn, commanding the entrance of Niagara river. It is smaU, but of wonderful apparent strength, with walls of prodigious thickness, and so sturdy in its defences that it seemed to me one might as weU think of cannonading the clifls of Weehawken. It is curious to see how, as we grow more ingenious in the means of attack, we de-vise more effectual means of defence. A castle of the middle ages, in which a grim warrior of that time would hold his enemies at bay for years, would now be battered do-wn before breakfast. The finest old forts of the last century are now found to be unsafe against attack. That which we have at St. Augustine was an uncommonly good sample of its kind, but when I was in Florida, three or four years since, an engineer ofthe United States was engaged in reconstructing it. Do mankind gain any thing by these improvements, as they are caUed, in the art of war ? Do LEOPOLD DE MEYER. 243 not these more dreadful engines of attack on the one side, and these more perfect means of protection on the other, leave the balance just where it was before ? On Tuesday evening, at seven o'clock, we took passage in the steamer Oregon, for Chicago, and soon lost sight of the roofs and spires of Buffalo. A lady of Buffalo on her way to Cleveland placed herself at the piano, and sang several songs with such uncommon sweetness and expression that I saw no occasion to be surprised at what I heard of the con cert of Leopold de Meyer, at Buffalo, the night before. The concert room was crowded with people clinging to each other like bees when they swarm, and the whole affair seemed an outbreak of popular enthusiasm. A veteran teacher of music in Buffalo, famous for being hard to be pleased by any pubhc musical entertainment, found himself unable to sit stUl during the first piece played by De Meyer, but rose, in the fuUness of his dehght, and continued stand ing. When the music ceased, he ran to him and shook both of his hands, again and again, -with most uncomfortable energy. At the end of the next performance he sprang again on the platform and hugged the artist so rapturously that the room rang with laughter. De Meyer was to give another concert on Tuesday evening at Niagara FaUs, and the people of Buffalo were preparing to follow him. The tastes of our people are certainly much changed within the last twenty years. A friend of ours used to relate, as a good joke, the conversation of two men, who 244 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. came to the conclusion that Paganini was the greatest man in the world. They were only a little in advance of their age. If such are the honors reaped by De Meyer, we shall not be astonished if Sivori, when he comes over, passes for the greatest man of his time. The next morning found us with the southem shore of Lake Erie in sight — a long line of woods, with here and there a cluster of habitations on the shore. " That viUage where you see the light-house," said one of the passengers, who came from the hills of Maine, "is Grand River, and from that place to Cleveland, which is thirty miles distant, you have the most beautiful country under the sun — ^perfectly beautiful, sir ; not a hiU the whole way, and the finest farms that were ever seen ; you can buy a good farm there for two thousand dollars." In two or three hours after ward we were at Cleveland, and I hastened on shore. It is situated beyond a steep bank of the lake, nearly as elevated as the shore at Brooklyn, which we call Brooklyn Heights. As I stood on the edge of this bank and looked over the broad lake below me, stretching beyond the sight and quivering in the summer -wind, I was reminded of the lines of Southey : " Along the bending line of shore Such hue is thrown as when the peacock's neck Assumes its proudest tint of amethyst, Embathed in emerald glory." But it was not only along the hne of the shore that these CLEVELAND, 245 hues prevailed ; the whole lake glo-«'ed with soft amethystine and emerald tinges, in irregular masses, hke the shades of watered silk. Cleveland stands in that beautiful country without a hill, of which my fellow-passenger spoke — a thriving village yet to grow into a proud city of the lake country. It is built upon broad dusty ways, in which not a pebble is seen in the fat dark earth of the lake shore, and whioh are shaded with locust-trees, the variety called seed- locust, with crowded twigs and clustered foliage — a tree chosen, doubtless, for its rapid growth, as the best means of getting up a shade at the shortest notice. Here and there were gardens fiUed with young fruit-trees ; among the largest and hardiest in appearance was the peach-tree, which here spreads broad and sturdy branches, escapes the diseases that make it a short-hved tree in the Atlantic states, and produces fruit of great size and richness. One of my fellow-passengers could hardly find adequate expres sions to signify his high sense of the dehciousness of the Cleveland peaches, I made my way to a street of shops : it had a busy ap pearance, more so than usual, I was told, for a company of circus-riders, whose tents I had seen from a distance on the lake, was in town, and this had attracted a throng of people fi-om the country, I saw a fruit-stall tended by a man who had the coarsest red hair I think I ever saw, and of whom I bought two or three enormous " bough apples," as he caUed them. He apologized for the price he demanded. 21* 246 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. "The farmers," said he, "know that just now there is a call for their early fruit, while the circus people are in to-wn, and they make me pay a 'igh price for it.'' I told him I perceived he was no Yankee. " I am a Londoner," he replied ; " and I left London twelve years ago to slave and be a poor man in Ohio." He acknowledged, however, that he had two or three times got together some property, " but the Lord," he said, " laid his hand on it." On returning to the steamer, I found a party of country people, mostly young persons of both sexes, thin and lank figures, by no means equal, as productions of the country, to their bough apples. They passed through the fine spacious cabin on the upper deck, extending between the state-rooms the whole length of the steamer. At length they came to a large mirror, which stood at the stern, and seemed by its reflection to double the length of the cabin. They walked on, as if they would extend their promenade into the mirror, when suddenly observing the reflection of their o-wn persons advancing, and thinking it another party, they politely made way to let it pass. The party in the mirror at the same moment turned to the same side, which first showed them the mistake they had made. The passengers had some mirth at their expense, but I must do our visitors the justice to say that they joined in the laugh -with a very good grace. The same evening, at twelve o'clock, we were at Detroit. " You must lock your state-rooms in the night," said one of LAKE ST. CLAIR. 217 the persons employed about the vessel, " for Detroit is full of thieves." We foUowed the ad-vice, slept soundly, and saw nothing of the thieves, nor of Detroit either, for the steamboat was again on her passage through Lake St, Clair at three this moming, and when I awoke we were moving over the flats, as they are caUed, at the upper end of the lake. The steamer was threading her way in a fog be tween large patches of sedge of a pea-green color. We had waited several hours at Detroit, because this passage is not safe at night, and steamers of a larger size are sometimes grounded here in the day-time, I had hoped, when I began, to bring down the narrative of my voyage to this moment, but my sheet is full, and I shaU give you the remainder in another letter. 248 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. LETTER XXXL A TRIP FROM DETROIT TO MACKINAW. Steamek Oregon, Lake Michigan, i July 25, 1846, \ Soon after passing the flats described in my last letter, and entering the river St. Clair, the steamer stopped to take in wood on the Canadian side. Here I went on shore. All that we could see of the country was a road along the bank, a row of cottages at a considerable distance from each other along the road, a narrow belt of cleared fields behind them, and beyond the fields the original forest standing like a long lofty wall, with its crowded stems of enormous size and immense height, rooted in the strong soil — ashes and maples and elms, the largest of their species. Scattered in the foreground were numbers of leafless elms, so huge that the settlers, as if in despair of bringing them to the ground by the ax, had girdled them and left them to decay and fall at their leisure. We went up to one of the houses, before which stood several of the famUy attracted to the door by the sight of our steamer. Among them was an inteUigent-looldng man. CHIPPEWA INDIANS. 249 originally from the state of New York, who gave quick and shrewd answers to our inquiries. He told us of an Indian settlement about twenty miles further up the St, Clair. Here dweU a remnant of the Chippewa tribe, coUected by the Canadian government, which has built for them com fortable log-houses with chimneys, furnished them with horses and neat cattle, and utensUs of agriculture, erected a house of worship, and given them a missionary. " The design of planting them here," saidth esettler, "was to en courage them to cultivate the soil," " And what has been the success of the plan ?" I asked, " It has met with no success at all," he answered. " The worst thing that the government could do for these people is to give them every thing as it has done, and leave them under no necessity to pro-vide for themselves. They chop over a little land, an acre or two to a family ; their squaws plant a little corn, and a few beans, and this is the extent of their agriculture. They pass their time in hunting and fishing, or in idleness. They find deer and bears in the woods behind them, and fish in the St, Clair before their doors, and they squander their yearly pensions. In one respect they are just hke white men, they wiU not work if they can live without.'' " What fish do they find m the St. Clair ?" " Various sorts. Trout and white-fish are the finest, but they are not so abundant at this season. Sturgeon and pike are just now in season, and the pike are exceUent," 250 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. One of us happening to observe that the river might easily be crossed by swimming, the settler answered : " Not so easily as you might think. The river is as cold as a well, and the swimmer would soon be chilled through, and perhaps taken with the cramp. It is this coldness of the water which makes the fish so fine at this season." This mention of sturgeons tempts me to relate an anec dote which I heard as I was coming up the Hudson. A gentleman who lived east of the river, a little back of Tivoh, caught last spring one of these fish, which weighed about a hundred and sixty pounds. He carried it to a large pond near his house, the longest diameter of which is about a mile, and without taking it out of the net in which he had caught it, he knotted part of the meshes closely around it, and attaching them to a pair of lines hke reins, put the creature into the water. To the end of the lines he had taken care to attach a buoy, to mark the place of the fish in the pond. He keeps a smaU boat, and when he has a mind to make a water-excursion, he rows to the place where the biioy is floating, ties the lines to the boat and, pul ling them so as to disturb the fish, is drawn backward and forward with great rapidity over the surface. The pond, in its deepest part, has only seven feet water, so that there is no danger of being dragged under. We now proceeded up the river, and in about two hours came to a neat httle village on the British side, with a windmill, a httle church, and two or three httle cottages. A CHIPPEWA VILLAGE. 251 prettdy screened by young trees. Immediately beyond this was the beginnmg ofthe Chippewa settlement of which we had been told. Log-houses, at the distance of nearly a quarter of a mile from each other, stood in a long row beside the river, with scattered trees about them, the largest of the forest, some girdled and leafless, some untouched and green, the smallest trees between having been cut away. Here and there an Indian woman, in a blue dress and bare headed, was walking along the road ; cows and horses were grazing near the houses ; patches of maize were seen, tended in a slovenly manner and by no means clear of bushes, but nobody was at work in the fields. Two females came down to the bank, with paddles, and put off into the river in a birch-bark canoe, the ends of which were carved in the peculiar Indian fashion. A httle beyond stood a group of boys and girls on the water's edge, the boys in shirts and leggins, silently watching the steamer as it shot by them. Still further on a group of children of both sexes, seven in number, came running -with shrill cries down the bank. It was then about twelve o'clock, and the weather was extremely sultry. The boys in an instant threw off their shirts and leggins, and plunged into the water with shouts, but the girls were in before them, for they wore only a kind of petticoat which they did not take off, but cast themselves into the river at once and slid through the clear water hke seals. This httle Indian colony on the edge of the forest ex- 252 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. tends for several miles along the river, where its banks are highest and best adapted to the purpose of settlement. It ends at last just below the village which bears the name of Fort Saranac, in the neighborhood of which I was shown an odd-looking wooden building, and was told that this was the house of worship provided for the Indians by the government. At Fort Huron, a viUage on the American side, opposite to Fort Saranac, we stopped to land passengers. Three Indians made their appearance on the shore, one of whom, a very large man, wore a kind of turban, and a white blanket made into a sort of frock, -with bars of black in several places, altogether a striking costume. One of this party, a weU-dressed young man, stopped to speak with somebody in the crowd on the wharf but the giant in the turban, with his companion, strode rapidly by, apparently not deigning to look at us, and disappeared in the vUlage. He was scarcely out of sight when I perceived a boat approaching the shore with a curiously mottled saU, As it came nearer I saw that it was a quilt of patchwork taken from a bed. In the bottom of the boat lay a barrel, apparently of flour, a stout young feUow pulled a pair of oars, and a slender- waisted damsel, neatly dressed, sat in the stern, plying a paddle -with a dexterity which she might have learned from the Chippewa ladies, and guiding the course of the boat which passed with great speed over the water. We were soon upon the broad waters of Lake Huron, and MACKINAW. 253 when the evening closed upon us we were already out of sight of land. The next morning I was awakened by the sound of rain on the hurricane deck. A cool east wind was blowing. I opened the outer door of my state-room, and snuffed the air which was strongly impregnated with the odor of burnt leaves or grass, proceeding, doubtless, from the burning of woods or prairies somewhere on the shores of the lake. For mile after mUe, for hour after hour, as wS flew through the mist, the same odor was perceptible : the atmosphere of the lake was fuU of it, " Will it rain aU day ?" I asked of a feUow-passenger, a Salem man, in a white cravat. " The clouds are thin," he answered ; " the sun will soon burn them off." In fact, the sun soon melted away the clouds, and before ten o'clock I was shown, to the north of us, the dim shore of the Great Manitoulin Island, with the faintly descried opening caUed the West Strait, through which a throng of speculators in copper mines are this summer constantly passing to the Sault de Ste, Marie, On the other side was the sandy isle of Bois Blanc, the name of which is com monly corrupted into Bob Low Island, thickly covered with pines, and showing a taU light-house on the point nearest us. Beyond another point lay like a cloud the island of Mackinaw. I had seen it once before, but now the hazy atmosphere magnified it into a lofty mountain ; its limestone cliffs impending over the water seemed larger ; the white fort 22 254 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. — white as snow — ^built from the quarries of the island, looked more commanding, and the rocky crest above it seemed almost to rise to the clouds. There was a good deal of illusion in all this, as we were convinced as we came nearer, but Macki naw with its rocks rising from the most transparent waters that the earth pours out from her springs, is a stately object in any condition of the atmosphere. The captain of our steamer allowed us but a moment at Mackinaw ; a moment to gaze into the clear waters, and count the fish as they played about -without fear twenty or thirty feet below our steamer, as plainly seen as if they lay in the air ; a moment to look at the fort on the heights, dazzling the eyes with its new whiteness ; a moment to observe the habitations of this ancient -village, some of which show you roofs and walls of red-cedar bark confined by horizontal strips of wood, a kind of architecture between the -wigwam and the settler's cabin, A few baskets of fish were hfted on board, in which I saw trout of enormous size, trout a yard in length, and white-fish smaller, but held perhaps in higher esteem, and we turned our course to the straits which lead into Lake Michigan, I remember hearing a lady say that she was tired of im provements, and only wanted to find a place that was finished, where she might live in peace, I think I shall recommend Mackinaw to her, I saw no change in the place since my visit to it five years ago. It is so lucky as to have no lack-country, it offers no advantages to specula- MACKINAW 255 tion of any sort ; it produces, it is true, the finest potatoes in the world, but none for exportation. It may, however, on account of its very cool summer climate, become a fashionable watering-place, in which case it must yield to the common fate of American villages and improve, as the phrase is. 256 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. LETTER XXXIL JOURNEY FROM DETROIT TO PRINCETON. Pkinoeton, Illinois, July 31, 1846. Soon after leaving the island of Mackinaw we entered the straits and passed into Lake Michigan. The odor of bm-nt leaves continued to accompany us, and from the western shore of the lake, thickly covered with wood, we saw large columns of smoke, several miles apart, rising into the hazy sky. The steamer turned towards the eastern shore, and about an hour before sunset stopped to take in wood at the upper Maneto island, where we landed and strolled into the forest. Part of the island is high, but this, where we went on shore, consists of hillocks and hollows of sand, like the waves of the lake in one of its storms, and looking as if successive storms had swept them up from the bottom. They were covered with an enormous growth of trees which must have stood for centuries. We admired the astonishing transparency of the water on this shore, the clean sands without any intermixture of mud, the pebbles of almost chaUcywhiteness, and the stones in the edge of the lake, to which adhered no slime, nor green moss, nor aquatic weed. In the hght-green depths, far down, but SHEBOYGAN. 257 distinctly seen, shoals of fish, some of them of large size, came quietly playing about the huge huU of our steamer. On the shore were two log-houses inhabited by woodmen, one of whom drew a pail of water for the refreshment of some of the passengers, from a well dug in the sand by his door, " It is not so good as the lake water," said I, for I saw it was not so clear, " It is colder, though," answered the man ; " but I must say that there is no purer or sweeter water in the world than that of our lake." Next moming we were coasting the western shore of Lake Michigan, a high bank presenting a long line of forest. This was broken by the little town of Sheboygan, with its hght-house among the shrubs of the bank, its cluster of houses just built, among which were two hotels, and its single schooner lying at the mouth of a river. You probably never heard of Sheboygan before ; it has just sprung up in the forests oi Wisconsm ; the leaves have hardly -withered on the trees that were felled to make room for its houses ; but it wiU make a noise in the world yet. " It is the prettiest place on the lake," said a passenger, whom we left there, with three chubby and healthy children, a lady who had already lived long enough at Sheboygan to be proud ofit. Further on we came to Milwaukie, which is rapidly becoming one of the great cities of the West. It lies within a semicircle of green pastoral declivities sprinkled with scattered trees, where the future streets are to be built. 22* 258 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. We landed at a kind of wharf, formed by a long platform of planks laid on piles, under whieh the water flows, and extending to some distance into the lake, and along which a car, running on a railway, took the passengers and their baggage, and a part of the freight of the steamer to the shore. "Will you go up to to-wn, sir?" was the question -with which I was saluted by the drivers of a throng of vehicles of all sorts, as soon as I reached the land. They were ranged along a firm sandy beach between the lake and the river of Milwaukie. On one side the hght-green waters of the lake, of crystaUine clearness, came roUing in before the -wind, and on the other the dark thick waters of the" river lay still and stagnant in the sun. We did not go up to the town, but we could see that it was compactly built, and in one quarter nobly, A year or two since that quarter had been destroyed by fire, and on the spot several large and lofty warehouses had been erected, with an hotel of the largest class. They were of a fine light-brown color, and when I leamed that they were of brick, I inquired of a by stander if that was the natural color of the material, "They are Milwaukie brick," he answered, "and neither painted nor stained ; and are better brick besides than are made at the eastward." Milwaukie is said to contain, at present, about ten thousand inhabitants. Here the belt of forest that borders the lake stretches back for several mUes to the prairies of Wisconsin. " The Germans,'' said a CHICAGO. 259 passenger, " are already in the woods hacking at the trees, and will soon open the country to the prairies." We made a short stop at Racine, prettily situated on the bank among the scattered trees of an oak opening, and another at Southport, a rival town eleven miles further south. It is surprising how many persons travel, as way- passengers, from place to place on the shores of these lakes. Five years ago the number was very few, now they com prise, at least, half the number on board a steamboat plying between Buffalo and Chicago, When all who travel from Chicago to Buffalo shall cross the peninsula of Michigan by the more expeditious route of the railway, the Chicago and Buffalo line of steamers, which its owners claim to be the finest line in the world, will still be crowded with people taken up or to be set down at some of the intermediate towns. When we awoke the next moming our steamer was at Chicago. Any one who had seen this place, as I had done five years ago, when it contained less than five thousand people, would find some difficulty in recognizing it now when its population is more than fifteen thousand. It has its long rows of warehouses and shops, its bustling streets ; its huge steamers, and crowds of lake-craft, lying at the wharves ; its villas embowered with trees ; and its suburbs, consisting of the cottages of German and Irish laborers, stretching northward along the lake, and westward into the prairies, and widening every day. The slovenly and raw 260 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER appearance of a new settlement begins in many parts to dis appear. The Germans have already a garden in a little grove for their holidays, as in their towns in the old country, and the Roman Catholics have just finished a college for the education of those who are to proselyte the West. The day was extremely hot, and at sunset we took a httle drive along the belt of firm sand which forms the bor der of the lake. Light-green waves came to the shore in long lines, with a crest of foam, hke a miniature surf, roUing in from that inland ocean, and as they dashed against the legs of the horses, and the wheels of our carriage, the air that played over them was exceedingly refreshing. When we set out the foUo-wing day in the stage-coach for Peru, I was surprised to see how the settlement of Chicago had extended westward into the open coimtry. " Three years ago," said a traveller in the coach, " it was thought that this prairie could neither be inhabited nor cultivated. It is so level and so little elevated, that for weeks its surface would remain covered -with water ; but we have found that as it is intersected with roads, the water either runs off in the ditches of the highways, or is absorbed into the sand which lies below this surface of dark vegetable mould, and it is now, as you perceive, beginning to be covered -with habitations." If you ever go by the stage-coach from Chicago to Peru, on the Illinois river, do not beheve the glozing tongue of the agent who tells you that you will make the journey in A PLUNGE IN THE CANAL. 201 sixteen hours. Double the number, and you -will be nearer the truth. A violent rain fell in the course of the morning ; the coach was hea-vily loaded, nine passengers within, and three without, besides the driver ; the day was hot, and the horses dragged us slowly through the black mud, which seemed to possess the consistency and tenacity of sticking- plaster. We had a dinner of grouse, which here in certain seasons, are sold for three cents apiece, at a little tavern on the road ; we had passed the long green mound which bears the name of Mount Joliet, and now, a little before sunset, ha-ving traveUed somewhat less than fifty miles, we were about to cross the channel of the Illinois canal for the second or third time. There had once been a bridge at the crossing-place, but the water had risen in the canal, and the timbers and planks had floated away, leaving only the stones which formed its foundation. In attempting to ford the channel the blundering driver came too near the bridge ; the coach- wheels on one side rose upon the stones, and on the other sank deep into the mud, and we were overturned in an instant. The outside passengers were pitched head-fore most into the canal, and four of those within were lying under water. We extricated ourselves as well as we could, the men waded out, the women were carried, and when we got on shore it was found that, although drenched with water and plastered with mud, nobody was either drowned or hurt. 262 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. A farm wagon passing at the moment, forded the canal without the least difficulty, and taking the female passen gers, conveyed them to the next farm-house, about a mile distant. We got out the baggage, which was completely soaked with water, set up the carriage on its wheels, in doing which we had to stand waist high in the mud and water, and reached the hospitable farm-house about half- past nine o'clock. Its owner was an emigrant from Kinder- hook, on the Hudson, who claimed to be a Dutchman and a Christian, and I have no reason to doubt that he was either. His kind family made us free of their house, and we passed the night in drying ourselves, and getting our baggage ready to proceed the next day. We travelled in a vehicle built after the fashion of the English post-coach, set high upon springs, which is the most absurd kind of carriage for the roads of this country that could be devised. Those stage- wagons which ply on Long Island, in one of which you sometimes see about a score of Gluakers and Gluakeresses, present a much better model. Besides being tumbled into the canal, we narrowly escaped being overturned in a dozen other places, where the mud was deep or the roads uneven. In my journey the next day, I was struck -with the dif ference which five years had made in the aspect of the country. Frame or brick houses in many places had taken the places of log-cabins ; the road for long distances now passed between fences, the broad prairie, inclosed, was CHANGED ASPECT OP THE COUNTRY, 203 turned into immense fields of maize, oats, and wheat, and was spotted here and there with young orchards, or httle groves, and clumps of bright-green locust-trees, and where the prairie remained open, it was now depastured by large herds of cattle, its herbage shortened, and its flowers less numerous. The wheat harvest this year is said to have failed in northern Ilhnois. The rust has attacked the fields which promised the fairest, and they are left unreaped, to feed the quaUs and the prairie-hens. Another tedious day's journey, over a specially bad road, brought us to Peru a little before midnight, and we passed the rest of the night at an inn just below the bank, on the margin of the river, in listening to the mosquitoes, A Mas sachusetts acquaintance the next morning furnished us with a comfortable conveyance to this pleasant neighborhood. 264 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. LETTER XXXIIL RETURN TO CHICAGO. Chicago, August 8, 1846. You may be certain that in returning to this place from Princeton I did not take the stage coach, I had no fancy for another plunge into the Ilhnois canal, nor for being overturned upon the prairies in one of those vehicles which seem to be set high in the air in order they may more easUy lose their balance. We procured a private conveyance and made the journey in three days — ^three days of extreme heat, which compelled us to travel slowly. The quails, which had repaired for shade to the fences by the side of the road, ran from them into the open fields, as we passed, -with their beaks open, as if panting -with the excessive heat. The number of these birds at the present time is very great. They swarm in the stubble fields and in the prairies, and manifest httle alarm at the approach of man. StUl more numerous, it appears to me, are the grouse, or prairie- hens, as they call them here, which we frequently saw walk ing leisurely, at our approach, into the grass from the road, whither they resorted for the sake of scattered grains of oats or wheat that had faUen from the loaded wagons going to PRAIRIE-HENS. 2G>« Chicago. At this season they are fiiU fed and fearless, ant fly hea-vUy when they are started. We frequently sav them feeding at a very short distance from people at worl in the fields. In some neighborhoods they seem almost a, numerous as fowls in a poultry-yard, A settler goes ou' -with his gun, and in a quarter of an hour brings in half a dozen birds which in the New York market would cosi two doUars a pair. At one place where we stopped to dine, they gave us a kind of pie which seemed to me an appro priate dessert for a dinner of prairie-hens. It was made of the fruit of the western crab-apple, and was not unpalatable. The wUd apple of this country is a small tree growing in thickets, natural orchards. In spring it is profusely covered ¦with light-pink blossoms, which have the odor of violets, and at this season it is thickly hung with fruit of the color of its leaves. Another wild fruit of the country is the plum, which grows in thickets, plum-patches, as they are called, where they are produced in great abundance, and sometimes, I am told , of exceUent quality. In a drive which I took the other day from Princeton to the aUuvial lands of the Bureau River, I passed by a declivity where the shrubs were red with the fruit, just beginning to ripen. The slope was sprinkled by them with crimson spots, and the odor of the fruit wat- quite agreeable. I have eaten worse plums than these from our markets, but I hear that there is a later variety, larger and of a yellow color, which is finer. 23 • 266 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. I spoke in my last of the change caused in the aspect of the country by cultivation. Now and then, however, you meet with -views which seem to have lost nothing of their original beauty. One such we stopped to look at from an eminence in a broad prairie in Lee county, between Knox Grove and Pawpaw Grove, The road passes directly over the eminence, which is round and regular *in form, with a small level on the summit, and bears the name of the Mound. On each side the -view extends to a prodigious dis tance ; the prairies sink into basins of immense breadth and rise into swells of vast extent ; dark groves stand in the light-green waste of grass, and a dim blue border, ap parently of distant woods, encircles the horizon. To give a pastoral air to the scene, large herds of cattle were gra zing at no great distance from us. I mentioned in my last letter that the wheat crop of northern Illinois has partially failed this year. But this is not the greatest calamity which has befallen this part of the country. The season is uncommonly sickly. We passed the first night of our journey at Pawpaw Grove — so named from the number of pawpaw-trees which grow in it, but \Yhich here scarcely find the summer long enough to perfect their fruit. The place has not had the reputation of being unhealthy, but now there was scarce a famUy in the neighborhood in which one or more was not ill -with an in termittent or a bilious fever. At the inn where we stopped, the landlady, a stout Pennsylvania woman, was just so A SICKLY SEASON. 267 far recovered as to be able, as she informed us, " to poke about ;" and her daughter, a strapping lass, went out to pass the night at the bedside of one of the numerous sick neigh bors. The sickness was ascribed by the settlers to the extremely dry and hot weather foUowing a rainy June. At almost every place where we stopped we heard similar accounts. Pale and hoUow-eyed people were lounging about. " Is the place unhealthy," I asked one of them. " /reckon so," he answered ; and his looks showed that he had sufficient reason. At Aurora, where we passed the second night, a busy little village, with miUs and manufac tories, on the Fox River, which here rushes swiftly over a stony bed, they confessed to the fever and ague. At Na- per-vUle, pleasantly situated among numerous groves and little prairies swelling into hiUs, we heard that the season was the most sickly the inhabitants had known. Here, at Chicago, whioh boasts, and -with good reason, I believe, of its healthy site, dysenteries and bihous attacks are just now very common, with occasional cases of fever. It is a common remark in this country, that the first culti vation of the earth renders any neighborhood more or less unhealthy. " Nature," said a western man to me, some years since, " resents the violence done her, and punishes those who first break the surface of the earth with the plough." The beautiful Rock River district, with its rapid stream, its noble groves, its banks disposed in natural ter races, with fresh springs gushing at their foot, and airy 268 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. prairies stretching away from their summits, was esteemed one of the most healthy countries iu the world as long as it had but few inhabitants. With the breaking up of the soil came in bilious fever and intermittents. A few years of cultivation wUl render the country more healthy, and these diseases wiU probably disappear, as they have done in some parts of western New York. I can remember the time when the " Genesee Country," as it was caUed, was thought quite a sickly region — a land just in the skirts of the shadow of death. It is now as healthy, I believe, as any part of the state. A PUBLIC DISAPPOINTMENT. 269 LETTER XXXIV. VOYAGE TO SAULT STE. MARIE. Sault Ste. Marie, August 13, 1846. When we left Chicago in the steamer, the other morning, all the vessels in the port had their flags displayed at half- mast in token of dissatisfaction with the fate of the harbor bill. You may not recollect that the bill set apart half a million of dollars for the construction or improvement of various harbors of the lakes, and authorized the deepening of the passages through the St, Clair Flats, now intricate and not quite safe, by which these bulky steamers make their way from the lower lakes to the upper. The people of the lake region had watched the progress of the bill through Congress -with much interest and anxiety, and congratulated each other when at length it received a majority of votes in both houses. The President's veto has turned these congratulations into expressions of disappoint ment which are heard on all sides, sometimes expressed with a good deal of energy. But, although the news of the veto reached Chicago two or three days before we left the place, nobody had seen the message in which it was con tained. Perhaps the force ofthe President's reasonings will 23* 270 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. reconcUe the minds of people here to the disappointment of their hopes. It was a hot August morning as the steamer Wisconsin, an unwieldy bulk, dipping and bobbing upon the smaU waves, and trembhng at every stroke of the engine, swept out into the lake. The southwest wind during the warmer portion of the summer months is a sort of Sirocco in Illi nois, It blows with considerable strength, but passing over an immense extent of heated plains it brings no cool ness. It was such an air that accompanied us on our way north from Chicago ; and as the passengers huddled into the shady places outside of the state-rooms on the upper deck, I thought of the flocks of quails I had seen gasping in the shadow of the rail -fences on the prairies. People here expose themselves to a draught of air with much less scruple than they do in the Atlantic states. " We do not take cold by it," they said to me, when I saw them sitting in a current of wind, after perspiring freely. If they do not take cold, it is odds but they take something else, a fever perhaps, or what is called a bilious attack. The vicissitudes of climate at Chicago and its neighborhood are more sudden and extreme than with us, but the in habitants say that they are not often the cause of catarrhs, as in the Atlantic states. Whatever may be the cause, I have met with no person since I came to the West, who appeared to have a catarrh. From this region perhaps -will hereafter proceed singers with the clearest pipes. LITTLE PORT. 271 Some forty miles beyond Chicago^ we stopped for half an hour at Little Fort, one of those flourishing little towns -which are springing up on the lake shore, to besiege future Congresses for money to build their harbors. This settle ment has started up in the woods within the last three or four years, and its cluster of roofs, two of the broadest of which cover respectable-looking hotels, already makes a considerable figure when viewed fi-om the lake. We passed to the shore over a long platform of planks framed upon two rows of posts or piles planted in the sandy shallows. " We make a port in this manner on any part of the western shore of the lake," said a passenger, " and con venient ports they are, except in very high winds. On the eastern shore, the coast of Michigan, they have not this advantage ; the ice and the northwest winds would rend such a wharf as this in pieces. On this side too, the water of the lake, except when an east wind blows, is smoother than on the Michigan coast, and the steamers therefore keep under the shelter of this bank." At Southport, stUl further north, in the new state of Wisconsin, we procured a kind of omnibus and were driven over the town, which, for a new settlement, is uncommonly pretty. We crossed a narrow inlet of the lake, a creek in the proper sense of the term, a -winding channel, with water hi the midst, and a rough growth of water-flags and sedges on the sides. Among them grew the wild rice, its bending spikes, hea-vy with grain, ahnost ready for the harvest. 272 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. " In the northern marshes of Wisconsin," said one of onr party, " I have seen the Indian women gathering this grain. Two of them take their places in a canoe ; one of them seated in the stern pushes it with her paddle through the shallows of standing water, while the other, sitting forward, lends the heads of the rice-plant over the sides of the canoe, itrikes them with a little stick and causes the grain to faU vithin it. In this way are coUected large quantities, .vhich serve as the winter food of the Menomonies, and ome other tribes." The grain ofthe wUd rice, I was told, s of a dark color, but palatable as food. The gentleman ¦vho gave me this account had made several attempts to irocure it in a fit state to be sown, for Judge Buel, of \lbany, who was desirous of trying its cultivation on the grassy .shallows of our eastern rivers. He was not success- iil at first, because, as soon as the grain is collected, it is iiln-dried by the Indians, which destroys the vegetative principle. At length, however, he obtained and sent on a small quantity of the fresh rice, but it reached Judge Buel jnly a short time before his death, and the experiment probably has not been made. On one side of the creek was a sloping bank of some height, where tall old forest trees were growing. Among these stood three houses, just built, and the space between them and the water was formed into gardens with regular terraces faced with turf Another turn of our vehicle brought us into a public square, where the oaks of the origi- SOUTHPORT, 273 nal forest were left standing, a miniature of the Champs Elysees, surrounding which, among the trees, stand many neat houses, some of them built of a drab-colored brick. Back of the town, we had a glimpse ofa prairie approaching within half a mile of the river. We were next driven through a street of shops, and thence to our steamer. The streets of Southport are beds of sand, and one of the passengers who professed to speak from sorne experience, described the place as haunted by myriads of fleas. It was not tiU about one o'clock of the second night after lea-ving Chicago, that we landed at Mackinaw, and after an infmite deal of trouble in getting our baggage together, and keeping it together, we were driven to the Mission House, a plain, comfortable old wooden house, built thirty or forty years since, by a missionary society, and now turned into an hotel. Beside the road, close to the water's edge, stood several -wigwams of the Potawottamies, pyramids of poles wrapped around with rush matting, each containing a family asleep. The place was crowded with people on their way to the mining region of Lake Superior, or return ing from it, and we were obliged to content ourselves with narrow accommodations for the night. At half-past seven the next morning we were on our way to the Sault Ste. Marie, in the little steamer General Scott. The wind was blowing fresh, and a score of persons who had intended to -visit the Sault were withheld by the fear of seasickness, so that half a dozen of us had the steamer to 274 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. ourselves. In three or four hours we found ourselves gli ding out of the lake, through smooth water, between two low points of land covered with firs and pines into the west strait. We passed Dmmmond's Island, and then coasted St, Joseph's Island, on the woody shore of which I was shown a solitary house. There I was told lives a long- nosed Englishman, a half-pay officer, with two wives, sisters, each the mother of a numerous offspring. This English polygamist has been more successful in seeking solitude than in avoiding notoriety. The very loneliness of his habitation on the shore causes it to be remarked, and there is not a passenger who makes the voyage to the Sault, to when his house is not pointed out, and his story related. It was hinted to me that he had a third wife in Toronto, but I liave my private doubts of this part of the story, and suspect that it was thrown in to increase my wonder. Beyond the island of St. Joseph we passed several islets of rock -with fir-trees growing from the clefts. Here, in summer, I was told, the Indians often set up their wigwams, and subsist by fishing. There were none in sight as we passed, but we frequently saw on either shore the skeletons of the Chippewa habitations. These consist, not like those of the Potawottamies, of a circle of sticks placed in the form of a cone, but of slender poles bent into circles, so as to make an almost regular hemisphere, over which, while it serves as a dwelling, birch-bark and mats of bulrushes are thrown. MUDDY LAKE. 275 On the western side of the passage, opposite to St. Jo seph's Island, stretches the long eoast of Sugar Island, luxuriant with an extensive forest of the sugar-maple. Here the Indians manufacture maple-sugar in the .spring. I inquired concerning their agriculture, " They plant no com nor squashes," said a passenger, who had resided for some time at the Sault ; " they will not ripen in this climate ; but they plant potatoes in the sugar- bush, and dig them when the spring opens. They have no other agricidture ; they plant no beans as I believe the In dians do elsewhere," A violent squall of wind and rain fell upon the water just as we entered that broad part of the passage which bears the name of Muddy Lake. In ordinary weather the waters are here perfectly pure and translucent, but now their agitation brought up the loose earth from the ,shallo-»v bottom, and made them as turbid as the Missouri, with tho exception of a narrow channel in the midst where the cur rent runs deep. Rocky hills now began to show themselves to the east of us ; we passed the sheet of water known by the name of Lake George, and came to a httle river which appeared to have its source at the foot of a precipitous ridge on the British side. It is called Garden River, and a little beyond it, on the same side, hes Garden Village, inhabited by the Indians. It was now deserted, the Indians having gone to attend a great assemblage of their race, held on one of the Manitoulin Islands, where they are to receive their 276 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER, annual payments from the British govemment. Here were log-houses, and skeletons of wigwams, from which the coverings had been taken. An Indian, when he travels, takes with him his family and his furniture, the matting for his wigwam, his implements for hunting and fishing, his dogs and cats, and finds a home wherever he finds poles for a dwelling. A tornado had recently passed over the Garden Village. The numerous girdled-trees which stood on its little clearing, had been twisted off midway or near the ground by the wind, and the roofs had, in some instances, been lifted from the cabins. At length, after a winding voyage of sixty miles, between wild banks of forest, in some places smoking with fires, in some looking as if never -violated either by fire or steel, with huge carcasses of trees mouldering on the ground, and vene rable trees standing over them, bearded -with streaming moss, we came in sight of the white rapids of the Sault Sainte Marie, We passed the humble cabins of the half- breeds on either shore, with here and there a round wigwam near the water ; we ghded by a white chimney standing behind a screen of fir-trees, which, we were told, had be longed to the dwelling of Tanner, who himself set fire to his house the other day, before murdering Mr, Schoolcraft, and in a few minutes were at the wharf of this remotest settle ment of the northwest. THE COPPER MINES, 277 LETTER XXXV. FALLS OF THE ST. MARY. Sault Ste. Marie, August 15, 1846. A CROWD had assembled on the wharf of the American -village at the Sault Sainte Marie, popularly called the Soo, to witness our landing ; men of aU ages and complexions, in hats and caps of every form and fashion, with beards of every length and color, among which I discovered two or three pairs of mustaches. It was a party of copper-mine speculators, just fhtting from Copper Harbor and Eagle River, mixed -with a few Indian and half-breed inhabitants of the place. Among them I saw a face or two quite famUiar in Wall-street. I had a conversation -with an inteUigent geologist, who had just returned from an examination of the copper mines of Lake Superior. He had pitched his tent in the fields near the -vUlage, choosing to pass the night in this manner, as he had done for several weeks past, rather than in a crowded inn. In regard to the mines, he told me that the external tokens, the surface indications, as he caUed them, were more favorable than those of any copper mines in the world. They are still, however, mere surface indications ; 24 278 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. the veins had not been worked to that depth which was necessary to determine their value with any certainty. The mixture of silver with the copper he regarded as not giving any additional value to the mines, inasmuch as it is only occasional and rare. Sometimes, he told me, a mass of metal would be discovered of the size of a man's fist, or smaUer, composed of copper and silver, both metals closely united, yet both perfectly pure and unaUoyed -with each other. The masses of virgin copper found in beds of gravel are, however, the most remarkable feature of these mines. One of them which has been discovered this summer, but whioh has not been raised, is estimated to weigh twenty tons. I saw in the propeller Independence, by which this party from the copper mines was brought do-wn to the Sault, one of these masses, weighing seventeen iiundred and fifty pounds, with the appearance of having once been fluid with heat. It was so pure that it might have been cut in pieces by cold steel and stamped at once into coin. Two or three years ago this settlement of the Sault de Ste. Marie, was but a military post of the United States, in the midst of a viUage of Indians and half-breeds. There were, perhaps, a dozen white residents in the place, including the family of the Baptist Missionary and the agent of the Amer ican Fur Company, which had removed its station hither from Mackinaw, and built its warehouse on this river. But since the world has begun to talk of the copper mines of Lake Superior, settlers flock into the place ; carpenters are DRUNKEN INDIANS. 279 busy in knocking up houses with all haste on the govern ment lands, and large warehouses have been built upon piles driven into the shallows of the St. Mary. Five years hence, the primitive character of the place will be altogether lost, and it will have become a bustling Yankee town, resembling the other new settlements of the West, Here the navigation from lake to lake is interrupted by the falls or rapids of the river St, Mary, from which the place receives its name. The crystalline waters of Lake Superior on their way through the channel of this river to Lake Huron, here rush, and foam, and roar, for about three quarters of a mile, over rocks and large stones. Close to the rapids, with birchen-canoes moored in little inlets, is a village of the Indians, consisting of log-cabins and round wigwams, on a shrubby level, reserved to them by the government. The moming after our arrival, we went through this village in search of a canoe and a couple of Indians, to make the descent of the rapids, which is one of the first things that a visitor to the Sault must think of In the first -wigwam that we entered were three men and two women as drunk as men and women could weU be. The squaws were speechless and motionless, too far gone, as it seemed, to raise either hand or foot ; the men though appa rently unable to rise were noisy, and one of them, who called himself a half-breed and spoke a few words of En glish, seemed disposed to quarrel. Before the next door was a woman busy in washing, who spoke a httle English. 280 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. " The old man out there," she said, in answer to our ques tions, " can paddle canoe, but he is very drunk, he can not do it to-day." " Is there nobody else," we asked, " who -wUl take us down the faUs ?" " I don't know ; the Indians aU drank to-day," " Why is that ? why are they aU drunk to-day ?" " Oh, the whisky," answered the woman, giving us to understand, that when an Indian could get whisky, he got drunk as a matter of course. By this time the man had come up, and after addressing us with the customary " hon jour," manifested a curiosity to know the nature of our errand. The woman explained it to him in English. " Oh, messieurs, je vous ser-virai," said he, for he spoke Canadian French ; " I go, I go," We told him that we doubted whether he was quite sober enough, " Oh, messieurs, je suis parfaitement capable — first rate, first rate," We shook him off as soon as we could, but not tUl after he had time to propose that we should wait till the next day, and to utter the maxim, " Whisky, good — ^too much whisky, no good," In a log-cabin, which some half-breeds were engaged in building, we found two men who were easily persuaded to leave their work and pUot us over the rapids. They took DESCENT OF THE RAPIDS. 281 one of the canoes which lay in a httle inlet close at hand, and entering it, pushed it with their long poles up the stream in the edge of the rapids. Arriving at the head of the rapids, they took in our party, which consisted of five, and we began the descent. At each end of the canoe sat a half- breed, with a paddle, to guide it while the current drew us rapidly down among the agitated waters. It was surprising with what dexterity they kept us in the smoothest part of the -water, seeming to know the way down as well as if it had been a beaten path in the fields. At one time we would seem to be directly approaching a rock against which the waves were dashing, at another to be descending into a hollow of the waters in which our canoe would be inevitably fiUed, but a single stroke of the paddle given by the man at the prow put us safely by the seeming danger. So rapid was the descent, that almost as soon as we descried the apparent peril, it was passed. In less than ten minutes, as it seemed to me, we had left the roar of the rapids behind us, and were gliding over the smooth water at their foot. In the afternoon we engaged a half-breed and his brother to take us over to the Canadian shore. His wife, a slender young woman with a lively physiognomy, not easily to be distinguished from a French woman of her class, accompa nied us in the canoe with her little boy. The birch-bark canoe of the savage seems to me one of the most beautiful and perfect things of the kind constructed by human art. 282 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. We were in one of the finest that float on St. Mary's river, and when I looked at its delicate ribs, mere shavings of white cedar, yet firm enough for the purpose — the thin broad laths of the same wood with which these are inclosed, and the broad sheets of birch-bark, impervious to water, which sheathed the outside, all firmly sewed together by the tough slender roots of the fir-tree, and when I consid ered its extreme hghtness and the grace of its form, I could not but wonder at the ingenuity of those who had invented so bea-Litiful a combination of ship-building and basket-work. " It cost me twenty dollars," said the half-breed, " and I would not take thirty for it." We were ferried over the waves where they dance at the foot of the rapids. At this place large quantities of white- fish, one ofthe most delicate kinds known on our continent, are caught by the Indians, in their season, with scoop-nets. The whites are about to interfere with this occupation of the Indians, and I saw the other day a seine of prodigious length constructing, with which it is intended to sweep nearly half the river at once. " They will take a hun dred barrels a day," said an inhabitant ofthe place. On the British side, the rapids divide themselves into half a dozen noisy brooks, which roar round little islands, and in the boiling pools of which the speckled trout is caught with the rod and line. We landed at the warehouses of the Hudson Bay Company, where the goods intended for the Indian trade are deposited, and the furs brought from the CANADIAN HALF-BREEDS. 283 northwest are collected. They are surrounded by a massive stockade, within which lives the agent of the Company, the walks are graveled and well-kept, and the whole bears the marks of British solidity and precision. A quantity of furs had been brought in the day before, but they were locked up in the warehouse, and all was now quiet and silent. The agent was absent ; a half-breed nurse stood at the door with his child, and a Scotch servant, apparently with nothing to do, was lounging in the court inclosed by the stockade ; in short, there was less bustle about this centre of one of the most powerful trading-companies in the world, than about one of our farm-houses. Crossing the bay, at the bottom of "which these buildings stand, we landed at a Canadian village of half-breeds. Here were one or two wigwams and a score of log-cabins, some of which we entered. In one of them -we were re ceived with great appearance of deference by a woman of decidedly Indian features, but light-complexioned, barefoot, ¦with blue embroidered leggings falling over her ankles and sweeping the floor, the only peculiarity of Indian costume about her. The house was as clean as scouring could make it, and her two little children, with little French physiogno mies, were fairer than many children of the European race. These people are descended from the French voyageurs and settlers on one side ; they speak Canadian French more or less, but generally employ the Chippewa language in their intercourse with each other. 284 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. Near at hand was a burial ground, with graves of the Indians and half-breeds, which we entered. Some of the graves were covered with a low roof of cedar-bark, others with a wooden box ; over others was placed a little house like a dog-kennel, except that it had no door, others were covered with little log-cabins. One of these was of such a size that a small Indian family would have found it amply large for their accommodation. It is a practice among the savages to protect the graves of the dead from the wolves, by stakes driven into the ground and meeting at the top like the rafters of a roof ; and perhaps when the Indian or half- breed exchanged his wigwam for a log-cabin, his respect for the dead led him to make the same improvement in the ar chitecture of their narrow houses. At the head of most of these monuments stood wooden crosses, for the population here is principally Roman Catholic, some of them inscribed with the names of the dead, not always accurately spelled. Not far from the church stands a building, regarded by the half-breeds as a wonder of architecture, the stone house, la maison de pierre, as they call it, a large mansion buUt of stone by a former agent of the Northwest or Hudson Bay Company, who lived here in a kind of grand manorial style, with his servants and horses and hounds, and gave hospitable dinners in those days when it was the fashion for the host to do his best to drink his guests under the table. The old splendor of the place has departed, its gardens are overgrown with grass, the barn has been blown down, the TANNER THE MURDERER. 285 kitchen in which so inany grand dinners were cooked con sumed by fire, and the mansion, with its broken and patch ed windows, is now occupied by a Scotch farmer of the name of Wilson. We climbed a ridge of hUls back of the house to the church of the Episcopal Mission, built a few years ago as a place of worship for the Chippewas, who have since been removed by the government. It stands remote from any habitation, with three or four Indian graves near it, and we found it filled with hay. The -view from its door is uncom monly beautiful ; the broad St. Mary lying below, -with its bordering vUlages and woody vaUey, its white rapids and its rocky islands, picturesque -with the pointed summits of the fir-tree. To the northwest the sight foUowed the river to the horizon, where it issued from Lake Superior, and I was told that in clear weather one might discover, from the spot on which I stood, the promontory of Gros Cap, which guards the outlet of that mighty lake. The country around was smoking in a dozen places with fires in the woods. When I returned I asked who kindled them. "It is old Tanner,'' said one, " the man who murdered Schoolcraft." There is great fear here of Tan ner, who is thought to be lurking yet in the neighborhood. I was going the other day to look at a view of the place from an eminence, reached by a road passing through a swamp, full of larches and firs. " Are you not afraid of Tanner?" I was asked. Mrs. Schoolcraft, since the 286 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. assassination of her husband, has come to hve in the fort, which consists of barracks protected by a high stockade. It is rumored that Tanner has been seen skulking about within a day or two, and yesterday a place was discovered which is supposed to have served for his retreat. It was a hollow, thickly surrounded by shrubs, which some person had evidently made his habitation for a considerable time. There is a dispute whether this man is insane or not, but there is no dispute as to his malignity. He has threatened to take the hfe of Mr. Bingham, the venerable Baptist missionary at this place, and as long as it is not certain that he has left the neighborhood a feeling of insecurity prevails. Nevertheless, as I know no reason why this man should take it into his head to shoot me, I go whither I list, without the fear of Tanner before my eyes. STEAMER DRAGGED OVER THE PORTAGE. 287 LETTER XXXVL INDIANS AT THE SAULT. Mackinaw, August 19, 1846. We were detained two days longer than we expected at the Sault de Ste. Marie, by the failure of the steamer Gen eral Scott to depart at the proper time. If we could have found a steamer going up Lake Superior, we should most certainly have quieted our impatience at this delay, by em barking on board of her. But the only steamer in the river St. Mary, above the falls, which is a sort of arm or harbor of Lake Superior, was the Julia Palmer, and she was lying aground in the pebbles and sand of the shore. She had just been dragged over the portage which passes round the falls, where a broad path, with hiUocks flattened, and trunks hewn off close to the surface, gave tokens of the vast bulk that had been moved over it. The moment she touched the water, she stuck fast, and the engineer was obliged to go to Cleveland for additional machinery to move her forward. He had just arrived -with the proper appa ratus, and the steamer had begun to work its way slowly into the deep water ; but some days must yet elapse before she can float, and after that the engine must be put together. 288 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. Had the Juha Palmer been ready to proceed up the lake, I should certainly have seized the occasion to be present at an immense assemblage of Indians on Madeleine Island. This island hes far in the lake, near its remoter extremity. On one of its capes, called La Pointe, is a missionary station and an Indian village, and here the savages are gathering in vast numbers to receive their annual payments from the United States. " There were already two thousand of them at La Pointe when I left the place," said an intelligent gentleman who had just returned from the lake, " and they were starving. If an Indian fanuly has a stock of provisions on hand sufficient for a month, it is sure to eat it up in a week, and the Indians at La Pointe had already consumed all they had provided, and were living on what they could shoot in the woods, or get by fishing in the lake." I inquired of him the probable number of Indians the oc casion would bring together. " Seven thousand," he answered. " Among them are some of the -wildest tribes on the continent, whose habits have been least changed by the neighborhood of the white man. A new tribe -will come in who never before would have any transactions with the government. They are called the PUlagers, a fierce and warlike race, proud of their independence, and, next to the Blackfeet and the Camanches, the most ferocious and formidable tribe withip the territory of the United States. They inhabit the INDIANS AT MADELEINE ISLAND. 289 country about Red River and the head-waters of the Mississippi," I was further told that some of the Indian traders had expressed their determination to disregard the law, set up their tents at La Pointe, and sell spirits to the savages. " If they do, knives will be drawn," was the common saying at the Sault ; and at the Fort, I learned that a requisition had arrived from La Pointe for twenty men to enforce tho law and prevent disorder. " We can not send half the num ber," said the officer who commanded at the Fort, " wc have but twelve men in all ; the rest of the garrison have been ordered to the Mexican frontier, and it is necessary that somebody should remain to guard the public property." The call for troops has since been transferred to the garrison at Mackinaw, from which they will be sent. I leamed afterward from an intelligent lady of the half- caste at the Sault, that letters had arrived, from which it appeared that more than four thousand Indians were already assembled at La Pointe, and that their stock of provisions was exhausted. " They expected," said the lad)', " to be paid off on the 15th of August, but the government has changed the time to nearly a month later. This is unfortunate for the In dians, for now is the time of their harvest, the season for gathering wild rice in the marshes, and they must, in con sequence, not only suffer with hunger now, but in the -winter also." 29 290 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. In a stroll which we made through, the Indian viUage, situated close to the rapids, we feU in with a half-breed, a sensible-looking man, living in a log cabin, whose boys, the offspring of a squaw of the pure Indian race, were practicing with their bows and arrows. " You do not go to La Pointe ?" we asked. " It is too far to go for a blanket," was his answer — he spoke tolerable English, This man seemed to have inherited from the white side of his ancestry somewhat of the love of a constant habitation, for a genuine Indian has no particular dishke to a distant journey. He takes his habitation -with him, and is at home wherever there is game and fish, and poles -with which to construct his lodge. In a further conversation with the half-breed, he spoke of the Sault as a dehghtful abode, and expatiated on the pleasures of the place. " It is the greatest place in the world for fun," said he ; "we dance all -winter; our women are all good dancers; our httle girls can dance single and double jigs as good as any body in the States, That httle girl there," pointing to a long-haired girl at the door, " -will dance as good as any body," The fusion of the two races in this neighborhood is re markable ; the mixed breed running by gradual shades into the aboriginal on the one hand, and into the white on the other ; children -with a tinge of the copper hne in the fami lies of white men, and children scarcely less fair sometimes seen in the wigwams. Some of the half-caste ladies at the METHODIST INDIANS, 291 FaUs of St, Mary, who have been educated in the At lantic states, are persons of graceful and dignified manners and agreeable conversation. I attended worship at the Fort, at the Sault, on Sunday. The services were conducted by the chaplain, who is of the Methodist persuasion and a missionary at the place, assisted by the Baptist missionary, I looked about me for some evidence of the success of their labors, but among the wor shipers I saw not one male of Indian descent. Of the females, half a dozen, perhaps, were of the half-caste ; and as two of these walked away from the church, I perceived that they -wore a fringed clothing for the ankles, as if they took a certain pride in this badge of their Indian extraction. In the afternoon we drove down the west bank of the river to attend religious service at an Indian -village, called the Little Rapids, about two miles and a half from the Sault. Here the Methodists have built a mission-house, maintain a missionary, and instruct a fragment of the Chippewa tribe. We found the missionary, Mr. Speight, a Kentuckian, who has wandered to this northern region, quite ill, and there was consequently no service. We walked through the village, which is prettily situated on a swift and deep channel of the St. Mary, where the green waters rush between the main-land and a wooded island. It stands on rich meadows of the river, with a path running before it, parallel with the bank, along the velvet sward, and backed at no great distance by the thick original 292 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. forest, which not far below closes upon the river on both sides. The inhabitants at the doors and windows of their log-cabins had a demure and subdued aspect ; they were dressed in their clean Sunday clothes, and the peace and quiet of the place formed a strong contrast to the de baucheries we had witnessed at the viUage by the Falls, We fell in with an Indian, a quiet httle man, of very decent appearance, who answered our questions with great civUity, We asked to whom belonged the meadows lying back ofthe cabins, on which we saw patches of rye, oats, and potatoes. " Oh, they belong to the mission ; the Indians work them." " Are they good people, these Indians ?" " Oh yes, good people." " Do they never drink too much whisky ?" " Well, I guess they drink too much whisky sometimes." There was a single -wigwam in the village, apparently a supplement to one of the log-cabins. We looked in and saw two Indian looms, from which two unfinished mats were depending, Mrs, Speight, the wife of the missionary, told us that, a few days before, the village had been full of these lodges ; that the Indians delighted in them greatly, and always put them up during the mosquito season ; " fbr a mosquito," said the good lady, " will never enter a wig wam;" and that lately, the mosquitoes having disappeared, and the nights having grown cooler, they had taken down all but the one we saw. SMALLNESS OP INDIAN FAMILIES. 293 We passed a few minutes in the house of the missionary, to which Mrs. Speight kindly invited us. She gave a rather favorable account of the Indians under her husband's charge, but manifestly an honest one, and without any wish to extenuate the defects of their character. " There are many exceUent persons among them," she said ; " they are a kind, simple, honest people, and some of them are eminently pious," " Do they follow any regular industry ?" " Many of them are as regularly industrious as the whites, rising early and continuing at their work in the fields all day. They are not so attentive as we could wish to the education of their children. It is difficult to make them send their children regularly to school ; they think they confer a favor in allowing us to instruct them, and if they happen to take a little offense their children are kept at home. The great evU against which we have to guard is the love of strong drink. When this is offered to an Indian, it seems as if it was not in his nature to resist the temptation. I have known whole congregations of Indians, good Indians, ruined and brought to nothing by the oppor tunity of obtaining whisky as often as they pleased." We inquired whether the numbers of the people at the mission were diminishing. She could not speak with muoh certainty as to this point, having been only a year and a half at the mission, but she thought there was a gradual decrease. 15* 294 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. " The families ofthe Indians," she said, in answer to one of my questions, " are small. In one family at the viUage are six children, and it is the talk of all the Indians, far and near, as something extraordinary. Generally the number is much smaller, and more than half the children die in infancy. Their means would not allow them to rear many children, even if the number of births was greater." Such appears to be the destiny of the red race while in the presence of the white — decay and gradual extinction, even under circumstances apparently the most favorable to its preservation. On Monday we left the Falls of St. Mary, in the steamer General Scott, on our return to Mackinaw. There were about forty passengers on board, men in search of copper- mines, and men in search of health, and traveUers from curiosity, Virginians, New Yorkers, wanderers from Ilhnois, Indiana, Massachusetts, and I believe several other states. On reaching Mackinaw in the evening, our party took quarters in the Mansion House, the obliging host of which stretched his means to the utmost for our accommodation, Mackinaw is at the present moment crowded -with strangers ; attracted by the cool healthful climate and the extreme beauty of the place. We were packed for the night almost as closely as the Potawottamies, whose lodges were on the beach before us. Parlors and garrets were turned into sleeping-rooms ; beds were made on the floors CLOSE QUARTERS. 295 and in the passages, and double-bedded rooms were made to receive four beds. It is no difficult feat to sleep at Macki naw, even in an August night, and we soon forgot, in a refreshing slumber, the narrowness of our quarters. 296 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. LETTER XXXVn. THE ISLAND OF MACKINAW. Steamer St. Louis, Lake Huron, i August 20, 1846. \ Yesterday evening we left the beautiful island of Macki naw, after a visit of two days delightfully passed. We had chmbed its cliffs, rambled on its shores, threaded the walks among its thickets, driven out in the roads that wind through its woods — ^roads paved by nature with limestone pebbles, a sort of natural macadamization, and the time of our de parture seemed to arrive several days too soon. The fort which crowns the heights near th e shore com mands an extensive prospect, but a still wider one is to be seen from the old fort. Fort Holmes, as it is called, among whose ruined intrenchments the half-breed boys and girls now gather gooseberries. It stands on the very crest ofthe of the island, overlooking all the rest. The air, when we ascended it, was loaded with the smoke of burning forests, but from this spot, in clear weather, I was told a magnifi cent view might be had of the Straits of Mackinaw, the wooded islands, and the shores and capes of the great main land, places known to history for the past two centuries. SIXTY YEARS SINCE, 297 For when you are at Mackinaw you are at no new settle ment. In looking for samples of Indian embroidery with porcu pine quills, we found ourselves one day in the warehouse of the American Fur Company, at Mackinaw, Here, on the shelves, were pUes of blankets, white and blue, red scarfs, and white boots ; snow-shoes were hanging on the walls, and wolf- traps, rifles, and hatchets, were slung to the ceiling — an assortment of goods destined for the Indians and half- breeds of the northwest. The person who attended at the counter spoke English with a foreign accent. I asked him how long he had been in the northwestern country. " To say the truth," he answered, " I have been here sixty years and some days," " You were born here, then." " I am a native of Mackinaw, French by the mother's side ; my father was an Englishman." " Was the place as considerable sixty years ago as it now is ?" " More so. There was more trade here, and quite as many inhabitants. AU the houses, or nearly all, were then built ; two or three only have been put up since." I could easily imagine that Mackinaw must have been a place of consequence when here was the centre of the fur trade, now removed further up the country. I was shown the large house in whioh the heads of the companies of voy ageurs engaged in the trade were lodged, and the barracks. 298 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER, a long low building, in which the voyageurs themselves, seven hundred in number, made their quarters from the end of June tiU the beginning of October, when they went out again on their journeys. This interval of three months was a merry time with those light-hearted Frenchmen. When a boat made its appearance approaching Mackinaw, they fell to conjecturing to what company oi voyageurs it belonged ; as the dispute grew warm the conjectures became bets, till finally, unable to restrain their impatience, the boldest of them dashed into the waters, swam out to the boat, and climbing on board, shook hands with their brethren, amidst the shouts of those who stood on the beach. They talk, on the New England coast, of Chebacco boats, built after a peculiar pattern, and called after Chebacco, an ancient settlement of sea-faring men, who have foolishly changed the old Indian name of their place to Ipswich. The Mackinaw navigators have also given their name to a boat of pecuhar form, sharp at both ends, swelled at the sides, and flat-bottomed, an exceUent sea-boat, it is said, as it must be to live in the wUd storms that surprise the mar iner on Lake Superior, We took yesterday a drive to the western shore. The road twined through a wood of over-archmg beeches and maples, interspersed with the white-cedar and fir. The driver stopped before a chff sprouting with beeches and cedars, with a smaU cavity at the foot. This he told us was the SkuU Cave. It is only remarkable on account of THE BRITISH LANDING. 299 human bones having been found in it. Further on a wliite paling gleamed through thc trees ; it inclosed the sohtary burial ground of the garrison, -with half a dozen graves. "There are few buried here," said a gentleman of our party ; " the soldiers who eome to Mackinaw sick get well soon." The road we traveUed was cut through the woods by Captain Scott, who commanded at the fort a few years since. He is the marksman whose aim was so sure that the western people say of him, that a raccoon on a tree once offered to come down and surrender without giving him the trouble to fire. We passed a farm surrounded with beautiful groves. In one of its meadows was fought the battle between Colonel Croghsm and the British officer Holmes in the war of 1813 Three luxuriant beeches stand in the edge of the wood, north of the meadow ; one of them is the monument of Holmes ; he hes buried at its root. Another quarter of a mile led us to a httle bay on the solitary shore of the lake looking to the northwest. It is called the British Landing, because the British troops landed here in the late war to take possession of the island. We wandered about awhile, and then sat down upon the embankment of pebbles which the waves of the lake, heaving for centuries, have heaped around the shore of the island — pebbles so clean that they would no more soil a lady's white muslin gown than if they had been of newly 300 LETTEP,S OF A TRAVELLER. polished alabaster. The water at our feet was as trans parent as the air around us. On the main-land opposite stood a church with its spire, and several roofs were visible, with a background of woods behind them. "There," said one of our partj', "is the old Mission Church. It was built by the Catholics in 1680, and has been a place of worship ever since. The name of the spot is Point St, Ignaoe, and there lives an Indian of the fuU caste, who was sent to Rome and educated to be a priest, but he preferred the hfe of a layman, and there he hves on that wUd shore, with a hbrary in his lodge, a learned savage, occupied with reading and study." You may well suppose that I felt a strong desire to see Point St. Ignace, its venerable Mission Church, its Indian village, so long under the care of Catholic pastors, and its learned savage who talks Italian, but the time of my departure was already fixed. My companions were pointing out on that shore, the mouth of Carp River, which comes down through the forest roaring over rocks, and in any of the pools of which you have only to throw a line, with any sort of bait, to be sure of a trout, when the driver of our vehicle called out, " Your boat is coming.'' We looked and saw the St. Louis steamer, not one of the largest, but one of the finest boats in the line between Buffalo and Chicago, making rapidly for the island, with a train of black smoke hanging in the air behind her. We hastened to return through the woods, and in an hour and a half we were in TIIi; Ar.CIIED ROCK. 301 our clean and comfortable quarters in this well-ordered httle steamer. But I should mention that before leaving Mackinaw, we did not fail to -visit the principal curiosities of the place, the Sugar Loaf Rock, a remarkable rock in the middle of the island, of a sharp conical form, rising above the trees by which it is surrounded, and lifting the stunted birches on its shoulders higher than they, like a taU fellow holding up a little boy to overlook a crowd of men — and the Arched Rock on the shore. The atmosphere was thick -with smoke, and through the opening spanned by the arch of the rock I saw the long waves, roUed up by a fresh -wind, come one after another out of the obscurity, and break -with roaring on the heach. The path along the brow of the precipice and among the evergreens, by which this rock is reached, is singularly wUd, but another which leads to it along the shore is no less picturesque — passing under impending chffs and overshad owing cedars, and between huge blocks and pinnacles of rock. I spoke in one of my former letters of the manifest fate of Mackinaw, which is to be a watering-place. I can not see how it is to escape this destiny. People already begin to repair to it for health and refreshment from the southern borders of Lake Michigan. Its climate during the summer months is delightful ; there is no air more pure and elastic, and the vvinds ofthe .outh and southwest, which are so hot 26 302 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. on the prairies, arrive here tempered to a grateful coolness by the waters over which they have swept. The nights are always, in the hottest season, agreeably cool, and the health of the place is proverbial. The world has not many islands so beautiful as Mackinaw, as you may judge from the description I have already given of parts of it. The surface is singularly irregular, -with summits of rock and pleasant hollows, open glades of pasturage and shady nooks. To some, the savage visitors, who occasionally sot up their lodges on its beach, as well as on that of the sur rounding islands, and paddle their canoes in its waters, -will be an additional attraction, I can not but think with a kind of regret on the time which, I suppose is near at hand, when its wild and lonely woods will be intersected with high ways, and fiUed -with cottages and boarding-houses. SOUTHERN NEW JERSEY. 303 LETTER XXXYIIL AN EXCURSION TO THE WATER GAP. Steoudsbcrg, Monroe Co_ Penn, ) October 23, 1S46. ) I REACHED this placc last evening, ha-ving taken Easton in my way. Did it ever occur to yon, in passing through New Jersey, how much the northem part of the state is, in some respects, like New York, and how much the southem part resembles Pennsylvania ? For twenty mUes before reaching Easton, you see spacious dwelling-houses, often of stone, substantiaUy built, and bams of the size of churches, and large farms -with extensive woods of taU trees, as in Pennsylvania, where the right of soU has not undergone so many subdivisions as with us. I was shown in Warren county, in a region apparently of great fertUity, a farm which was said to be two miles square. It belonged to a farmer of German origin, whose comfortable mansion stood by the way, and who came into the state many years ago, a young man. " I have heard him say," said a passenger, " that when his father brought him out with his young wife into Warren county, and set him down upon what then appeared a bar ren little farm, now a part of his large and productive 304 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER, estate, his heart faUed him. However he went to work in dustriously, practicing the strictest economy, and by apply ing lime copiously to the soil made it highly fertUe, It is lime which makes this region the richest land in New Jer sey ; the farmers find limestone close at hand, burn it in their kilns, and scatter it on the surface. The person of whom I speak took off large crops from his httle farm, and as soon as he had any money beforehand, he added a few acres more, so that it gradually grew to its present size. Rich as he is, he is a worthy man ; his sons, who are nu merous, are all fine fellows, not a scape-grace among them, and he has settled them all on farms around him." Easton, which we entered soon after dark, is a pretty little town of seven thousand inhabitants, much more sub stantially built than towns of the same size in this country. Many of the houses are of stone, and to the sides of some of them you see the ivy clinging and hiding the masonry with a veil of evergreen foliage. The middle of the streets is unpaved and very dusty, but the broad flagging on the sides, under the windows of the houses, is sedulously swept. The situation of the place is uncommonly picturesque. If ever the httle borough of Easton shall grow into a great town, it will stand on one of the most commanding sites in . the world, unless its inhabitants shaU have spoiled it by im provements. The Delaware, which forms the eastern bound of the borough, approaches it from the north through high wooded banks, and flows away to join the Susquehanna BEAUTIFUL SITE OP EASTON. 305 between craggy precipices. On the south side, the Lehigh comes down through a deep, verdant hoUow, and on the north the BushkiU winds through a glen shaded with trees, on the rocky banks of which is one of the finest drives in the world. In the midst of the borough rises a crag as lofty as that on which Stirling Castle is built — ^in Europe, it would most certauUy have been crowned with its castle ; steep and grassy on one side, and precipitous and rocky on the other, where it overhangs the BushkiU. The coUege stands on a lofty eminence, overlooking the dwellings and streets, but it is an ugly buUding, and has not a tree to con ceal even in part its ugliness. Besides these, are various other eminences in the immediate vicinity of this compact little town, which add greatly to its beauty. We set out the next morning for the Delaware Water Gap, following the road along the Delaware, which is here uncommonly beautiful. The steep bank is mostly covered with trees sprouting from the rocky shelves, and below is a fringe of trees between the road and the river. A little way from the town, the driver pointed out, in the midst of the stream, a long island of loose stonss and pebbles, without a leaf or stem of herbage. " It was there," said he, " that Gaetter, six years ago, was hanged for the murder ofhis -wife." The high and steep bank of the river, the rocks and the trees, he proceeded to tell us, were covered on that day with eager spectators from aU Uie surrounding couu'ry, evci-y oue 26* 306 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. of whom, looking immediately down on the island, could enjoy a perfect view of the process by which the poor -wretch in the hands of the hangman was turned off'. About five mUes from Easton we stopped to water our horses at an inn, a large handsome stone house, with a chatty landlord, who spoke with a strong German accent, complaining pathetically of the potato disease, which had got into the fields of the neighborhood, but glorying in the abundant crops of maize and wheat whioh had been gath ered. Two miles further on, we turned away from the river and ascended to the table-land above, which we found green with extensive fields of wheat, just springing under the autumnal sun. In one of the httle villages nestling in the hoUows of that region, we stopped for a few moments, and fell into conversation with a tolerably intelligent man, though speaking English -with some peculiarities that indicated the race to which he belonged, A sample of his dialect may amuse you. We asked him what the " Oh," said he, " there are different obinions, some hkes people in that part of the country thought of the new tariff. it and some not.'' " How do the democrats take it ?" " The democratic in brinciple likes it." " Did it have any effect on the election ?" " It bre vented a goot many democrats from votuig for their candidate for Congress, Mr, Brodhead, because he is THE WATER GAP, 307 for the old tariff. This is a very strong democratic district, and Mr. Brodhead's majority is only about a sousand," A little beyond this village we came in sight of the Water Gap, where the Blue Ridge has been cloven down to its base to form a passage for the Delaware, Two lofty summits, black with precipices of rock, form the gates through which the river issues into the open country. Here it runs noisily over the shallows, as if boasting aloud of the victory it had achieved in breaking its way through such mighty bar riers ; but -within the Gap it sleeps in quiet pools, or flows in deep glassy currents. By the side of these you see large rafts composed of enormous trunks of trees that have floated down with the spring floods from the New York forests, and here wait for their turn in the saw-mills along the shore. It was a bright morning, with a keen autumnal air, and we dismounted from our vehicle and walked through the Gap. It will give your readers an idea of the Water Gap, to say that it consists of a succession of lofty peaks, like the High lands of the Hudson, with a winding and irregular space between them a few rods -wide, to give passage to the river. They are unlike the Highlands, however, in one respect, that their sides are covered with large loose blocks detached from the main precipices. Among these grows the original forest, which descends to their foot, fringes the river, and embowers the road. The present autumn is, I must say, in regard to the 308 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. coloring of the forests, one of the shabbiest and least brilliant I remember to have seen in this country, almost as sallow and dingy in its hues as an autumn in Europe. But here in the Water Gap it was not without some of its accustomed brightness of tints — the sugar-maple with its golden leaves, and the water-maple with its foliage of scarlet, contrasted with the intense green of the hemlock-fir, the pine, the rosebay-laurel, and the mountain-laurel, which here grow in the same thicket, while the ground below was carpeted with humbler evergreens, the aromatic wintergreen, and the trailing arbutus. The Water Gap is about a mile in length, and near its northern entrance an excellent hotel, the resort of summer visitors, stands on a cliff' which rises more than a hundred feet almost perpen dicularly from the river. From this place the eye follows the Water Gap to where mountains shut in one behind another, like the teeth of a saw, and between them the Delaware twines out of sight. Before the hotel a fine little boy of about two years of age was at play. The landlord showed us on the calf of the child's leg t..o smaU lurid spots, about a quarter of an inch apart. " That," said he, " is the bite of a copper head snake," We asked when this happened. "It was last summer," answered he; "the chUd was playing on the side of the road, when he was heard to cry, and seen to make for the house. As soon as he came, my BITE OP A COPPER-HEAD SNAKE. 309 -wife called my attention to what she called a scratch on hii leg, I examined it, the spot was already purple and hard, and the chUd was crying violently. I knew it to be the bite of a copper-head, and immediately cut it open with a sharp knife, making the blood to flow freely and washing the part with water. At the same time we got a yerb" (such was his pronunciation) " on the hills, which some call hon-heart, and others snake-head. We steeped this yerb in mUk which we made him drink. The doctor had been sent for, and when he came apphed hartshorn ; but I believe that opening the wound and letting the blood flow was the most effectual remedy. The leg Avas terribly swollen, and for ten days we thought the httle fellow in great danger, but after that he became better and finally recovered." " How do you know that it was a copper-head that bit mm : " We sent to the place where he was at play, found the snake, and kiUed it. A -violent rain had fallen just before, and it had probably washed him down from the mountain-side." " The boy appears very healthy now." " Much better than before ; he was formerly delicate, and troubled -with an eruption, but that has disappeared, and he has become hardy and fond ofthe open air." We dined at the hotel and left the Water Gap. As we passed out of its jaws we met a man in a little wagon, carry ing behind him the carcass of a deer he had just killed. 310 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. They are hunted, at this time of the year, and killed in con siderable numbers in the extensive forests to the north of this place, A drive of four miles over hiU and valley brought us to Stroudsburg, on the banks of the Pocano — a place of which I shaU speak in my next letter. DEER IN THE LAUREL SWAMPS. 311- LETTER XLIL AN EXCURSION TO THE WATER GAP. Easton, Pemi., October 24, 1846. My yesterday's letter left me at Stroudsburg, about four miles west of the Delaware. It is a pleasant village, situated on the banks of the Pocano, From this stream the inhab itants have diverted a considerable portion of the water, bringing the current through this village in a canal, making it to dive under the road and rise again on the opposite side, after which it hastens to turn a cluster of mills. To the north is seen the summit of the Pocano mountain, where this stream has its springs, -with woods stretching down its sides and covering the adjacent country. Here, about nine miles to the north of the -village, deer haunt and are hunted. I heard of one man who had already kiUed nine of these ani mals within two or three weeks. A traveUer from Wyoming county, whom I met at our inn, gave me some account of the winter hfe of the deer. " They inhabit," he said, " the swamps of mountain-laurel thickets, through which a man would find it almost impossi ble to make his way. The laurel-bushes, and the hemlocks 312 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER, scattered among them, intercept the snow as it falls, and form a thick roof, under the shelter of which, near some pool or rivulet, the animals remain until spring opens, as snugly pro tected from the severity of the weather as sheep under the sheds of a farm-yard. Here they feed upon the leaves of the laurel and other evergreens. It is contrary to the law to kill them after the Christmas holidays, but sometimes their re treat is invaded, and a deer or two killed ; their flesh, how ever, is not wholesome, on account of the laurel leaves on which they feed, and their skin is nearly worthless," I expressed my surprise that the leaves of the mountain laurel, the kalmia latifolia, which are so deadly to sheep, should be the winter food of the deer. " It is because the deer has no gall," answered the man, " that the pison don't take effect. But their meat -wiU not do to eat, except in a small quantity, and cooked with pork, which I think helps take the pison out ofit.'' " The deer," he went on to say, " are now passing out of the blue into the gray. After the holidays, when their hair becomes long, and their winter coat is quite grown, their hide is soft and tender, and tears easily when dressed, and it would be folly to kill them, even if there were no law against it." He went on to find a paraUel to the case of the deer-skins in the hides of neat-cattle, which, when brought from a hot country, like South America, are firmer and tougher than when obtained in a colder climate hke ours. The Wyoming traveller gave a bad account of the health. CHERRY HOLLOW. 313 just at present, of the beautiful valley in which he lived, " We have never before," said he, " known what it was to have the fever and ague among us, but now it is very com mon, as well as other fevers. The season has neither been uncommonly wet nor uncommonly dry, but it has been un commonly hot," I heard the same account of various other districts in Pennsylvania, MifBin county, for example, was sickly this season, as well as other parts of the state which hitherto have been almost uniformly healthy. Here, how ever, in Stroudsburg and its neighborhood, they boasted that the fever and ague had never yet made its appear ance, I was glad to hear a good account of the pecuniary cir cumstances of the Pennsylvania farmers. They got in debt hke every body else during the prosperous years of 1835 and 1836, and have been ever since working themselves grad uaUy out ofit, " I have never," said an intelligent gentle man of Stroudsburg, " known the owners of the farms so free from debt, and so generally easy and prosperous in their con dition, as at this moment," It is to be hoped that having been so successful in paying their private debts, they wUl now try what can be done with the debt ofthe state. We left Stroudsburg this morning — one of the finest mornings of this autumnal season — and soon climbed an eminence which looked down upon Cherry Hollow, This place reminded me, with the exception of its forests, of the valleys in the Peak of Derbyshire, the same rounded 27 314 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER, summits, the same green, basin-like hollows. But here, on the hUl-sides, were tall groves of oak and chestnut, instead of the brown heath ; and the large stone houses of the German householders were very unlike the Derbyshire cottages. The valley is four miles in length, and its eastern extremity is washed by the Delaware. Climbing out of this valley and passing for some miles through yellow woods and fields of springing corn, not Indian com, we found ourselves at length travelling on the side of another long vaUey, which terminates at its southern extremity in the Wind Gap, The Wind Gap is an opening in the same mountain ridge which is cloven by the Water Gap, but, unlike that, it ex tends only about half-way down to the base. Through this opening, bordered on each side by large loose blocks of stone, the road passes. After you have reached the open country beyond, you look back and see the ridge stretching away eastward towards the Water Gap, and in the other direction towards the southwest till it sinks out of sight, a rocky waU of uniform height, with this opening in the midst, which looks as if part of the mountain had here fallen into an abyss below. Beyond the Wind Gap we came to the village of Windham, lying in the shelter of this mountain barrier, and here, about twelve o'clock, our driver stopped a moment at an inn to give water to his horses. The bar room was full of fresh-colored young men in mUitary uniforms, talking Pennsylvania German rather rapidly and vociferously. They surrounded a thick-set man, in a cap NAZARETH, 315 and shirt-sleeves, whom they called Tscho, or Joe, and insisted that he should give them a tune on his fiddle. ' Spiel, Tscho, spiel, spiel," was shouted on every side, and at last Tscho took the floor with a fiddle and began to play. About a dozen of the young men stood up on the floor, in couples, facing each other, and hammered out the tune with their feet, giving a tread or tap on the floor to correspond with every note of the instrument, and occasion ally crossing from side to side. I have never seen dancing more diligently performed. When the player had drawn the final squeak from his violin, we got into our vehicle, and in somewhat more than an hour were entering the little village of Nazareth, pleasantly situated among fields the autumnal verdure of which indicated their fertility. Nazareth is a Moravian village, of four or five hundred inhabitants, looking pro digiously like a little town of the old world, except that it is more neatly kept. The houses are square and Eolid, of stone or brick, built immediately on the street ; a pavement of broad flags runs under their windows, and between the flags and the carriage-way is a row of trees. In the centre of tbe village is a square with an arcade fbr a market, and a little aside from the main street, in a hollow covered with bright green grass, is another square, in the midst of which stands a large white church. Near it is an avenue, with two immense lime-trees growing at the gate, leading to the field in which they bmy their dead. Looking iij)on this 316 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. square is a large building, three or four stories high, where a school for boys is kept, to which pupUs are sent from various parts of the country, and which enjoys a very good reputation. We entered the garden of this school, an inclosure thickly overshadowed with tall forest and exotic trees of various kinds, with shrubs below, and winding walks and summer-houses and benches. The boys of the school were amusing themselves under the trees, and ths arched walks were ringing with their shrill voices. We visited also the burying place, which is situated on a httle eminence, backed with a wood, and commands a view of the villags. The Moravian grave is simple in its decorations ; a small flat stone, of a square shape, lying in the midst, between the head and foot, is inscribed with the name of the dead, the time and place of his birth, and the time when, to use their own language, he " departed," and this is the sole epitaph. Bat innovations have been recently made on this simplicity ; a rhyming couplet or quatrain is now sometimes added, or a word in praise of the dead One recent grave was loaded with a thick tablet of white marble, which covered it entirely, and bore an inscription as voluminous as those in the burial places of other denom inations. The graves, as in all Moravian burying grounds, are arranged in regular rows, with paths at right angles between them, and sometimes a rose-tree is planted at the head of the sleeper. A PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN. 317 As we were leaving Nazareth, the innkeeper came to us, and asked if we would allow a man who was traveUing to Easton to take a seat in our carriage with the driver We consented, and a respectable-looking, well-clad, middle- aged person, made his appearance. When we had pro ceeded a httle way, we asked him some questions, to which he made no other reply than to shake his head, and we soon found that he understood no English. I tried him with German, which brought a ready reply in thesame language. He was a native of Pennsylvania, he told me, born at Snow HUl, in Lehigh county, not very many miles from Nazareth. In tum, he asked me where I came from, and when I bid him guess, he assigned my birthplace to Germany, which showed at least that he was not very accurately instructed in the diversities with which his mother tongue is spoken. As we entered Easton, the yellow woods on the hills and peaks that surround the place, were ht up with a glowing autmnnal sunset. Soon afterward we crossed the Lehigh, and took a walk along its bank in South Easton, where a little town has recently grown up ; the sidewalks along its dusty streets were freshly swept for Saturday night. As it began to grow dark, we found ourselves strolling in front of a row of iron mills, with the canal on one side and the Lehigh on the other. One of these was a rolling mill, into which we could look from the bank where we stood, and observe the whole process of the manufacture, which is very striking. 27* 318 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. The whole interior of the building is lighted at night only by the mouths of several furnaces, which are kindled to a white heat. Out of one of these a thick bar of iron, about six feet in length and heated to a perfect whiteness, is drawn, and one end of it presented to the cylinders of the mill, which seize it and draw it through between them, rolled out to three or four times its original size. A sooty workman grasps the opposite end of the bar with pincers as soon as it is fairly through, and returns it again to the cylinders, which deliver it again on the opposite side. In this way it passes backward and forward till it is rolled into an enormous length, and shoots across the black floor with a twining motion like a serpent of fire. At last, when pressed to the proper thinness and length, it is coiled up into a circle by the help of a machine contrived for the purpose, which rolls it up as a shopkeeper rolls up a ribbon. We found a man near where we stood, begrimed by the soot of the furnaces, handhng the clumsy masses of iron which bear the name of bloom. The rolling mUl, he said, belonged to Rodenbough, Stewart & Co., who had very extensive contracts for furnishing iron to the naUmakers and wire manufacturers. " Will they stop the mill for the new tariff?" said I. " They will stop for nothing," replied the man. " The new tariff is a good tariff, if people would but think so. It costs the iron-masters fifteen dollars a ton to make their iron, and they sell it for forty dollars a ton. If the new REVOLUTIONS OF OPINION. 319 tariff obliges them to sell it for considerable less they -will stUl make money.'' So revolves the cycle of opinion. Twenty years ago a Pennsylvanian who questioned the policy of the protective system would have been looked upon as a sort of curiosity. Now the bloomers and stable-boys begin to talk free trade. What will they talk twenty years hence ? 320 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. LETTER XL. B O S T O N. — L A W B E N 0 E. — ^P O R T L A N D. Portland, July 31, 1847. I LEFT Boston for this place, a few days since, by one of the railways. I, never come to Boston or go out of it without being agreeably struck with the civility and respec table appearance of the hackney-coachmen, the porters, and others for whose services the traveller has occasion. You feel, generaUy, in your intercourse -with these persons that you are dealing with men who have a character to main tain. There is a sober substantial look about the dwellings of Boston, which pleases me more than the gayer aspect of our own city. In New York we are careful to keep the outside of our houses fresh with paint, a practice which does not exist here, and which I suppose we inherited from the Hollanders, who learned it I know not where — could it have been from the Chinese ? The country houses of Holland, along the canals, are bright with paint, often of several different colors, and are as gay as pagodas. In their moist climate, where mould and moss so speedily THE NEW CITY OP LAWRENCE. 32J gather, the practice may be founded in better reasons than it is -with us. " Boston," said a friend to whom I spoke of the appear ance of comfort and thrift in that city, " is a much more crowded place than you imagine, and where people are crowded there can not be comfort. In many of the neigh borhoods, back of those houses which present so respectable an aspect, are buildings rising close to each other, inhabited by the poorer class, whose families are huddled together -without sufficient space and air, and here it is that Boston poverty hides itself You are more fortunate on your island, that your population can extend itself horizontally, instead of heaping itself up, as we have begun to do here." The first place which we could call pleasant after leaving Boston was Andover, where Stuart and Woods, now vener able with years, instruct the young orthodox ministers and missionaries of New England. It is prettily situated among green decli-vities. A httle beyond, at North Andover, we carae in sight of the roofs and spires of the new city of Law rence, which already begin to show proudly on the sandy and sterile banks of the Merrimac, a rapid and shallow river. A year ago last February, the buUding of the city was begun ; it has now five or six thousand inhabitants, and new colonists are daily thronging in. Brick kilns are smoking all over the country to supply matenals for the walls of the dwellings. The place, I was told, astonishes visitors with its bustle and confusion. The streets are en- 322 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. cumbered with heaps of fresh earth, and piles of stone, brick, beams, and boards, and people can with difficulty hear each other speak, for the constant thundering of hammers, and the shouts of cartmen and wagoners urging their oxen and horses with their loads through the deep sand of the ways. " Before the last shower," said a passenger, " you could hardly see the city from this spot, on account of the cloud of dust that hung perpetually over it." " Rome," says the old adage, " was not built in a day," but here is a city which, in respect of its growth, puts Rome to shame. The Romulus of this new city, who like the Latian of old, gives his name to the community of which he is the founder, is Mr. Abbot Lawrence, of Boston, a rich manufacturer, money-making and munificent, and more fortunate in building cities and endowing schools, than in foretelling political events. He is the modern Amphion, to the sound of whose music, the pleasant chink of dollars gathered in many a goodly dividend, aU the stones which form the foundation of this Thebes dance into their places, " And half the mountain rolls into a wall." Beyond Lawrence, in the state of New Hampshire, the train stopped a moment at Exeter, which those who dehght in such comparisons might call the Eton of New England. It is celebrated for its academy, where Bancroft, Everett, and I know not how many more of the New England scholars and men of letters, received the first rudiraents of OAK GROVE. 323 their education. It lies in a gentle depression of the surface of the country, not deep enough to be called a valley, on the banks of a httle stream, and has a pleasant retired aspect. At Durham, some ten miles further on, we found a long train of freight-cars crowded -with the children of a Sunday- school, just ready to set out on a pic-nic party, the boys shouting, and the girls, of whom the number was prodi gious, sho-wing us their smiling faces. A few middle-aged men, and a still greater number of matrons, were dispersed among them to keep them in order. At Dover, where are several cotton mills, we saw a simUar train, with a still larger crowd, and when we crossed the boundary of New Hampshire and entered South Ber-wiok in Maine, we passed through a sohtary forest of oaks, where long tables and benches had been erected for their reception, and the birds were t-wittering in the branches over them. At length the sight of numerous groups gathering blue berries, in an extensive tract of shrubby pasture, indicated that we were approaching a to-wn, and in a few minutes we had arrived at Portland. The conductor, whom we found inteUigent and communicative, recommended that we should take quarters, during our stay, at a plaee caUed the Veranda, or Oak Grove, on the water, about two miles from the to-wn, and we followed his advice. We drove through Portland, which is nobly situated on an eminence overlooldng Casco Bay, its maze of channels, and almost innumerable islands, -with their green slopes, cultivated S24 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. fields, and rocky shores. We passed one arm of the sea after another on bridges, and at length found ourselves on a fine bold promontory, between Presumpscot river and the waters of Casco Bay. Here a house of entertainment has just been opened — the beginning of a new watering-place. which I am sure will become a favorite one in the hot months of our summers. The surrounding country is so in tersected with straits, that, let the wind come from what quarter it may, it breathes cool over the waters ; and the tide, rising twelve feet, can not ebb and flow without push ing forward the air and drawing it back again, and thus causing a motion of the atmosphere in the stUlest weather. We passed twenty-four hours in this pleasant retreat, among the oaks of its grove, and along its rocky shores, enjoying the agreeable coolness of the fresh and bracing atmosphere. To tell the truth we Tiave found it quite cool enough ever since we reached Boston, five days ago ; some times, in fact, a little too cool for the thin garments we are accustomed to wear at this season. Retuming to Portland, we took passage in the steamer Huntress, for Augusta, up the Kennebeck. I thought to give you, in this letter, an account of this part of my journey, but I find I must reserve it for my next. ISLANDS OP CASCO BAY, 325 LETTER XLI. THE KENNEBECK. Keene, New Hampshire, August 11, 184*7. We, left Portland early in the afternoon, on board the steamer Huntress, and swept out of the harbor, among the numerous green islands which here break the swell of the Atlantic, and keep the water almost as smooth as that of the Hudson. " It is said," remarked a passenger, " that there are as many of these islands as there are days in the year, but I do not know that any body has ever counted them." Two ofthe loftiest, rock-bound, with verdant sum mits, and standing out beyond the rest, overlooking the main ocean, bore hght-houses, and near these we entered the mouth of the Kennebeck, which here comes into the sea between banks of massive rock. At the mouth of the river were forests of stakes, for the support of the nets in which salmon, shad, and alewives are taken. The shad fishery, they told me, was not yet over, though the month of August was already come. We passed some small -vUlages where we saw the keels of large un finished vessels lying high upon the stocks ; at Bath, one of the most considerable of these places, but a small vUlage 28 326 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. still, were five or six, on which the ship-buUders were busy. These, I was told, when once lamiched would never be seen again in the place where they were built, but would convey merchandise between the great ports of the world. " The activity of ship-building in the state of Maine," said a gentleman whom I afterward met, " is at this mo ment far greater than you can form any idea of, -avithout travelling along our coast. In solitary places where a stream or creek large enough to float a ship is found, our builders lay the keels of their vessels. It is not necessary that the channel should be wide enough for the ship to turn round ; it is enough if it will contain her lengthwise. They choose a bend in the river from which they can launch her with her head down stream, and, aided by the tide, float her out to sea, after which she proceeds to Boston or New York, or some other of our large seaports to do her part in carrying on the commerce ofthe world." I learned that the ship-builders of Maine purchase large tracts of forest in Virginia and other states of the south, for their supply of timber. They obtain their oaks from the Virginia shore, their hard pine from North Carolina ; the coverings of the deck and the smaUer timbers of the large vessels are furnished by Maine. They take to the south cargoes of lime and other products of Maine, and bring back the huge trunks produced in that region. The larger trees on the banks of the navigable rivers of Maine were long ago wrought into the keels of vessels. A SEAL IN THE KENNEBECK. 327 It was not far from Bath, and a considerable distance from the open sea, that we saw a large seal on a rock in the river. He turned his head slowly from side to side as we passed, -without aUowing himself to be disturbed by the noise we made, and kept his place as long as the eye could distinguish him. The presence of an animal always associa ted in the imagination with uninhabited coasts of the ocean, made us feel that we were advancing into a thinly or at least a newly peopled country. Above Bath, the channel of the Kennebeck -widens into what is called Merrymeeting Bay. Here the great Andro scoggin brings in its waters from the southwest, and various other smaU streams from different quarters enter the bay, making it a kind of Congress of Rivers. It is full of wooded islands and rocky promontories projecting into the water and overshading it -with their trees. As we passed up we saw, from time to time, farms pleasantly situated on the islands or the borders of the river, where a soU more genial or more easily tilled had tempted the settler to fix himself. At length we approached Gardiner, a flourishing village, beautifully situated among the hills on the right bank of the Kennebeck. All traces of sterility had already disap peared from the country ; the shores of the river were no longer rock-bound, but disposed in green terraces, with woody eminences behind them. Lea-ving Gardiner behind us, we went on to HaUoweU, a village bearing similar marks of prosperity, where we landed, and were taken iu 328 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. carriages to Augusta, the seat of government, three or four miles beyond. Augusta is a pretty village, seated on green and appa rently fertile eminences that overlook the Kennebeck, and itself overlooked by still higher summits, covered with woods. The houses are neat, and shaded -with trees, as is the case with all New England villages in the agricultural districts. I found the Legislature in session ; the Senate, a small quiet body, deliberating for aught I could see, with as much grave and tranquil dignity as the Senate of the United States. The House of Representatives was just at the moment occu pied by some railway question, which I was told excited more feeling than any subject that had been debated in the whole session, but even this occasioned no unseemly agita tion ; the surface was gently rippled, nothing more. While at Augusta, we crossed the river and visited the Insane Asylum, a state institution, lying on the pleasant de chvities of the opposite shore. It is a handsome stone build ing. One of the medical attendants accompanied us over a part of the building, and showed us some of the wards in which there were then scarcely any patients, and which ap peared to be in exceUent order, with the best arrangements for the comfort of the inmates, and a scrupulous attention to cleanhness. When we expressed a desire to see the pa tients, and to learn something of the manner in which they were treated, he rephed, " We do not make a show of our patients ; we only show the building." Our visit was, of MULTITUDE OP LAKES. 329 course, soon dispatched. We leamed afterward that this was either insolence or laziness on the part of the officer in question, whose business it properly was to satisfy any rea sonable curiosity expressed by visitors. It had been our intention to cross the country from Au gusta directly to the White Hills in New Hampshire, and we took seats in the stage-coach with that view. Back of Augusta the country sweUs into hills of considerable height -with deep hoUows between, in which lie a multitude of lakes. We passed several of these, beautifully embosomed among woods, meadows, and pastures, and were told that if we continued on the course we had taken we should scarcely ever find ourselves without some sheet of water in sight tiU we arrived at Fryeburg on the boundary between Maine and New Hampshire. One of them, in the township of Winthrop, struck us as particularly beautiful. Its shores are clean and bold, with little promontories ranning far into the water, and several small islands. At Winthrop we found that the coach in which we set out would proceed to Portland, and that if we intended to go on to Fryeburg, we must take seats in a shabby wagon, -without the least protection for our baggage. It was already beginning to rain, and this circumstance decided us ; we re mained in the coach and proceeded on our return to Port land. I have scarcely ever travelled in a country which presented a finer appearance of agricultural thrift and pros perity than the portions of the counties of Kennebeck and 330 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. Cumberland, through which our road carried us. The dwell ings are large, neatly painted, surrounded with fruit-trees and shrubs, and the farms in excellent order, and apparently productive. We descended at length into the low country, crossed the Androscoggin to the county of York, where, as we proceeded, the country became more sandy and sterile, and the houses had a neglected aspect. At length, after a jour ney of fifty or sixty miles in the rain, we were again set down in the pleasant town of Portland. TIIE Wri. LEV HOOSE. 331 LETTER XLIL THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. Springfield, Mass., August 13, 1847. I HAD not space in my last letter, which was written from Keene, in New Hampshire, to speak of a visit I had just made to the White Mountains, Do not think I am going to bore you with a set description of my journey and ascent of Mount Washington ; a few notes of the excursion may possibly amuse you. From Conway, where the stage-coach sets you down fbr the night, in sight of the summits of the mountains, the rflad to the Old Notch is a very picturesque one. You follow the path of the Saco along a wide valley, sometimes in the woods that overhang its banlc, and sometimes on the edge of rich grassy meadows, tiU at length, as you leave behind you one summit after another, you find yourself in a little plain, apparently inclosed on every side by mountains. Further on you enter the deep gorge which leads grad ually upward to the Notch. In the midst of it is situated the WiUey House, near which the Willey family were overtaken by an avalanche and perished as they were making their escape. It is now enlarged into a house of 332 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER, accommodation for visitors to the mountains. Nothing can exceed the aspect of desolation presented by the lofty mountain-ridges which rise on each side. They are streaked -with the paths of landslides, occurring at different periods, which have left the rocky ribs of the mountains bare from their bald tops to the forests at their feet, and have filled the sides of the valley with heaps of earth, gravel, .stones, and trunks of trees. From the Willey house you ascend, for about two miles, a declivity, by no means steep, with these dark ridges frowning over you, your path here and there crossed by streams which have made for themselves passages in the granite sides of the mountains like narrow staircases, down which they come tumbling from one vast block to another. I afterward made acquaintance with two of these, and followed them upward from one clear pool and one white cascade to another till I was tired. The road at length passes through what raay be compared to a natural gate way, a narrow chusm between tall cliffs, and through which the Saco, now a mere brook, finds its way. You find j'our- self in a green opening, looking like the bottom of a drained lake with mountain summits around you. Here is one of the houses of accommodation frora which you ascend Mount W^ashington. If you should ever think of ascending Mount Washington, do not allow any of the hotel-keepers to cheat you in regard to the distance. It is about ten miles from either the SCENERY OP THE WHITE MOUNTAINS, 333 hotels to the summit, and very little less from any of them. They keep a set of worn-out horses, which they hire for the season, and which are trained to chmb the raountain, in a walk, by the worst bridle-paths in the world. The poor hacks are generally tolerably sure-footed, but there are exceptions to this. Guides are sent with the visitors, who generally go on foot, strong-legged men, carry ing long staves, and watching the ladies lest any accident should occur ; some of these, especially those from the house in the Notch, commonly called Tom Crawford's, are un mannerly feUows enough. The scenery of these mountains has not been sufficiently praised. But for the glaciers, but for the peaks white with perpetual snow, it would be scarcely worth while to see Switzerland after seeing the White Mountains, The depth of the vaUeys, the steepness of the mountain-sides, the variety of aspect shown by their summits, the deep gulfs of forest below, seamed with the open courses of rivers, the vast extent of the mountain region seen north and south of us, gleaming with many lakes, took me with surprise and astonishment. Imagine the forests to be shorn from half the broad declivities — imagine scattered habitations on the thick green turf and footpaths leading from one to the other, and herds and flocks browzing, and you have Switzerland before you, I admit, however, that these accessories add to the variety and interest of the landscape, and perhaps heighten the idea of its vastness. 334 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. I have been told, however, that the White Mountains in autumn present an aspect more glorious than even the splendors of the perpetual ice of the Alps. All this mighty multitude of mountains, rising from vaUeys filled with dense forests, have then put on their hues of gold and scarlet, and, seen more distinctly on account of their brightness of color, seem to tower higher in the clear blue of the sky. At that season of the year they are little visited, and only awaken the wonder of the occasional traveller. It is not necessary to ascend Mount Washington, to enjoy the finest views. Some of the lower peaks offer grander though not so extensive ones ; the height of the main sum mit seems to diminish the size of the objects beheld from it. The sense of solitude and immensity is however most strongly felt on that great cone, overlooking all the rest, and formed of loose rocks, which seem as if broken into frag ments by the power which upheaved these ridges from the depths of the earth below. At some distance on the north ern side of one of the summits, I saw a large snow-drift lying in the August sunshine. The Franconia Notch, which we afterwards visited, is almost as remarkable for the two beautiful little lakes within it, as for the savage grandeur of the mountain-walls between which it passes. At this place I was shown a hen clucking over a brood of young puppies. They were littered near the nest where she was sitting, when she immediately abandoned her eggs and adopted them as her offspring. A HEN MOTHER OF PUPPIES. 335 She had a battle with the mother, and proved victorious ; after which, however, a compromise took place, the slut nursing the puppies and the hen covering them as well as she could with her wings. She was strutting among them when I saw her, with an appearance of pride at having produced so gigantic a brood. From Franconia we proceeded to Bath, on or near the Connecticut, and entered the lovely valley of that river, which is as beautiful in New Hampshire, as in any part of its course. Hanover, the seat of Dartmouth College, is a pleasant spot, but the traveUer will find there the worst hotels on the river. Windsor, on the Vermont side, is a still finer -village, with trim gardens and streets shaded by old trees ; Bellows Falls is one of the most striking places for its scenery in all New England, The coach brought us to the railway station in the pleasant village of Greenfield. We took seats in the train, and leavuig on our left the quiet old streets of Deerfield under their ancient trees, and passing a dozen or more of the villages on the meadows of the Con necticut, found ourselves in less than two hours in this flourishing place, which is rapidly rising to be one of the most important towns in New England. 336 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. LETTER XLIII. A PASSAGE TO SAVANNAH. Augusta, Georgia, March 29, 1849. A QUIET passage by sea from New York to Savannah would seem to afford little matter for a letter, yet those who take the trouble to read what I am about to write, -will, I hope, admit that there are some things to be observed, even on such a voyage. It was indeed a remarkably quiet one, and worthy of note on that account, if on no other. We had a quiet vessel, quiet weather, a quiet, good-natured captain, a quiet crew, and remarkably quiet passengers. When we left the wharf at New York last week, in the good steamship Tennessee, we were not conscious, at first, as we sat in the cabin, that she was in motion and proceed ing down the harbor. There was no beating or churning of the sea, no struggling to get forward ; her paddles played in the water as smoothly as those of a terrapin, without jar or noise. The Tennessee is one of the tightest and strongest boats that navigate our coast ; the very flooring of her deck is composed of timbers instead of planks, and helps to keep her massive frame more compactly and solidly together. It was hei' first voyage ; her fifty-one passengers loUed on sofas PASSENGERS IN THE STEAMER. 337 fresh from the upholsterer's, and slept on mattresses which had never been pressed by the human form before, in state rooms where foul air had never collected. Nor is it possible that the ah should become impure in them to any great de gree, for the Tennessee is the best- ventilated ship I ever wa,? in ; the main cabin and the state-rooms are connected with each other and with the deck, by numerous openings and pipes whieh keep up a constant circulation of air in every part. I have spoken of the passengers as remarkably quiet per sons. Several of them, I beheve, never spoke during thc passage, at least so it seemed to me. The silence would have been almost irksome, but for two lively little girls who amused us by their prattle, and two young women, appa rently just married, too happy to do any thing but laugh, eveu when suffering from seasickness, and whom we now and then heard shouting and squealing from their state-rooms. There were two dark-haired, long-limbed gentlemen, who lay the greater part of the first and second day at full length on the sofas in the after-cabin, each with a spittoon before him, chewing tobacco with great rapidity and industry, and apparently absorbed in the endeavor to fiU it within a given time. There -was another, with that atrabilious complexion peculiar to marshy countries, and circles of a stUl deeper hue about his eyes, who sat on deck, speechless and motionless, wholly indifferent to the sound of the dinner-beU, his coun tenance fixed in an expression which seemed to indicate an utter disgust of life. 29 338 LETTEU.S OF A TRAVELLER. Yet we had some snatches of good talk on the voyage. A robust old gentlemah, a native of Norwalk, in Connecticut, told us that he had been reading a history of that place by the Rev. Mr. HaU. " I find," said he, " that in his account ofthe remarkable people of Norwalk, he has omitted to speak of two of the most remarkable, two spinsters, Sarah and Phebe Comstock, relatives of mine and friends of my youth, of whom I retain a vivid recoUection. They were in opulent circumstances for the neighborhood in which they lived, possessing a farm of about two hundred acres ; they were industrious, frugal, and extremely charitable ; but they never relieved a poor family without visiting it, and inquiring carefully into its circumstances. Sarah was the housekeeper, and Phebe the farmer. Phebe knew nothing of kitchen matters, but she knew at what time of the year greensward should be broken up, and corn planted, and potatoes dug. She dropped Indian corn and sowed English grain with her own hands. In the time of planting or of harvest, it was Sarah who visited and relieved the poor. "I remember that they had various ways of employing the j'oung people who called upon them. If it was late in the autumn, there was a chopping-board and chopping-knife ready, with the feet of neat-cattle, from which the oily parts had been extracted by boiling. ' You do not want to be idle,' they would say, ' chop this meat, and you shaU have your share of the mince-pies that we are going to make.' OLD TIMES IN C O .%' N E C T I 0 U T, 339 At other times a supply of old woollen stockings were ready for unraveling. ' We know you do not care to be idle,' they would say, ' here are some stockings which you would obhge us by unravehng.' If you asked what use they made of the spools of wooUen thread obtained by this pro cess, they woiUd answer : ' We use it as the weft of the linsey-woolsey with which we clothe our negroes.' They had negro slaves in those times, and old Tone, a faithful black servant of theirs, who has seen more than a hundred years, is alive yet. " They practiced one very peculiar piece of economy. The white hickory you know, yields the purest and sweetest of saccharine juices. They had their hickory fuel cut into short billets, which before placing on the fire they laid on the andirons, a little in front ofthe blaze, so as to subject it to a pretty strong heat. This caused the syrup in the wood tp drop from each end of the billet, where it was caught in a cup, and in this way a gallon or two was collected in the course of a fortnight. With this they flavored their finest cakes. " They died about thirty years since, one at the age of eighty-nine, and the other at the age of ninety. On the tomb-stone of one of them, it was recorded that she had been a member of the church for seventy years. Their father was a remarkable man in his way. He was a rich raan in his time, and kept a park of deer, one of the last known in Connecticut, fbr the purpose of supplying his table 340 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. with venison. He prided himself on the strict and hteral ftdfiUment of his word. On one occasion he had a law-suit with one of his neighbors, before a justice of the peace, in which he was cast and ordered to pay ten shillings damages, and a shUling as the fees of court. He paid the ten shil lings, and asked the justice whether he would allow him to pay the remaining shilling when he next passed his door. The magistrate readily consented, but from that time old Comstock never went by his house. Whenever he had oc casion to go to church, or to any other place, the direct road to which led by the justice's door, he was careful to take a lane which passed behind the dweUing, and at some dis tance from it. The shilling remained unpaid up to the day of his death, and it was found that in his last will he had directed that his corpse should be carried by that lane to the place of interment." When we left the quarantine ground on Thursday mom ing, after lying moored aU night with a heavy rain beating on the deck, the sky was beginning to clear with a strong northwest wind and the decks were slippery with ice. ^Tien the sun rose it threw a cold white light upon the waters, and the passengers who appeared on deck were muffled to the eyes. As we proceeded southwardly, the temperature grew milder, and the day closed with a calm and pleasant sunset. The next day the weather was slill mUder, untU about noon, when we arrived off Cape Hat teras a strong wind set in from the northeast, clouds ^'ii'.h- A SOFTER CLIMATE, 341 ered with a showery aspect, and every thing seemed to betoken an impending storm. At this moment the captain shifted the direction of the voyage, from south to southwest ; we ran befbre the wind leaving the storm, if there was any, behind us, and the day closed with another quiet and bril liant sunset. The next day, the third of our voyage, broke upon us like a day hi summer, with amber-colored sunshine and the blandest breezes that ever blew. An awning was stretched over the deck to protect us from the beams of the sun, and aU the passengers gathered under it ; the two dark-com plexioned gentlemen left the task of filling the spittoons be low, and came up to chew their tobacco on deck ; the atra- bihous passenger was seen to interest himself in the direction of the compass, and once was thought to smile, and the hale old gentleman repeated the history of his Norwalk relatives. On the fourth morning we landed at Savannah. It -was delightful to eyes which had seen only russet fields and leaf less trees for months, to gaze on the new and delicate green ofthe trees and the herbage. The weeping wiUows drooped in full leaf the later oaks were putting forth their new foliage, the locust-trees had hung out their tender sprays and their clusters of blossoms not yet unfolded, the Chinese -wistaria covered the sides of houses with its festoons of blue blossoms, and roses were nodding at us in the wind, from the tops of the brick waUs which surround the gardens. Yet winter had been here, I saw. The orange-trees whieh, 29* 312 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. since the great frost seven or eight years ago, had sprung from the ground and grown to the height of fifteen or twenty feet, had a few days before my arrival felt another severe frost, and stood covered with sere dry leaves in the gardens, some of them yet covered with fruit. The trees were not killed, however, as formerly, though they wiU produce no fruit this season, and new leaf-buds were beginning to sprout on their boughs. The dwarf-orange, a hardier tree, had escaped entirely, and its blossoms were beginning to open. I visited Bonaventure, which I formerly described in one of my letters. It has lost the interest of utter soli tude aud desertion which it then had. A Gothic cottage has been built on the place, and the avenues of live-oaks have buen surrounded with an inclosure, for the purpose of making a cemetery on the spot. Yet there they stand, as solemn as ever, lifting and stretching their long irregular branches overhead, hung with masses and festoons of gray moss. It almost seemed, when I looked up to them, as if the clouds had come nearer to the earth than is their wont, and formed themselves into the shado-wy ribs of the vault above me. The drive to Bonaventure at this season of the year is very beautiful, though the roads are sandy ; it is partly along an avenue of tall trees, and partly through the woods, where the dog-wood and azalea and thorn-trees are in blossom, and the ground is sprinkled with flowers. Here and there are dweUings beside the road, " They are unsafe the greater part of the year," said the gentleman who VAST QUANTITIES OF COTTON. oi) drove me out, and who spoke from professional knowledge, " a summer residence in them is sure to bring dangerous fevers." Savannah is a healthy city, but it is like Rome, imprisoned by malaria. The city of Savannah, since I saw it six years ago, has enlarged considerably, and the additions made to it increase its beauty. The streets have been extended on the south side, on the same plan as those of the rest of the city, with small parks at short distances from each other, planted with trees; and the new houses are handsome and well-built. The communications opened -with the interior by long lines of railway have, no doubt, been the principal occasion of this prosperity. These and the Savannah river send enor mous quantities of cotton to the Savannah market. One should see, with the bodily eye, the multitude of bales of this commodity accumulating in the warehouses and else where, in order to form an idea of the extent to which it is produced in the southem states — long trains of cars heaped with bales, steamer after steamer loaded high with bales coining down the rivers, acres of bales on the wharves, acres of bales at the railway stations — one should see all this, and theu carry his thoughts to the miUions of the civilized world who are clothed by this great staple of our country. I came to this place by steamer to Charleston and then by railway. The line of the railway, one hundred and thirty- seven mUes in length, passes through the most unproductive district of South Carohna. It is in fact nothing but a waste 344 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. of forest, with here and there an open field, half a dozen glimpses of plantations, and about as many viUages, none of which are considerable, and some of which consist of not more than half a dozen houses. Aiken, however, sixteen miles before you reach the Savannah river, has a pleasant aspect. It is situated on a comparatively high tract of country, sandy and barren, but healthy, and hither the planters resort in the hot months from their homes in the less salubrious districts. Pretty cottages stand dispersed among the oaks and pines, and immediately west of the place the country descends in pleasant undulations towards the valley of the Savannah. The appearance of Augusta struck me very agreeably as I reached it, on a most delightful afternoon, which seemed to me more like June than March. I was dehghted to see turf again, regular greensward of sweet grasses and clover, such as you see in May in the northern states, and do not meet on the coast in the southern states. The city lies on a broad rich plain on the Savannah river, with woody declivities to the north and west. I have seen several things her 3 since my arrival which interested me much, and if I can command time I will speak of them in another letter. AUGUSTA IN GEORGIA. 345 LETTER XLIV. SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS. Barnwell District, South CaroUna, i Jfarch 31, 1849. ) I PROMISED to say something more of Augusta if I had time before departing from Cuba, and I find that I have a few moments to spare for a hasty letter. The people of Augusta boast of the beauty of their place, and not without some reason. The streets are broad, and in some parts overshadowed with rows of fine trees. The banks of the river on which it stands are high and firm, and slopes half covered with forest, of a pleasant aspect, over look it from the west and from the Carolina side. To the south stretches a broad champaign country, on which are some of the finest plantations of Georgia. I visited one of these, consisting of ten thousand acres, kept throughout in as perfect order as a small farm at the north, though large enough for a German principahty. But what interested me most, was a visit to a cotton miU in the neighborhood, — a sample of a class of manufac turing establishments, where the poor white people of this state and of South Carohna find occupation. It is a large 346 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. manufactory, and the machinery is in as perfect order as in any of the mills at the north. " Here," said a gentleman who accompanied us, as we entered the long apartment in the second story, " you will see a sample of the brunettes of the piny woods." The girls of various ages, who are employed at the spindles, had, for the most part, a sallow, sickly com plexion, and in many of their faces, I remarked that look of mingled distrust and dejection which often accompanies the condition of extreme, hopeless poverty. " These poor girls," said one of our party, " think themselves extremely for tunate to be employed here, and accept work gladly. They come fiom the most barren parts of Carolina and Georgia, where their families live wretchedly, often upon unwholesome food, and as idly as wretchedly, for hitherto there has been no manual occupation provided for them from which they do not shrink as disgraceful, on account of its being the occupation of slaves. In these factories negroes are not employed as operatives, and this gives the calhng of the factory girl a certain dignity. You would be surprised to see the change which a short time effects in these poor people. They come barefooted, dirty, and in rags ; they are scoured, put into shoes and stockings, set at work and sent regularly to the Sunday-schools, where they are taught what none of them have been taught before — to read and write. In a short time they became expert at their work ; they lose their sullen shyness, and their physiognomy becomes WHITE LAI30RERS IN THE MILLS. 347 comparatively open and cheerful. Their families are re lieved from the temptations to theft and other shameful courses which accompany the condition of poverty withoul occupation." " They have a good deal of the poke-easy manner of the piny woods about them yet," said one of our party, a Georgian. It was true, I perceived that they had not yet acquired all that alacrity and quickness in their work which you see in the work-people of the New England miUs. In one of the upper stories I saw a girl of a clearer complexion than the rest, with two long curls swinging behind each ear, as she stepped about with the air of a duchess. " That girl is from the north," said our con ductor ; " at first we placed an expert operative from the north in each story of the building as an instructor and pattern to the rest." I have since learned that some attempts were made at first to induce the poor white people to work side by side ¦with the blacks in these mills. These utterly failed, and the question then became with the proprietors whether they should employ blacks only or whites only ; whether they should give these poor people an occupation which, while it tended to elevate their condition, secured a more expert class of work-people than the negroes could be ex pected to become, or whether they should rely upon the less intelhgent and more neghgent services of slaves. They de cided at length upon banishing the labor of blacks from their 348 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. miUs. At Graniteville, in South Carolina, about ten miles from the Savannah river, a neat little manufacturing village has lately been built up, where the families of the crackers, as they are called, reclaimed from their idle lives in the woods, are settled, and white labor only is employed. The enterprise is said to be in a most prosperous condition. Only coarse cloths are made in these mills — strong, thick fabrics, suitable for negro shirting — and the demand for this land of goods, I am told, is greater than the supply. Every yard made in this manufactory at Augusta, is taken off as soon as it leaves the loom. I fell in with a northem man in the course of the day, who told me that these mills had driven the northern manufacturer of coarse cottons out Of the southern market, " The buildings are erected here more cheaply,'' he con tinued, " there is far less expense in fuel, and the wages of the workpeople are less. At first the boys and girls of the cracker families were engaged for little more than their board ; their wages are now better, but they are still low. I am about to go to the north, and I shall do my best to persuade some of my friends, who have been almost ruined by this southern competition, to come to Augusta and set up cotton mills." There is water-power at Augusta sufficient to turn the machinery of many large estabhshments. A canal fi-om the Savannah river brings in a large volume of water, which passes from level to level, and might be made to turn the SOMERVILLE. 349 spuidles and drive the looms of a populous manufacturing town. Such it -will become, if any faith is to be placed in present indications, and a considerable manufacturing popu lation will be settled at this place, drawn from the half- wild inhabitants of the most barren parts of the southern states. I look upon the introduction of manufactures at the south as an event of the most favorable promise for that part of the country, since it both condenses a class of population too thinly scattered to have the benefit of the institutions of civilized life, of education and religion — and restores one branch of labor, at least, to its proper dignity, in a region where manual labor has been the badge of ser-vitude and dependence. One of the pleasantest spots in the neighborhood of Augusta is Somerville, a sandy eminence, covered with woods, the shade of which is carefully cherished, and in the midst of which are numerous cottages and country seats, closely embowered in trees, with pleasant paths leading to them from the highway. Here the evenings in summer are not so oppressively hot as in the to-wn below, and dense as the shade is, the air is dry and elastic. Hither many famUies retire during the hot season, and many reside here the year round. We drove through it as the sun was setting, and caUed at the dwelhngs of several of the hos pitable inhabitants. The next morning the railway train brought us to Barnwell District, in South Carolina, where I -write this. 30 350 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. I intended to send you some notes of the agricultural changes which I ha,ve observed in this part of South Caro lina since I was last here, but I have hardly time to do it. The culture of wheat has been introduced, many planters now raising enough for their own consumption. The sugar cane is also planted, and quantities of sugar and molasses are often made suflicient to supply the plantations on which it is cultivated. Spinning-wheels and looms have come into use, and a strong and dm'able cotton cloth is woven by the negro women for the wear of the slaves. AU this shows a desire to make the most of the recources of the country, and to protect the planter against the embar rassments which often arise from the fluctuating prices of the great staple of the south — cotton. But I have no time to dwell upon this subject. To-morrow I sail for Cuba. THE FLORIDA REEPS, 35] LETTER XLV. THE FLORIDA OOAS T. — K E Y WEST. Havana, April 1, 1849. It was a most agreeable voyage which I made in the steamer Isabel, to this port, the wind in our favor the whole distance, fine bright weather, the temperature passing graduaUy from what we have it in New York at the end of May, to what it is in the middle of June. The Isabel is a noble sea-boat, of great strength, not so well ventilated as the Tennessee, in which we came to Savannah, with spa cious and comfortable cabins, and, I am sorry to say, rather duty state-rooms. We stopped off Savannah near the close of the first day of our voyage, to leave some of our passengers and take in others ; and on the second, which was also the second of the month, we were running rapidly down the Florida coast, -with the trade-wind fresh on our beam, sweeping be fore it a long swell from the east, in which our vessel rooked too much for the stomachs of most of the passengers. The next day the sea was smoother ; we had changed our direc tion somewhat and were going before the wind, the Florida 352 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. reefs full in sight, with their long streak of white surf, be yond which, along the line of the shore, lay a belt of water, of bright translucent green, and in front the waves wore an amethystine tint. We sat the greater part of the day under an awning. A long line, with a baited hook at the end, was let down into the water from the stern of our vessel, and after being dragged there an hour or two, it was seized by a king-fish, which was immediately hauled on board. It was an elegantly shaped fish, weighing nearly twenty pounds, with a long head, and scales shining -with blue and purple. It was served up for dinner, and its flavor much commended by the amateurs. The waters around us were full of sails, gleaming in the sunshine. " They belong," said our Charleston pilot, " to the wreckers who live at Key West. Every morning they come out and cruise among the reefs, to discover if there are any vessels wrecked or in distress — the night brings them back to the harbor on their island." Your readers know, I presume, that at Key West is a town containing nearly three thousand inhabitants, who subsist solely by the occupation of relie-ving vessels in dis tress navigating this dangerous coast, and bringing in such as are wrecked. The population, of course, increases -with the commerce of the country, and every vessel that sails from our ports to the Gulf of Mexico, or comes from the Gulf to the North, every addition to the intercourse of the Atlantic ports -with Mobile, New Orleans, the West Indies, DANGEROUS NAVIGATION. 353 or Central America, adds to their chances of gain. These people neither plant nor sow; their isle is a low barren spot, surrounded by a beach of white sand, formed of dis integrated porous hmestone, and a covering of the same sand, spread thinly over the rock, forms its soil. " It is a scandal," said the pilot, " that this coast is not better lighted, A few light-houses would make its naviga tion much safer, and they would be built, if Florida had any man in Congress to represent the matter properly to the government. I have long been familiar with this coast — sixty times, at least, I have made the voyage from Charles ton to Havana, and I am sure that there is no such danger ous navigation on the coast of the LTnited States. In going to Havana, or to New Orleans, or to other ports on the gulf, commanders of vessels try to avoid the current of the gulf- stream which would carry them to the north, and they, therefore, shave the Florida coast, and keep near the reefs which you see yonder. They often strike the reefs inad vertently, or are driven against them by storms. In return ing northward the navigation is safer ; we give a good offing to the reefs and strike out into the gulf-stream, the current of which carries us in the direction of our voyage." A httle before nine o'clock we had entered the little harbor of Key West, and were moored in its still waters. It was a bright moonlight evening, and we rambled two or three hours about the town and the island. The hull of a dis- 30* 354 LETTEIiS OF A TRAVELLER. masted vessel lay close by our landing-place ; it had no name on bow or stem, and had just been found abandoned at sea, and brought in by the wreckers ; its cargo, consist ing of logwood, had been taken out and lay in piles on the wharf This town has principally grown up since the Florida war. The habitations have a comfortable appear ance ; some of them are quite neat, but the sterUity of the place is attested by the want of gardens. In some of the inclosures before the houses, however, there were tropical shrubs in flower, and here the cocoanut-tree was growing, and other trees of the palm kind, which rustled -with a sharp dry sound in the fresh -wind from the sea. They were the first palms I had seen growing in the open air, and they gave a tropical aspect to the place. We fell in with a man who had hved thirteen years at Key West. He told us that its three thousand inhabitants had four places of worship — an Episcopal, a Cathohc, a Methodist, and a Baptist church ; and the drinking-houses which we saw open, -with such an elaborate display of bottles and decanters, were not resorted to by the people of the place, but were the haunt of English and American sailors, whom the disasters, or the regular voyages of their vessels had brought hither. He gave us an account of the hurricane of September, 1846, which overflowed and laid waste the island. " Here where we stand," said he, "the water was four feet deep at least. I saved my family in a boat, and A HURRICANE AND PLOOD. 355 carried them to a higher part of the island. Two houses which I owned were swept away by the flood, and I was mined. Most of the houses were unroofed by the wind ; every vessel belonging to the place was lost ; dismasted hulks were floating about, and nobody knew to whom they belonged, and dead bodies of men and women lay scattered along the beach. It was the worst hurricane ever kno-wn at Key West ; before it came, we used to have a hurri cane regularly once in two years, but we have had none since." A beU was rung about this time, and we asked the reason. " It is to signify that the negroes must be at their homes," answered the man. We inquired if there were many blacks in the place. " Till lately,'' he replied, " there were about eighty, but since the United States government has begun to build the fort yonder, their number has increased. Several broken-down planters, who have no employment for their slaves, have sent them to Key West to be employed by the government. We do not want them here, and -wish that the government would leave them on the hands of their masters." On the fourth morning when we went on deck, the coast of Cuba, a ridere of dim hills, was in sight, and our vessel was rolhng in the unsteady waves of the gulf stream, which here beat against the northern shore of the island. It was a hot moming, as the mornings in this climate always are tUl the periodical breeze springs up, about ten o'clock, and 356 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. refreshes all the islands that lie in the embrace of the gulfi In a short time, the cream-colored walls of the Moro, the strong castle which guards the entrance to the harbor of Havana, appeared rising from the waters. We passed elose to the cliffs on which it is built, were hailed in English, a gun was fired, our steamer darted through a narrow entrance into the harbor, and anchored in the midst of what appeared a still inland lake. The city of Havana has a cheerful appearance seen from the harbor. Its massive houses, built for the most part of the porous rock of the island, are covered with stucco, generally of a white or cream color, but often stained sky- blue or bright yellow. Above these rise the dark towers and domes of the churches, apparently built of a more durable material, and looking more venerable for the gay color of the dwellings amidst which they stand. The extensive fortifications of CabaBas cro-wn the heights on that side of the harbor which lies opposite to the town ; and south of the city a green, fertile valley, in which stand scattered palm-trees, stretches towards the pleasant village of Cerro. We lay idly in the stream for two hours, till the authori ties of the port could find time to visit us. They arrived at last, and without coming on board, subjected the captain to a long questioning, and searched the newspapers he brought for intelligence relating to the health of the port from which he sailed. At last they gave us leave to land, LANDING AT HAVANA. 357 without undergoing a quarantine, and withdrew, taking with them our passports. We went on shore, and after three hours further delay got our baggage through the custom-house. 358 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. LETTER XLVI. Havana, April 10, 1849. I FIND that it requires a greater effort of resolution to sit down to the -writing of a long letter in this soft chmate, than in the country I have left. I feel a temptation to sit idly, and let the grateful wind from the sea, coming in at the broad windows, flow around me, or read, or talk, as I happen to have a book or a companion. That there is something in a tropical climate which indisposes one to vigorous exertion I can well believe, from what I experience in myself, and what I see around me. The ladies do not seem to take the least exercise, except an occasional drive on the Paseo, or pubhc park ; they never walk out, and when they are shopping, which is no less the vocation of their sex here than in other civilized countries, they never descend from their volantes, but the goods are brought out by the obsequious shopkeeper, and the lady makes her choice and discusses the price as she sits in her carriage. Yet the women of Cuba show no tokens of delicate health. Freshness of color does not belong to a latitude so near the equator, but they have plump figures, placid, un- AIRY ROOMS. 369 wrinkled countenances, a well-developed bust, and eyes, the briUiant languor of which is not the languor of illness. The girls as weU as the young men, have rather narrow shoulders, but as they advance in life, the chest, in the women particularly, seems to expand from year to year, tUl it attains an amplitude by no means common in our country. I fuUy believe that this effect, and their general health, in spite of the inaction in which they pass their lives, is owing to the free circulation of air through their apartments. For in Cuba, the women as well as the men may be said to live in the open air. They know nothing of close rooms, in aU the island, and nothing of foul air, and to this, I have no doubt, quite as much as to the mildness of the temper ature, the friendly effect of its climate upon invalids from the north is to be ascribed. Theu- ceihngs are extremely lofty, and the wide windows, extending from the top of the room to the floor and guarded by long perpendicular bars of iron, are without glass, and when closed are generally only closed with blinds which, while they break the force of the wind when it is too strong, do not exclude the air. Since I have been on the island, I may be said to have breakfasted and dined and supped and slept in the open air, in an atmosphere which is never in repose except for a short time in the moming after sunrise. At other times a breeze is always stirring, in the day-time bringing in the ah from the ocean, and at night drawing it out again to the sea. 360 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. In walking through the streets of the towns in Cuba, I have been entertained by the glimpses I had through the ample windows, of what was going on in the parlors. Sometimes a curtain hanging before them allowed me only a sight of the small hands which clasped the bars of the grate, and the dusky faces and dark eyes peeping into the street and scanning the passers by. At other times, the whole room was seen, with its furniture, and its female forms sitting in languid postures, courting the breeze as it entered from without. In the evening, as I passed along the narrow sidewalk of the narrow streets, I have been startled at finding myself almost in the midst of a merry party gathered about the window of a briUiantly lighted room, and chattering the soft Spanish of the island in voices that sounded strangely near to me. I have spoken of their languid postures : they love to recline on sofas ; their houses are filled with rocking-chairs imported from the United States ; they are fond of sitting in chairs tilted against the wall, as we sometimes do at home. Indeed they go beyond us in this respect ; for in Cuba they have invented a kind of chair which, by lowering the back and raising the knees, places the sitter precisely in the posture he would take if he sat in a chair leaning backward against a wall. It is a luxurious attitude, I must own, and I do not wonder that it is a favorite with lazy people, for it relieves one of all the trouble of keeping the body upright. It is the women who form the large majority of the wor- DEVOTION OP THE WOMEN. 361 shipers in the churches. I landed here in Passion Week, and the next day was Holy Thursday, when not a vehicle on wheels of any sort is allowed to be seen in the streets ; and the ladies, contrary to their custom during the rest of the year, are obhged to resort to th-e churches on foot. Negro servants of both sexes were seen passing to and fro, carryinj;- iilats on which their mistresses were to kneel in the morning service. All the white female population, young and old, were dressed in black, with black lace veils. In the after noon, three wooden or waxen images of the size of life, rep resenting Christ in the different stages of his passion, were placed in the spacipus Church of St. Catharine, which was so thronged that I found it difficult to enter. Near the door was a figure of the Saviour sinking under the weight of his cross, and the worshipers were kneeling to kiss his feet. Aged negro men and women, half-naked negi-o children, ladies richly attired, little girls in Parisian dresses, with lustrous black eyes and a profusion of ringlets, cast them selves down before the image, and pressed their lips to its feet m a passion of devotion. Mothers led up their little ones, and showed thera how to perform this act of adoration. I saw matrons and young women rise from it with their eyes red with tears. The next day, which was Good Friday, about t-wUight, a long procession came trailing slowly through the streets under my window, bearing an image of the dead Christ, lying upon a cloth of gold. It was accompanied by a body 31 3lj::i- LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. of soldiery, holding their muskets reversed, and a band play ing plaintive tunes; the crowd uncovered their heads as it passed. On Saturday morning, at ten o'clock, the solemnities of holy week were over ; the beUs rang a merry peal ; hun dreds of volantes and drays, which had stood ready har nessed, rushed into the streets ; the city became suddenly noisy with the rattle of wheels and the tramp of horses : the shops which had been shut for the last two days, were opened ; and the ladies, in white or hght-colored muslins, were proceeding in their volantes to purchase at the shops their costumes for the Easter festivities. I passed the evening on the Plaza de Armas, a public square in front of the Governor's house, planted with palms and other trees, paved with broad flags, and bordered with a row of benches. It was crowded with people in their best dresses, the ladies mostly in white, and without boimets, for the bonnet in this country is only wom while traveUing. Chairs had been placed fbr them in a double row around the edge of the square, and a row of volantes surrounded the square, in each of which sat two or more ladies, the ample folds of their muslin dresses flowing out on each side over the steps of the carriage. The Governor's band played various airs, martial and civic, with great beauty of execution. The music continued - for two hours, and the throng, with only occasional intervals of conversation, seemed to give them selves up wholly to the enjoyment of listening to it. It was a bright moonlight night, so bright that one might CASCARILLA. 363 almost see to read, and the temperature the finest I can con ceive, a gentle breeze rustling among the palms overhead. I was surprised at seeing around me so many fair brows and snowy necks. It is the moonlight, said I to myself, or per haps it is the effect of the white dresses, for the complexions of these ladies seem to differ several shades from those which I saw yesterday at the churches. A female acquaintance has since given me another solution of the matter. " The reason," she said, " of the difference you perceived is this, that during the ceremonies of holy week they take off the cascarilla from their faces, and appear in their natural complexions." I asked the meaning of the word cascarilla, which I did not remember to have heard before, "It is the favorite cosmetic of the island, and is made of egg-shells finely pulverized. They often fairly plaster their faces -with it, I have seen a dark-skinned lady as white almost as raarble at a bal]. They will sometimes, at a morning call or an evening party, withdraw to repair the cascarilla on their faces." I do not vouch for this tale, but tell it " as it was told to me." Perhaps, after all, it was the moonlight which had produced this transformation, though I had noticed sorae thing of the same improvement of complexion just before sunset, on the Paseo Isabel, a public park without the city waUs, planted with rows of trees, where, every afternoon, the gentry of Havana drive backward and forward in their 364 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. volantes, with each a glittering harness, and a liveried negro bestriding, in large jack-boots, the single horse whieh draws the vehicle. I had also the same afternoon visited the receptacle into which the population of the city are swept when the game of life is played out — the Campo Santo, as it is called, or public cemetery of Havana. Going out of the city at the gate nearest the sea, I passed through a street of the wretchedest houses I had seen ; the ocean was roaring at my right on the coral rocks which form the coast. The dingy habitations were soon left behind, and I saw the waves, pushed forward by a fresh wind, flinging their spray almost into the road ; I next entered a short avenue of trees, and in a few minutes the volante stopped at the gate of the cemetery. In a little inclosure before the entrance, a few starvling flowers of Europe were cultivated, but the wild plants of the country flourished luxuriantly on the rich soil within. A thick wall surrounded the cemetery, in which were rows of openings for coffins, one above the other, where the more opulent of the dead were entombed. Tho coffin is thrust in endwise, and the opening closed wl^ a marble slab bearing an inscription. Most of these niches were already occupied, but in the earth below, by far the greater part of those who die at Ha vana, are buried without a monument or a grave which they are allowed to hold a longer time than is necessary for their bodies to be consumed in the quicklime whicli ia BURIAL PLACES. 365 thrown upon them. Every day fresh trenches are dug in which their bodies are thrown, generally without coffins. Two of these, one near each wall of the cemetery, were waiting for the funerals. I saw where the spade had divided the bones of those who were buried there last, and thrown up the broken fragments, mingled with masses of lime, looks of hair, and bits of clothing. Without the waUs was a receptacle in which the skulls and other larger bones, dark with the mould ofthe grave, were heaped. Two or three persons were walking about the cemetery when we first entered, but it was now at length the cool of the day, and the funerals began to arrive. They brougiit in first a rude black coffin, broadest at the extremity which contained the head, and placing it at the end of one of the trenches, hurriedly produced a hammer and nails to fasten the lid before letting it down, when it was found that the box was too shallow at the narrower extremity. The lid was removed for a moment and showed the figure of an old man in a threadbare black coat, white pantaloons, and boots. The negroes who bore it beat out the bottom with the ham mer, so as to allow the lid to be fastened over the feet. It was then nailed down firmly with coarse nails, the coffin was swung into the trench, and the earth shoveled upon it. A middle-aged man, who seemed to be some relative of the dead, led up a httle boy close to the grave and watched the process of filling it. They spoke to each other and smUed, stood till the pit was filled to thc surface, and the 31* 366 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. bearers had departed, and then retired in their turn. This was one of the more respectable class of funerals. Com monly the dead are piled without coffins, one above the other, in the trenches. The funerals now multiphed. The corpse of a httle child was brought in, uncoffined ; and another, a young man who, I was told, had cut his throat for love, was borne to wards one of the niches in the wall. I heard loud voices, which seemed to proceed from the eastern side of the ceme tery, and which, I thought at first, might be the recitation of a funeral service ; but no funeral service is said at these graves ; and, after a time, I perceived that thej' came from the windows of a long building which overlooked one side of the burial ground. It was a mad-house. The inmates, exasperated at the spectacle before them, were gesticulating from the windows — the women screaming and the men shouting, but no attention was paid to their uproar. A lady, however, a stranger to the island, who visited the Campo Santo that afternoon, was so affected by the sights and sounds of the place, that she was borne out weeping and almost in convulsions. As we left the place, we found a crowd of volantes about the gate ; a pompous bier, with rich black hangings, drew up ; a little beyond, we met one of another kind — a long box, with glass sides and ends, in which lay the corpse of a woman, dressed in white, with a black ^eil thrown over the face. The next day the festivities, which were to indemnify the C0C::-FIG1IT!XG. ofi? people for the austerities of Lent and of Passion Week, began . The cock-pits were opened during the day, and masked balls were given in the evening at the theatres. You know, probably, that oock-fighting is the principal diversion of thu island, having entirely supplanted the national spectacle of bull-baitiiig. Cuba, in fact, seemed to me a great poultry- yard. I heard the crowing of cocks in all quarters, for the game-cock is the noisiest and most boastful of birds, and is perpetually uttering his notes of defiance. In the villages I saw the veterans of the pit, a strong-legged race, with their combs cropped smooth to the head, the feathers plucked from every part of the body except their wings, and the tail docked hlce that of a coach horse, picking up their food in the lanes among the chickens. One old cripple I remem ber to have seen in the little town of Guines, stiff with wounds received in combat, who had probably got a fur lough for hfe, and who, while limping among his female com panions, raaintained a sort of strut in his gait, and now and then stopped to crow defiance to the world. The peasants breed game-cocks and bring them to market ; amateurs in the town train them for their private amusement. Dealers in game-cocks are as common as horse-jockies with us, and every village has its cock-pit. I went on Monday to the Valla de GaUos, situated in that part of Havana which lies without the walls. Here, in a spacious inclosure, were two amphitheatres of benches, roofed, but without walls, with a circular area in the midst. 368 LETTF.RS OP A TRAVELLER. Each was crowded with people, who were looking at a cock fight, and half of whom seemed vociferating with all their might. I mounted one of the outer benches, and saw one of the birds laid dead by the other in a few minutes. Then was heard the chink of gold aaid sUver pieces, as the betters stepped into the area and paid their wagers ; the slain bird was carried out and thrown ou the ground, and the victor, taken into the hands of the owner, crowed loudly in cele bration of. his victory. Two other birds were brought in, and the cries of those who offered wagers were heard on aU sides. They ceased at last, and the cocks were put down to begin the combat. They fought warily at first, but at length began to strike in earnest, the blood flowed, and the bystanders were heard to vociferate, " ahi estdn pele- zando"* — "niata! matal mataP'X gesticulating at the same time with great violence, and new wagers were laid as the interest of the combat increased. In ten minutes one of the birds was dispatched, for the combat never ends till one of them has his death- wound. In the mean time several other combats had begun in smaller pits, which lay within the same inclosure, but were not surrounded with circles of benches. I looked upon the throng engaged in this brutal sport, with eager gestures and loud cries, and could not help thinking how soon this noisy crowd would lie in heaps in the pits of the Campo Santo. * " Now they are fighting !" f " Kill ! kill ! kill !" A MASKED BALL. 369 In the evening was a masked ball in the Tacon Theatre, a spacious buUding, one of the largest of its kind in the world. The pit, floored over, with the whole depth of the stage open to the back wall of the edifice, furnished a ball room of immense size. People in grotesque masks, in hoods or fancy dresses, were mingled with a throng clad in the ordinary costume, and Spanish dances were performed to the music of a numerous band. A well-dressed crowd filled the first and second tier of boxes. The Creole smokes everywhere, and seemed astonished when the soldier who stood at the door ordered him to throw away his lighted segar before entering. Once upon the floor, however, he lighted another segar in defiance of the prohibition. The Spanish dances, with their graceful movements, resembhng the undulations of the sea in its gentlest moods, are nowhere more gracefully performed than in Cuba, by the young women born on the island. I could not help thinking, however, as I looked on that gay crowd, on the quaint maskers, and the dancers whose flexible limbs seemed swayed to and fro by the breath ofthe music, that all this was soon to end at the Campo Santo, and I asked myself how many of all this crowd would be huddled un- coffined, when their sports were over, into the foul trenches of the pubhc cemetery. 370 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. LETTER XLVII, SCENERY OF CUB A. C OFFEE PLANTATIONS, Matanzas, April 16, 1849. My expectations of the scenery of the island of Cuba and of the raagnificence of its vegetation, have not been quite fulfilled. This place is but sixty miles to the east of Havana, but the railway which brings you hither, takes you over a sweep of a hundred and thirty miles, through one of the most fertile districts in the interior of the island. I made an excursion from Havana to San Antonio de los Baiios, a pleasant little town at nine leagues distance, in a southeast direction from the capital, in what is called the Vuelta Abajo. I have also just returned from a visit to some fine sugar estates to the southeast of Matanzas, so that I may claim to have seen something of the face of the country of which I speak. At this season the hills about Havana, and the pastures everywhere, have an arid look, a russet hue, like sandy fields with us, when scorched by a long drought, on like our meadows in winter. This, however, is the dry season ; and when I was told that but two showers of rain have fallen since October, I could only wonder that so much TREES OF CUBA. 371 vegetation was left, and that the verbenas and other herbage which clothed the ground, should yet retain, as I perceived they did, when I saw them nearer, an unextin guished life. I have, therefore, the disadvantage of seeing Cuba not only in the dry season, but near the close of an cncomraouly dry season. Next month the rainy season uommenees, when the whole island, I am told, even the barrenest parts, flushes into a deep verdure, creeping plants chmb over all the rocks and ascend the trees, and the mighty palms pnt out their new foliage. Shade, however, is the great luxury of a warm climate, and why the people of Cuba do not surround their habita tions in the country, in the villages, and in the environs of the large towns, with a dense umbrage of trees, I confess I do not exactly understand. In their rich soil, and in their perpetually genial cliraate, trees grow with great rapidity, and they have many noble ones both for size and foliage. The royal palm, with its tall straight columnar trunk of a whitish hue, only uplifts a Corinthian capital of leaves, and casts but a narrow shadow ; but it mingles finely with other trees, and planted in avenues, forms a colonnade nobler than any of the porticoes to the ancient Egyptian temples. There is no thicker foliage or fresher green than that of the mango, which daily drops its abundant fruit for several months in th eyear, and the mamey and the sapote, fruit- trees also, are in leaf during the whole of the dry season ; even the Indian fig, which clasps and kills the largest trees 372 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. of the forest, and at last takes their place, a stately tree with a stout trunk of its own, has its unfading leaf of vivid green. It is impossible to avoid an expression of impatience that these trees have not been formed into groups, embowering the dwellings, and into groves, through which the beams of the sun, hero so fierce at noonday, could not reach the ground beneath. There is in fact nothing of ornamental cultivation in Cuba, except ofthe most formal kind. Some private gardens there are, carefully kept, but all of the stiffest pattern ; there is nothing which bruigs out the larger vegetation of the region in that grandeur and magnificence which might belong to it. In the duinta del Obispo, or Bishop's Garden, whioh is open to the public, you find shade which you find nowhere else, but the trees are planted in straight alleys, and the water-roses, a species of water-lily of immense size, fragrant and pink-colored, grow in a square tank, fed by a straight canal, with sides of hewn stone. Let me say, however, that when I asked for trees, 1 was referred to the hurricanes which have recently ravaged the island. One of these swept over Cuba in 1844, uprooting the palms and the orange groves, and laying prostrate the avenues of trees on the cofiee plantations. The Paseo Isabel, a public proraenade, between the walls of Havana and the streets of the new town, was formerly over-canopied with lofty and spreading trees, which this tempest leveled to the ground ; it has now been planted with rows of young trees. ORANGE-TREES. 373 which yield a meagre shade. In 1846 came another hur ricane, stiU more ten-ific, destroying much of the beauty which the first had spared. Of late years, also, such of the orange-trees as were not tiprooted, or have recently been planted, have been attacked by the insect which a few years since was so destructive to the same tree in Florida, The effect upon the tree resem bles that of a blight, the leaves grow sere, and the branches die. You may imagine, therefore, that I was somewhat disappointed not to find the air, as it is at this season in the south of Italy, fragrant with the odor of orange and lemon blossoms. Oranges are scarce, and not so fine, at this mo ment, in Havana and Matanzas, as in the fruit-shops of New York, I hear, however, that there are portions of the island which were spared by these hurricanes, and that there are others where the ravages of the insect in the orange groves have nearly ceased, as I have been told is also the case in Florida, I have mentioned my excursion to San Antonio. I went thither by railway, in a car built at Newark, drawn by an engine made in New York, and worked by an American engineer. For some distance we passed through fields of the sweet-potato, which here never requires a second planting, and propagates itself perpetually in the soil, patches of maize, low groves of bananas with their dark stems, and of plantains with their green ones, and large tracts producing the pine apple growing in rows like carrots. Then came plantations 374 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. of the sugar-cane, with its sedge-like blades of pale-green, then extensive tracts of pasturage with scattered shrubs and tall dead weeds, the gro-wth of the last summer, and a thin herbage bitten close to the soil. Here and there was an abandoned coffee-plantation, where cattle were browzing among the half-perished shrubs and broken rows of trees ; and the neglected hedges of the wild pine, pina raton, as the Cubans call it, were interrupted with broad gaps. Sometimes we passed the cottages of the nionteros, or peasants, built often of palm-leaves, the walls formed of thc broad sheath of the leaf, fastened to posts of bamboo, and ' the roof thatched with the long plume-like leaf itself The door was soraetiraes hung with a kind of curtain to exclude the sun, which the dusky coraplexioned women and children put aside to gaze at us as we passed. These dwellings were often picturesque in their appearance, with a grove of plan tains behind, a thicket of bamboo by its side, waving its wiUow-like sprays in the wind ; a pair of mango-trees near, hung with fruit just ripening and reddish blossoms just opening, and a cocoa-tree or t-wo lifting high above the rest its immense feathery leaves and its clusters of green nuts. We now and then met the monteros themselves scudding along on their little horses, in that pace which we call a rack. Their dress was a Panama hat, a shirt worn over a pair of pantaloons, a pair of rough cowskin shoes, one of which was armed with a spur, and a sword lashed to the left side by a belt of cotton cloth. They are men of manly SAN ANTONIODE LOS BAN OS. 375 bearing, of thin make, but often of a good figure, with well- spread shoulders, which, however, have a stoop in thera, contracted, I suppose, by riding always with a short stirrup. Forests, too, we passed. You, doubtless, suppose that a forest in a soil and climate like this, must be a dense growth of trees with colossal stems and leafy summits. A forest in Cuba — all that I have seen are such — is a thicket of shrubs and creeping plants, through which, one would suppose that even the wild cats of the country would find it impossible to make their way. Above this impassable jungle rises here and there the palm, or the gigantic ceyba or cotton-tree, but more often trees of far less beauty, tliinly scattered and with few branches, disposed without symmetry, and at this season often leafless. We reached San Antonio at nine o'clock in the raorning, and went to the inn of La Punta, where we breakfasted on rice and fresh eggs, and a dish of meat so highly flavored with garlic, that it was impossible to distinguish to what animal it belonged. Adjoining the inn was a cockpit, with cells for the birds surrounding the inclosure, in which they were crowing lustily. Two or three persons seemed to have nothing to do but to tend them ; and one, in particular, with a gi-ay beard, a grave aspect, and a solid gait, went about the work with a deliberation and solemnity which to me, who had lately seen the hurried burials at the Campo Santo, in Havana, was highly edifying. A raan was training a game-cock in lhe pit ; he was giving it lessons in the virtue 376 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. of perseverance. He held another cock before it, which he was teaching it to pursue, and striking it occasionally over thc head to provoke it, with the wing of the bird in his hand, he made it run after hira about the area for half an hour together. I had heard much of the beauty of the coffee estates of Cuba, and in the neighborhood of San Antonio are some which have been reputed very fine ones. A young man, in a checked blue and white shirt, worn like a frock over checked pantaloons, with a spur on one heel, offered to pro cure us a volante, and we engaged him. He brought us one with two horses, a negro postillion sitting on one, and the shafts of the vehicle borne by tho other. We set off, passing through fields guarded by stiff-leaved hedges of the ratoon- pine, over ways so bad that if the motion of the volante M'cre not the easiest in the world, we should have taken an unpleasant jolting. The lands of Cuba fit for cultivation, are divided into red and black ; we were in the midst of the red lands, consisting of a fine earth of a deep brick color, resting on a bed of soft, porous, chalky limestone. In the dry season the surface is easily dispersed into dust, and stains your clothes of a dull red. A drive of four miles, through a country full of palm and cocoanut trees, brought us to the gate of a coffee plantation, which our friend in the checked shirt, by whom we were accompanied, opened for us. We passed up to the house through what had been an avenue of palms, but was now A COFFEE ESTATE. 377 two rows of trees at very unequal distances, with here and there a sickly orange-tree. On each side grew the coffee shrubs, hung with flowers of snowy white, but unpruned and full of dry and leafless twigs. In every direction were ranks of trees, prized for ornament or for their fruit, and shrubs, among which were magnificent oleanders loaded -«itli flowers, planted in such a manner as to break the force of the wind, and partially to shelter the plants from the too fierce rays of the sun. The coffee estate is, in fact, a kind of forest, with the trees and shrubs arranged in straight lines. The mayoral, or steward of the estate, a handsome Cuban, with white teeth, a pleasant smile, and a distinct utterance of his native language, received us with great courtesy, and offered us cigarillos, though he never used tobacco ; and spirit of cane, though he never drank. He wore a sword, and carried a large flexible whip, doubled for convenience in the hand. He showed us the coffee plants, the broad platforms with smooth surfaces of cement and raised borders, where the berries were dried in the sun, and the mills where the negroes were at work separating the kernel from the pulp in which it is inclosed. "These coffee estates,'' said he, " are already ruined, and the planters are abandoning them as fast as they can ; in four years more there wiU not be a single coffee plantation on the island. They can not afford to raise coffee for the price they get in the market." I inquired the reason. " It is," replied ho, "the extreme 22* '378 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. dryness of the season when the plant is in flower. If we have rain at this time of the year, we are sure of a good crop ; if it does not rain, the harvest is small ; and the fail ure of rain is so common a circumstance that we must leave the cultivation of coffee to the people of St. Domingo and Bi-azU." I asked if the plantation could not be converted into a sugar estate. " Not this," he answered ; " it has been cultivated too long. The land was originally rich, but it is exhausted" — tired out, was the expression he used — " we may cultivate maize or rice, for the dry culture of rice succeeds -well here, or we may abandon it to grazing. At present we keep a few negroes here, just to gather the berries which ripen, without taking any trouble to preserve the plants, or replace those which die." I could easily believe from what I saw on this estate, that there must be a great deal of beauty of vegetation in a well- kept coffee plantation, but the formal pattern in which it is disposed, the straight alleys and rows of trees, the squares and parallelograms, showed me that there was no beauty of arrangement. We fell in, before we returned to our inn, with the proprietor, a delicate-looking person, with thin white hands, who had been educated at Boston, and spoke English as if he had never lived anywhere else. His manners, compared with those of his steward, were exceed ingly frosty and forbidding, and when we told him of the NEAT ATTIRE OP THE CUBANS. 379 'ti-vility which had been shown us, his looks seemed to say he -wifihed it had been otherwdse. Returning to our inn, we dined, and as the sun grew low, we strolled out to look at the town. It is situated on a clear little stream, over which several bathing-houses are built, their posts standing in the raidst of the current. Above the town, it flows between rocky banks, bordered with shrubs, many of them in flower. Below the to-wn, after winding a little way, it enters a cavern yawning in the limestone rock, immediately over which a huge ceyba rises, and stretches its leafy arms in mid-heaven. Down this opening the river throws itself and is never seen again. This is not a singu lar instance in Cuba. The island is full of caverns and open ings in the rocks, and I am told that many of the streams find subterranean passages to the sea. There is a well at the inn of La Punta, in which a roaring of water is constantly heard. It is the sound of a subterranean stream rushing along a passage in the rocks, and the well is an opening into its roof In passing through the town, I was struck with the neat attire of those who inhabited the humblest dwellings. At the door of one of the cottages, I saw a group of children, of difierent ages, all quite pretty, with oval faces and glittering black eyes, in clean fresh dresses, which, one would think, could scarcely have been kept a moment without being soUed, in that dwelling, with its mud floor. Thc people of Cuba are sparing in their ablutions ; the men do not wash 380 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. their faces and hands till nearly mid-day, for fear of spasms ; and of the women, I am told that many do not wash at all, contenting themselves with rubbing tlieir cheeks and necks with a little aguardiente ; but the passion for clean linen, and, among the men, fbr clean white pantaloons, is universal. The montero himself, on a holiday or any public occasion, will sport a shirt of the finest linen, smoothly ironed, and stiffly starched throughout, from the collar downward. The next day, at halfpast eleven, we left our inn, which was also what we call in the United States a country store, where the clerks who had just performed their ablutions and combed their hair, were making segars behind the counter from the tobacco of the Vuelta Abajo, and Tcturned by the railway to Havana. We procured travelling licenses at the cost of four dollars and a half each, for it is the pleasure of the government to levy this tax on strangers -who travel, and early the following morning took the train for Ma tanzas, ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY. 381 LETTER XLVIII. MATANZAS. — VALLEY OF YUMURL Los Guines, April 18, 1849. In the long circuit of raUway which leads from Havana to Matanzas, I saw nothing remarkably different from what I observed on my excursion to San Antonio. There was the same smooth country, of great apparent fertility, sometimes varied "with gentle undulations, and sometimes rising, in the distance, into hiUs covered with thickets. We swept by dark-green fields planted with the yuca, an esculent root, of which the cassava bread is made, pale-green fields of the cane, brown tracts of pasturage, partly formed of abandoned cofiee estates where the palms and scattered fruit-treer were yet standing, and forests of shrubs and twining plants growing for the most part among rocks. Some of these rocky tracts have a peculiar appearance ; they consist of rough projections of rock a foot or two in height, of irregular shape and full of holes ; they are called diente de ferro, or dog's teeth. Here the trees and creepers find openings filled -with soil, by which they are nourished. We passed two or three country cemeteries, where that foulest of birds, the turkey-vulture, was seen sitting on the white stuccoed 382 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. walls, or hovering on his ragged wings in circles over them. In passing over the neighborhood of the to-wn in whioh I am now writing, I found myself on the black lands of the island. Here the rich dark earth of the plain lies on a bed of chalk as white as snow, as was apparent where the earth had been excavated to a little depth, on each side of the railway, to form the causey on which it ran. Streams of clear water, diverted from a river to the left, traversed the plain with a swift current, almost even with the surface ofthe soil, which they keep in perpetual freshness. As we approached Matanzas, we saw more extensive tracts of cane clothing the broad slopes with their dense blades, as if the coarse sedge of a river had been transplanted to the uplands. At length the bay of Matanzas opened before us ; a long tract of water stretching to the northeast, into which several rivers empty themselves. The town lay at the southwestern extremity, sheltered by hills, where the San Juan and the Yumuri pour themselves into the brine. It is a small but prosperous town, with a considerable trade, as was indicated by the vessels at anchor in the harbor. As we passed along the harbor I reraarked an extensive, healthy-looking orchard of plantains growing on one of those tracts which they caU diente de perro. I could see nothing but the jagged teeth of whitish rock, and the green swelling stems of the plantain, from ten to fifteen feet in height, THE CUMBRE. 383: and as large as a man's leg, or larger. The stalks of the plantain are juicy and herbaceous, and of so yielding a texture, that with a sickle you might entirely sever the largest of them at a single stroke. How such a multitude of succulent plants could find nourishment on what seemed to the eye little else than barren rock, I could not imagine. The day after arriving at Matanzas we made an excursion on horseback to the summit of the hill, immediately overlook ing the town, called the Cumbre. Light hardy horses of the country were brought us, with high pommels to the saddles, which are also raised behind in a manner making it difficult to throw the rider from his seat. A negro fitted a spur to my right heel, and mounting by the short stirrups, I crossed the river Yumuri -with my companions, and began to chmb the Cumbre. They boast at Matanzas of the perpetual coolness of temperature enjoyed upon the broad summit of this hill, where many of the opulent merchants of the town have their country houses, to which the mos quitoes and the intermittents that infest the town below, never come, and where, as one of them told me, you may play at bUhards in August without any inconvenient per spiration. From the Cumbre you behold the entire extent of the harbor ; the town lies below you -with its thicket of masts, and its dusty paseo, where rows of the Cuba pine stand rooted in the red soil. On the opposite shore your eye is attracted to a chasm between high rocks, where the river 384 LF.TTERS OF A TRAVELLER. Canimar comes forth through banks of romantic beauty — so they are described to me — and mingles with the sea. But the view to the west was much finer ; there lay the valley of the Yumuri, and a sight of it is worth a voyage to the island. In regard to this my expectations suffered no disappointment . Before me lay a deep vaUey, surrounded on all sides by hills and mountains, with the little river Yumuri twining at the bottom. Smooth round hillocks rose from the side next to me, covered with clusters of palras, and the steeps of the southeastern corner of the vaUey were clothed with a wood of intense green, where I could almost see the leaves glisten in the sunshine. The broad fields below were waving with cane and maize, and cottages of the monteros were scat tered araong thera, each with its tuft of bamboos and its little grove of plantains. In some parts the cliffs almost seemed to impend over the valley ; but to the west, in a soft golden haze, rose surarait behind summit, and over therii all, loftiest and most remote, to-wered the mountain called the Pan de Matanzas, We stopped for a few raoraents at a country seat on the top of the Curabre, where this beautiful view lay ever be fore the eye. Round it, in a garden, were cultivated the most showy plants of the tropics, but my attention was attracted to a little plantation of damask roses blooming profusely. They were scentless ; the chmate which sup plies the orange blossom with intense odors exhausts the GRIKDI.\C} OP TIIE SUGAR-CANE. 385 fragrance of the rose. At nightfall — the night falls sud denly in this latitude — we were again at our hotel. We passed our Sunday on a sugar estate at the hospitable mansion of a planter from the United States about fifteen miles from Matanzas, The house stands on an eminence, once embowered in trees which the hurricanes have lev eled, overlooking a broad valley, where palms were scat tered in every direction ; for the estate had formerly been a coffee plantation. In the huge buUdings containing the machinery and other apparatus for making sugar, which stood at the foot of the eminence, the power of steam, whioh had been toUing all the week, was now at rest. A.= the hour of sunset approached, a smoke was seen rising from its chimney, presently puffs of vapor issued from the engine, its motion began to be heard, and the negroes, men and women, were summoned to begin the work of the week. Some feed the fire under the boiler with coal ; others were seen rushing to the mill with their arms full of the stalks of the cane, freshly cut, which they took from a huge pile near the building ; others lighted fires under a row of huge cauldrons, with the dry stalks of cane from which the juice had been crushed by the mUl. It was a spectacle of activity such as I had not seen in Cuba, The sound of the engine was heard all night, for the work of grinding the cane, once begun, proceeds day and night, with the exception of Sundays and some other holi days. I was early next morning at the miU, A current 33 386 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. of cane juice was ffowing fr-om the mill in a long trunk to a vat in which it was clarified with hme ; it was then made to pass successively fr-om one seething cauldron to another, as it obtained a thicker consistence by boiling. The negroes, with huge ladles turning on pivots, swept it from cauldron to cauldron, and finally passed it into a trunk, which conveyed it to shallow tanks in another apartment, where it cooled into sugar. From these another set of workmen scooped it up in moist masses, carried it in buckets up a low flight of stairs, and poured it into rows of hogsheads pierced with holes at the bottom. These are placed over a large tank, into which the moisture dripping from the hogsheads is col lected and forms molasses. This is the method of making the sugar called Muscovado. It is drained a few days, and then the railways take it to Matanzas or to Havana. We visited afterward a planta tion in the neighborhood, in which clayed sugar is made. Our host furnished us with horses to make the excursion, and we took a winding road, over hill and valley, by plantations and forests, till we stopped at tbe gate of an extensive pasture-ground. An old negro, whose hut was at hand, opened it for ns, and bowed low as we passed. A ride of half a mile further brought us in sight of the cane-fields of the plantation called Saratoga, belonging to the house of Drake & Company, of Havana, and reputed one ofthe finest of the island. It had a different aspect from any plantation we had seen. Trees and shrubs there were none, but the MAKING OP CLAYED SUGAR. 387 canes, except where they had been newly cropped for the mill, clothed the slopes and hollows with their light-green blades, like the herbage of a prairie. We were kindly received by the administrator of the estate, an intelligent Biscayan, who showed us the whole process of making clayed sugar. It does not differ from that of making the Muscovado, so far as concerns the grind ing and boiling. When, however, the sugar is nearly cool, it is poured into iron vessels of eonical shape, with the point downward, at which is an opening. The top of the sugar is then covered -with a sort of black thick mud, which they call clay, and which is several times renewed as it becomes dry. The moisture from the clay passes through the sugar, carrying with it the cruder portions, which form molasses. In a few days the draining is complete. We saw the work-people of the Saratoga estate preparing for the market the sugar thus cleansed, if we may apply the word to such a process. With a rude iron blade they cleft the large loaf of sugar just taken from the mould into three parts, called first, second, and third quality, according to their whiteness. These are dried in the sun on separate platforms of wood with a raised edge ; the women standing and walking over the fragments with their bare dirty feet, and beating them smaUer with wooden mallets and clubs. The sugar of the first quality is then scraped up and put into boxes ; that of the second and third, being moister, is handled a third time and carried into the drying-room. 388 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. where it is exposed to the heat of a stove, and when suffi ciently dry, is boxed up for market like the other. The sight of these processes was not of a nature to make one think with much satisfaction of clayed sugar as an in gredient of food, but the inhabitants of the island are supe rior to such prejudices, and use it -with as little scruple as they who do not know in what manner it is made. In the afternoon we returned to the dwelling of our American host, and taking the train at Caobas, or Ma hogany Trees — so called from the former growth of that tree on the spot — ^we were at Matanzas an hour afterward. The next morning the train brought us to this little town, situated half-way between Matanzas and Havana, but a considerable distance to the south of either. THE GARROTE 389 LETTER XLIX. NEGROES IN CUB A. — I NDIAN SLAVES. Havana, April 22, 1849. The other day when we were at Guines, we heard that a negro was to sufier death early the next morning by the garrote, an instruraent by which the neck of the crirainal is broken and life extinguished in an instant. I asked our landlady for what crime the man had been condemned. " He has kiUed his master," she replied, " an old man, in his bed." " Had he received any provocation ?" " Not that I have heard ; but another slave is to be put to death by the garrote in about a fortnight, whose offense had some palliation. His master was a man of harsh tem per, and treated his slaves with extreme severity ; the negro watched his opportunity, and shot him as he sat at table." We went to the place of execution a little before eight o'clock, and found the preparations already made. A plat form had been erected, on which stood a seat for the pris oner, and back of the seat a post was fixed, with a sort of iron collar for his neck. A screw, with a long transverse handle on the side of the post opposite to thc collar, was so 33* 390 LETTERS OF A THAVELLER. contrived that, when it was turned, it would push forward an iron bolt against the back of the neck and crash the spine at once. Sentinels in uniform were walking to and fro, keeping the spectators at a distance from the platform. The heat of the sun was intense, for the sea-breeze had not yet sprung up, but the crowd had begun to assemble. As near to the platform as they could come, stood a group of young girls, two of whom were dressed in white and one was pretty, Avith no other shade for their dusky faces than their black veils, chatting and laughing and stealing occasional glances at the new-comers. In another quarter were six or eight monteros on horseback, in their invariable costume of Panama hats, shirts and pantaloons, -with holsters to their saddles, and most of them with s-words lashed to their sides. About half-past eight a numerous crowd made its appear ance coming from the to-wn. Among them walked with a firm step, a large black man, dressed in a long white frock, white pantaloons, and a white cap with a long peak which fell backward on his shoulders. He was the murderer ; his hands were tied together by the wrists ; in one of them he held a crucifix ; the rope by which they were fastened was knotted around his waist, and the end of it was held by another athletic negro, dressed in blue cotton with white facings, who walked behind him. On the left of the criminal walked an officer of justice ; on his right an eccle- EXECUTION OP A NEGRO CRIMINAL, 391 siastic, slender and stooping, in a black go-wn and a black cap, the top of which was formed into a sort of coronet, exhorting the criminal, in a loud voice and with many ges ticulations, to repent and trust in the mercy of God, When they reached the platform, thc negro was made to place himself on his knees before it, the priest continuing his exhortations, and now and then clapping him, in an encour aging manner, on the shoulder. I saw the man shake his head once or twice, and then Iriss the crucifix. In the mean time a multitude, of all ages and both sexes, took possession of the places from which the spectacle could be best seen. A stone-fence, such as is common in our coun tiy, formed of loose stones taken frora the surface of the ground, upheld a long row of spectators. A well-dressed couple, a gentleman in white pantaloons, and a lady ele gantly attired, -with a black lace veil and a parasol, bring ing their two children and two colored servants, took their station by my side — the elder child found a place on the top of the fence, and the younger, about four years of age, was lifted in the arms of one of the servants, that it might have the full benefit ofthe spectacle. The criminal was then raised from the ground, and going up the platform took the seat ready for him. The priest here renewed his exhortations, and, at length, turning to tho audience, said, in a loud voice, " I believe in God Almighty and in Jesus Christ his only Son, and it grieves me to the heart to have offended them." These 392 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. words, I suppose, were meant, as the confession of the criminal, to be repeated after the priest, but I heard no response from his lips. Again and again the priest re peated them, the third time with a louder voiae than ever ; the signal was then given to the executioner. The iron collar was adjusted to the neck of the victim, and fastened under the chin. The athletic negro in blue, standing behind the post, took the handle of the screw and turned it deliberately. After a few turns, the criminal gave ei s-adden shrug of the shoulders ; another turn of the sere-vij, and a shudder ran over his whole frame, his eyes roUed wildly, his hands, stiU tied with the rope, -W'ere convul sively jerked upward, and then dropped back to their place motiorJess forever. The priest advanced and turned the peak of the white cap over the face to hide it from the sight ofthe multitude. I had never seen, and never intended to see an execution, but the stra ageness of this manner of inflicting death, and the desire to witness the behavior of an assembly of the people of Cuba on such an occasion, had overcome my previou'. determination. The horror of the spectacle now caused mo to regret that I made one of a crowd drawn to look at it by an idle curiosity. Th'r negro in blue then stepped forward and felt the limbs 'jf the dead man one by one, to ascertain whether life were wholly extinct, and then returning to the screw, gave it two or three turns more, as if to make his work sure. In BEHAVIOR OP A COLORED BOY. 393 the mean time my attention was attracted by a sound like that of a light buffet and a whimpering voice near me. I looked, and two men were standing by me, with a little white boy at their side, and a black boy of nearly the same age before them, holding his hat in his hand, and crying They were endeavoring to direct his attention to what they considered the wholesome spectacle before him. " Mira, mira, no te Ivara dano,"* said the men, but the boy steadily refused to look in that direction, though he was evidently terrified by some threat of punishment and his eyes filled with tears. Finding him obstinate, they desisted from their purpose, and I was quite edified to see the little fellow continue to look away from the spectacle which attracted all other eyes but his. The white boy now came forward, touched the hat of the little black, and goodnaturedly saying " pontelo, pontelo,"'\ made him put it on his head. The crowd now began to disperse, and in twenty minutes the place was nearly solitary, except the sentinels pacing backward and forward. Two hours afterward the sentinels were pacing there yet, and the dead man, in his white dress and iron collar, was still in his soat on the platform. I It is generaUy the natives of Africa by whom these * " Look, look, it win do you no harm." f " Put it on, put it on.'' 394 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. murders are committed ; the negroes born in the country are of a more yielding temper. They have better learned the art of avoiding punishment, and submit to it more patiently when inflicted, having understood from their birth that it is one of the conditions of their existence. The whip is always in sight. " Nothing can be done with out it,'' said an Englishman to rae, who had lived eleven years on the island, " you can not raake the negroes work by the mild methods which are used by slaveholders in the United States ; the blacks there are far raore intelligent and more easily governed by moral means," Africans, the living witnesses of the present existence of the slave-trade, are seen everywhere ; at every step you meet blacks whose cheeks are scarred with parallel slashes, with which they were marked in the African slave-market, and who can not even speak the mutilated Spanish current in the mouths of the Cuba negroes, f One day I stood upon the quay at Matanzas and saw the slaves unloading the large lighters which brought goods from the Spanish ships lying in the harbor — casks of wine, jars of oil, bags of nuts, barrels of flour. The men were naked to the hips ; their only garment being a pair of trowsers. I admired their ample chests, their massive shoulders, the full and muscular proportions of their arms, and the ease with which they shifted the heavy articles from place to place, or carried them on their heads, " Some of these are Africans ?" I said to a gentleman who resided on the island. T :i t: .? I, .', V F, - -.- R A n E . 395 " They are all Africans," he answered, " Africans to a man ; the negro born in Cuba is of a hghter make." When I was at Guines, I went out to look at a sugar estate in the neighborhood, where the mill was turned by water, which a long aqueduct, from one of the streams that traverse the plain, conveyed over arches of stone so broad and massive that I could not help thinking of the aqueducts of Rome, A gang of black women were standing in the sccadero or drying-place, among the luraps of clayed sugar, beating them smaU with maUets ; before them walked to and fro the major-domo, with a cutlass by his side and a whip in his hand, I asked him how a planter could increase his stock of slaves. " There is no difficulty,'' he replied, " slaves are still brought to the island from Africa. The other day five hundred were landed on the sea-shore to the south of this ; for you mu.st know, SeHor, that we are but three or four leagues from the coast." " Was it done openly ?" I inquired. " Publicamente, Senor, publicam,ente ;* they were landed on the sugar estate of El Pastor, and one hundred and seven more died on the passage from Africa." " Did the governraent know of it ?" He shrugged his shoulders. " Of course the government knows it," said he ; " every body else knows it." The truth is, that the slave-trade is now fully revived ; * " PubUcly, sir, publicly.'- 396 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. the government conniving at it, making a profit on the slaves imported from Africa, and screening from the pursuit of the English the pirates who bring them. There could scarcely be any arrangeraent of coast more favorable for srauggling slaves into a country, than the islands and long peninsulas, and many channels of the southern shore of Cuba. Here the mangrove thickets, sending down roots into the brine from their long branches that stretch over the water, form dense screens on each side of the passages from the main ocean to the inland, and render it easy for the hilaver and his boats to lurk undiscovered by the English men-of-war. During the comparative cessation of the slave-trade a few years since, the negroes, I have been told, were much better treated than before. They rose in value, and when thej'- died, it was found not easy to supply their places ; they were therefore made much of, and every thing was done which it was thought would tend to preserve their health, and maintain them in bodily vigor. If the slave-trade should make them cheap again, their lives of course will be of less consequence to their owners, and they will be sub ject again to be overtasked, as it has been said they wero before. There is certainly great temptation to wear them out in the sugar mills, which are kept in motion day and night, during half the year, namely, through the dry season. " If this was not the healthiest employment in the world," said an overseer to me on one of the sugar estates, " it INDIAN AND ASIATIC SLAVES. 397 would kill us all who are engaged in it, both black and white." Perhaps you may not know that more than half of the island of Cuba has never been reduced to tillage. Immense tracts of the rich black or red mould of the island, accumu lated on the coral rock, are yet waiting the hand of the planter to be converted into profitable sugar estates. There is a demand, therefore, for laborers on the part of those who wish to beconie planters, and this demand is supplied not pnly from the coast of Africa, but from the American conti nent and southwestern Asia. In one of the afternoons of Holy Week, I saw amid the crowd on the Plaza de Armas, in Havana, several men of low stature, of a deep-olive complexion, beardless, with high cheek-bones and straight black hair, dressed in white panta loons of cotton, and shirts of the same raaterial worn over them. They were Indians, natives of Yucatan, who had been taken prisoners of war by the whites of the country and sold to white men in Cuba, under a pretended contract to serve for a certain number of years. I afterward learned, that the dealers in this sort of merchandise were also bring ing in the natives of Asia, Chinese they call them here, though I doubt whether they belong to that nation, and dis posing of their services to the planters. There are six hun dred of these people, I have been told, in this city. Yesterday appeared in the Havana papers an ordinance concerning the " Indians and Asiatics imported into the 34 398 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. country under a contract to labor." It directs how much Indian com, how many plantains, how much jerked-pork and rice they shall receive daily, and how many lashes the master may inflict for misbehavior. Twelve stripes with the cowskin he may administer for the smaller offenses, and twenty-four for transgressions of more importance ; but if any more become necessary, he must apply to a magistrate for permission to lay them on. Such is the raanner in which the government of Cuba sanctions the barbarity of making slaves of the freeborn men of Yucatan. The ordi nance, however, betrays great concern for the salvation of the souls of those whom it thus delivers over to the lash of the slave-driver. It speaks of the Indians from Araerica, as Christians already, but while it allows the slaves im ported from Asia to be flogged, it directs that they shall be carefuUy instructed in the doctrines of our holy religion. Yet the pohcy of the government favors emancipation. The laws of Cuba permit any slave to purchase his freedom on paying a price fixed by three persons, one appointed by his master and two by a magistrate. He may, also, if he pleases, compel his master to sell him a certain portion of his time, which he may employ to earn the means of pur chasing his entire freedom. It is owing to this, I suppose, that the number of free blacks is so large in the island, and it is manifest that if the slave-trade could be checked, and these laws reraain un altered, the negroes would gradually emancipate themselves FREE BLACKS IN CUBA. 399 — all at least who would be worth keeping as servants. / The population of Cuba is now about a million and a quarter, rather more than half of whom are colored per sons, and one out of every four of the colored population is free. The mulattoes emancipate themselves as a matter of course, and some of them become rich by the occupations they follow. The prejudice of color is by no means so strong here as in the United States. Five or six years since the negroes were shouting and betting in the cockpits -with the whites ; but since the mulatto insurrection, as it is caUed, in 1843, the law forbids their presence at such amusements. I am told there is little difficulty in smug gling people of mixed blood, by the help of legal forras, into the white race, and if they are rich, into good society, pro vided their hair is not frizzled. You hear something said now and then in the United States concerning the annexation of Cuba to our con federacy ; you may be curious, perhaps, to know what they say of it here. A European who had long resided in the island, gave me this account : " The Creoles, no doubt, would be very glad to see Cuba annexed to the United States, and many of thera ardently desire it. It would relieve them from many great burdens they now bear, open their commerce to the world, rid them of a tyrannical government, and allow them to manage their own affairs in their own way. But Spain derives from the possession of Cuba advantages too great to be relinquished. 400 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. She extracts from Cuba a revenue of twelve millions of dollars ; her governraent sends its needy nobility, and all for whom it would provide, to fill lucrative offices in Cuba — the priests, the military officers, the civil authorities, everj^ man who fills a judicial post or holds a clerkship is from old Spain. The Spanish government dares not give up Cuba if it were inclined. " Nor will the people of Cuba make any effort to eman cipate theraselves by taking up arms. The struggle with the power of Spain would be bloody and uncertain, even if the white population were united, but the mutual distrust with which the planters and the peasantry regard each other, would make the issue of such an enterprise still raore doubtful. At present it would not be safe for a Cuba planter to speak publicly of annexation to the United States. He would run the risk of being imprisoned or exiled." j Of course, if Cuba were to be annexed to the United States, the slave trade with Africa would cease to be carried on as now, though its perfect suppression might be found difficult. Negroes would be imported in large numbers from the United States, and planters would emigrate with them. Institutions of education would be introduced, com merce and religion would both be made free, and the character of the islanders would be elevated by the respon sibilities which a free government would throw upon them. The planters, however, would doubtless adopt regulations ANNEXATION OP CUBA. 491 insuring the perpetuity of slavery ; they would unquestion ably, as soon as they were allowed to frame ordinances for the island, take away the facilities which the present laws give the slave for effecting his own emancipation. 34* 402 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. LETTER L. ENGLISH EXHIBITIONS OF WORKS OF ART. London, July 7, 1849. I HAVE just been to visit a gallery of drawings in water- colors, now open for exhibition. The English may be almost said to have created this branch of art. Till within a few years, delineations in water-colors, on drawing paper, have been so feeble and meagre as to be held in little es teem, but the English artists have shown that as much, though in a soraewhat different way, may be done on draw ing-paper as on canvas ; that as high a degree of expression may be reached, as much strength given to the coloring, and as rauch boldness to the lights and shadows. In the col lection of which I speak, are about four hundred drawings not before exhibited. Those which appeared to me the most remarkable, though not in the highest department of art, were still-life pieces by Hunt. It seems to me impossi ble to carry pictorial illusion to a higher pitch than he has attained. A sprig of ha-wthorn flowers, freshly plucked, lies before you, and you are half-tempted to take it up and inhale its fragrance ; those speckled eggs in the bird's nest, you are sure you might, if you pleased, take into your hand ; DRAWINGS IN W A T E R - C O L O R S, 403 that tuft of ivy leaves and buds is so complete an optical deception, that you can hardly believe that it has not been attached by some process to the paper on which you see it, A servant girl, in a calico gown, with a broom, by the same artist, and a young woman standing at a window, at which the light is streaming in, are as fine in their way, and as perfect imitations of every-day nature, as you see in the works of the best Flemish painters. It is to landscape, however, that- the artists in water- colors have principally devoted their attention. There are several very fine ones in the collection by Copley Fielding, the foregrounds drawn with much strength, the distant ob jects softly blending with the atmosphere as in nature, and a surprising depth and transparency given to the sky. Alfred Fripp and George Fripp have also produced some very fine landscapes — mills, waters in foam or sleeping in pellucid pools, and the darkness of the tempest in contrast with gleams of sunshine. Oakley has sorae spirited groups of gipsies and country people, and there are several of a similar kind by Taylor, who designs and executes with great force. One of the earliest of the new school of artists in water-colors is Prout, whose drawings are principally architectural, and who has shown how admirably suited this new style of art is to the delineation of the rich carv ings of Gothic churches. Most of the finer pieces, I ob served, were marked ' sold ;' they brought prices varying from thirty to fifty guineas. 404 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER, There is an exhibition now open of the paintings of Etty, who stands high in the world of art as an historical painter. The " Society of the Arts" — I believe that is its name — every year gets up an exhibition of the works of some emi nent painter, with the proceeds of which it buys one of his pictures, and places it in the National Gallery, This is a very effectual plan of forraing in time a various and valuable collection of the works of British artists. The greatest work of Etty is the series representing the Death of Holofemes by the hand of Judith, It consists of three paintings, the first of which shows Judith in prayer before the execution of her attempt ; in the next, and the finest, she is seen standing by the couch of the heathen warrior, with the sword raised to heaven, to which she turns her eyes, as if imploring supernatural assistance ; and in the third, she appears issuing from the tent, bearing the head of the ravager of her country, which she conceals from the armed attendants who stand on guard at the entrance, and exhibits to her astonished handmaid, who has been waiting the result. The subject is an old one, but Etty has treated it in a new way, and given it a moral interest, which the old painters seem not to have thought of In the delineation of the naked human figure, Etty is allowed to surpass all the English living artists, and his manner of painting flesh is thought to be next to that of Rubens, His reputation for these qualities has influenced his choice of subjects in a remarkable manner. The walls of the exhibi- EXHIBITION OP THE ROYAL ACADEMY, 405 tion were covered with Venuses and Eves, Cupids and Psyches, and nymphs innocent of drapery, reclining on couches, or admiring their own beauty reflected in clear fountains, I almost thought myself in the midst of a collec tion made for the Grand Seignior, The annual exhibition of the Royal Academy is now open. Its general character is mediocrity, unrelieved by any works of extraordinary or striking merit. There are some clever landscapes by the younger Danbys, and one by the father, which is by no means among his happiest — a dark picture, which in half a dozen years will be one raass of black paint. Cooper, alraost equal to Paul Potter as a cattle painter, contributes some good pieces of that kind, and one of them, in which the cattle are from his pencil, and the landscape from that of Lee, appeared to me the finest thing in the collection. There is, however, a picture by Leshe, which his friends insist is the best in the exhibition. It represents the chaplain of the Duke leaving the table in a rage, after an harangue by Don duixote in praise of knight- errantry. The suppressed mirth of the Duke and Duchess, the sly looks of the servants, the stormy anger of the ecclesiastic, and the serene gravity of the knight, are well expressed ; but there is a stiffness in some of the figures which makes them look as if copied from the wooden models in the artist's study, and a raw and crude appearance in the handhng, so that you are reminded of the brush every time you look at the painting. To do Leshe justice. 406 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLEK. however, his paintings ripen wonderfully, and seem to acquire a finish -with years. If one -wishes to form an idea of the vast nimibers of ui- different paiutuigs whieh are annuaUy produced in En gland, he should -^-isit, as I did, another exhibition, a large gaUery hghted from above, in which each artist, most of them of the younger or obscurer class, takes a certain number of feet on the waU and exhibits just what he pleases. Even" mau is his owu hanging committee, aud if his pictures are not placed in the most advantageous position, it is his own fault. Here acres of canvas are ex hibited, most of which is spoUed of course, though here and there a good picture is to be seen, and others a\ hich give promise of future merit. Enough of pictures. The principal subject of political discussion since I have been ui England, has been the expediency of allo-wing Je^s to sit in Parliament. You have seen by what a large majority Baroii Rothschild has been again returned from the city of London, after his resignation, in spite of the zealous opposition of the con servatives. It is aUowed, I think, on aU hands, that the majority ofthe nation are in favor of aUo-wing Jews to hold seats in Parhament, but the other side urge the inconsist ency of maintaining a Christian Church as a state institu tion, and admitting the enemies of Christianity to a share in its administration. Public opinion, however, is so strongly against pohtical disabilities on account of rehgious JEWS IN PARLIAMENT. 407 faith, that -with the aid of the ministry, it will, no doubt, triumph, and we shall see another class of adversaries of the Establishment making war upon it in the House of Comraons. Nor will it be at all surprising if, after a little whUe, we hear of Jewish barons, earls, and marquises in the House of Peers. Rothschild himself may become the founder of a noble line, opulent beyond the proudest of them all. The protectionist party here are laboring to persuade the people that the government have committed a great error, in granting such hberal conditions to the trade of other nations, to the prejudice of British industry. They do not, however, seem to make much impression on the public mind. The necessaries of life are obtained at a cheaper rate than formerly, and that satisfies the people. Peel has been making a speech in Parhament on the free-trade question, which I often hear referred to as a very able argument for the free-trade policy. Neither on this ques tion nor on that of the Jewish disabilities, do the oppo sition seem to have the country with them. 408 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. LETTER LL A VISIT TO THE SHETLAND ISLES. Aberdeen, July 19, 1849. Two days ago I was in the Orkneys ; the day before I was Ul the Shetland Isles, the " farthest Thule" of the Ro mans, where I clirabed the Noup of the Noss, as the fa mous headland of the island of Noss is called, from which you look out upon the sea that hes between Shetland and Norway. From Wick, a considerable fishing town in Caithness, on the northern coast of Scotland, a steamer, named the Glueen, departs once a week, in the sumraer months, for Kirkwall, in the Orkneys, and Lerwick, in Shetland. We went on board of her about ten o'clock on the 14th of July. The herring fishery had just begun, and the artificial port of Wick, constructed with massive walls of stone, was crowded with fishing vessels which had returned that morn ing from the labors of the night ; for in the herring fishery it is only in the night that the nets are spread and drawn. Many of the vessels had landed their cargo ; in others thc fishermen were busily disengaging the hemngs frora tho black nets and throwing them in heaps ; and now and then HIGHLAND FISHERMEN, 400 a boat later than the rest, was entering from the sea. The green heights all around the bay were covered with groups of -women, sitting or walking, dressed for the most part iu caps and white short gowns, waiting for the arrival of tho boats manned by their husbands and brothers, or belonging to the famUies of those who had come to seek occupation as fishermen, I had seen two or three of the principal street:; of Wick that morning, swarming with strapping fellows, in blue highland bonnets, with blue jackets and pantaloons, and coarse blue flannel shirts, A shopkeeper, standing at his door, instructed me who they were, " They are men of the Celtic race," he said — the term Celtic has gro-wn to be quite fashionable, I find, when ap phed to the Highlanders. " They came from the Hebrides and other parts of western Scotland, to get employment in the herring fishery. These people have travelled perhaps three hundred mUes, most of them on foot, to be employed six or seven weeks, for which they will receive about six pounds wages. Those whom you see are not the best of their class ; the more enterprising and industrious have boats of their own, and carry on the fishery on their owu account." We found the dueen a strong steamboat, with a good cabin and convenient state-rooms, but dirty, and smelling of fish froca stem to stern. It has seemed to me that the fur ther north I went, the more dirt I found. Our captain was an old Aberdeen seaman, with a stoop in his shoulders, and 35 410 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. looked as if he was continually watching for land, an occu pation for which the foggy chmate of these latitudes gives him full scope. We left Wick between eleven and twelve o'clock in the forenoon, and glided over a cahn sea, with a cloudless sky above us, and a thin haze on the surface of the waters. The haze thickened to a fog, which grew more and more dense, and finaUy closed overhead. After about three hours sail, the captain began to grow uneasy, and was seen walking about on the bridge betweea the wheel-houses, anxiously peering into the mist, on the look out for the ooast of the Orkneys. At length he gave up the search, and stopped the engine. The passengers amused themselves "with fishing. Several coal-fish, a large fish of slender shape, were caught, and one fine cod was hauled up by a gentleman who united in his person, as he gave me to understand, the two capacities of portrait-painter and preacher of the gospel, and who held that the universal cliurch of Christendom had gone sadly astray from the true primitive doctrine, in regard to the time when the millen nium is to take place. The fog cleared away in the evening ; our steamer was again in motion ; we landed at KirkwaU in the middle of the night, and when I went on deck the next moming, we were smoothly passing the shores of Fair Isle — ^high and steep rocks, impending over the waters -with a covering of green turf Before they were out of sight we saw the Shetland coast, the dark rock of Sumburgh Head, and be- LERWICK. 411 hind it, half shrouded in mist, the promontory of Fitfiel Head, — Fitful Head, as it is called by Scott, in his novel of the Pirate. Beyond, to the east, black rocky promontories came in sight, one after the other, beethng over the sea. At ten o'clock, we were passing through a channel be tween the islands leading to Lerwick, the capital of Shet land, on the principal island bearing the name of Main land, Fields, yellow with flowers, araong which stood here and there a cottage, sloped softly down to the water, and beyond them rose the bare dechvities and summits of the hUls, dark with heath, with here and there still darker spots, of an almost inky hue, where peat had been cut for fuel. Not a tree, not a shrub was to be seen, and the greater part of the soil appeared never to have been reduced to cultivation. About one o'clock -we cast anchor before Lerwick, a fishing viUage, buUt on the shore of Bressay Sound, which here forms one of the finest harbors in the world. It has two passages to the sea, so that when the wind blows a storm on one side of the islands, the Shetlander in his boat passes out in the other direction, and finds himself in com paratively smooth water. It was Sunday, and the raan who landed us at the quay and took our baggage to our lodgihg, said as he left us — " It's the Sabbath, and I'll no tak' my pay now, but I'll caU the morrow. My name is Jim Sinclair, pilot, and if ye'U be wanting to go anywhere, I'll be glad to tak' ye in 412 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. my boat." In a few minutes we were snugly established at our lodgings. There is no inn throughout all the Shetland Islands, which contain about thirty thousand inhabitants, but if any of my friends should have occasion to -visit Ler wick, I can cheerfully recommend to them the corafortable lodging-house of Mrs. Walker, who keeps a httle shop in the principal street, not far from Glueen's lane. We made haste to get ready for church, and sallied out to find the place of worship frequented by our landlady, which was not a dif ficult matter. The httle town of Lerwick consists of two-story houses. built mostly of unhewn stone, rough-cast, with steep roofe and a chimney at each end. They are arranged along a winding street parallel with the shore, and along narrow lanes running upward to the top of the hill. The main street is flagged -with sraooth stones, like the streets in Venice, for no vehicle runs on wheels in the Shetland islands. We went up Clueen's lane and soon found the building occu pied by the Free Church of Scotland, untU a temple of fairer proportions, on which the masons are now at work, on the top of the hiU, shall be completed for their reception. ^' was crowded with attentive worshipers, one of who;. obligingly carae forward and found a seat for us. The minister, Mr. Frazer, had begun the evening service, and was at prayer. When I entered, he was speaking of " our father the devil ;" but the prayer was followed by an earnest, practical discourse, though somewhat crude in thc CHURCH-GOERS IN SHETLAND. 413 composition, and reminding me of an expression I once heard used by a distinguished Scotchman, who complained that the clergy of his country, in composing their sermons, too often " mak' rough wark of it." I looked about among these descendants ofthe Norwegians, but could not see any thing singular in their physiognoray ; and but for the harsh accent of the preacher, I might almost have thought myself in the midst of a country congregation in the United States. They are mostly of a light complexion, with an appearance of health and strength, though of a sparer raake than the people of the more southern British isles. After the service was over, we returned to our lodgings, by a way which led to the top of the hill, and made the circuit of the little town. The paths leading into the interior of the island, were fuU of people returning homeward ; the woraen in their best attire, a few in silks, with wind-tanned faces. We saw them disappearing, one after another, in the hollows, or over the dark bare hill tops. With a population of less than three thous.and souls, Lerwick has four places of worship — a church ofthe Estab lishment, a Free church, a church for the Seceders, and one for the Methodists. The road we took commanded a fine -view of the harbor, surrounded and sheltered by hills. Within it lay a numerous group of idle fishing-vessels, with one great steamer in the midst ; and more formidable in appearance, a Dutch man-of-war, sent to protect the Dutch fisheries, with the flag of Holland flying at the mast-hgad. 35* 414 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. Above the to-wn, on tall poles, were floating the flags of four or five different nations, to mark the habitation of their consuls. On the side opposite to the harbor, lay the small fresh water lake of Cleikimin, with the remains of a Pictish castle in the raidst ; one of those circular buildings of unhewn, uncemented stone, skillfully laid, forraing apartments and galleries of such small diraensions as to lead Sir Walter Scott to infer that the Plots were a people of a stature con siderably below the ordinary standard of the huraan race. A deep Sabbath silence reigned over the scene, except the sound of the -wind, which here never ceases to blow frora one quarter or another, as it swept the herbage and beat against the stone walls surrounding the fields. The ground under our feet was thick with daisies and the blossoms of the crow-foot and other flowers ; for in the brief sumraer of these islands, nature, which has no groves to embellish, makes amends by pranking the ground, particularly in the uncultivated parts, with a great profusion and variety of flowers. The next raorning we were rowed, by two of Jim Sinclair's boys, to the island of Bressay, and one of them acted as our guide to the remarkable precipice called the Noup of the Noss. We ascended its smooth slopes and pastures, and passed through one or two hamlets, where we observed the construction of the dwellings of the Zetland peasantry. They are built of unhewn stone, with roofs of HABITATIONS OF THE ISLANDERS. 415 turf held do-wn by ropes of straw neatly t-wisted ; the floors are of earth ; the cow, pony, and pig live under the same roof with the family, and the manure pond, a receptacle for refuse and filth, is elose to the door. A little higher up we came upon the uncultivated grounds, abandoned to heath, and only used to supply fuel by the cutting of peat. Here and there women were busy pihng the square pieces of peat in stacks, that they might dry in the -wind. " We carry home these pits in a basket on our showlders, when they are dry," said one of them to me ; but those who can afford to keep a pony, make him do this work for them. In the hollows of this part of the island -we saw several fresh-water ponds, which -were enlarged -with dykes and made to turn grist mills. We peeped into one or two of these mills, little stone buUdings, m which we could hardly stand upright, inclosing two smaU stones turned by a perpendicular shaft, in whieh are half a dozen cogs ; the paddles are fixed bdow, and there struck by the water, tum the upper stone. A steep descent brought us to the httle strait, bordered with rocks, whieh divides Brassey from the island called the Noss. A strong south wind was driving in the billows from the sea -with noise and foam, but they were broken and checked by a bar of rocks in the middle of the strait, and we crossed to the north of it in smooth water. The ferryman told us that when the wind was nort.herly he crossed to the south of the bar. As we climbed the hill of the Noss the mist began to drift thinly around us fi-om the 415 LETTnpS OP A TRAV li.':r. sea, and flocks of sea-birds rose screaming from the ground at our approach. At length we stood upon the brink of a precipice of fearful height, from which we had a fuU view of the StUl higher precipices of the neighboring summit. A wall of rock was before us six hundred feet in height, descending almost perpendicularly to the sea, which roared and foamed at its base among huge masses of rock, and plunged into great caverns, hoUowed out by the beating of the surges for centuries. Midway on the lock, and above 1 lie reach of the spray, were thousands oi sea-birds, sitting i.i ranks on the numerous shelve, or alighting, or taking wing, and screaming as they flew, A cloud of them were constantly in the air in front of tbe rock and over our heads. Here they make their nests and rear their young, but not entirely safe from the pursuit of the Zetlander, who causes himself to be let down by a rope from the summit and plunders their nests. The face of the rock, above the por tion which is the haunt of the birds, was fairly tapestried with herbage and flowers which the perpetual moisture of lhe atmosphere keeps always fresh — daisies nodding in the M'ind, and the crimson phlox, seeming to set the cliffs on flame ; yellow buttercups, and a variety of other plants in bloora, of which I do not know the name. Magnificent as this spectacle was, we were not satisfied without chmbing to the sumrait. As we passed upward, we saw where the rabbits had made their burrows in the elastic peat-like soil close to the very edge of the precipice. THE CRADLE OP THE NOSS. 417 We now found ourselves involved in the cold streams of mist which the strong sea--wind was drifting over us ; they were in fact the lower skirts of the clouds. At times they would clear away and give us a prospect of the green island summits around us, with their bold headlands, the winding straits between, and the black rocks standing out in the sea. When we arrived at the summit we could hardly stand against the wind, but it was almost more difficult to muster courage to look do-wn that dizzy depth over which the Zet landers suspend themselves with ropes, in quest of the eggs of the sea-fowl. My friend captured a young gull on the surarait of the Noup. The bird had risen at his approach, and essayed to fly towards the sea, but the strength of the wind drove him back to the land. He rose again, but could not sustain a long ffight, and coming to the ground again, was caught, after a spirited chase, amidst a wild clamor of of the sea-fowl over our heads. Not far from the Noup is the Holm, or, as it is sometimes called, the Cradle or Basket, of the Noss. It is a perpen dicular mass of rock, two or three hundred feet high, with a broad flat summit, richly covered with grass, and is sep arated from the island by a narrow chasm, through which the sea flows. Two strong ropes are stretched frora the main island to the top of the Holm, and on these is slung the cradle or basket, a sort of open box made of deal boards, in which the shepherds pass with their sheep to the top of the Holm. We found the cradle strongly secured by lock 418 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. and key to the stakes on the side of the Noss, in order, no doubt, to prevent any person from crossing for his o-wn amusement. As we descended the sraooth pastures of the Noss, we fell in with a herd of ponies, of a size somewhat larger than is common on the islands. I asked our guide, a lad of four teen years of age, what was the average price of a sheltie. His answer deserves to be written in letters of gold — " It's jist as they're bug an' smaV." From the ferryman, at the strait below, I got more specific inforraation. They vary in price frora three to ten pounds, but the latter sura is only paid for the finest of these animals, in the respects of shape and color. It is not a little remarkable, that the same causes which, in Shet land, have made the horse the sraallest of ponies, have alraost equally reduced the size of the cow. The sheep, also — a pretty creature, I might caU it — from the fine wool of which the Shetland women knot the thin webs known by the name of Shetland shawls, is much smaller than any breed I have ever seen. Whether the cause be the per petual chilliness of the atmosphere, or the insufficiency of nourishment — for, though the long Zetland winters are temperate, and snow never lies long on the ground, there is scarce any growth of herbage in that season — I will not undertake to say, but the people of the islands ascribe it to the insufficiency of nourishment. It is, at all events, re- PICTISH CASTLE. 419 markable, that the traditions of the country should ascribo to the Picts, the early inhabitants of Shetland, the same dwarfish stature, and that the numerous remains of their habitations which still exist, should seem to confinn the tradition. The race whieh at present possesses the Shet lands is, however, of what the French call " an advan tageous stature," and well limbed. If it be the want of a proper and genial warmth, which prevents the due growth of the doraestic aniraals, it is a want to which the Zet landers are not subject. Their hills afford the man appa- rantly inexhaustible supply of peat, which costs the poorest man nothing but the trouble of cutting it and bringing it home; and their cottages, I was told, are always well warmed in winter. In crossing the narrow strait which separates the Noss from Bressay, I observed on the Bressay side, overlooking the water, a round hiUock, of very regular shape, in which the green turf was intermixed with stones. " That,'' said the ferryman, " is what we call a Pictish castle. I mind when it was opened ; it was full of rooms, so that ye could go over every part of it." I climbed the hillock, and found, by inspecting several openings, which had been made by the peasantry to take away the stones, that below the turf it was a regular work of Pictish raasonry, but the spiral galleries, whieh these openings revealed, had been cora pletely choked up, in taking away the raaterials of which they were built. Although plenty of stone may be found 420 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. everywhere in the islands, there seems to be a disposition to plunder these reraarkable remains, for the sake of building cottages, or making those inclosures for their cabbages, which the islanders call crubs. They have been pulling down the Pictish castle, on the little island in the fresh water loch called Cleikimin, near Lerwick, described with such minuteness by Scott in his journal, tUl very few traces of its original construction are left. If the inclosing of lands for pasturage and cultivation proceeds as it has begun, these curious monuments of a race which has long perished, wiU disappear. Now that we were out of hearing of the cries of the sea- birds, we were regaled with more agreeable sounds. We had set out, as we chmbed the island of Bressay, amid a perfect chorus of larks, answering each other in the sky, and some times, apparently, from the clouds ; and now we heard them again overhead, pouring out their sweet notes so fast and so ceaselessly, that it seemed as if the little creatures imagined they had more to utter, than they had time to utter it in. In no part of the British Islands have I seen the larks so numerous or so merry, as in the Shetlands. We waited awhile at the wharf by the minister's house in Bressay, for Jim Sinclair, who at length appeared in his boat to convey us to Lerwick. " He is a noisy fallow," said our good landlady, and truly we found him voluble enough, but quite arausing. As he rowed us to town he gave us a sample of his historical knowledge, talking of Sir Wafter THE ZETLANDERS. 421 Raleigh and the settlement of North America, and told us that his greatest pleasure was to read historical books in the long winter nights. His children, he said, could all read and write. We dined on a leg of Shetland mutton, with a tart made " of the only fruit of the Island" as a Scotchman called it, the stalks of the rhubarb plant, and went on board of our steamer about six o'clock in the after noon. It was matter of some regret to us that we were obliged to leave Shetland so soon. Two or three days more might have been pleasantly passed among its grand preci pices, its winding straits, its remains of a reraote and rude antiquity, its little horses, little cows, and httle sheep, its sea-fowl, its larks, its flowers, and its hardy and active people. There was an amusing novelty also in going to bed, as we did, by daylight, for at this season of the year, the daylight is never out of the sky, and the flush of early sunset only passes along the horizon from the northwest to the northeast, where it brightens into sunrise. The Zetlanders, I was told by a Scotch clergyman, who had hved among them forty years, are naturally shrewd and quick of apprehension ; " as to their morals," he added, " if ye stay araong thera any time ye'U be able to judge for yourself" So, on the point of morals, I am in the dark. More attention, I hear, is paid to the education of their children than forraerly, and all have the opportunity of learn ing to read and write in the parochial schools. Their agri culture is still very rude, they are very unwiUing to adopt 36 422 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. the instruraents of husbandry used in England, but on the whole they are making some progress. A Shetland gentle man, who, as he remarked to rae, had " had the advantage of seeing some other countries" besides his own, complained that the peasantry were spending too much of their earnings for tea, tobacco, and spirits. Last winter a terrible famine came upon the islands ; their fisheries had been unproduc tive, and the potato crop had been cut off by the bhght. The communication -with Scotland by steamboat had ceased, as it always does in winter, and it was long before the sufferings of the Shetlanders were kno-wn in Great Britain, but as soon as the inteUigence was received, contributions were made and the poor creatures were relieved. Their climate, inhospitable as it seems, is healthy, and they live to a good old age. A native of the island, a baronet, who has a great white house on a bare field in sight of Lerwick, and was a passenger on board the steamer in which we made our passage to the island, remarked that if it was not the healthiest climate in the world, the ex tremely dirty habits of the peasantry would engender disease, which, however, was not the case. " It is, probably, the effect of the sahne particles in the air," he added. His opinion seemed to be that the dirt was salted by the sea- winds, and preserved from further decomposition, I was somewhat amused, in hearing him boast of the climate of Shetland in winter. " Have you never observed" said he, turning to the old Scotch clergyman of whom I have A GALE IN THE NORTH SEA. 423 already spoken, " how much larger the proportion of sunny days is in our islands than at the south ?" " I have never observed it," was the dry answer ofthe rainister," The people of Shetland speak a kind of Scottish, but not with the Scottish accent. Four hundred years ago, when the islands were transferred frora Nor-way to the British cro-wn, their language was Norse, but that tongue, al though some of its words have been preserved in the pres ent dialect, has become extinct. " I have heard," said an inteUigent Shetlander to me, " that there are yet, perhaps, half a dozen persons in one of our remotest neighborhoods, who are able to speak it, but I never met with one who could." In returning from Lerwick to the Orkneys, we had a sample of the weather which is often encountered in these latitudes. The wind blew a gale in the night, and our steamer was tossed about on the waves like an egg-shell, much to the discomfort of the passengers. We had on board a cargo of ponies, the smaUest of which were from the Shetlands, some of them not much larger than sheep, and nearly as shaggy ; the others, of larger size, had been brought from the Faro Isles. In the morning, when the gale had blown itself to rest, I went on deck and saw one of the Faro Island ponies, which had given out during the night, stretched dead upon the deck. I inquired if the body was to be committed to the deep. "It is to be skinned first,'' was the answer. 424 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. We stopped at Kirkwall in the Orkneys, long enough to allow us to look at the old cathedral of St. Magnus, built early in the twelfth century — a venerable pile, in perfect preservation, and the finest specimen of the architecture once called Saxon, then Norman, and lately Romanesque, that I have ever seen. The round arch is everywhere used, except in two or three windows of later addition. The nave is narrow, and the central groined arches are lofty ; so that an idea of vast extent is given, though the cathedral is smaU, compared with the great minsters in England. The work of corapleting certain parts of the building which were left unfinished, is now going on at the expense of the government. All the old flooring, and the pews, which made it a parish church, have been taken away, and the original proportions and symmetry of the building are seen as they ought to be. The general effect of the building is wonderfully grand and solemn. On our return to Scotland, we stopped for a few hours at Wick, It was late in the afternoon, and the fishermen, in their vessels, were going out of the harbor to their nightly toil. Vessel after vessel, each manned with four stout rowers, came out of the port — and after rowing a short distance, raised their sails and steered for the open sea, till all the waters, from the land to the horizon, were full of them. I counted them, hundreds after hundreds, till I grew tired of the task. A sail of ten or twelve hours brought us to Aberdeen, with ita old cathedral, encumbered ABERDEEN. 425 by pews and wooden partitions, and its old college, the tower of which is surmounted by a cluster of flying but tresses, formed into the resemblance of a crown. This letter, you perceive, is dated at Aberdeen. It was begun there, but I have written portions of it at different tiraes since I left that city, and I beg that you wiU imagine it to be of the latest date. It is now long enough, I fear, to tire your readers, and I therefore lay down my pen. 36* 426 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. LETTER LIL EUROPE UNDER THE BAYONET. Paris, September 13, 1849. Whoever should visit the principal countries of Europe at the present moment, might take thera for conquered provinces, held in subjection by their victorious raasters, at the point of the sword. Such was the aspect which France presented when I came to Paris a few weeks since. The city was then in what is called, by a convenient fiction, a state of siege ; soldiers filled the streets, were posted in every public square and at every corner, were seen march ing before the churches, the cornices of which bore the inscription of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, keeping their brethren quiet by the bayonet. I have since made a journey to Bavaria and Switzerland, and on returning I find the siege raised, and these demonstrations of fraternity less formal, but the show and the menace of railitary force are scarcely less apparent. Those who raaintain that France is not fit for liberty, need not afflict themseves with the idea that there is at present raore liberty in France than her people know how to enjoy. USES OP THE STATE OP SIEGE. 427 On my journey, I found the cities along the Rhine crowded with soldiers ; the sound of the drum was heard araong the hills covered with vines ; women were trundling loaded wheel-barrows, and carrying panniers like asses, to earn the taxes which are extorted to support the men who stalk about in uniforra. I entered Heidelberg with antici pations of pleasure ; they were dashed in a moment ; the city was in a state of siege, occupied by Prussian troops which had been sent to take the part of the Grand Duke of Baden against his people. I could hardly believe that this was the same peaceful and friendly city which I had known in better times. Every other man in the streets was a soldier ; the beautiful walks about the old castle were full of soldiers ; in the evening they were reeling through the streets. " This invention," said a German who had been a member of the Diet of the Confederation lately broken up, "this invention of declaring a city, which has uncondition ally submitted, to be still in a state of siege, is but a device to practice the most unbounded oppression. Any man who is suspected, or feared, or disliked, or supposed not to ap prove of the proceedings of the victorious party, is arrested and imprisoned at pleasure. He may be guiltless of any offense which could be made a pretext for condemning hira, but his trial is arbitrarily postponed, and when at last he is released, he has suffered the penalty of a long confineraent, and is taught how dangerous it is to becorae obnoxious to the government," 428 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. From Heidelberg, thus transformed, I was glad to take my departure as soon as possible. Our way from that city to Heilbronn, was through a most charming country along the valley of the Neckar. Here were low hills and valleys rich with harvests, a road embowered in fruit-trees, the branches of which were propped with stakes to prevent them frora breaking with their load, and groves lying pleasantly in the morning sunshine, where ravens were croaking. Birds of worse omen than these were abroad, straggling groups, and sometimes entire companies of soldiers, on their way from one part of the duchy to another ; while in the fields, women, prematurely old with labor, were wielding the hoe and the mattock, and the younger and stronger of their sex were swinging the scythe. In all the vUlages through which we passed, in the very smallest, troops were posted, and men in military uniform were standing at the doors, or looking from the windows of every inn and beer-house. At Heilbronn we took the railway for Stuttgart, the capital of Wurtemberg. There was a considerable propor tion of men in mihtary trappings among the passengers, but at one of the stations they came upon us like a cloud, and we entered Stuttgart with a little army. That city, too, looked as if in a state of siege, so numerous were the soldiery, though the vine-covered hills, among which it is situated, could have given them a better occupation. The railway, beyond Stuttgart, wound through a deep valley and ended at Geisslingen, an ancient Swabian to-wn, in a SYMPATHY WITH THE HUNGARIANS. 429 gorge of the mountains, with tall old houses, not one of which, I might safely affirm, has been buUt within the last two hundred years. Frora this place to Ulra, on the Danube, the road was fairly lined with soldiers, walking or resting by the wayside, or closely packed in the peasants' wagons, which they had hired to carry them short distances. At Ulra we were obhged to content ourselves with straitened accommodations, the hotels being occupied by the gentry in epaulettes. I hoped to see fewer of this class at the capital of Bavaria, but it was not so ; they were everywhere placed in sight as if to keep the people in awe. " These fellows," said a German to me, " are always too numerous, but in ordinary times they are kept in the capitals and barracks, and the nuisance is out of sight. Now, however, the occasion is supposed to make their presence necessary in the raidst of the people, and they swarra everywhere." Another, it was our host of the Goldener Hirsch, said to ray friend, " I think I shall eraigrate to America, I am tired of living under the bayonet." I was in Munich when the no 'is arrived of the surrender of the Hungarian troops under Gorgey, and the fall of the Hungarian republic. AU along my journey I had observed tokens of the intense interest which the German people took in the result of the struggle between Austria and the Magyars, and of the warmth of their hopes in favor of the latter. The intelhgence was received with the deepest 430 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER sorrow. " So perishes," said a Bavarian, " the last hope of European liberty." Our journey to Switzerland led us through the southern part of Bavaria, among the old towns which formed a part of ancient Swabia. The country here, in some respects, re sembles New England ; here are broad woods, large orchards of the apple and pear, and scattered farra-houses — of a different architecture, it is true, from -that of the Yankees, and somewhat resembhng, with their far-project ing eaves, those of Switzerland. Yet there was a further difference — everywhere, raen were seen under arms, and women at the plough. So weary had I grown of the perpetual sight of the military uniform, that I longed to escape mto Switzerland, where I hoped to see less of it, and it was with great delight that I found myself at Lindau, a border town of Bavaria, on the Bodensee, or Lake of Constance, on the shores of which the boundaries of four sovereignties meet. A steamer took us across the lake, from a wharf covered with soldiers, to Roorschach, in Switzerland, where not a soldier was to be seen. Nobody asked for our passports, nobody required us to submit our baggage to search. I could alraost have kneeled and kissed the shore of the hospitable republic ; and really it was beautiful enough for such a demonstration of affection, for nothing could be lovelier than the decli-vities of that shore -with its woods and orchards, and grassy meadows, and green hollows running ST. GALL. 431 upward to the mountain-tops, all fresh with a shower which had just passed and now glittering in the sunshine, and interspersed with large Swiss houses, bearing quaintly- carved galleries, and broad overhanging roofs, while to the east rose the glorious summits of the Alps, mingling with the clouds. In three or four hours we had climbed up to St. Gall — St. GaUen, the Germans call it — situated in a high valley, among steep green hills, which send do-wn spurs of wood land to the meadows below. In walking out to look at the town, we heard a brisk and continued discharge of mus ketry, and, proceeding in the direction of the sound, came to a large field, evidently set apart as a parade-ground, on which several hundred youths were practicing the art of war in a sham fight, and keeping up a spirited fire at each other -with blank cartridges. On inquiry, we were told that these were the boys of the schools of St. Gall, from twelve to sixteen years of age, -with whom military exercises were a part of their education. I was still, therefore, among soldiers, but of a different class from those of whom I had seen so much. Here, it was the people who were armed for self-protection ; there, it was a body of mer cenaries armed to keep the people in subjection. Another day's joumey brought us to the picturesque town of Zurich, and the next morning about four o'clock I was awakened by the roll of drums under my window. Looking out, I saw a regiment of boys of a tender age, in a uniform 432 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. of brown linen, with little light muskets on their shOulders, and miniature knapsacks on their backs, completely equipped and furnished for -war, led on by their little officers in regu lar mUitary order, marching and wheeling to the sound of martial music with all the precision of veterans. In Swit zerland arms are in every man's hands ; he is educated to be a soldier, and taught that the liberties of his country depend on his skill and valor. The worst effect, perhaps of this military education is, that the Swiss, when other means of subsistence are not easily found, become mihtary adventurers and sell their services to the first purchaser. Meantime, nobody is regarded as properly fitted for his duties as a member of the state, who is not skiUed in the use of arms. Target-shooting, Freischiessen, is the national amusement of Switzerland, and has been so ever since the days of Tell ; occasions of target-shooting are prescribed and superintended by the pubhc authorities. They were practicing it at the stately city of Berne when we visited it ; they were practicing it at various other places as we passed. Every town is provided with a public shooting-ground near its gates. It -was at one of the most remarkable of these to-wns ; it was at Freiburg, Cathohc Freiburg, fuU of Cathohc semina ries and convents, in the churches of which you may hear the shrill voices of the nuns chanting matins, themselves unseen ; it was at Freiburg, grandly seated on the craggy banks of her rivers, flowing in deep gulfs, spanned by the loftiest and FEEinUEG. 433 longest chain-bridges in the world, that I saw another evi dence of the fact that Switzerland is the only place on the continent where freedora is understood, or allowed to have an existence. A proclamation of the authorities of the canton was pasted on the walls and gates, ordaining the 16th of September as a day of religious thanksgiving. After recounting the motives of gratitude to Providence ; after speaking of the abundance of the harvests, the health enjoyed throughout Switzerland, at the threshold of which the cholera had a second time been stayed ; the subsidence of pohtical animosities, and the quiet enjoyment of the ben efits of the new constitution upon which the country had entered, the proclamation mentioned, as a special reason of gratitude to Almighty God, that Switzerland, in this day of revolutions, had been enabled to offer, among her moun tains, a safe and unmolested asylum to the thousands of fugitives who had suffered defeat in the battles of freedora. I could not help contrasting this with the cruel treatraent shown by France to the pohtical refugees frora Baden and other parts of Germany. A few days before, it had been announced that the French government required of these poor fellows that they should either enlist at once in the re- ^ments destined for service in Algiers, or iraraediately leave the country — offering thera the alternative of mUitary slavery, or banishment from the country in which they had hoped to find a shelter. I have spoken of the practice of Switzerland in regard to 37 434 LETTERS OF A TRAVELLER. passports, an exaraple which it does not suit the purpoiie of the French pohtioians to follow. Here, and all over the continent, the passport system is as strictly and vexatiously enforced as ever It is remarkable that none of the re formers occupied in the late remodelling of European insti tutions, seems to have thought of abolishing this invention of despotism — this restraint upon the liberty of passing from place to place, which makes Europe one great prison. If the people had been accustomed to perfect freedom in this respect, though but a short time, it inight have been found difficult, at least in France, to reimpose the old restraints. The truth is, however, that France is not quite so free at present as she was under Louis Phihppe. The only advan tage of her present condition is, that the constitution places in the hands of the people the means of peaceably perfecting their liberties, whenever they are enhghtened enough to claim them. On my way from Geneva to Lyons I sat in the banquette of the diligence among the plebeians. The conversation happened to tum on pohtics, and the expressions pf hatred against the present government of France, which broke from the conductor, tbe coachman, and the two passengers by my side, were probably significant of the feeling which prevails among the people. " The only law now," said one, " is the law of the sabre." " The soldiers and the gens d'armes have every thing their own way now," said another, " but by and by they wiU be glad to hide in the sewers." The DISCONTENT OF TIIE FRENCH PEOPLE. 435 others were no less emphatic in their expressions of anger and detestation. The expedition to Rome is unpopular throughout France, more especially so in the southern part of the repubhc, where the intercourse with Rome has been more frequent, and the sympathy with her people is stronger. " I have never," said an American friend, who has resided sorae timt in Paris, " heard a single Frenchman defend it." It is un popular, even among the troops sent on the expedition, as is acknowledged by the government journals themselves. To propitiate public opinion, the government has changed its course, and after making war upon the Roraans to establish the pontifical throne, now tells the Pope that he must subrait to place the government in the hands of the laity. This change of policy has occasioned a good deal of surprise and an infinite deal of discussion. Whatever may be its con sequences, there is one consequence which it can not have, that of recovering to the President and his rainistry the popularity they have lost. 436 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. LETTER LIII. VOLTERRA. [This letter was casually omitted from its pi-oper place near the beginning of the volume.] Rome, April 15, 1835. Towards the end of March I went from Pisa to Volterra. This you know is a very ancient city, one of the strong holds of Etruria when Rorae was iu its cradle ; and, in raore raodern tiraes, in the age of Italian republics, large enough to forra an independent comraunity of considerable importance. It is now a decayed town, containing about four thousand inhabitants, some of whom are families of the poor and proud nobility common enough over all Italy, who are said to quarrel with each other more fiercely in Volterra than almost anywhere else. It is the old feud of the Montagues and the Capulets on a humbler scale, and the disputes of the Volterra nobility are the more violent and implacable for being hereditary. Poor creatures I too proud to engage in business, too indolent for literature, ex cluded from pohtical employments by the nature of the government, there is nothing left for thera but to starve, intrigue, and quarrel. You raay judge how miserably poor A DESOLATE "REGION. 437 they are, when you are told they can not afford even to cul tivate the favorite art of modern Italy ; the art best suited to the genius of a soft and effeminate people. There is, I was told, but one pianoforte in the whole town, and that is owned by a Florentine lady who has recently corae to re side here. For several mUes before reaching Volterra, our attention was fixed by the extraordinary aspect of the country through which we were passing. The road gradually as cended, and we found ourselves among deep ravines and steep, high, broken banks, principally of clay, barren, and in most places wholly bare of herbage, a scene of complete desolation, were it not for a cottage here and there perched upon the heights, a few sheep attended by a boy and a dog grazing on the brink of one of the precipices, or a solitary patch of bright green wheat in some spot where the rams had not yet carried away the vegetable mould. Imagine to yourself an elevated country like the high lands of Pennsylvania or the western part of Massachu setts ; iraagine vast beds of loam and clay in place of the ledges of rock, and then fancy the whole region to be torn by water-spouts and torrents into guUeys too profound to be passed, with sharp ridges between — stripped of its trees and its grass — and you wiU have some idea of the country near Volterra, I could not help fancying, while I looked at ft, that as the earth grew old, the ribs of rook which once up held the raountains, had becorae changed into the baro heaps 37* 438 LETTERS OF A Tr. AVELL ER, of earth which I saw about rne, that time and the elements had destroyed the cohesionof the particles of which they were formed, and that now the rains were sweeping them down to the Mediterranean, to fill its bed and cause its waters to encroach upon the land. It was impossible for me to pre vent the apprehension frora passing through my mind, that such might be the fate of other quarters of the globe in ages yet to come, that their rocks must crumble and their- moun tains be levelled, until the waters shall again cover the face of the earth, unless new mountains shall be thrown up by eruptions of internal fire. They told rae in Volterra, that this frightful region had once been productive and under cultivation, but that after a plague which, four or five hun dred years since, had depopulated the country, it was aban doned and neglected, and the rains had reduced it to its present state. In the raidst of this desolate tract, which is, however, here and there interspersed with fertile spots, rises the raountain on which Volterra is situated, where the inhab itants breathe a pure and keen atmosphere, almost perpet uaUy cool, and only die of pleurisies and apoplexies ; while below, on the banks of the Cecina, which in full sight winds its way to the sea, they die of fevers. One of the ravines of which I have spoken, — the balza they call it at Volterra — has ploughed a deep chasm on the north side of this moun tain, and is every year rapidly approaching the city on its summit. I stood on its edge and looked down a bank of soft THE BALZA AT VOLTERRA. 439 red earth five hundred feet in height. A few rods in front of me I saw where a road had crossed the spot in which the gulf now yawned ; the tracks of the last year's carriages were seen reaching to the edge on both sides. The ruins of a convent were close at hand, the inmates of which, two or three years since, had been removed by the government to the town for safety. These will soon be undermined by the advancing chasm, together with a fine piece of old Etruscan wall, once inclosing the city, built of enormous uncemented parallelograms of stone, and looking as if it might be the work of the giants who lived before the flood ; a neighboring church wiU next fall into the gulf, which finally, if means be not taken to prevent its progress, will reach and sap the present walls of the city, swallowing up what tune has so long spared. " A few hundred crowns," said an inhabitant of Volterra to me, " would stop all this mischief A wall at the bottom of the chasm, and a heap of branches of trees or other rub bish, to check the faU of the earth, are aU that would be necessary." I asked why these raeans were not used. " Because," he replied, " those to whora the charge of these matters belongs, wiU not take the trouble. Some body must devise a plan for the purpose, and somebody must take upon himself the labor of seeing it executed. They find it easier to put it off." The antiquities of Volterra consist of an Etruscan burial- 440 LETTERS OP A TRAVELLER. ground, in which the tombs still reraain, pieces of the old and incredibly massive Etruscan wall, including a far larger circuit than the present city, two Etruscan gates of imme morial antiquity, older doubtless than any tiling at Rome, built of enormous stones, one of them serving even yet as an entrance to the town, and a multitude of cin erary vessels, mostly of alabaster, sculptured -with nuraerous figures in alto relievo. These figures are sometimes alle gorical representations, and soraetiraes embody the fables of the Greek raythology. Araong thera are some in the most perfect style of Grecian art, the subjects of which are taken from the poems of Homer ; groups representing the be siegers of Troy and its defenders, or Ulysses with his com panions and his ships. I gazed with exceeding delight on these works of forgotten artists, who had the verses of Homer by heart — ^works just drawn from the tombs where they had been buried for thousands of years, and looking as if fresh frora the chisel. We had letters to the commandant of the fortress, an ancient-looking stronghold, built by the Medici family, over which we were conducted by his adjutant, a courteous gentleman with a red nose, who walked as if keeping time to military music. From the summit of the tower we had an extensive and most reraarkable prospect. It was the 19th day of March, and below us, the sides ofthe mountain, scooped into irregular dells, were covered with frait-trees just breaking into leaf and flower. Beyond stretched the THE FOUTr^ESS AT VOLTERRA. 4-11 region of barrenness 1 have already described, to the west of which lay the green pastures of the Maremma, the air of which, in summer, is deadly, and still further west were spread the waters of the Mediterranean, out of which were seen rising the mountains of Corsica. To the north and northeast were the Appenines, capped with snow, embosom ing the fertile lower valley of the Arno, with the cities of Pisa and Leghorn in sight. To the south we traced the windings of the Cecina, and saw ascending into the air the smolce of a hot-water lake, agitated perpetually with the escape of gas, which we were told was visited by Dante, and frora which he drew images for his description of Hell. Some Frenchman has now converted it into a borax manu factory, the natural heat of the -water serving to extract the salt. The fortress is used as a prison fbr persons guilty of offenses against the state. On the top of the tower -wo passed four prisoners of state, well-dressed young men, who appeared to have been entertaining themselves with music, having guitars and other instruments in their hands. They saluted the adjutant as he went by them, who, in return, took off his hat. They had been condemned for a con spiracy against the government. The commandant gave us a hospitable reception. In showing us the fortress he congratulated us that we had no occasion for such engines of governraent in America. We went to his house in the evening, where we saw his 442 LETTERS or A T n AV E L L E R. wife, a handsome young lady, whom he had lately brought from Florence, the very lady of the pianoforte whora I have already mentioned, and the mother of two young children, whose ruddy cheeks and chubby figures did credit to the wholesome air of Volterra, The commandant made tea for ns in tumblers, and the lady gave us music. The tea was so strong a decoction that I seemed to hear the music all night, and had no need of being waked from sleep, when our vetturino, at an early hour the next morning, came to take us on our journey to Sienna, THE END, 3 9002 00825 6316