JS AN HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL OF THE NORTH-AMERICAN CONTINENT; ITS BY THE REV. JAMES BENTLEY GORDON. WITH A 'itmmarp Account OF HIS LIFE/ WRITINGS, *4 OPINIONS. t i PRINTED BY JOHN JONES, 40, SOUTH GREAT GEORGE'S-STREET. 1820. \e> TO THE KING. SIR, IT is surely an auspicious circumstance* not only for the orphan daughters of the Author, for whose benefit this Publication is ; but for man kind, that the greatest Sovereign of the world, is the most sensible to a call of humanity and letters* It would ill become me to presume further, than to subscribe myself, with the deepest gratitude, your Majesty's most faithful, most obedient, and most humble subject and servant, THOMAS JONES, Representative of the late JJMES BEHTLEY GORDOS. Nutgrove School, Rathfarnham, 90th May, 1820. OF THE LIFE, WRITINGS, AND OPINIONS, OF THE LATE REV. JAMES BENTLEY GORDON, Rector ofKillegny^ in the Diocese of Ferns ; and ofCanaway y in that of Cork; Author of " Terraquea ; or, Memoirs Geographical and Historical ;" of the " History of the Rebellion of 1798 ;" of Ireland" and " of the British Islands." A SUMMARY ACCOUNT, &c, " WE have but collected this Volume, and done an office to the dead, to procure his orphans, guardians, without ambition, either of self-profit, or fame, only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow, alive. " HEMINGE AND CONDELL." DOCTOR JOHNSON complains, that even Goldsmith's life of Parnel, is dull and unentertaining, as the wri ter had no proper knowledge (" had not eaten and drunk with him") of his subject. He knew the man, whose character he described, by report only. He was not acquainted with the exact features of his mind, the peculiarities of his manners, their shape and colour. The remark is acute and just : but not sufficiently extended no variety of incident, no dra matic cast of character can be thrown into the biogra phy of a secluded and sedentary scholar, which may render the narrative lively and entertaining. b X A SUMMARY The truth and reality of the likeness should be preserved, and they admit not of such extraneous or naments. Happy it is for the narrator, that he can thus throw a veil over his own deficiencies, by im puting them to the deficiency of the subject that he can conceal his dulness by attributing it to the same ness which necessarily attaches to the quiet, unvaried life of a secluded scholar, who never mingled with the great and learned, except in scenes of rural tran quillity who led a species of still life, which, how soever abundant in happiness, affords little matter for narration. Yet, although this narrative is dull, it is consolatory to the writer. It is a medicine to his sorrow, and a gratification to his pride ; for a man may be proud to have enjoyed the friendship of Mr. Gordon, from, boyhood upwards, for thirty-four years, without the interruption of an hour. Medicinal for the mind, while thus employed, seems, to hold converse with, " The guide, philosopher and friend/' who gilded all the joys of past life, and softened all its sorrows. > JAMBS BENTLEY GORDON was the son of the Rev. James Gordon, of Neeve-hall, county Londonderry, in the north of Ireland, a younger branch of the Ducal family of Gordon, by the then Earls of Hunt- ACCOUNT, &C. Xi ley, who having adhered to the race of the Stuarts, shared in their misfortunes ; and the residue are now mostly scattered through Scotland and Jamaica. His mother was daughter of Thomas Neeve, cele brated in British biography, as a man of eminent science and literature; and was nephew to the great Bentley, whose fame so many of his descendents par ticipate in, and are honoured by. This gentleman having been connected by marriage with the Mac- Cartney and Sidney families, illustrious names, left a large personal property to his grand-children. By the mismanagement of the trustee, it became of no value to them. The present Sir Thomas Neeve, of Essex, Baronet, is lineal descendant of the maternal branch of Mr. Gordon's family as was also the ce lebrated Richard Cumberland, who till within a few months of his death maintained a correspondence with the subject of this narrative. Although Mr. Gordon was fully alive to the great value of family-respectability to society at large, and considered it as a great stimulus an additional in centive to honourable conduct in life, he notwith standing never boasted of his. " Quce non fecimus ipsiy vix ea, nostra voco" But indeed no man, who has a claim to a good descent should undervalue it. b 2 A SUMMARY It is a badge of distinction, which makes all other honours sit with a better grace. Doubtlessly, as Horace says, and as many of even kings and nobles have said, since Horace's time, true nobility resides in the mind, and is not to be measured by splendid titles and ancestral dignity. It cannot with unerring certainty, be transmitted from father to son. It may however be admitted that hereditary rank and family honours continued from generation to generation, engender, spread and secure a distinctive highmind- edness of conduct, which renders the acquisitions of this generation the seeds and plants of the virtues and excellencies of those which are to follow. Men are thus most effectually formed into " what nature and the gods designed them." A stronger stimulus is thus given to man's exertions than by any considera tions merely personal and selfish. Having received the usual school-education, he en tered Trinity College, Dublin ; and originally pur posed to read for a fellowship, but was prevented by a long illness, terminating in a weakness of sight, which for many years, deprived him of all power of read ing : and although he subsequently acquired strength enough of vision to be able to read a book placed close to the eye, he never acquired sufficient clearness >f sight to enable him to read with ease and fluency. This defect tlurew an ungraceful, unrecommendatory ACCOUNT, &c. xiii awkwardness over his whole demeanour. It affected and blunted the whole system of his tastes, by ex cluding him, before he had sufficiently stored his mind w T ith images, from an expansive or an exact view of nature. He never acquired a perception of the beauties of a landscape, or a flower; and the narrator remembers his being laughed at by a lady, to whom he once presented a flaring, full-blown peony, as "a beautiful rose." During his continuance in college, he engaged the attachment and lasting friendship of several very respectable men. On leaving it, about the year 1773, he entered into orders. Subsequently, in early life, about 1776, he became acquainted with the late Lord Courtown, (as private tutor to his sons) a man who, endowed with all the refinement and high polish which a court can bestow upon a noble nature, knew how to value, and had an innate regard for simplicity and integrity such as Mr, Gordon's. In fact, his Lord ship, who had the best possible opportunities of know ing him intimately and well, as he lived in his family, at Courtown, for some years, always, as is evident by his .letters, regarded him not only with esteem, Jbut cordiality. In or about the year 1779, he married Miss Boo- tey, daughter ^f Richard Bookey, Esq. ; a family of A SUMMARY . high respectability, in the counties of Wicklow and Kildare; a son of which, Thomas Bookey, Esq. (a ne phew of Mrs. Gordon) of Mount Garnet, in the county Kilkenny,was lately, June 1819, married to a daugh ter of the present Lord Bishop of El phi n^. ; and Miss Bookey, Mrs. Gordon's niece, heiress of the main branch of her family, is married to James Chritchley, Esq., repeatedly Sheriff of the counties of Wicklow and Kildare; and who, although a man of extensive possessions, is still better known for integrity, libera lity, and correctness, in all the walks and commerce of life. Whatever other advantages Mr. Gordon may have derived from his marriage, it is certain that the first, and best object of life was fully obtained by it. The cheerfulness and kindness of his wife's disposition, her bland ness of manners and goodness of heart threw a family-paradise around him. If, fortunately, they had been reared in habits of judicious economy, they would have found their income amply sufficient for all the purposes of a respectable establishment, which indeed (though by incurring debts) they always up held ; but, though neither of them was extravagant, they were improvident, and never sufficiently un derstood, and attended to the conduct and distribution * Since the foregoing was written (in July last) his Lordship has been translated to the Archdiocese of Tuam. ACCOUNT, ytxg " He was a friend to mankind, for he loved them all." The following circumstance may sufficiently exem plify his generous and persevering ardour, in the pur suit of literature, an ardour, which obstacles only strengthened to overcome, " ne cede malts, sed con tra audentior lYo." Residing in the country, at too great a distance from public libraries, he was often stopped in his researches for \yant of books not to be ACCOUNT, TOVS ^KKT^VWS t e solicitude, and in a greater degree 5 than of any acuteness in letters arid science, which are in no danger of not being sufficiently cultivated, tending as they do directly to the illustration of the individual* But the mind of the country should be 1XX A SUMMARY nationalized, as well as its wealth and power- The rays of its intellect should be trained to converge and contribute to the general glory and harmony. They have a natural tendency to scatter and spread wide, in a manner dangerous to public union, authority, and strength. To accomplish an end apparently so desirable, it needs only to extend and diffuse off shoots in all directions from, and still in connection with, the great parent seminaries already in exist ence. It only requires to revise and enlarge the plan of national education. To do that on a well- arranged system of union and subordination, which individuals, and societies of individuals, do now, on the glimmering lights of tyros in knowledge. Let a board of education, consisting of the heads of the church, and of the universities, be invested by the legislature with power and means to bring a real, moral, religious education home to the lowest, as well as the highest ranks of society, and the thing w T ill be done. Let the principle be once agreed on new lights will every day spring up to purify and improve it. Half a generation will not have passed off, when the clamours of faction and dis content will have died away. The poor man's cot tage, when its inmates shall have been thus early trained in the way they should go, will then no longer envy the palace of the great. The peasant ACCOUNT, <&C. will have been taught, that the great ones of the earth are as useful to him, in the scheme of society, as he is to them ; and all will be embraced " in one wide system of benevolence." Finally, in justice to Mr. Gordon's memory, it is right to explain, in a few words, his political opinions. It is the more so, because they have been utterly mistaken and misre presented. It was in:leed his misfortune, or his happiness, to sometimes entertain different senti ments from the decisions of authority ; but he' was not prone to infer, that the authority which he dis sented from was less pure or less incorrupt than himself" hane veniam dam as petimus que vicis- sim" He, like the great imperturbable champion of political freedom, and his country's honour, the il lustrious Charles Fox, had studied the history of man and nations, and was of that order of thinking beings, who see events in their causes, and reading, as it were, the future in the past, would prevent those evils which the wisdom of others teaches, at best, only to remedy; and which, perhaps, would not have been remedied, were it not for the provi dential interference of a Russian campain, and the drunken ambition of a despot. He understood, as well as Mr. Burke, that the wisest and honestest politicians, must occasionally A SUMMARY " vary their means, to attain the unity of their end." This great maxim of social prudence this sound principle of civil wisdom, was not adopted by him to furnish a contingent excuse, or to throw a veil over his own backslidings. He deemed it a maxim of most especial force, and recurrent appli cation, in such a government as that of Britain, com pounded as it is, of all the orders of society, and partaking of all its interests. In such a government, he was well aware, that the most clear and compre hensive minds will often feel real difficulties of opi nion, in deciding on the modification, adjustment, and adoption of very many measures. He could not, however, conceive how a man, at once wise and honest, practised in all the ways of mankind, and long conversant in all the intricacies of public life, should designate " kings, as lovers of low com pany," and yet regard and throw the mantle of his eloquence around them, as if beings almost super human, and of authority indefeasible. Mr. Gordon did indeed deem this a kind of sailing north by south, not to be acquired by the ablest navigator, taught in any honest school of political traversing. He could not, like Mr. Burke, perceive in what, the right of the American people to revolt and independence from the comparatively mild and pa ternal government of Britain, was more sacred and ACCOUNT, Site Division Coast Face Waters Air Products Antiquities Inhabitants Towns. A REGION of great, but as yet undefined extent, is here CHAPTER conceived to occupy all that vast space which lies between Louisiana, the Californian gulf, the Pacific ocean, North- sitc * western America, and Old Mexico or New Spain. From the last we consider it as parted only by an imaginary line drawn from the northwestern angle of the gulf of Mexico to the most southern part of the gulf of California. Except where the latter gulf and the ocean bound it, its limits are elsewhere quite uncertain. On the side of northwestern America we cannot even conjecure where the wilds of the two regions mutually terminate. On the side of Louisiana the position of the bounding line depends on future events. The Spaniards, to whom New Mexico has hitherto be longed, consider this country as extending as far to the east as the river Mermentas or Mexicaua, which fUftvs into the ' NEW MEXICO, CHAPTER II. Division, Coast. Face. gulf of Mexico to theeast of the river Sabina; \vhilethe anglo- Americans, in possession of Louisiana, would contract the Spanish dominion within the great river called Rio Bravo del Norte, willing to extend their own settlements so far westward as that stream. Taken in the sense noted above, New Mexico contains great part of what are called the intendancies of San Luis de Potosi and Durango or New Biscay, together with those of New Mexico properly so called, New California, or, as it was denominated by the famous Drake, New Albion, and Sonora, including Cin- aloa. These intendancies or governments, subordinate to the viceroyalty of Old Mexico, are considered as subdi vided into a number of inferior provinces or territories, the limits of which are not permanently settled and a catalogue of whose names seems hardly worth attention. The coasts of this country have not been well explored : at least no accurate accounts of them have been received. That which is washed by the gulf of California doubtless presents many receptaclesfor shipping, butfewof them are no- ticed or named, and none described. That which is washed by the Pacific ocean has several ports which seem to be good. One, that of San Francisco, has been noted as ex cellent. In its coast on the side of the gulf of Mexico, the extent of which coast is as uncertain as the eastern limit of this region, no harbour has been found, except for small vessels which can swim in shallow water. From the coasts the land rises north-eastward and north-westward to the interior country, the middle parts of which consist of moun tainous tracts and high table-ground. This table-ground NEW MEXICO. is a continuation of that of Old Mexico., which advances, CHAPTER though with inferior height, northward through this region, - yet rising higher in approaching the north; and attaining its greatest elevation in the mountains of Sierra Verde, about the fortieth degree of latitude, the ridges of which extend still further toward the north. To the east and west of the ele vated interior country the lands are generally low, but much more on the eastern side, where are plains of vast ex tent. Great part of these plains are what are called Savan nahs, destitute of trees, but covered with various grasses. Of such consists all the eastern part of the country next Louisiana, a vast extent from north to south, which termi nates southward in impassible marshes. Although the country along the Californian gulf is low, it is diversified with hills, which increase in number and elevation as they recede from the coast. New Albion presents a different face, traversed from north to south, at no great distance from its shores, by a continuation of that vast ridge of mountains which extends along the coast of North-western America. The scenery throughout the vast region of New Mexico is almost as wild, as the country is uninhabited ex cept in scattered spots. As the land is generally fertile, and the sky serene, the prospect is mostly pleasing, but some tracts are arid, and by nature barren. Thus a desarr, destitute of water, extends about ninety miles between the intendancies of Durango and New Mexico properly so called, and thus also the northern part of Sonora is sandy and dry.* * Humboldt's New Spain, vol. 2, chap. 8. Vancouver's Voyage, vol. 4> chap. 8, &c. L 2 NEW MEXICO* CHAPTER II. Waters. Air. Concerning the lakes and rivers of this as yet imperfectly explored region we have little to say. Of the former we have no certain account. Two have been noticed in the western parts, a salt lake about the thirty-ninth degree of latitude, the western limits of which are unknown, and the lake of Timpanogos, about the forty -first degree, of great but unascertained extent. The chief of the rivers is that which is named by the Spaniards Rio Bravo, Rio Grande del Norte, the great river of the North, which, from its source in the Sierra Verde, runs above a thousand miles to its influx into the gulf of Mexico, with a very muddy stream, a stream^ which, from the melting of the snow, begins to swell in April, attains its greatest height in the beginning of May, and sinks again toward the end of June. The Rio Colo rado, springing from the same chain of mountains, flows south-westward above six hundred miles to the northern angle of the Californian gulf. Another Rio Colorado, dis tinguished by the epithet of de Texas, is one of the many streams which flow southward into the gulf of Mexico. The Rio Gila has a westerly course to the angle of the Californian gulf into which the Colorado makes its influx. A scantiness of streams of water and of rain seems the chief inconvenience of this otherwise in general very fine country. The season of rains appears to be from Decem ber to March. Little falls in the other months, particularly in the autumnal, in which a dry season seems mostly to prevail. Heavy dews supply in some degree the deficiency of rain, and in New Albion at least a haze, or kind of fog, which very frequently obscures the sky, promotes by ite NEW MEXICO. moisture vegetation. The temperature must vary with the circumstances of the land, particularly its height above the ocean's level. In the low lands of New Albion the weather is so mild that the inhabitants enjoy a perpetual spring, at least as far as the thirty-sixth degree of latitude ; while in the elevated table-grounds of the province of New Mexico properly so called, the winter is so severe, that the Rio del Norte, at the thirty-seventh degree, is sometimes, for a suc cession of years, frozen so hard as to admit the passage over it of horses and carriages. Even in the low lands in the eastern parts, although the heat is violent in summer, the cold of winter is rendered severe by sharp winds from the north. The sky throughout the whole is in general serene/ little troubled by storms or violent changes of weather, and the air is accounted uncommonly salubrious to the human constitution.* Among the indigenous vegetables of this country, spon taneously produced, are oak, cherry tree, and many other species of timber, gooseberries, raspberries, currants, and various other berries, roses, wild peas, and wild vines, which bear a sour kind of grape. The grain, fruits, and roots of Europe, so far as they have been imported and tried, thrive excellently in its fertile soil. Thus in New Albion, wheat sown without manure, and cultivated in a very clumsy man ner, yields thirty, or at least twenty-five fold.f European quadrupeds have also been introduced and thrive well, par- * Humboldt, book 3, chap. 8. Vancouver's Voyage, in various places. t Vancouver, book 3, chap. 1. 85 CHAPTER II. Products* NEW MEXICO. CHAPTER II. Antiquities. ticularly horses. Among 1 the indigenous animals is a kind of wild goat, or chamois on the mountains, and also a gi gantic and beautiful stag, of a brown colour, smooth, and destitute of spots, the branches of whose horns are near four feet and a half in length. These, which are very numerous in the plains, are frequently taken by the Spanish colonists on horseback with nooses, or are shot by the na tives, who approach them by the stratagem of putting stags' heads over their own, and concealing their bodies in brush wood or long herbage.* In products of the fossil kind this country, so far as trials have been made, may be accounted rich. Gold is found in great quantities in the province of Sonora, particularly in the hilly tract named Pimeria-alta, and might be found in still greater, if searchers were not deterred by the incursions of warlike savages. This metal is obtained by washing away sand or earth in the ravines and alluvious ground. Pieces of pure gold called pepitas have been thus procured of the weight of from five to six pounds. f Of the history of this country we have no certain infor mation previously to the arrival of the Spaniards, who began to plant some small colonies in it soon after their conquest of Old Mexico ; but that some parts of it were once inhabited by a people advanced above savage life to some degree of civilization, monuments still extant shew. The chief of these monuments is found in a vast and beau tiful plain, which lies one league from the southern bank of * Humboldt, book 3, chap. 8. t Idem, book 4, chap, 11. NEW MEXICO, 87 the Rio Gila, where stand the ruins of an ancient city, sup- CHAPTER posed to have been inhabited by the Aztecs in their progress toward the south. In the middle of these ruins, which occupy more than a square league, is seen the remnant of an edifice called casa grande, four hundred and forty-five feet long, two hundred and seventy -six broad, with walls almost four feet thick, built of great blocks of clay, pre viously rammed into cases, and thus rendered hard and durable. This ancient structure, the four sides of which face exactly the four cardinal points, is observed to have had three stories, a terrace, and stairs outside, probably of wood, as is at present the fashion of some independent tribes of natives of this country, and three apartments, each above twenty-seven feet long, almost eleven broad, and near twelve in height. The plain around is in great part covered with broken pitchers and pots of earthenware, pret tily painted in white, red, and blue, intermixed with pieces of obsidian, used in cutting instruments.* Whether art had any share in the production of a very curious object, near the river Monterry in New Albion, seems a little doubtful. Here the side of a hill or mountain is so excavated as to exhibit the appearance of a vast and sumptuous building in a state of decay, the roof of which is the top of the hill, supported by columns of great magnitude, elegantly formed., and rising perpendicularly with the most minute mathe matical exactness, f The inhabitants of this country, as yet extremely few in inhabitants. proportion to its vast extent, consist mostly of Spanish co- * Humboldt, book 3 ? chap. 8. t Vancouter, book 6, chap, 2. S8 SEW MEXICO. CHAPTER lonists and indigenous tribes. The former dwell in towns -* and scattered settlements at great distances asunder. Of the settlements some are presidios, which are only garrisons whh a few soldiers in each, for defence against the hostili- s ties of the independent natives. Others are called missions, in each of which a few monks are stationed for the purpose of endeavouring to convert and civilize the wild tribes in their neighbourhood. Their success appears to have been hitherto only partial and slow. The colonists who are most exposed to the attacks of the savages are said., from their habits of vigilance and activity, to be superior in the ener gies both of body and mind to all other people of Spanish descent in the American regions. The indigenous people consist of various tribes, some agricultural and pacific, some pastoral, and some venatic and quite savage. The indi genous who inhabit the plains to the south of the Rio Gila, and have had no intercourse with the Spanish colonists, were found clothed and considerably civilized, peaceable, collected in villages, and cultivating the soil with maize, cotton, and gourds. Also to the north of the Gi!a, between it and the Colorado, dwell settled people called Moqui In dians, among whom was found a town with regular streets parallel to one another, two great squares, and houses of several stories, built in the manner of the casas grandes, one of which I have mentioned under the head of antiqui ties, several tribes of the indigenous, particularly of the people called Apaches, dwell infixed habitations, in a state of peace with the colonists. The pastoral and venatic tribes are not clearly distinguished. They are both erratic, deno minated by the Spaniards Indios bra\ m os f and implacable MEXICO, 89 enemies to the Spanish race. They inhabit chiefly the extensive wilds of the north and east. The tribes of the Cumanches are uncommonly formidable. These have learned to tame the horses of. Spanish breed, which run wild in the Savannahs, and are said lo be cxeeded by no people whatsoever in the agility of horsemanship. They lo Ige in tents of buffaloes' hides, which are carried from place to place on the backs of great dogs, by which they are accompanied.* The savages in the southern parts of New Albion are so excessively stupid and lazy, that, not without the utmost difficulty, have the monks, established in the several missions, been able to induce a few to adopt a life of industry and civilization. We find no towns of great magnitude in New Mexico, since the country is as yet very thinly colonized. The most populous noted in a survey of it is Culiacan in Sonora, which is estimated to contain almost eleven thousand souls. The numbers in the other towns are rated at from three or four to near ten thousand. To Santa Pe, the capital of the province properly called New Mexico, not more than three thousand six hundred persons are attributed. In New Al bion we find only villages, inhabited by such indigenous people as the missionaries have been able to persuade to dwell thus together under their inspection, and to cultivate the soil. Par the greatest of these, when an account was procured of them, contained about thirteen hundred persons of all ages, under the name of Santaclara. * Humboldt, book 2, chap. 6, book 3, chap. 8. M CHAPTER II Towns, 90 CALIFORNIA, CHAPTER A PENINSULA, stretching southeastward from the main ~ land of New Mexico, between the Pacific ocean and the Californian gulf, or Vermillion sea, displays on both its coasts, more especially the eastern, mostly high and rocky shores bordered with many islands, and broken by many bays, some of them spacious, which afford in various degrees accommodation for ships. It is divided longitu dinally throughout by a chain of mountains, the most ele vated of which, called Cerro de la Giganta, rises to the height of near five thousand feet above the surface of the ocean. This and some other mountains appear to have had a volcanic origin. Not only these mountains, but the plains also at each side, more especially the western, pre sent a naked and dreary prospect, arid, bare, and barren, seldom refreshed with rain, and little moistend by springs or streams of water. Generally where springs are found the surface of the earth consists of sand or barren rock, which receives no benefit from irrigation : but in spots, comparatively few, where springs and vegetative soil con cur, the fertility is prodigious. The beauties of this country are displayed by its atmosphere, not by its land. " Thb sky is constantly serene, and of a deep blue, and without a cloud ; and should any clouds appear for a moment at the setting of the sun, they display the most beautiful shades CALIFORNIA, 9t of violet, purple and green. All those who have ever CHAPTER been in California preserved the recollection of the extra- ' - ordinary beauty of this phenomenon, which depends on a particular state of the vesicular vapour, and the purity of the air in these climates."* In so arid a region the vegetable products must be ex pected to be scanty. The land is almost destitute of trees, yet amid the sand and stones at the foot of the mountains some species of the cactus rise to extraordinary heights. The vine, where cultivated, yields an excellent grape, the wine of which resembles that of the Canary islands. We can easily conceive from the climate of California what vegetables it might yield where soil and water are procured, but the chief object of culture appears to be maize. Among the indigenous quadrupeds is a wild animal on the moun tains which resembles the moujlon of Sardinia, having horns " curved on themselves in a spiral form/' and leaping, like the ibex, with the head downward. The gulf of Califor nia along its coast is more productive than the land, yield ing pearls of a very beautiful water and large size, but often of an irregular shape, disagreeable to the eye. They abound much more in the southern than in the northern parts of the gulf, particularly in the bay of Ceralyo, and around the islands of Santa Cruz and San Jose. This branch of industry however has been of late years so ne glected, that it is considered as almost or altogether abandoned. Humboldt, book 3, chap. 8. N 2 % CALIFORNIA. CHAPTER California was discovered in 1534, by Hernando de Grix- ii. ' alva, in the employment of Cortes, the conqueror of Mex ico, who visited in person the country in the following year, and afterwards commissioned, for the completion of the survey, Francisco de Ulloa, who ascertained this region to be a peninsula. In 1683, the Jesuits began to establish missions for the conversion of the natives, arid " displayed there that commercial industry, and that acti vity, to which they are indebted for so many successes, and which have exposed them to so many calumnies in both Indies/' In the middle of the eighteenth century their af fairs were prosperous. They had in very few years built sixteen villages in the interior of the peninsula, and their settlements were become considerable. Since their expul sion in 1767, the Spanish government has confided Califor nia to the Dominican monks of the city of Mexico, under whom the state of affairs seems much altered for the worse. California is so thinly peopled as to be almost a desart. Its length is about seven hundred miles. Its unascertained breadth may be on an average nearly one hundred. Its area may thus con-tain near sixty millions of English acres, or may be nearly three times as great as that of Ireland. The number of people in all this extent of territory seems not to exceed nine thousand. The Spaniards are few, con sisting only of some soldiers and monks. The indigenous people, who are so far reclaimed from a savage life as to dwell in fixed habitations and cultivate the soil, are reckoned only at between four and five thousand. Of those who still remain savage the number is said scarcely to amount to CALIFORNIA. 93 four thousand. The country was formerly far less thinly inhabited, but a great depopulation, within thirty or forty years past, has been caused by the small pox, and perhaps by political defects, of which we are not informed. No towns can have place where people are so few. The chief mission or village is that of Loreto. Those indigenous Californians, who still remain in a savage state, are descri bed as among the very lowest in the scale of civilization, wandering about in a state of absolute nudity in search of precarious food, exposed without the shelter of a roof to all the vicissitudes of the atmosphere, and destitute of other religion than the dread of invisible malignant beings, whose malice they deprecate. They are rather of a small and feeble frame, with little vigour of spirit, and of a very dark complexion, approaching to black. They entertain such a contempt of clothing, that a man in clothes appears more ridiculous to them than a monkey with garments to the common people of Europe.* * Humboldf, book 3, chap. 8. Account of California by Venegas, &c. CHAPTER III. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. Site Coast Face Waters Temperature Vegetables Animals Fossils History Commerce Inhabitants Eskeemoes Occidentals Person Habits Language Houses Life Manners Interior Aboriginals Persons Habits Language Habitations Food Religion Government Tribes Depopulation Life Manners Customs Arts. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA, HERE considered, for geographical convenience, as that CHAPTER immense continuous portion of the northern peninsula of tn * the new continent which remains as yet uncolonized by site. Europeans, and free from the dominion of any civilized nation, consists of the whole extent of territory which lies between the gulf or sea of Hudson, the Pacific ocean, the Arctic ocean or Icy sea, and the boundaries of Canada and New Mexico. These boundaries indeed are not as yet per manently settled, nor can we at present form a rational con jecture how soon such alterations shall have been made, by the planting of colonies, as may render a new geographical 96 NORTHWESTERN AMtERiCA. CHAPTER HI. Coast. Face. account of this vast region necessary. The eastern coast of this immense tract, except along the seas of Hudson and Davis, where it is in general rocky and steep, though af fording many receptacles for shipping, is quite unknown. The same is the case with the whole of the northern. The western, parted from Tartary by Beering's strait, is bordered in an extraordinary manner by innumerable islands, is in dented by numerous inlets, which form harbours various in magnitude and quality, and consists in great proportion of high table-ground, which constitutes part of the base of an immense chain of mountains. Of the various projections of the land that which runs farthest into the Pacific is the peninsula of Alaska. Of the multitude of inlets, that which penetrates nearest to the great inland waters is Lynn chan nel, near the latitude of fifty-nine, which advances within three hundred and seventy English miles of the great Atha- baska or Slave lake, from which, however, it is separated by a vast chain of mountains. Of the masses of rock, vari ous in size and figure, which, along this extensive coast, repel or break the waves of the ocean, some display to ma riners a romantic appearance. Of these, one, resembling a ship under sail, stands insulated near the middle of a chan nel, beyond the fifty-fifth degree of latitude, above two hundred and fifty feet in perpendicular height.* This immense region, so far as information concerning it has been collected, consists in general of wide-spread plains, * Vancouver's Voyage round the World, 8vo. London, 1801, vol.4, p. 160. For the coast in general, see various parts of the 4th, 5th and 6th volumes , aho Cooke's 3d Vuj age, Perouse, &c. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. 97 >yhich gradually rise to a great elevation in the interior, CH\PTER and are traversed in the western parts by a prodigious chain * of mountains, and elsewhere, more especially, in the southern parts, by some ridges of inferior magnitude. The western chain, apparently connected with the Andes of South Ame rica, may perhaps be justly denominated the Andes of the North, though by travellers it has been named the Shining and the Stony mountains, from the appearances displayed by it in several places. In its progress northward, this vast ridge elevates its peaks to a stupendous height, and takes a north-westerly direction, parellel to the coast of the Pacific, from which ocean its range of summits, cased with perpe tual ice and snow, is visible to mariners, through a far ex tended course of navigation, and to which some lateral , chains, and branches extending from the main ridge, make, in several places, a near approach. It presents to the eye a grand and magnificent prospect, but cold and savage, of snow, glaciers, and naked rocks, rugged, precipitous, and stupendously high. Between the river Columbia and Cook's inlet it attains its greatest elevation and greatest breadth, a breadth of from about two hundred and sixty to between, three and four hundred miles, and is bordered along the eastern skirts by a narrow and uneven strip of quite marshy or boggy ground. Pursuing still a north-westerly course, but, from Cook's inlet, with apparently diminished size, it terminates at length, about the seventieth degree of lati tude in the Arctic ocean.* * Mackenzie's Travels, 4to. London, 1801, p. 401402. Vancouver, vol. 6, p. 27, 411, &c. &c, N 98 NORTHWESTERN AMERICA* CHAPTER A ridge of much inferior height, but of prodigious length, ' extends from Labrador, between the waters of Hudson's gulf and those of the Saint Lawrence river, in a nearly south-westerly course, to the sources of the river Utawas. Thence it turns north-westward to the longitude of eighty- nine degrees and the latitude of fifty, where it forks, and sends a branch to the south-west, while -the main ridge pursues a north-westerly direction, to the north of lake Winnipig, whence it winds westward between the rivers Beaver and Saskatshawin, till it strikes a long ridge which stretches north eastward. The latter, parting the waters which fall into Hudson's gulf from those which flow to the Arctic ocean, takes a direction almost to the north beyond the latitude of fifty-seven, and throws a branch to the west, which terminates at Mackenzie's river. That part of this vast region, which lies between the Andes of the North and the Pacific ocean, is mostly moun tainous and ruggid. To the east of this chain vast plains expand, widening as they advance toward the east and south. The northern parts which stretch eastward from these mountains, dreary, cold, and inhospitable, destitute of trees, except some dwarfish kinds, abounding in rocks and water, and shelving to the Icy sea, bear a strong resemblance to the Asiatic region of Siberia. Even farther toward the south the Savannahs, or grassy plains, are considerably like the Tartarian Steppes, or desarts of Northern Asia ; while the Northern Andes, in respect of position, may bear some similitude to the Uralian chain. In the southern parts the wild scenery, the only kind which can have place NORTHWESTERN AMERICA* in regions void of culture, lias been found highly beautiful. A celebrated traveller enjoyed in September " a most ex tensive romantic, and ravishing prospect ;" and again he thus speaks of what he saw in May.* " This magnificent theatre of nature has all the decorations which the trees and animals of the country can offord it. Groves of poplars in every shape vary the scene., and their intervals are enlivened with vast herds of elks and buffaloes ; the former choosing the steeps and uplands ; the latter the plains. The whole country displayed an exuberant verdure. The trees which bear a blossom were advancing fast to that delightful appear ance ; and the velvet rind of their branches, reflecting the oblique rays of a rising or setting sun, added a splendid gaiety to the scene which no expressions of mine are quali fied to describe." Beside the vast lakes and rivers of the immense northern peninsula of America already noted in the general view, many of no inconsiderable magnitude belong to this north western region, of which however very few are more than very partially known to Europeans. To attempt to describe them would as yet be premature. Such is their number and communication, that canoes can be navigated in all di rections, through thousands of miles, except short inter ruptions at places called portages, where, on account of cataracts, or other impediments, the canoe and its cargo must be carried from one navigable part of the channel to * Mackenzie, p. 155. See also Lewis and Clarke's Travels, 4to. Lon don, 1814, p. 40, 52, 390, 556, &c. R 2 99 CHAPTER III. Waters. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA, CHAPTER III, Temperature* another, or from one river to another. Among the streams which run eastward is the Saskatchawin, which, arising from the northern Andes, falls into the great lake of Win- nipig, whence it issues, under the name of Nelson river, and disembogues into the gulf of Labrador, after a course of about a thousand miles. Among those which flow north ward is the Unjiga or Peace river, which, originating from a western lateral chain of these Andes, and making its way through a gap in the main ridge, discharges its waters into the vast bason absurdly called the Slave lake, from the western angle of which it makes its egress, and pursues its course, a course in all of about seventeen hundred miles, to the arctic ocean, under the denomination of Mackenzie's river. Among those which run to the Pacific ocean is the Columbia, called also the Oregan and Tatoutche-Tessi, which is said by late travellers* to be navigable by large sloops through a hundred and eighty miles above its mouth, and by ships of three hundred tuns through a length of a hundred and twenty-five miles. That which has been deno minated Cook's river has been found by Vancouver to be only an inlet of the Pacific, above two hundred miles in length. Exposed to the northerly and northwesterly winds, which blow with inconceivable keenness from the ice of the Arctic ocean, all the northern parts of this immense region, which lie to the east of the Northern Andes, sustain the utmost rigours of intense cold, in the same manner as Siberia. * Lewis and Clarke's Travels, 8?o. London, 1809, p. 19. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. The earth continues frozen throughout the whole year, except that in the heats of summer it is thawed to the depth of from two to four feet. The season of these heats, which are indeed intense, is only of about four or five weeks' duration ; but even then the changes from heat to cold are great and sudden.* To the south of the long ridge, which extends from Labrador southward and west ward, where warm winds from the gulf of Mexico operate on that part of the atmosphere, the temperature is milder, and is found warmer in proportion to the advance of the country southward. In the long tract contained between the Northern Andes and the Pacific ocean the air is vastly less cold than in the parts between the same parallels to the east of these mountains.f This appears to be the effect of oceanic winds, from whose influence the tracts lying east ward of the Northern Andes are screened by this huge barrier ; while by the same, in its north-westerly direction, the piercing winds from the Icy sea, may be, in great mea sure, confined to the more eastern regions. The indigenous vegetables, spontaneously produced, in this immense uncultivated portion of the globe, are in great variety, varied with the temperature of the air,' the nature of the soil, the aspect of the ground, and other circum stances ; but the species as yet distinguised by the researches of Europeans are comparatively very few. Toward the icy shores of the north vegetation gradually languishes, ending * Volney's View of the United States of America, 8?o. London, 1814 ? p. 155157. i Cook's Third Voyage, book 4, chap. 2. 101 CHAPTER III. Vegetables. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. CHAPTER in stunted and straggling pines, junipers, and moss, and * leaving little beside naked rocks ami water to the view of the traveller. Southward the herbage gradually augments, and the trees encrease in size, variety, and number, till at length the forests become dense and extensive. This im provement of the vegetation, in a progress to the south, has place far earlier, or far nearer the north, on the coast of the Pacific ocean than on the eastern side of the Northern Andes, from the superior warmth of the air on that coast. Among the trees of the forest are several species of the pine, many of which grow to such magnitude as to be twenty or thirty feet in girth, and of a height proportionate, some times of above two hundred feet. The cedar also, often of still larger dimensions, covers some tracts of considerable extent. The alder forms beautiful woods in some places, with a trunk seven or eight or more feet in circumference, and forty in height between the ground and lowest branches. The inner rind of some species, particularly that which is called the hemlock tree, is used as food, on occasions of scarcity, by the savages. Wild berries of various kinds are produced in abundance, in places adapted severally to their growth. Among these are gooseberries, currants, cherries, raspberries, cranberries, and strawberries. The rosebush also flourishes copiously in many tracts. Among the wild plants are flax, the parsnip, the carrot, the liquorice, wild rye, and that which is termed by botanists zizania aquatica, and by travellers wild rice. This appears to be a species of grass, bearing farinaceous seeds which resem ble rice. Growing in vast quantities in shallow streams of water, in tracts where the cold is too severe for the pro- NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. 103 duction of European corn, this plant, which now serves to feed savages and wild fowl, may become in future times au object of human culture. All the quadrupeds of this immense region, so far as we are informed, appear to be as yet indigenous, except the horse, which has been lately introduced into the southern parts by the Indians, who steal considerable numbers from the Spanish colonists of New Mexico. Among the indi genous animals are two species of the Vaccine tribe, the bison and the musk ox, which differ greatly in size, but are humped both at the shoulders, are clothed, at the roots of their long hair, with fine wool fit to be manufactured into cloth, and smell both of musk, but the latter sort more strongly, insomuch that its heart is on this account not edible. The bison, termed also the buffalo and the Ameri can ox, grows to such a size as to weigh from sixteen hun dred to two thousand four hundred pounds. Prom its long flocks of reddish hair, depending from the head and shoul ders, the bull displays a tremendous aspect, but is extremely timid, unless it be wounded, when it becomes dangerously fierce. These animals migrate in vast herds from north to south, and from the highlands to) the lowlands, and con versely, according to the seasons, between the latitudes of Hudson's gulf and those of the northern parts of New Mexico. These and several species of the deer are so numerous in the rich lands toward the south, that the coun try has " the appearance, in some places of a stall-yard, from the state of the ground, and the quantity of dung which is CHAPTER III. Animals* 1(H: NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. CHAPTER scattered over it."* The musk ox is less tall than a deer, : but larger in the body. The horns are so disproportion ately large, that a pair sometimes weighs sixty pounds,, and the legs are little more than a foot in length ; yet the animal is nimble, and climbs rocks like a goat. The hair of the female is black, but that of the male is of a dusky red, extremely fine, and so long as to trail on the ground. It migrates in herds of twenty or thirty; nearly as far south ward as the bison, and much farther northward, even beyond the latitude of seventy-two degrees.f , Of the deer are several species. The reindeer is seen moving in columns of eight or ten thousand each, in the vicinity of Hudson's gulf. The stag, near five feet high, and eight in length, inhabits more southern territories, separated from those of the former sort almost by a line, instinctively settled, as if by mutual compact. The moosedeer, of which the elk seems to be a species, inhabits the latitudes of the vast Canadian lakes, and thence so far southward as the fortieth degree. The weight of the largest has been found to be twelve hundred pounds, and the height seventeen hands. With hair of a hoary brown colour, a huge head, short neck, and long ears, it shews a rather deformed and stupid aspect. Less than three feet measures the distance between the tips of the horns of this animal, which i? cer tainly not the same species with that which anciently existed in Ireland, where horns of vast size are found. It is inoffen sive, except in the season of amorous feelings, or when it is * Mackenzie, p. 104. See also Lewis and Clarke, 4to. p. 652. t Pennant's Arctic Zoology, vol. 1, page 812. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. 105 wounded. The skin is manufactured into excellent buff. CHAPTER The flesh is remarkably agreeable and nutricious, particu- larly the tongue, but chiefly the nose, which is perfectly marrow.* Several smaller species of deer, like those of Eu rope, roam in numerous herds through the vast forests and savannahs of the middle and southern parts, and in like mariner the elk. Among the various other kinds of quadrupeds in this vast region are several species of the bear, white, red, black, and grey, the beaver, the porcupine, the wolf, the fox of se veral sorts and colours, the ground-dog, which burrows in the earth, the wolvereen, which seems to be a species of carnivorous bear, and several varieties of the cat, the largest of which is by some called the panther, and has been found six feet in the length of its body. The beaver inhabits from the sixtieth to the thirtieth degree of latitude, but much more toward the former. This amphibious animal, so much the object of pursuit on account of its valuable fur, is known to live in societies of two or three hundred together, to work in common like the ant or bee, and to form assemblages of com modious apartments on lakes and rivers, where it lodges, and stores irs food, the branches and shoots of trees, for the winter. The beaver, which weighs from forty to sixty pounds, is inferior in size to the black sea-otter, the weight of whose body is seventy or eighty. The fur of this qua druped, which inhabits the coast of the Pacific ocean, be- |ween the latitudes of forty -nine and sixty, is in such esti- * Pennant, vol. 1, p. 18 31. o J06 NORTHWESTERN AMERICA, CHAPTER III. Fossils. mation, that the skin has sold in China at the price of from fourteen to twenty-five pounds. Among the numerous tribes of the feathered race is the turkey, indigenous only in the new continent, whence it has been imported into the old. This bird, which, in its wild state, grows to the weight of thirty, sometimes even / forty pounds, is numerous only in tracts most remote from human habitation, where it is said to assemble in flocks of frequently five hundred each. Aquatic fowls are in pro digious numbers, particularly several species of wild geese, thousands of which are taken in the vicinity of Hudson's gulf. The bird which most astonishes by its numbers is a species of pigeon, which breeds in the northern parts, and migrates to the south at the approach of winter, much more indeed in some years than in others, in flocks of many millions. The varieties of the serpent are in considerable number ; but the rattle snake, so denominated from the rat tling of dry joints of bone at the end of its tail, is not found northward of the forty-fifth degree of latitude. Various other reptiles are copious in places adapted to their nature. Marine animals, among which are various kinds of the seal, the whale, and numerous tribes of other fish, abound along the coasts. Concerning the fossils of this part of the globe we can at present say but little, as nothing beneath the surface of the earth, and extremely little of the surface itself, has as yet been explored ; but that it is deficient in riches of this nature we have no reason to suspect. In all the northern NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. .parfs to the north of lake Winnipig, and eastward from the same to the gulf of Hudson, the substratum of the soil seems mostly granite, while to the west and south of this lake lie vast beds of limestone, between which and the granitic region are situated all the great basons of fresh water in North America.* A tract in the north so abounds in cop per, that a stream which flows through it to the Arctic ocean, has thence been denominated the Coppermine river. Vast beds of mineral salt exist in many parts, as is evinced by saline wells and other tokens. For instance, westward of the Unjiga river, in its approach to the Slave lake, con creted salt, perfectly white and pure, may be collected in any quantity, around the numerous pools and springs of salt water, which appear in that tract. In other places have springs been seen whose margins are covered with sulphureous incrustations ; and fountains of bitumen, par ticularly in territories near the Elk river, have been disco- veried, into which a pole, twenty feet long, may be inserted perpendicularly downward, without resistance. Stratums also of coal have been found, and probably this valuable fossil may be copious in many parts. The history of this as yet uncultivated part of the earth's surface is only a registry of discoveries of its coasts by na vigators, and of its interior by travellers, as the history of its few savage inhabitants, among whom are no records, is unknown. In a search for a north-west passage to the" East Indies, which continued to be an object of hope and enter- * Mackenzie, p. 403. 107 CHAPTER III. History. 108 NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. CHAPTER prize till the latter part of the eighteenth century, the Eng- ' lish, under Martin Frobisher, in the year 1576, discovered the strait which bears his name, in the sea which was after ward called the strait of Davis, from John Davis who ex plored it in 1585, between Greenland and the main conti nent of America. In 1610, the important discovery was made by Henry Hudson of the extensive gulf called Hudson's bay, the coasts of which where a trade in furs was found very profitable, have since been examined by other navigators. The earliest discoverers of the Western coasts were Spa niards, one of whom Francisco Gali, viewed the shores of the continent between the fifty-seventh and fifty-eighth de grees of latitude, and admired the snowy mountains of the great northern chain.* The next who attempted to explore these tracts were the Russians, who had possessed them selves of Siberia, the part of the old continent the nearest . to the new ; but their discoveries extended not far to the south. The first Russian discoverers of the American coasts were Beering and Tchirikof, who sailed from Kam- tchatka in 1741. From the former the channel between the extremities of the two continents bears the name of the strait of Beering. The Spaniards, after an intermission of nearly a hun dred and seventy years, renewed their voyages northward on the American coast, not for the promoting of geographi cal knowledge, but for the prevention, if possible, of any settlements which other European nations might meditate i * Humboldt's NewSpain > 8vo. London, 1811, vol. 2, p. 360. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. 109 to establish, in regions of which the Spanish crown claimed CHAPTER exclusively the dominion. A Spanish captain, named Juan Perez, in 1774, anchored, with his crew, on the ninth of August, " the first of all European navigators, in Nootka road, which they called the port of San Lorenzo, and which the illustrious Cook, four years afterwards-, named King George's Sound."* Cook, and his successor, Captain Gore, explored the coast to the strait of Beering, and beyond it as far as the permanent ice of the Arctic sea permitted. Other expeditions were subsequently made by Spanish officers, which, with those of the famous English navigator, Vancouver, in the years 1792, 1793, arid 1794, completed the survey of the north-western coast. For the exploration of the interior parts a journey was performed on land by Hearrie, and two voyages were accomplished along lakes and rivers by Mackenzie. The former having taken his departure from Churchill river, which falls into Hudson's gulf, arrived, by a north- westerly course of near thirteen hundred miles, in the June of 1771, at the mouth of the Coppermine river, under the latitude of seventy-two de grees. The latter, having embarked in a canoe, at Fort Chepewyan, at the lake of the Hills, proceeded to the Slave lake, and thence, by a stream called from his name Mac kenzie's river, in the July of 1789, to the Arctic ocean, near the seventieth degree. In his second expedition, which was directed south-westward, he sailed from the same fort up the Unjigah, and passed thence by a portage to the Oregan, whence he arrived by land, in the July of 1793, at * Humboldt, ?ol. 2, p. 364, no NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. CHAPTER lit. Commerce. an inlet of the Pacific ocean, about the fifty -second degree of latitude, the first of all Europeans who traversed North. America from the Atlantic to the opposite shores. The voyages performed for the discovery of the coasts and inlets of this immense region have led to the establish ment of an extensive commerce in furs and peltry; the only products of these wilds as yet considered as worthy of being rendered objects of exportation. The English formed fac tories on the coasts of Hudson's gulf for a traffic with the savages, but in 1673 the trade was confined by patent to an exclusive corporation, termed the Hudson's bay company. The factories are chiefly settled on the rivers Moose, Albany, Severn, Nelson, and Churchill. The French also of Ga- nada, while they remained in possession of that country, maintained the same commerce with the savages, and ex tended it much farther. The English, since they became possessors of Canada, have carried their enterprizes beyond former limits, especially since the institution of a mercantile association styled the north-west company, in 1783, whose agents have erected factories along the Saskatshawin river, and seem to be approaching the Pacific ocean. Blankets, ammunition, and various manufactured articles, are given in exchange to the savages for the products of the chase. The goods are conveyed in canoes made of the bark of trees, particularly the birch. The canoes thus are light for occa sional transportation over-land, and, if easily damaged, are also easily repaired. These crazy vessels are navigated thousands of miles by intrepid mariners, who are wonder fully patient of cold, fatigue, and hunger. At a portage 111 CHAPTER in. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. the* vessel is unloaded or lightened, according to circum stances, and the merchandize is carried on men's shoulders to the next place of embarkation ; while the canoe is either floated empty, or partly disburthened, through the rapid, or carried over-land in like manner as the cargo. The earliest traders on the western coast were the Rus sians, who have formed small factories in the north-western parts, as far toward the south as the fifty-ninth degree of latitude, which seems to be the limit of their commercial operations, or of any dominion in America which they can justly claim. These indeed seem of all Europeans the best adapted for an advantageous traffic in these regions, from their hardy modes of life, and their trade by land with China, the chief market for peltry. By the discovery of Nootka sound, by the celebrated Cook, a new scene of com merce was opened for furs, particularly that of the marine otter ; but this trade has been ruined for a time by the com petition and irregular conduct of different nations, particu larly Anglo-Americans. No means are furnished for the forming of a just estimate of the quantity of furs and skins of the beaver, the marten, the lynx, the otter, and various other quadrupeds, exported by the way of Hudson's gulf, Canada, and the western ports : but we know that the traders of Canada* have procured above a hundred thou sand beavers' skins in the space of a year. The inhabitants of this immense region, indigenous in inhabitant*, our conception, as we have no knowledge of anterior occu- * Mackenzie's Introduction, NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. CHAPTER HI. Eskimoes. Occidentals. pants, may, for the convenience of giving to the reader such information concerning them as can be collected, be con sidered as divided into three general classes, the Eskeemoes, the Occidentals, and the interior aboriginals. The Esqui maux or Eskimoes, who dwell along the northern coast, from Hudson's gulf and the sea of Davis to the Pacific ocean, are the same with those who inhabit Labrador and Greenland, in the accounts of which countries they are described. Of the Occidentals, by which term are de signated the inhabitants of that western region which lies between the Pacific and the Northern Andes, our knowledge is extremely limited. They consist of various tribes or nations, which are different, in their personal characteristics, from the rest of the Americans, and from one another. Persons. Of the personal conformation and complexion of the Oc cidental Americans several partial accounts have been receiv ed, but not such as enable us to form thence a general charac ter which could prove satisfactory. We find that to the north of the fifty-first or fifty-second degree of northern latitude the hair of the inhabitants, altogether differently from that of the interior aboriginals, is generally of a brown or ches- nut colour, sometimes approaching to fair.* Their com plexions also seem in general less dark, and some tribes are found, which, in the prominence and regularity of the fea tures, and fairness of the skin, bear a strong resemblance to the people of northern Europe. High cheek-bones appear * Vancouver, vol. 4, p. 105. La Perouse, vol. 3, p. 1 95. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. 113 to be universally prevalent : but, instead of attempting a CHAPTER general portrait from observations too few and scanty, the notice of some particulars may prove less unsatisfactory to the reader. About the sixtieth degree of latitude, and to the north ward of it, the people were found of a stature not exceeding the common height; of a square make, or with strong chests ; with heads disproportionally large ; short and thick necks ; large and broadly spreading faces, inclined to flatness ; eyes, though not otherwise small, yet not large in propor tion to the face ; noses with full and round tips, which are hooked or turned upward ; broad and white teeth, equal in size, and evenly set ; black, thick, strait, and strong hair ; strait beards, generally thin, but sometimes thick, and fre quently of a brown colour on the lips ; and skins sometimes white, without any mixture of red, but sometimes brownish or swarthy.* A little to the north of the fifty-fourth degree, a tribe was discovered with large eyes, European features, and a skin less dark than that of the German peasants, though the people dwelling around were of a different cast of features and complexion. f The inhabitants of the ter ritories situated about the fifty-second degree are in gene ral of a middle stature, with round faces, high cheek-bones, a, complexion between the olive and copper, small grey eyes with a tinge of red, hair of a dark brown hue incti- * Cook's Third Voyage, Book 4, chap. 5. t Humboldt, vol. 1, p. 145. 114 NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. ning to black, and heads so flattened by art both before and behind as to terminate above in the form of a wedge.* This cuneated shape of the head continues onward to the south, to the countries about the Columbia river. It is caused in the time of infancy, when the skull is soft, by the pressure of two boards, covered with soft leather, the one applied to the frontal bone, the other to the occipital. The people, however, who dwell to the south of the fifty- first, or fiftieth degree of latitude, appear to be a race essen tially different from the more northern tribes The inhabi tants of the coasts about Nootka sound are described as below the common stature, with fleshy or plump, but not muscu lar bodies ; faces commonly round and full, sometimes also broad ; high and prominent cheeks, above which the face is frequently much depressed, or seemingly fallen inward, quite across, between the temples ; noses flattened at the base, with wide nostrils and a rounded tip ; foreheads rather low ; small eyes, black, and rather: languishing than spark ling ; the mouth round ; round lips somewhat thick ; teeth tolerably equal and well set, but not remarkably white ; hair in abundance, coarse and strong, and universally black, straight, and lank ; and either thin beards or none, the ef fect of eradication * The skin seems fair in its natural state. The body is- rather clumsily framed, and the limbs very small in proportion, crooked, with projecting ankles, and large and ill shaped feet. In these deformities they agree with the tribes who dwell about the lower part of the river * Mackenzie, p. 370; t Cook's Third Voyage, Book 4, chap. 2, NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. 115 Columbia. These are represented as of a diminutive sta- CHAPTER in. ttire in general, a bad shape, an unpleasing appearance, with broad, thick, and flat feet, thick ankles, crooked legs, a wide mouth, thick lips, a moderately sized nose, fleshy, wide at the extremities, with large nostrils, and generally low between the eyes, but, in some rare instances, high and aquiline ; and with eyes generally black, but sometimes of a dark yellowish brown, with a black pupil.* Their com plexion is a coppery colour, but somewhat lighter than that of the interior aboriginals. The deformity of the legs is attributed in great measure to their mode of sitting on their heels, and to tight ornamental bandages worn by the females. The custom of rendering the forehead flat, which is ope rated on all persons of both sexes on the coasts, about the Columbia, and thence northward through six or seven de crees of latitude, diminishes eastward, so as at first to be 53 confined to females, and at length to cease entirely, to the east of the northern Andes. The tribes of Shoshonees or Snake Indians, who dwell at the foot of these mountains, and who are supposed to have come from the eastern side, and who still at certain seasons pass thither for a time, ap pear not to have adopted this mode of deformation : yet they might be suspected to be of a kindred race with the neighbouring occidental?, since they are described as of a diminutive stature, with thick flat feet and ankles, and crooked legs ;f to which another account adds a crookedness * Lewis and Clarke, p. 43G. f Lewis and Clarke, 4to. p. 311, p 2 116 CHAPTER lit Habits. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. of body, high cheek-bones large light coloured eyes, and such meagerness as to contribute to give them a frightful aspect.* The inhabitants of the coasts nearer to the north, about the fifty-fourth degree., and even the fifty-second, and~ thence beyond the sixtieth, give themselves another artificial deformity more disgusting than the flat forehead. This is a horizontal incision made, in the time of infancy, quite through the under lip, which causes the appearance of a se cond mouth. A thin piece of wood of an oval shape, com monly about three inches long and two broad, is worn in this orifice, the artificial lips of wh\ph are received into grooves made round the edge of the wooden ornament. This horrible mode of decoration seems in some tribes- wholely, and in others chiefly, to be applied to the female sex, The habits worn by the occidental aboriginals of Ame rica are various, but are every where, as may be expected, rude, and in general inadequate for the purposes of modesty or comfortable warmth. The various tribes, like savages in general, are variously ornamented or disfigured, with trinkets, "with paint, or with indelible figures impressed on the skin., The trinkets are worn in strings on the legs and arms, or suspended from the ears, or septum of the nose, perforated for that purpose. On the northern parts of the coast, about Cook's inlet, the common garment of both sexes is a close robe of skin, with the hair mostly outward,, reaching generally to the ankles, sometimes only to the * Lewia* Account, 8rot p. 10. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. 117 knees, with a hole above barely sufficient to admit the head, CHAPTER and with sleeves reaching- to the wrists. The head, legs, : : and feet are commonly naked ; but some have high caps in the form of a truncated cone ; some have leathern stock ings extending half-way up the thigh ; and almost all have mittens for the hands from the paws of bears. For a de fence against rain they use an outside garment made from the intestines of the whale, or some other large animal, like that which is used by the Eskeemoes, whom also these clans resemble in their boats and instruments for fishing. Farther southward, toward the fifty-second degree of lati tude, a robe is worn either of skin or manufactured from the filaments of the inner bark of the cedar, or some other tree, falling to the heels behind, and a little below the knees' before, with a cape in the form of an inverted bowl. A cap is also used in these territories, sometimes a kind of leathern shoe, and in rain a short mantle of matting : but for the covering of those parts which civilized nations are most careful to conceal, no means are employed, except a small apron of fringe carried by the women,, which answers not. the purpose otherwise than quite imperfectly. Garments of thick leather, in case of expected battle, and other de fences against weapons, are occasionally carried also. Flax and the wool of some wild quadrupeds are rudely manufactured into a kind of cloth by the people about Nootka sound. Beside various dresses occasionally worn, for war or ceremony, often monstrous and frightful, the common garb of the inhabitants of this part of the coast is a kind of flaxen cloak, ornamented at the edges with fur NOETHWESTERN AMERICA. CHAPTER and fringes, reaching below the knees, passing under the '~r~ left arm, and tied over the right shoulder, in such manner as to leave both arms free, and to cover the left side, but to expose their right, except when the vestment is collected by a girdle. Over this is placed a mantle, similar in stuff and ornaments, covering the arms to Ihe elbows and the body . to the waist, resembling a round dish inverted, with a hole in the middle, through which the head is thrust. On the head is a cap of fine matting, in form of a truncated cone, tied under the chin with a string, often decorated at top with a knob or a bunch of tassels. Among the tribes about the Columbia the dress of the men is a small robe of skin, reaching to the middle of the thigh, tied across the breast by a string, with the corners hanging loosely over the arms. Sometimes, instead of tt>is, a blanket, woven by the fingers, is used. All parts of the man, with this imperfect vesture, except the back and shoulders, are exposed to view. The robe of the women descends not below the waist; but the lower parts of the body are incompletely covered by a kind of fringe- work of rushes flags, or bark of trees, sometimes interwoven with fur. The covering of the head is a conical cap of similar materials, tied under the chin, -in like manner as that of the people of Nootka. To notice more varieties would be useless, especially as an intercourse with Euro peans may introduce in a few years considerable alterations. The languages of the occidental tribes, of which our knowledge is altogether scanty, appear to be as various as their personal characteristics. The speech of the more northern inhabitants, as about Cook's inlet, is guttural ; but NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. 119 the words, which sound as sentences in the ears of Euro- CHAPTER pearts, are pronounced in general with strength and dis- tirictness. The language of Nootka, which is essentially different from the more northern dialects, is fur from harsh or disagreeable, abounding more in labial and dental, than in guttural sounds. Yet somo of its syllables cannot accu rately be represented by the letters of our alphabet, nor easily .expressed by Europeans, particularly one which very frequently occurs. This is approximated by Roman cha racters in the word opulszthl, the name of the sun, and onulszthl, that of the moon. The words often terminate in z and ss,but much more commonly in tl. Thus Yucuatl is the real appellation of the harbour, which Cook, front a remarkable inattention, or inaccuracy in hearing, con ceived to be called Nootka. From the little which is known of this language we have ground to suspect an affinity be tween it and the ancient Mexican.* About the Columbia the pronunciation of several tribes is so guttural, that nd-x thing " seems to represent thek- tone of speaking more than the clucking of a fowl or the noise of a parrot. This peculiarity renders their voices scarcely audible, except at a short distance, and, when many of them are talking, forms a strange confusion of sounds Their common conversa tion consists of low guttural sounds, occasionally broken by a loud word or two, after which it relapses, and can scarcely be distinguished'^ by a stranger. How far this mode of speaking may resemble, or differ from, the clacking of the * Cook's third Voyage, book 4, chap. 3 and 6. Humboldt, *ol. 2, p..369, i Lewis and Clarke, p. 321, 374* NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. CHAPTER III. nouses. Hottentots, we cannot pretend to know, until the discourses of both kinds of people shall have been heard and described by the same observers. Beside various kinds of huts or cabins, like those of other savages in America, habitations of an uncommon sort are in use with the occidental tribes, especially near inlets and rivers where fish are copious. These, both in sides and roof, are composed of planks, retained in due position by poles, posts, and ligatures. Each house contains commonly three, four, or more families, whose distinct apartments are so imperfectly separated, that the whole fabric may be con sidered as having a rude resemblance to a long stable, with two ranges of stalls, and a broad passage in the middle, from end to end, between them. A hollow in the floor, without hearth or chimney, serves as a fire-place. Aper tures in the roof, longitudinal at the ridge-pole, or other wise disposed, imperfectly emit the smoke and admit the figtit. These houses vary in size and other circumstances. In some the roof is flat and horizontal ; in others shelving from one side-wall to the other ; and in others shelving from the ridge-pole to the sides, in the manner of European houses. Some are partly sunk in the earth to the depth of from about four to six feet, above which they rise to the height of six or eight : in others, which are from twelve to fourteen feet high, the floor is on the surface of the ground : and some are built on platforms, elevated on posts, from twelve to near thirty feet above the soil. The last, which are ascended by trunks of trees notched, serving as ladders, appear to be commonly the largest, as they are found from NORTHWESTERN AMERICA, 12 1 a hundred to a hundred and twenty feet long and about CHAPTER forty broad ; while others seem generally between thirty ' and sixty feet in length, and between fourteen and thirty in breadth : some, however, built immediately on the ground, have been seen of a vast size, even a hundred and sixty feet long and forty broad. The roofs of some, beside boards, have also a covering of bark, in the manner of thatch.* With the mode of life, and state of society, of these Occi dentals, our acquaintance is so very superficial, that little on that subject can be said with precision. The tribes in general, differently from those of a merely pastoral or venatic life, appear to be stationary, depending chiefly for subsistence on the produce of the seas and rivers. Their food consists partly of berries, roots, and other vegetable substances, but in much greater proportion of aquatic animals, particularly salmon, which ascend the rivers in prodigious numbers. These and other fish, as herrings and sliced porpoises, are preserved for store by drying. The two latter are com monly eaten in that state without any other preparation. The salmon is in general merely warmed, except while it is fresh, when it is boiled or roasted. The operation of boiling is performed in wooden vessels by the immersion of red -hot stones, in succession in the water. The roes of fish, incrusted and dried on the tender branches of the pine, or on a species of grass, are eaten as winter's food, together * Lewis and Clarke, p. 369, 382, 392, 431, 515. -Mackenzie, p. 329. Cooke, book 4, chap. 3. Vancouver, rol. 3, p. 128, 405 j rol, 4, p. 25,26. La Perousej TO!. 3, p. 199. CHAPTER HI. Manners. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. with these vegetables. Among the species of vegetable food is the inner bark of certain trees, pounded and pre pared in various ways, as a substitute for bread. Some tribes on the northern parts of the coast devour fresh fish, or some parts of them at least, in a state entirely raw. The boats, arms, and instruments of the northerns are almost the same with those of the savages of Greenland. Toward the south, as about the Columbia, the boats or canoes are from fifteen to above fifty feet long, each consisting wholely of a single trunk of a tree hollowed. One of the largest carries a cargo of four or five tons, and a crew of twenty or thirty persons. They are managed with such dexterity as to ride safely in tempestuous seas, where a European boat would inevitably perish. The Occidental tribes have been every where found uncleanly in their habitations, persons, and food. To this is ascribed a remarkably premature de cay of the teeth and eyes among the dwellers about the Columbia river. Concerning the government, religion, and manners of the occidental tribes, a few superficial remarks only, can be made. Their government seems mostly like that of sa vages in general, where every man is perfectly free, and no chief has authority to command, but merely to advise : yet in some tribes on the coast hereditary monarchy is said to be established, as at Nootka, where the toys or prince is af firmed to be absolute, uniting in his person both the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction.* The Nootkains, who have * Humboldt, tol. 2, p. 370, 371. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. 123 inade some advances toward civilization, and have regu- CHAPTER in. lated their year by fourteen months of twenty days each, ' with intercalations to supply the deficiency, are found to believe in the existence of two principles concerned in the government of the world, a good and a bad, and in a con test between them. Notions of a like nature seem to pre vail in other tribes ;* but of their various and absurdly super stitious ideas very little is known, nor would perhaps a par ticular knowledge of them be worthy of being communicated. Some forms of worship are observed in several communities, where wooden images of rude formation are in use. The modes of burial are various. Of these to mention two may be sufficient. The one is to wrap the bodies in the skin of animals, and to place them, one over another, in wooden houses appropriated to that purpose. The other is to leave them to moulder in the open air, in canoes, on spots of ground somewhat elevated, chosen from some superstitious motive. Much diversity has been discovered in the manners of different tribes. Many are thievish and treacherous, as is generally the case with savages : yet some have been found, with surprise, remarkably honest, particularly the Wolla- wollahs, who dwell about the Columbia river, at a consider able distance from the ocean. Some also have displayed a comparatively great mildness of manners, as the Chopunmsh clans, who inhabit a neighbouring tract still farther from the ocean.f * Mackenzie, p. 374. t Lewis & Clarke, p. 535, 557. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. CHAPTER All the occidental tribes are addicted to gaming, as are 1 men in general of barbarous manners, in whatsoever coun try they are found. These tribes, however, bear an honour able distinction from other savages in their behaviour to the female sex. Women among them are not only treated with respect, but also often assume authority and command. This, with seeming justice is ascribed to their mode of life. Among people purely venatic, where a precarious and often scanty subsistence is procurable only by the vigorous exer tions of the male sex, the females are considered as of little utility in contributiug to the common support, and therefore of little value. But where, as in these western tracts, the food consists chiefly of wild vegetables and fish, the women are as useful as the men in the acquiring of necessaries for the family or clan. Here the collecting of roots and berries , devolves chiefly on the females, and they are as dexterous as the males in the management of boats and instruments of the fishery. The stationary life of this people also, and their plenty of provisions, occasion a treatment of the old and infirm different from that which is experienced by per sons of this description in tribes which subsist by hunting. In the erratic life of the latter, who make long and laborious excursions in quest of precarious food, the infirm, who can give no assistance, nor accompany the rest without causing delay and trouble, become a useless incumbrance, and are therefore abandoned. But in a stationary state of society, amid a sufficiency of provisions, the coversation and advice of the aged and experienced are regarded as compensating for the victuals which they consume. We find indeed, that among the occidental Americans, the aged of both sexes., NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. 125 when even deprived of sight and the use of their limbs, are held in respect, and treated with tenderness Notwith standing however that so much deference is paid to females, men prostitute their wives, daughters, or sisters, to strangers without scruple.* The Interior aboriginals belong to that general race of indigenous Americans, of which I have spoken in the gene ral view, and which extends throughout the vast continent of America, from the vicinity of the Eskeemoes to the strait of Magellan. The colour of the skin is coppery, or a red dish brown ; the hair universally of a jetty black, glossy, smooth, coarse, flat, and pendent ; the eyes black, small, deeply set, and oblong, with the corners directed upward toward the temples ; the nose commonly sraight ; the lower part of the face in general triangular, while the forehead approaches a square form ; the cheeks prominent ; the cast of the countenance suspicious and ferocious, contrasted with an expression of gentleness about the mouth ; the fore head less prominent, and the occipital bone less curved, than in Europeans ; the face either destitute of a beard, by the eradication of the hairs, or thinly furnished with that appen dage ;f and " the mouth is formed like a shark's, that is, the sides are lower than the front, and the teeth, small, white, and regular, are sharp and cutting, like those of the cat or the tiger. May not this form be naturally accounted for from their habit of biting from a large piece when they eat, * Lewis and Clarke, p. 441, 44?. Vancouver, Vol. 4, p. 254, i Humboldt, TO!. 1, p. 141148. Volney, p. 403 413. CHAPTER in. Interior Aboriginals, Persons. J26 CHAPTER III. Habits. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. without ever using a knife ? This habit evidently gives the muscles a position which at length they retain, and this po sition ultimately modifies the solid parts likewise."* They are in general well shaped, but less robust than the Europeans, and various in stature. Variations also in personal charac teristics, even shades of colour, have place in the different tribes, by which those who are well acquainted with them can easily distinguish them. Some distinctive marks are the effects of art. One of the most striking is found in the tribe of the Choctaws, who, by a compression in the days of infancy, mould the head into the form of a truncated py ramid. The shades of colour are so different, that, while in some tribes the skin is hardly darker than in the southern Europeans, it is in others almost as black as that of the Negroes, f as is the case among the Mississaguis, at lake Ontario. The habits or dresses of the aboriginals, improperly termed Indians, of North America, vary in the different tribes, and in a difference of circumstances. Many go al most naked, even in severe weather, using only some of the articles which compose a full clothing. These articles con sist principally of a kind of shoes, hoes, aprons, a coat, an outside robe, a girdle, and some appendages. Those who have an opportunity of trading with Europeans have mostly exchanged their leathern garments for those of cloth or blanketing, but the rest still continue to clothe themselves * Volney, ibidem. i Weld's Travels in North America, 8vo, London, 1799, vol. 2, p. 224. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. 127 i with skins. The vestments of both materials are fashioned CHAPTER in the same manner, and are in general nicely decorated, at the seams and edges, with porcupine's quills and other ornaments. The shoe, called ?noccasin, is formed of a single piece of the skin of the buffalo, elk, or deer, fitted closely to the foot like a sock, with a seam from the toe to the instep, and another behind at the heel, and with sometimes a sole of what seerns a thick parchment, from the skin of the elk. The hose or leggings, of leather or cloth, extending from the instep to the middle of the thigh, are fitted tightly to the limbs, and sometimes sewed on them so closely as to remain immoveably fixed until worn into rags, and are fastened to a narrow girdle by two strings, one outside of each thigh. Another narrow belt is also in use, to which are appended two small aprons, one before, the other behind, and through which are drawn, behind and before, the ends of a narrow piece of cloth, or leather, passing between the thighs. What may be termed the coat is in the form of a shirt, open at the neck and wrists, and descending only to the upper ends of the leggings. The outside robe is a kind of mantle of leather, sufficient to envelope the whole body, or a great square piece of cloth, or a blanket, thrown about the shoul ders, and variously placed or folded, according to the fancy of the wearer, but often drawn over the left shoulder and under the right, in such manner as to leave the light arm free. The garments of the women are scarcely distinguish able from those of the men. Some wear a skin, or cloth, about the middle, descending to the knees ; and some a 128 NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. CHAPTER III. Language. shirt which reaches to the ancles. The hair of both sexes is variously modified. Among males many permit only one lock to grow, which falls backward in length from the crown of the head. Both men and women wear ornaments in great variety, as bracelets on the arms, pendants in the ears, and sometimes in the nose. Some men slit the ears, and distend them so as to touch the sho.ilders. The faces in general are horribly painted or daubed, especially in pre paring for a warlike expedition, with ointments of different colours, particularly black and red.* The languages spoken by the numerous little nations or tribes of savages, who roam through the immense wilds between the northern Andes and the European settlements on the eastern side of North America, have not as yet been made so much the object of philological enquiry, as to af ford grounds for the furnishing of any satisfactory informa tion on that subject to the reader. Such an inquiry, exten sively and judiciously pursued, by tracing affinities between different languages, would tend to discover a consanguinity, or an ancient connexion, between different clans, and also to determine whether an affinity exists between any of these American dialects and any of those which are spoken in the old continent. Whether, however, any valuable knowledge would result from this labour may be doubtful, since these barbarous dialects, wholely oral, or unrecorded by any per manent characters, may have greatly changed in a course * W*4d, vol. 2, p. 230-238. Mackenzie, p. xciii XCT. 36, 37.- Lewis and Clarke, p. 6466, 77, 648. NORTHWESTERN AMERICAt 129 of ages, and several may probably bave altogether perished. CHAPTER Yet great pains are said to be taken by the American sa vages to preserve the purity of their languages, particularly in their orations at their public councils or assemblies, where orators are studious to display their eloquence, and the auditors attentive to criticise the speeches. But the languages of savage tribes, whose ideas are few and little abstracted, must necessarily be barren, how figurative so ever their studied orations may be. The dialects in general of the interior aboriginals contain many polysyllables, and in several the words end frequently in vowels. Some dia lects are perceptibly more guttural than others ; but the females are observed to pronounce the languages much more softly than the other sex, in general indeed with a delicacy very pleasing to a European ear.* Most of these dialects, or the greater part of them, are comprehended under two general heads, the Knisteneaux and Chepewyan languages. The former, in all its variations, is spoken by the tribes who dwell in the vicinity of Hudson's gulf and the British settlements in Canada, and thence as far westward at least as the lake of the Hills. - The latter is in use among those who inhabit the more western regions from the sixty-fifth degree of latitude southward to about the fify-second.f The habitations of the savages of North America are rude Habitations. in the extreme. In general they are only temporary huts, composed of a frame- work of poles and a covering of bark. The poles are fixed with their lower ends in the ground, Weld, Tol. 2, p. 288. Mackenzie, p. xcii, cxrii. R 130 NORTH WESTFRN AMERICA. CHAPTER and the upper joined at top, so as to form a slope for the outside covering. Some huts are conical; others of diffe rent figures. In some a hole at the top serves for a chimney. Some are only sheds open on one side, These are often placed in pairs, each pair with the open sides opposite to each other, and a fire in the space between them for the accommodation of both. Sometimes four sheds are dis posed in the form of a quadrangle, with one fire in the cen ter for them all. Several tribes dwell in tents covered wit h skins. Tents of this description of an extraordinary size are used as common halls for public consultations. In their hunting expeditions, in the rigour of winter, the savages frame their temporary lodges from the snow itself, which they use, on the occasion, as the material of building, and which, consolidated by the frost, forms a firm enclosure, and an effectual shelter from the winds. \ 3Food. The food of the savage tribes in this immense region con sists principally, often wholely, of the flesh of animals, eaten frequently almost raw, sometimes entirely in that state. Their meat, when cooked, is boiled, fried on embers, or stewed or roasted with hot stones, covered with leaves, or grass, and earth. The boiling, where European pots have not been procured, is performed in kettles of stone, or in wooden vessels, in which the water is heated by red-hot stones. They much prefer the fat of the flesh, as that of the bear, to the lean, as the former remains longer in the sto mach under the operation of digestion. The lean however is necessarily chosen for the making of what is called pemi- han a meat preserved for store. For this purpose the flesK .N'ORTIl WESTERS AMERICA. 131 . of the larger kinds of quadrupeds, cut into thin slices, and CHAPTER dried in the sunbeams, or on a wooden grate over a slow - fire, or by the frost, is pounded carefully between two stones. In this state it may, with care, be kept fit for food during 1 several years, without salt or any substitute for it. It is mixed with an equal quantity of the thickest or firmest kind of the fat of animals, melted, and poured on it in a boiling state. Carried in baskets or bags, in expeditions, it forms a nutritive sustenance, when supplies from the chase or the fishery fail. The pemikan is sometimes varied by other mixtures. Thus in the composition of a superior kind, marrow and dried berries have a place. To berries, wild roots, the rind of trees, and other vegetables, recourse is had, when the more usual, and more favourite kind of ali ment cannot be obtained. Some tribes boil vegetables with the flesh of bears, the fat of which gives such a flavour as is considered as delicious even by some Europeans. Salt is used as a seasoning by some tribes ; but many never taste salt, spices of any kind, or bread, at any time in their lives. The flesh of dogs is eaten at religious feasts, but not in general as common food. The superstition of men in a savage condition ought Religion, hardly to be dignified with the name of religion, nor can a regular statement of their wild and irrational fancies be easily formed. Religious notions "form not a regular system among savages, because every individual, in his independent state, makes for himself a creed, after his own manner. To judge from the accounts of the historians of the first settlers, and those of late travellers in the north- n 2 132 NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. CHAPTER west, it appears that the savages generally compose their mythology in the following manner. First a great manitou, or superior genius, governs the earth and the aerial meteors, the visible whole of which constitutes the universe of a sa- vage. This great manitou, residing on high, without any clear idea where, rules the world, without giving himself much- trouble ; sends rain, wind, or fair weather, according to his fancy ; sometimes makes a noise to amuse himself ; concerns himself as little about the affairs of men as about those of other living beings that inhabit the earth ; does good without taking any thought about it ; suffers ill to be perpetrated, without its disturbing his repose ; and in the mean time leaves the world to a destiny or fatality, the laws of which are anterior and paramount to all things. Under his command are subordinate manitous, or genii, innumera ble, who people earth and air, and preside over every thing that happens, and have each a separate employment. Of these genii some are good, and these do all the good that takes place in nature. Others are bad, and these occasion all the evil that happens to living beings, It is to the latter chiefly, and almost exclusively, that the savages address their prayers, their propitiatory offerings, arid what religious worship they have, the object of which is to appease the malice of these manitous, as men appease the ill humour of morose and envious persons. They offer little or nothing to the good genii, because they would do neither more nor less good on this account.'* " This fear of evil genii is one of their most habitual thoughts, and that by which they are most tormented. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA* 133 Their most intrepid warriors are, in this respect, no bette? CHAPTER than the women and children. A dream, a phantom seen at night in the woods, or a sinister cry, equally alarms their credulous and superstitious minds. But. as wherever there are dupes, knaves will start up, we find in every savage tribe some juggler; or pretended magician, who makes a trade of expounding dreams, and negociat ing with the manitous the business and desires of every believer. Notwithstand ing their intercourse with the genii, the magicians are greatly puzzled to explain their nature, form, and aspect. Not having our ideas of pure spirit, they suppose them to be corporeal substances, yet light, volatile, true shadows, and manes, after the manner of the ancients. Sometimes they and< the savages select some particular one, whom they suppose to reside in a tree, a serpent, a rock, or a cataract, and him they make their fetish, like the negroes of Africa. The notion of another life is a pretty general belief too among the savages. They imagine that, after death, they shall go into another climate and country, where game and fish abound, where they can hunt without being fatigued> walk about without fear of an enemy, eat very fat meat, live without care or trouble, in short be happy in every thing that constitutes happiness in this life. Those of the north, place this climate toward the south-west, because the summer winds, and the most pleasing and genial tempera ture, come from that quarter."* The analogy is easily observable which the religious notions of the indigenous iribes of North America bear to those of the primitive * Volaey, p. 477480. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. CHAPTER Grecians, to those of the barbarous hordes at present in Northern Asia, and indeed to those of people in a state of savage ignorance in every part of the world. Where Chris- \ tian missionaries have endeavoured to propagate their doc trines among the more eastern tribes, they seem to have in some degree modified the ancient and proper opinions of the American oboriginals ; but no real conversion to Christianity appears to have had place ; except with an exceedingly small number whom the Moravians have persuaued to adopt the agricultural, instead of the venatic life. The superstition of the savages is so blended with fancied magic, on which, more than on drugs of any kind, they depend for the cure of diseases, that every thing of a reli gious nature is by them termed medicine. In feasts which are celebrated for religious purposes, in some of which the flesh of dogs, offered in sacrifice, is eaten, what is called the bag of medicine is opened with great ceremony, containing several sacred articles, one of which, in some tribes, is a little image. A piece of furniture indispensable on such occasions is the sacred stem of a pipe, the smoking through which is a most material part of the ceremonial. This stem, kept in reserve with reverential care, is adapted on the occa sion, to a pipe filled with lighted tobacco, and transferred from hand to hand till each man takes a whiff. Every par taker in the rite of smoking is regarded as bound by an ob ligation, according to the end proposed in the giving of the feast. Thus, if the feast be furnished by a public contri bution, and war be the object, the partakers are solemnly enlisted for the expedition. When a chief holds a religious NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. 135 assembly at his own mansion, all persons, who join in the ceremony of smoking, are bound to entertain no grudge or hostile design against the chief, or against one another.* In some tribes, as among the people called Mandans and Minnetaries, a huge stone, conceived to be oracular, is an object of religious respect. When a deputation visits the sacred spot, the deputies perform the rite of smoking to the stone, and of presenting the pipe to it, and afterwards retire to an adjacent wood for the night. In the morning the de stinies of the nation are found marked by a number of white spots on the stone. These are deciphered by connoisseurs, who probably had secretly made them in the night, f No species of rule, which can rightly deserve the title of government, has place among the savage aboriginals in the interior of North America, in each tribe or nation all men are perfectly equal in political power. None can have any authority to command, nor can any one have influence, ex cept by superior age, wisdom, or talents. Thus who not only express no sensation of pain, but brave and defy their tormentors with the haughtiest pride, bitterest irony, and most insulting sarcasms, chaunting their own exploits ; enumerating the friends and relatives of the spec tators, whom they had slain ; particularizing the tortures which they had inflicted on them ; and accusing them all of cowardice, pusillanimity, and ignorance in the art of tor menting; till, dropping piecemeal, and devoured alive, before their own eyes, by their enemies drunk with rage, they lose their last breath with their last words : all this would be incredible to civilized nations, were not the truth established by incontrovertible testimony, and will someday be treated as fabulous by posterity, when savages shall no longer exist."* For the peculiar cruelty of these people, and their peculiar fortitude in braving the most horrible torments, we cannot otherwise pretend to account than from the force of the most deeply rooted habits. A judicious traveller, who studied the manners of the wild aboriginals of this vast region, speaks thus, in endeavouring to develope their general character : ff The American sa vage, placed on a soil abounding in grass and shrubs, find- * Volney, p. 458, 459. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. ing it difficult to retain captive animals always ready to flee CHAPTER into the woods, and feeling it more pleasant to pursue the n there, as well as more convenient to kill than to feed them, has been led by the nature of his situation to become a hunter, a shedder of blood, and an eater of flesh. Thus a hunter and butcher, who has had daily occasion to kill, and in every animal has beheld nothing but a fugitive prey, which he must be quick to seize, he has acquired a roaming, wasteful, and ferocious disposition ; has become an animal of the same kind with the wolf and the tiger; has united in bands or troops, but not into organized societies. Unac quainted with the ideas of property and of preservation, he has remained a stranger to all sentiments of family, and of a care to preserve which these inspire. Confined to his own powers, he has been obliged to keep them incessantly bent to their utmost stretch ; and hence an independent, restless, unsocial humour ; a proud untameable spirit, hos tile toward ail men ; a habitual state of excitement in con sequence of permanent danger ; a desperate determination to risk at every moment a life incessantly threatened ; an absolute indifference to the past, which has been toilsome, and to the future, which is uncertain ; and lastly an exist ence wholly confined to the present. These individual man ners, forming the public manners of the tribes, have ren dered them equally thriftless, greedy, and continually under the yoke of necessitousness, and have occasioned the habi tual and encreasing want of extending their rights of chase, the frontiers of their territory, and invading the domains of others. Hence more hostile habits without, and a more constant state of a war, irritation., and cruelty." 148 NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. CHAPTER " The habit of shedding blood, or of merely seeing K shed, corrupts every feeling of humanity : but to this are added several other causes, arising both from the subject itself, and from its concomitants, which have a powerful effect. First, the spirit of personality which every savage carries with him to war ; a selfishness founded on this, that every individual of the tribe, from the land being in com mon, considers the game in general as the fundamental means of his own subsistence, and consequently deems every thing that tends to destroy this as attacking or threat ening his own life. Among savage clans, poor and few in number, war directly endangers the existence of the whole society, and of each of its members. Its first effect is to famish, its next to exterminate the tribe. It is equally natural therefore, that every member should identify him self intimately with the whole, and display an energy car ried to the utmost, since it is stimulated by the extreme necessity of defence and self-preservation. A Second rea son of the animosity of these wars is the violence of pas sions, such as the point of honour, resentment, and ven geance, with which every warrior is inspired. The num ber of combatants being small, every one is exposed to the eyes both of his friends and enemies. Every act of cowar dice is punished with infamy, the near consequence of which is death ; and courage is stimulated by the rivalry of companions in arms, the desire of revenging the death of some friend or relative, and every personal motive of hatred and pride, ottenmore powerful than self-preservation." " The third reason is the nature of these wars> in which quarter is neither given, received, nor expected. The least NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. H9 danger is the loss of life, for, if the savage be only wounded CHAPTER or made prisoner, the sole prospect before him is that of being scalped immediately, or burned alive and eaten in a few days. His fortitude under torments is stimulated by despair, and the sense of the impossibility of saving himself by retraction or weakness. He resembles those animals-, which, attacked in their last retreat, defend themselves without any hope of escape ; and we know what prodigious efforts nature will then display in the weakest and most timid. In the savage it is the accumulated action of fana ticism and necessity : but a very interesting physiological problem nevertheless remains still to be resolved, namely, what is that singular state of the nerves, what that movement of the electric fluid, by which sensibility is deadened, or ex alted to such a pitch as ta annihilate pain ? The last mo tive to ferocity in the wars of the savages, and in their entire character, is the whole system of their education, and the direction which parents endeavour to give their inclina tions from the earliest age." " Prom their infant state they endeavour to promote an independent spirit. They are never known to beat or scold them, lest the martial disposition which is to adorn their future life and character, should be weakened. It is to pro cure more intrepid defenders that mothers thus spoil their children, who, at some future day, according to the general practice of these people, will despise, domineer over, and even beat them. Sometimes they spend their evenings in relating the noble deeds of their relatives, or of the heroes of their tribe : how in their lives they killed, scalped, and. 150 NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. CHAPTER burned such a number of their enemies : or how, having in * ' had the misfortune to be taken prisoners,, they endured the most horrible torments with the proudest bravery. At other times they entertain them with the domestic quarrels of the tribe, their causes of complaint against some of their neigh bours, and the precautions to be taken to revenge them opportunely. Thus they give them at once lessons of dis simulation, cruelty, hatred, discretion, vengeance, and blood- thirstiness. They never fail of seizing the first opportunity of a prisoner of war, to have their children present at the punishment, to tutor them in the art of tormenting, and to make them partakers in the canibal feast, with which these scenes terminate. It is obvious that such lessons must make a profound impression on a young mind. Accordingly their constant effect is to give the young savages an intractable, imperious, rebellious disposition, averse to all contradiction and restraint, yet dissembling, knavish, and even polite ; for the savages have a code of politeness, not less established than that of a court. In short, they contrive to make them unite all the qualities necessary to attain the object of their pre vailing passion, the thirst of revenge and bloodshed. Their frenzy in the last point is a subject of astonishment and affright to all the whites who have lived with them/' et On the whole it may be said, that the virtues of the savages are reducible to intrepid courage in clanger, unsha ken firmness amid tortures, contempt of pain and death, and patience under all the anxieties and distresses of life. Doubtless these are useful qualities ; but they are all con- I NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. J51 fined to the individual, all selfish, and without any benefit CHAPTER to the society. Farther they are proofs of a life truly wretched, and a social state so depraved or null, that a man, neither finding nor hoping any assistance from it, is obliged to wrap himself up in despair, and endeavour to harden himself against the strokes of fate. In pursuing my inves tigation I do not find that I am led to more advantageous ideas of the liberty of the savage. On the contrary, I see in him only the slave of his wants, and of the freaks of a sterile and parsimonious nature. Pood he has not at hand : rest is not at his command : he must run, weary himself, and endure hunger and thirst, heat and cold, and all the inclemency of the elements and seasons ; and as the igno rance, in which he has been bred, gives him, or leaves him a multitude of false and irrational ideas, and superstitious prejudices, he is likewise the slave of a number of errors and passions, from which civilized man is exempted, by the science and knowledge of every kind which an improved state of society has produced."* With the affectation of insensibility under the most tremen dous sufferings the apparent apathy of the savages, in the concerns of life in general, seems to have connexion. They express no surprise at the sight of any object, howsoever new or extraordinary, no joy at the meeting of the nearest relatives, nor grief at their departure, and receive both good and bad news with seeming indifference. Howsoever fa mished, they betray no symptom of hunger; but, whea * Volney, p. 446469. NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. CHAPTER arrived at the huts of their friends where they expect their cravings to be satisfied, they sit in apparent ease, wailing patiently, without asking for any, till food be offered them, Consonant w r ith their habitually affected apathy is the gra vity of their deportment. They maintain a serious and solemn air, at least before strangers. They never interrupt any person in speaking, and they in general behave with a kind of politeness, which shews a habit of avoiding to give offence. They are hospitable in a high degree, sharing un reservedly their food with visitants to the last morsel : but this may be ascribed in great measure to their improvident disposition, as they are apt to consume with a thoughtless pro- digality the provisions of the day, without any regard to the danger of posterior famine. Their prodigality is accompa nied by an indolence, from which they can only be roused by the calls of hunger, or the thirst of revenge, in which case they display the most vigorous persevering exertions. From indolence and a want of a sense of decency they are filthy in their persons, huts, and food, and commonly swarm with vermine, which they eat as a delicacy as fast as they can catch them. The insensibility, which the savages affect under their own sufferings, is real with respect to the sufferings of others. The feelings of compassion appear to be wholly strangers to their breasts. Of the treatment of their prisoners I have spoken already. A cruelty characteristic of savage man ners is also displayed in the treatment of females, to whom is consigned the carrying of burdens, and every other spe cies of drudgery ; while the men disdain to carry any thing NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. 153 except their arms, and never lend assistance to alleviate the CHAPTER . in. hardships of the weaker sex. They are liable besides to various maltreatment, to be unmercifully beaten, maimed, and even murdered, by their brutal husbands. Hence fre quently mothers, to save their female offspring from a life of such misery, extinguish the vital spark immediately at the birth. Inured to cruel treatment, these females are cruel in their turn. To join with frantic rage in the tor turing of a prisoner, and in the killing of a captive woman or child, by their own hands, they feel a quite favourite amusement. The appearance indeed of pain, or distress of any kind, affords commonly a subject of enjoyment, or mirth and laughter, to both sexes. From their inferiority in strength and courage women are accounted inferior beings. That no value is set on female chastity may partly perhaps have arisen from this principle. Licentious amours in her years of celibacy are not at all regarded as faults in a fe male. At some of the feasts, at least among the more southern tribes in this region, the most immodest exhibi tions are made, of the intercourse between the sexes, in the view of all the company. Men prostitute their wives, without scruple, to strangers. This is a usual act of hos pitality to guests. Yet if a wife indulges a galant without her husband's permission, she is liable to be most cruelly punished by her savage lord, who perhaps bites the nose from her face, or puts her to death. Polygamy is in gene ral practice, and the exchanging of wives between man and man is also usual. u 154 NORTHWESTERN AMERICA* CHAPTER III. Customs, Among the customs of the people of whom I am treating is the ceremony of marriage, which varies in different tribes, but the most general mode appears to be the following. After a feast on the occasion, the two persons intended to be joined in matrimony stand holding a wand about four feet long, at opposite extremities, in the presence of three or four males and as many females. When they have made a declaration of their affection and intention, the wand is broken into pieces, in number equal to that of the witnesses, of whom each takes a piece, and preserves it with great care. When they determine on a divorce, the witnesses, in the presence of a company assembled for the business, throw these pieces into the fire, by which ceremony the union is considered as dissolved. At weddings, and on other occasions, dancing is a custom. Different dances are appropriated to different affairs, and these again vary in the different tribes ; but to convey to readers a clear conception of the differences would perhaps be impossible, and of little utility. The dance of the pipe, which is performed at the arrival of ambassadors of peace from a hostile clan, or on the passage of an eminent stranger through their villages, is the most pleasing to Europeans, as being attended with more graceful movements, or less violent gestures, than others. The dance of war, exhibited in preparing for a hostile expedition, or after its completion, is terrific in the extreme, as its motions are designed to represent the modes of killing, scalping, and other acts of ferocity, accompanied by those hideous yells which they raise in real combat, while their weapons are so brandished, that to avoid being NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. 155 wounded by one another requires expertness or address in CHAPTER the highest degree. Women in general are excluded from joining with the men in dances, but they have some appro priated to their sex, which they perform apart. The pipe of peace, called calumet, which is smoked with the most solemn formality at the settling of pacific treaties, or at the reception of friendly strangers, consists of a bowl of red marble, and a wooden stem about four feet long, cu riously painted with hieroglyphics, and adorned with the most beautiful feathers of birds. The decorations are dif ferent in the different tribes, which are easily distinguished at first sight, of their calumets. When a treaty of peace is concluded, a painted hatchet or club is buried in the ground, to denote that all annimosities have ceased between o the contending parties. Treaties are recorded by belts of wampum. The substance thus named is the inside of a shell called the clam, found in the Atlantic, on the coast of North America. At present this is sent to England, where it is manufactured into beads, which are sent back, and sold to the savages. The beads are of two sorts, the white and the violet coloured, or purple. The latter, which are es teemed equivalent in value to their weight in silver, are more esteemed. They are sometimes sewed, in various ar rangements, on broad belts of leather, but are more commonly formed into strings on thongs drawn through them, ten, twelve, or more of which, according to the importance of the business compose a belt. These 156 NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. CHAPTER belts are produced at particular periods, and the trea- : ties, of which they are the memorials, are severally recapi tulated, for the recording of them in the memory. The customs which regulate the giving of proper names, for the designation of individuals, appear not clearly explicable. Children commonly bear the name of the mother, not of the father, as the parentage cannot be so doubtful on the female side. The name also of the tribe or band, which is mostly that of some animal, is generally retained Appellations or titles are, besides, conferred on chiefs and distinguished warriors, after their arrival at the age of maturity, which bear a refe rence to the hieroglyphic mark of their families, or to their superior abilities or exploits. At funerals they inter without burning, and commonly destroy all the personal property of the deceased. In mourning they cut short the hair, and blacken the face with charcoal. Among the arts of the savages of North America we may perhaps reckon that by which they find their way through forests, swamps, and other pathless wilds. In this they are by some supposed to surpass all other people on our globe : at least they are doubtless surpassed by none. The point at which they aim, though hundreds of miles distant, they arrive at by a direct or undeviating course. This exr pertness, so surprising to Europeans, is doubtless the result of early and incessant habit, and of an undistracted atten tion. Among the phenomena, by the observation of which they distinguish the different points of the compass, is the appearance of the trees. The bark, on the northwestern NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. 15? side, exposed to piercing winds from that quarter, is thicker CHAPTER and harder than elsowhere on the tree, and of a different colour. They shew not less expertness in the pursuit of men and quadrupeds, whose traces they follow with astonish ing sagacit). From their ability thus to traverse vast spaces of land, in various directions, to the intended spots, we may naturally suppose, which indeed we are informed to be the fact, that they are in general well acquainted with the geo graphy of their country, or the relative situations of its diffe rent parts. Of the arts of reading and of writing they are totally ignorant. Events are recorded in the memory, which, in political transactions, is assisted by belts of wam pum and some rude hieroglyphics. They reckon their years by winters, or, as they term them, snows ; and the number of days consumed in a journey they call so many nights. They divide the year into twelve moons, or lunar months, which they denominate from some circumstances attendant on the seasons. Thus the moon of frogs has place in May, and the moon of intense cold in January. An in tercalary month, termed a lost moon, is occasionally added when an aberration from the true or solar year becomes strikingly evident, which is commonly observed at the end of a period of thirty moons. In medicine they are acquainted with some simples of great efficacy ; but the powers of these are often frustrated by superstition. Thus the patient is prevented from the refreshment of sleep, or of any sort of repose, by the noise of incessant rattles, employed to frighten away the malig- 158 NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. CHAPTER naiit spirit, who is imagined to be the author of the malady, and to be continually on the watch to renew the aggression. In some cases of distemper, particularly of the feverish kinds, a mode of cure is practiced of the same nature with the Russian manner of bathing, which sometimes causes death, and sometimes recovery. The patient is thrown into a violent perspiration in a heated hut, and thence suddenly plunged into cold water or snow. They have instruments of music, among which is a species of flute : but, instead of regular tunes, they produce from them only wild or uncon nected notes. Their mechanical arts are few and simple ; but by time and attention they form some utensils in a neat and curious manner. Thus baskets are made of so close a contexture as to contain water, in the same manner as a pail or bowl. Their weapons are often very nicely ornamented : but the bow, except in remote parts toward the west, is from commerce with Europeans, superseded by the gun. The tomahawk, a peculiar weapon, is a hatchet of small size, to which a pipe for the smoking of tobacco is often attached. This, though they seldom suffer it to part from the hand, they can throw with such dexterity as to hit a, small mark, at the distance of ten yards, with the forepart, which pro^ jects, and terminates in a sharp point. Their canoes, which are constructed of the bark of the birch, the elm, and other trees, bound firmly on a slight fratne-work of wood, are remarkable for their lightness. A boat of this kind, which carries twelve men on the water, may be carried by one on the land. In such frail vessels, which bear a cargo of a tun or more in weight, beside the crew, voyages are NORTHWESTERN AMERICA. performed of hundreds of miles, sometimes two or three thousand, along the lakes and rivers of these immense re gions. Other species of canoes are also in use, among which are trunks of great trees hallowed into the form of slender boats, and pointed at the extremities.* 159 CHAPTER III. * Beside the writings of travellers already quoted concerning the man* ners, &c. of the Savage Americans, a multitude of others might be adduced, as those of Carver, Long, Adair, Bernard Romans, Hearue, &c, &c. 161 CHAPTER IV. GREENLAND IS of great, but unknown, dimensions, its extent to the north* being yet unexplored, nor is it decided whether it be entirely environed by water, but it is more probable that it is joined on the northwest to the American continent, and ought rather to be accounted an American than an European region. Vast masses of dazzling icef fill the surrounding seas, partly floating and partly fixt, and dis playing a strange variety of fantastic forms. Islands innu merable of various sizes border the coasts, which are deeply * Navigators have sailed on its western side as far as the 78th degree of latitude, and on the eastern as far as the 80th. + The most noted field of fixt ice is that which is called the Eisblink or Iceglance, situate on the western coast between the 62d and 63d degrees. It is an high field of shining ice, resembling a vast arched bridge, extending twenty-four miles in length and six in breadth across the mouth of an inlet. Its glance in the air is seen like an Aurora Borealis at the distance of many leagues, and its arches, through which the water returns in strong currents at (he tide of ebb, are from 40 to 120 feet high. GREENLAND. CHAPTER indented by many inlets. Its shores are generally high and rocky, especially on the western side, and ttiere more espe cially towards the south ; and the mountains, which every where fill the land, rise close to the sea shores, craggy, pointed, and of great elevation, their summits being visible to mariners at the distance of forty leagues.* These moun tains, and with them all the interior country, are covered with perpetual ice and snow ; but the lower grounds on the coasts appear in summer clothed with a kind of ver dure, f Few brooks and no rivers water these rugged re gions, and the interior country is totally uninhabited. Qreenlanders dwell along the western coasts as far to the north as the 75th degree of latitude, nor is it certainly known whether any people subsist in these countries still nearer to the pole. A few Danes are settled along the same coasts as tar as the 71st degree; but the eastern coasts, tho gh formerly open to navigators, and actually settled by a Nor wegian colony in the ninth century, are now so blockaded with ice as to be inaccessible to ships, and as a passage to them by land from the western side through the icy moun tains of the interior country, is also impracticable, it is not * The Hiertatak or stag's horn, situate on the western coast about the 04th degree, and reckoned the highest mountain of Greenland, is seen at the distance of 60 leagues at sea. f The Norwegians, who discovered this country in the ninth century, gave it the name of Greenland, because they affected to think that the easiern coast, on which they first arrived, appeared more green than Iceland, from which island they had last departed. GREENLAND. 16S certainly known, whether these eastern shores have, at pre- CHAPTER sent, any inhabitants or not. IV. Here, as in other places situate in high latitudes, two sea sons only divide the year, the spring and autumn being ex cluded That which is called the summer is commonly of five months duration, from the beginning of May to the end of September, during great part of which time about the solstice there is continually day, for to the north of the arc tic circle the sun remains many weeks together without setting, and to the south it disappears but a few hours, and then so strong a twilight reigns, that by its aid alone a man. can see well enough within doors to read the smallest print at midnight. The noontide heats in the longest days are scorching, in calm weather and in places where the sun's beams concentre, but in general the Greenland summer is neither very warm nor comfortable. The snows remain even on the shores until June, and begin to fall again in August and September. Thick fogs envelope the coasts from April to August ; and the cold emitted by the vast masses of permanent ice is always chilling at night, or when the sun is low in the horizon. The winter of seven months duration is altogether rigorous, all being involved in depths of ice and snow. The frost-smoke issues from the sea like the smoke of an oven, and feels less cold to a man immersed in it than the dry air around ; but when it is wafted into a colder region of the atmosphere it is converted into the frost shower, being frozen into small icy particles, which, driven on land by the winds, bring with them a cutting cold almost insupportable. The subtile snow dust, with which the air x 2 164 GREENLAND. CHAPTER j g fl|j e( j wnen the snows are drifted by the winds, is not more tolerable. Night with little interruption invests the skies for some months, the sun but peeping two or three hours above the horizon in the south, and not appearing at all for many weeks together in the north ; but, besides the twi lights, such is the brightness of the moon and stars, which shine in those northern climes with superior lustre, and such the splendor of the Aurora Borealis that a man can see well enough in (he open air to read. The sea is generally open notwithstanding the intense cold, permitting the Greenlan- ders to pursue their occupations ot fishing and seal-hunting, on which their subsistence depends ; but when it happens that, for two or three weeks together, a continued sheet of ice spreads from the shores many leagues over the sea, navi gation is precluded, and famine is the consequence. The parhelion or mock sun, so frequently seen in arctic climates, is particularly often seen in Greenland, as also the halo or luminous circle about the moon. It is remarkable that when the winter is uncommonly severe in the temperate cli mates of Europe, it is mostly uncommonly mild in Green land, and vice versa. It is also remarkable that the springs or wells in Greenland rise and fall regularly with the tide, being higher at the tide of flood than the tide of ebb, and highest of ail at spring tides. Lightning is rarely seen, thunder more rarely heard, and calm weather predominates, and that more in proportion as the country approaches the pole, but when storms come, which is generally in autumn, they blow with irresistible fury. 4 The earth in these regions, rendered sterile by the cold, yields hardly any vegetable for the subsistence of GREENLAND. 165 corn has been frequently sown, and as frequently grown CHAPTER up with a promising appearance, but was always destroyed ' by the frost before it could attain maturity. Some low shrubs appear, but the country is entirely destitute of trees, \vhichdefect kind providence has in some measure supplied by drift wood, which is conveyed to the coasts by the winds and waves. Some spots of ground upon the coasts, acci dentally manured about the dwellings of the Greenlanders, produce grass of so nutricious a quality that it has fatted a few sheep, brought from Denmark^ to an unconv mon degree, in an uncommonly short time ; but in general the surface is barren sand or stones instead of soil, and moss of various kinds the predominant growth, and in advancing towards the pole nature wears gradually a more barren aspect, until at length all vegetation ceases, and nothing meets the eye but naked rocks. The animal productions of the land are also scanty ; besides a few rein deer, hares are found which are white all the year, and a kind of partridges called snow hens, which are grey in summer and white in winter ; but the two last are not esteemed as food by the Greenlanders, who prefer to them the flesh of foxes. The only tame animals are dogs, which howl instead of barking, are like wolves in appearance, and are mostly white ; they are chiefly used as beasts of burden ; from four to ten of them, harnessed to a sledge, draw the Greenlander in state along the ice. But, to compensate in some degree for the penury of the land, the seas are prolific, and furnish great numbers of water fowl, fish, and seals, which constitute al most the whole su Insistence of the Greenlanders, and in the catching- of which they display surprising feats of dexterity. J66 GREENLAND, CHAPTER The king of Denmark claims the dominion of these frozen L deserts, arid some of his subjects from Denmark and Nor way are settled on the western coasts, who trade in seals' blubber, skins, and eider down ; vessels also from different European nations, particularly Holland, are em ploy 'd in the Greenland seas, every summer, in the whale fishery.* The Greenlanders, who inhabit the western coasts, and who are the same kind of people with the Esquimaux on the opposite coast of America, have been computed not much to exceed 7000, arid their number decreases yearly . * Voltiey's View of the United States, 8?o. London, 1804, p. 151^ 210. CANADA, 183 mander, appointed by favouritism, without regard to m^rit, by the villainous tory ministers of Queen Anne. Though the Canadians escaped a conquest, their condition, after the war which ended in 1714, was so miserable, that many of them were furnished with no other apparel than the skins of beasts, from their inability to purchase the manufactures of Europe : but afterwards, from a long enjoyment of peace with the English colonists and the Indians, the set tlement attained a considerable degree of prosperity, inso much that in the space of forty years it more than quadru pled its population. The Indians had been conciliated by the labours of the French missionaries, who, with ardent and indefatigable zeal, had endeavoured to convert them to the Roman Catholic religion, and by the condescending manners of the colonists, many of whom had intermarried with the savages, and adopted their modes of life. The ambition of the French court, which had formed a bold and insidious plan for the conquest of the English colonies in America, kindled a new war, in which Canada was con quered in 1759 by the arms of Britain. The heroic Wolfe, the British commander, fell at Quebec, in the moment of a victory, by which the contest in that country was decided. The possession of all Canada, resigned by France in the ensuing treaty of peace in 176$, has been since retained by the British crown. As the parts of this vast country as yet reclaimed by colo nial labour are, in comparison of the whole, of trifling extent, the indigenous are still the predominant products. In the countless variety of useful trees, which compose an CHAPTFR V. Vegetables; 184 CANADA^ CHAPTER immense continuous forest, are observed the beech, the oak, y^ the elrn, the ash, the pine, the sycamore, the chesnut, the hiccory, the cedar, the maple, the cherry-tree, and the birch, of each of which again different species are discovered. The pride of the Canadian forest is the white pine, which grows to the height of a hundred and twenty feet, with a diameter of four. The oak is accounted excellent, superior to the Scandinavian, yet, in durability, inferior to that of Eughnd. As this species of timber is never found other wise than straight in this country, no knees of ships can be made from it ; but the roots of the pine are applied to that purpose. The species of maple, which yields a saccharine sap grows here in great plenty. The sap, extilling from a gash, or hole, made in the tree, and received in vessels placed beneath for the purpose, is boiled till the aqueous parts evaporate. The residuum is a cake of coarse sugar, capable of being manufactured into as fine a sort as that of the cane. Each tree, with management, is capable of fur nishing five pounds of sugar annually during twenty years. Two sorts of this tree are found in Canada, the one growing in low or swampy ground, the other in more elevatea or dry situations. The juice of the former is more copious, but less rich in the quantity of sugar procurable from it. Among the indigenous fruits are very fine raspberries, which abound in the woods, and sour grapes not much larger than currants. Among the indigenous plants is the gin seng, so highly valued by the Chinese. The fruits of Europe, as apples, peaches, apricots, and plumbs, thrive to perfection in the gardens, more especially CANADA. J85 at Montreal and in Upper Canada. As fine grapes for the CHAPTER table as those of Portugal grow under the protection of ' frames of glass. Gooseberries, currants, and other small fruits, are in abundance. The soil, generally a loose earth of a dark hue, ten or twelve inches deep, with a substratum of cold clay, has proved very fertile in the kinds of grain which have been cultivated in it, as maize, wheat, oats, and barley : but the wheat alone, which is of an excellent quality, more especially in the upper province, is sown in such quantities as to be an article of exportation. The sort commonly cultivated is that which is called spring wheat, committed to the ground in May, and reaped in August or September. The farmers in the lower province, descended from the French, have as yet been slovenly, both in the neglect of manure, though rnarl is abundant, and in 'the cleaning of the grain, when thrashed. The tobacco of this country is esteemed for its mildness, but the quantity raised is very small. The soil is well adapted to the pro duction df hops and hemp. The former have already fur nished some small matter for exportation. The latter, the culture of which is encouraged by government, would be highly advantageous to Britain, if its growth should become extensive.* What may be, in future times, the agricultural products of this great arid fertile region, whose colony has not as yet far emerged above an infantine state, we can only conjecture. * Weld, tol. 1, 379388. Gray, p. 150, 151, 198, 305 209. A a 186 CANADA. CHAPTER V. Animals. The domestic quadrupeds and poultry of Europe have been imported into Canada, and thrive in general. The horses are spirited and remarkably hardy. Dogs, yoked either singly, or in one or more pairs together, are applied to the drawing of carts, and other wheeled carriages, in summer, and sledges in winter. Various sorts and sizes of these animals are used in drawing, each with a weight pro portioned to its strength : but the strongest is a particular breed, resembling what is called the dog of Newfoundland, but broader across the loins, and with shorter and thicker legs. The indigenous quadrupeds are in general the same with those of the northwestern regions of America, already noticed ; but here they have been reduced to a compara tively diminutive number, since the establishment of a colony on the banks of the Saint Lawrence, by the indefati gable pursuit of the Indian hunters, for the furnishing of furs and peltry to the demands of European merchants. Sometimes vast numbers of beara migrate from the more northern regions, through Canada, southward, crossing the Saint Lawrence in its narrowest parts, particularly the straits between the vast lakes. This kind of migration is always accounted an infallible prognostic of excessive severity of cold in the ensuing winter. Squirrels also sometimes, in like manner, changing their places of abode, pass through this country in prodigious numbers ; but their course is sometimes northward, as well as in the opposite direction. Also pigeons, resembling the wood-pigeon of Britain, but smaller, are observed, commonly once in seven or eight years, to migrate from the north to the south, passing over CANADA. 187 the Saint Lawrence and the lakes, in numbers so immense CHAPTER as might be thought incredible. Land birds in the woods, """"" and water fowl on the lakes and rivers, in a great variety of species, are seen in vast numbers in summer ; but when winter comes, they almost all disappear, as the frost pre cludes them from the means of subsistence. Among the few o which remain in the winter is a species called by some the spruce partridge, by others the pheasant, which procures its food from the spruce fir. This species resembles the British partridge in its external appearance, except, that it is larger; and the British pheasant in the taste of its flesh. These birds are so stupid that, when one of a flock is killed by a shot, the rest remain undisturbed, insomuch that the fowler may shoot several more, perhaps the whole flock, in suc cession. Among the reptiles of this country is the rattle snake, from which however Lower Canada is said to be extempt, but which swarms to a very dangerous degree in several parts of the Upper, particularly in the desert islands of the great lakes. The rattle snake here is of two species. The one, seldom longer than thirty inches, is of a deep brown colour, clouded with yellow. The other, nearly twice as large as the former, is of a greenish yellow, clouded with brown. Fish, in vast variety, abound in the Saint Law rence and the lakes. Among these is the sturgeon, which here is not considered as well flavoured for food, but is valuable for its oil. The salmon swarms in an extraordi nary degree. The Indians kill this and other species of large fish, with spears, at night, with the aid of torches. 188 CANADA. CHAPTER Of two in a canoe one steers and paddles, while the other, - standing over a flambeau placed in the head of the canoe, strikes dexterously with his spear, the fish which come around, attracted by the light.* Iii Canada > where the great object must continue to be agriculture, until a more numerous population shall have- augmented the demands of the colonists, and furnished workmen for other pursuits, little attention has been given to the exploring of fossil wealth, which appears to be co pious, and may in future times furnish large matter for exportation. The ore of iron has been found in many parts, but in one place only has a mine of it been worked. That of copper is abundant in the remote parts of Upper Canada, as about Lake Superior, and in its islands, where it can be procured in vast quantities with little trouble. Even virgin copper, apparently as pure as any which has undergone the usual action of fire, has been seen in great plenty in several of the more eastern of these islands, and on the borders of a river which flows into the southwestern side of the lake. Among the few fossils as yet discovered may be noticed fine pieces of quartz, called also rock crystal, which are brilliant like diamonds, and cut glass in like manner. At Quebec, at Cape Diamond, which received its name from these substances, great numbers might be procured, mostly of a pentagonal form, and terminating each in a point.f * Gray, p. 246, 911. Weld, vol. 1, p. 354, vol. 2, p. 4346, 86, 140 ? 156, 163. + Gray, p. 08, Weld, vol. 1> p. 377, vol. 2, p, 11. CANADA, The commerce of Canada is maintained on one side with the Indians by canoes, and on the other with the British dominions in Europe and the West Indies by ships, beside a considerable traffic with the people of the United States of North America by boats and land -carriage. The trade with the Indians for peltry and furs has been already no ticed in my account of Northwestern America. This trade has been chiefly in the hands of an association of merchants, styled the northwest company, whose business is managed by men resident in Montreal. Among- the skins imported into the country by their agents, in one year, were a hun dred and six thousand skins of beavers, thirty-two thousand of martens, seventeen thousand of musquashes, six thousand of lynxes, four thousand six hundred of otters, and three thousand eight hundred of wolves. The supply of this merchandize must, in course of time, diminish, according to the decrease in the number of quadrupeds by the activity of the hunters. The skins and furs, procured from the In dians of the northwestern regions, in exchange for blankets, guns, ammunition, spirituous liquors, and other articles, constitute a very considerable part of the exports of Canada to Europe. Among a great variety of other exports are wheat, flour, and timber. The imports consist chiefly of manufactured goods of various kinds, such as non-manufac turing colonists must be expected to require. The trade has employed already two hundred ships, containing thirty- six thousands tuns, navigated by about sixteen hundred seamen, and may be expected to employ, at a not very dis tant time, a much greater number. The only channel of traffic between Lower Canada and the United States of CHAPTER V. Commerce. 190 CANADA. CHAPTER North America, allowed by the British government, 'was 1 the river Chamblee, the outlet of the waters of lake Champ^ lain into the Saint Lawrence : but, as a smuggling trade, on so extensive a frontier could not easily be prevented, great quantities of goods have been imported clandestinely.* , An important article of exportation is timber, in staves or in gross pieces. It is floated down the river to Quebec in rafts, which are variously constructed, according to the va rious kinds of wood conveyed by them. When oak is to be floated, "a great number of large pieces of pine are strongly fastened together with wooden pins, making a kind of frame in the form of a gridiron. To this frame the pieces of oak are fastened, and thereby buoyed up : for they are so heavy, that they would not float of themselves. These floats, or rafts, are so well put together, that they resist the strong concussions in coming down the rapids ; and it is remarkable that there is not a piece of iron about them. Their only fastenings are wooden pins, and twigs and young shoots of trees, of a tough and pliable nature. The cables even, which they use as a fastening to prevent their being carried up the river by the flowing tide, are nothing but young shoots of trees, fastened and twisted together. By these floats not only the oak, both squared and in plank, is brought down, but also staves : and they are of vast dimen sions. They are managed and directed by the force of large oars or sweeps, from thirty to forty feet long, having their fulcrum near the edge of the raft. The rowers are stationed * Gray, p. 172201. Mackenzie's Tour, Pref. p. 25. Heriot's Tra vels, &c. CANADA. at the proper distance to give effect to their exertions on the lever ; and, it must be allowed, a great power is wanted to give a direction to such an unwieldy mass. Fifteen to twenty people are employed on some of them. A house is erected on each of them, in which the people sleep and eat ; for they have cooking utensils, a fireplace, and beds, such as they are. After the wood is sold, the float and house are also disposed of."* Various kinds of boats, some of which are termed canoes, are employed in the carriage of merchandize on the rivers and lakes of Canada. Next to the raft in its nature is the scow, et a vessel with four sides, an oblong square, in length forty to fifty feet, in breadth thirty to forty, and from four to five deep, flat-bottomed. The sides are not perpen dicular : they are inclined outwards for the purpose of car rying a greater weight. The scows are built on the lakes in Upper Canada. A large one will carry five! hundred barrels of flour, and costs fifty pounds. They are built for the farmers, for the purpose of transporting to Montreal flour, potash, and other goods. They are navigated by long oars, or sweeps, and poles. They have each a mast and sail too, which can be used in the lakes, when the wind is favourable. On such occasions they steer with an oar; and they have anchors and cables to come to within the lakes, when the wind blows strong against them. They are made of pine, planked, and ealked outside, like a ship, but have no deck. When they have discharged their car- * Gray, p. 212. 191 CHAPTER V. Boats. 192 CANADA. CHAPTER goes, they are of no further use, except for breaking up for " " domestic purposes, and they are sold generally for a Very few dollars."* Boats called bateaux, the French appellation', are much in use on the Saint Lawrence and the lakes. These are commonly about forty feet long, six broad, with the sides about four feet high, flat-bottomed, sharp at both ends, and carry a burden of from four to five tuns. They are heavy vessels, awkward in rowing and sailing, but are preferred to boats with keels, as, at the approach of a storm, they can easily be run aground at the beach, and drawn on shore.f Of the canoes made of bark, employed in the trade with the western Indians, which are also much used within the limits of Canada, I have already given an account in treat ing of the northwestern regions of America. Canoes of another sort are in use in the Saint I^awrence, made each out of " one solid piece of wood, the trunk of a large tree scooped out, and formed on the outside somewhat like a boat. Some of them are very large, carrying easily fifteen or twenty people. The passing of the Saint Lawrence in canoes,, in the middle of winter, where the river is not frozen over, as at Quebec, is a very extraordinary operation. The time of high water is chosen, when the large masses of ice are almost stationary. The canoe is launched into the water, where there is an opening : the people are provided with ropes, boat-hooks, and paddles. When they come to Jt sheet of ice, they jump out of the canoe upon it ; draw * Gray, p. 203. f Weld, vol. 1, p. 332. CANADA. the canoe up after them ; push it to the other side of the sheet of ice ; launch it into the water ; paddle till they come to another sheet of ice ; and proceed as before. You see twenty to thirty canoes crossing in this way at the same time ; and you cannot avoid trembling for them, when you see two immense masses of ice coming together, and the canoes between them, apparently in the greatest danger of being crushed to pieces : but the people extricate them selves with great dexterity."* Of the area of this vast country, of which no accurate survey has as yet been made, we can only form a conjec tural, or vague estimation. Its length may be fourteen hundred miles, its medial breadth near two hundred and thirty, and its area little less than two hundred millions of English acres. It is politically divided into the two pro vinces of Lower and Upper Canada, separated by an ima ginary line, which commences at a landmark of stone, on the northern bank of lake Saint Francis, a broad distention of the Saint Lawrence river, at a cove to the west of Point au Baudet, and thence runs northward to Utawas river, and along it to its source, and thence directly to the north to the confines of New Britain. The subdivisions of coun ties, townships parishes, and other districts, will increase in number with extending, population. The increase indeed in population has been rapid. In the lower province the number of inhabitants was almost tripled in the space of fifty years, after its becoming subject to the British crown. CHAPTER v. Area. Diyision. Popniatias. Gray, p. Bb 19* CHAPTER V. Inhabitants- CANADA. In the upper, the colony, from a very slender stock, grew to such a state, in thirty years, as to consist of about a hi.ndied shousand persons. This in part rs ascribable to emigra tions from the territories of the United States. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, the number of people in all Canada amounted to at least three hundred thousand, of whom about two-thirds were contained in the lower province.* In the above-stated estimate, I have not included the Indians, whose numbers are very small, and totally uncer tain, within the bounds of Canada. Few tribes indeed of this race of men can properly be said to belong to this country, as the range of territory, through which most of them roam, or are thinly scattered, extends into regions far beyond its limits. Such is the case with the Algonquins and Knisteneaux, already mentioned, who stretch to the west and north ; nor can the Iroquois be regarded as other than borderers. A few small clans of aboriginal people dwell in a comparatively settled manner within the Cana dian territories ; but they are so very inconsiderable as hardly to merit notice* A remnant of the Algonquins, termed mountaineers by the colonists, consisting of about thirteen hundred persons, about half of whom are a kind of nominal Christians, inhabit a tract of country which borders on lake Saint John. These, in length of time, have lost, together with the ferocity, all the courage of the savage, having become so unwarlike that they must quickly be ex- * Gray, p. 165. CANADA. 195 tirpated by fiercer tribes, if they were not surrounded by the posts of a civilized people. The rest of the charac teristics of a savage people they fully retain, as an invincible aversion to agriculture and every regular pursuit of pro vident industry/ and an indolence from which they are roused only by want, for the procuring of subsistence by the chace. Of the colonists, or civilized inhabitants, of Lower Canada, whom alone we regard as forming the population, nearly nine tenths are of French descent^ and speak no other than the French language. The remaining part, together with all the people of Upper Canada, are of British origin, and speak English only. That the use exclusively of the French language in the administration of govern rnent, and courts of justice in Lower Canada, has hitherto been sanctioned by the legislative power of Great Britain, seems to have been one of the errors of the British cabinet in the modelling of a political constitution for this country Two acts of the British par liament, the one in 1774, the other in 1791, were passed for the regulating of -the Canadian government. Of this system, which may be hereafter new modelled, I shall attempt to give no more than merely an outline. Two governors preside separately over the two provinces, independent of each other in civil matters ; but in military the governor of the lower has the precedence, as being captain general for Britain in North America. Under the governor of each province are two bodies of a kind of provincial parliament, the one termed the legislative council, the other the house of assembly. The members of the former are summoned CHAPTER V. Government^ 196' CANADA. CHAPTEK by the governor, and hold their places, unless forfeited by " ~ specified culpability, during- life. Those of the latter are elected by the freeholders of the several counties and (owns, and retain their seats four years, unless their dissolution be pronounced, before the expiration of that term, by the go vernor, who has power at all times to dissolve their assembly. In Lower Canada the legislative council must consist of not less than fifteen members, in Upper Canada of not less than seven. In the former province the house of assembly must not contain less than fifty members, hi the latter not less than sixteen. Except in some cases where the assent of the king, and in some where even that of the British parliament is necessary, laws for internal regulation are made by these assemblies with the assent of the governor, but may, within two years, be annulled by the king. The executive power is vested in the governor, assisted by an executive council nominated by the British sovereign. In both the provinces the laws of England in criminal matters are established, and in civil also in the upper : but in the lower the old French customs are permitted to retain the force of laws, except in lands granted, since the settle ment of the government, in free and common soccage, by the king, the inhabitants of which are subject only to English laws, except in certain cases. That these French customs have been established is somewhat unfortunate, as they press too heavily on the lower classes, and as, from their defective nature and their confusion with English laws, a field is opened for the chicane of lawyers for the obstruc tion of the course of justice, in the recovery of debts, and in CANADA. 197 suits concerning property. The assignment of separate legislatures to the two provinces seems also unfortunate, as tlience, in Lower Canada, the French members in the house of assembly have fully in their power, by their great majo rity over the English, to prevent the enactment of whatso ever bill they may choose to oppose, and, thus enabled, are apt, from their extraordinary ignorance, and inveterate pre judices, to put impediments in the way of the colony's improvement. Beside the great majority against them, the British members are under another disadvantage. They can seldom, if ever, in debate, speak the French tongue, which alone is in use, with such fluency and force as those of whom it is the vernacular speech. The expenses of go vernment in Canada, in the maintenance of civil establish ments and military and naval forces, must vary with circum stances, but has always far exceeded the revenue collected from the country. To attach the tribes of neighbouring Indians to the British interest, presents are annually given them, to a larger amount than seems to some consistent with sound policy. The expenses of these presents, toge ther with the salaries paid to officers in what is called the Indian department, have hitherto amounted to a hundred thousand pounds a year. \ The professors of every religion have the fullest toleration in this country. The Roman Catholic Church, the Church of the French colonists, the bulk of the inhabitants of Lower Canada, is established by law, so far as that its clergy retain their ecclesiastical properties, and can recover by legal pro cess the dues and tythes which they possessed before the CHAPTER v. Religion. 198 CANADA. CHAPTER conquest, except on lands belonging to Protestants. Tythes are still levied from such lands held by Protestants, as were formerly subject to this kind of rent for the support of the Romish worship; but the amount of them is paid into the hands of a receiver general, for the maintenance of Protes tant clergymen of the Church of England, actually resident in the province. For the maintenance of the same the se venth part of all waste lands, granted by the king, is reserved and without a clause of reservation to this purpose no grant is valid. To constitute benefices, and to endow themVrom this fund, a power is vested in the governor with the advice of the executive council. In the beginning of the nineteenth century the clergy of the Church of England, in both pro vinces, were only thirteen in number, including the bishop ot Quebec ; those of the Church of Scotland three ; those of the Romish Church two hundred. A late traveller* says v stupendous rocks, immense rivers, trackless forests and cultivated plains, mountains, lakes, towns, and villages, in turn strike the attention, and the senses are almost bewildered in contemplating the vast- ness of rhe scene. The river itself, five or six miles wide, is one of the most beautiful objects in nature, and on a CHAPTER fine still summer's evening it often wears the appearance ' of a vast mirror, where the varied rich tints of the sky, as well as the images of the different objects on the banks, are seen reflected with inconceivable lustre."* * Weld, Tol. 1, p. 355, 207 CHAPTER VI. HUDSON'S BAY. THE mouths of all the rivers in Hudson's Bay. are filled CHAPTER * vi. with shoals ; except that of Church-hill, in which the largest - ships may lie : but ten miles higher it is obstructed with sand-banks. All the rivers, as far, as they have been navi gated are full of rapids and cataracts, from ten to sixty feet perpendicular. Down these the Indian traders find a quick passage ; but their return is a labour of many months.* As far inland as the company have settlements, i. e. 600 miles to the west of a place called Hudson's stone in lat. 53, long. 106 27, the country is flat ; nor is it known how far to the eastward the great western chain of mountains branches oflf.f The sun rises and sets with a large eone of yellowish light. The burting of the rocks by the frost, is altogether terrific. Like many heavy cannon fired together, and the splinters thrown to an amazing distance. All the grous- kind, ravens, crows, titmouse., and Lapland finch brave the severest winters. * Pennant's Arctic Zoology, p. 294. t Idem, p. 290. 20S LABRADOR. CHAPTER THE northern part has a strait coast facing the bay, VI. guarded by a line of Isles innumerable. The eastern coast is barren beyond the efforts of cultivation. The surface is every where covered with masses of stone of an amazing- size. It is a country of fruitless vallies and frightful moun^ tains., some of them of an astonishing height. There is a chain of lakes spread throughout formed not from springs, but from rain and snow. Their water is so chilly, as to be productive of only a few small trout. On those mountains there are thinly scattered a few blighted shrubs, or a little moss. In the vallies there are crooked, stunted trees, pines, firs, birch, cedar, or rather a species of juniper. In latitude 6(X, on this coast vegetation ceases. The whole shore like that of the west is faced with islands, at some distance from the land. The people among tlie mountains are Indians. Those on the coast Esquimaux. The dogs of the former are small ; those of the latter are headed like the fox. They have a few rein-deer ; but use their dogs for drawing.* The Labrador-stone, which reflects all the colours of the peacock is found in loose masses. ? Phil. Trans, LXIV. 372, 386. 209 NOVA SCOTIA THE face of the country is in general hilly, but not mountainous. It appears to be a lowered continuation of that chain or spine which pervades the whole continent. The land is not favourable for agriculture ; but may be excellent for pasturage. The summer is misty and damp. It abounds in extensive forests ; but not in large timber, none fitted for large masts, nor even for the building of large ships. Here is an inexhaustible fund of lumber for the sugar plantations. The situation for fishing here is little inferior to that of Newfoundland. Cape George terminates the coast to the east. It is iron-bound, and 420 feet above the sea. Par from every part of Nova Scotia extends a skirt of land with deep water and fine anchorage. The harbours here form very secure retreats ; and the tides in the bay of Fundy are from fifty to seventy- two feet and flow with prodigious rapidity. Hogs perceiving its approach run away, at full speed. CHAPTER VI. CHAPTER VII. VIRGINIA. Virginia Site Coast Contour Rivers Lakes Swamps Springs Subterranean excavations Tempe rature and Seasons Face History Vegetables Ani mals Fossils Commerce Area Population Govern - ment Division Religion Towns Roads Bridges Inns Inhabitants Staves Literature Manners Islands. VIRGINIA, OR UNITED STATES, UNDER which general denomination, for geographical CHAPTER convenience, are comprehended the territories possessed by the United States of North America, is a region of vast dimensions, but of not accurately determined boundaries, extending from the borders of New Brunswick and Canada, and the lakes Ontario and Erie, southwestward to the fron tiers of Florida, .and from the Atlantic ocean, westward be yond the river Missisippi, to tracts approximating the Spa nish colonies in New Mexico. The settling of the limits of this great portion of the American continent will depend on 2o 2 eis CH \PTFR VFK Coast* Contour. VIRGINIA, future political transactions. At present the widest interval between this and the neighbouring countries is found on the side of the territories comprised under the appellation of New Mexico, where vast marshes and desart plains, desti tute of trees, like the steppes of Tartary, intervene between the occupied parts of the one and the other region. Prom its northern limit, the coast of this vast country is in* general high, rocky, and here and there bordered with reefs, as far toward the south as the vicinity of Long Island : but thence to its southern termination it is so flat and low, as not to be discernible from ships on the ocean until their very near approach to the land * It is broken throughout by numerous inlets, in which are many safe receptacles for ship ping. The greatest are in the southern parts, as Delaware bay, Chesapeak gulf, and Albemarle sound Far the most extensive of these is the gulf, improperly called the bay, of Chesapeak, which advances about two hundred and seventy miles within the continent, with a breadth of from seven to- eighteen miles, and a depth of commonly about nine fa thoms. The land of this region rises westward from the Atlantic, and eastward from the Missisippi, by gradations which are various and mostly insensible, to the interior or middle parts, which are occupied by long ridges of mountains, running generally toward the northeast and southwest, nearly pa rallel to one another, and remarkable for an evenness or * Volaey's View of the United States, London, 1804, 8vo. p. VIRGINIA; 213 uniformity unvaried by such peaks and ringed precipices as CIIAPTKR diversify the mountains or Europe and Asia. This extraor dinary congeries of mountainous protu Iterances, which ap pear to be natural terraces of prodigious elongation, forms a tract of above a thousand miles in length, and commonly from about seventy to a hundred and twenty miles broad. Among the extensive ridges of this tract, from which nu merous branches run in various directions, three principal are distinguishable., the different parts of which are variously denominated. The appellation of the Apalachiari or Al- leghany mountains, which is sometimes extended to the whole assemblage, belongs, in strict propriety, to the great est ridge, termed also the endless chain, which, unbroken by any watercourse, forms the spine of this portion of the American continent, separating the streams which descend eastward to the Atlantic from those which flow westward to/ the Missisippi. These mountains are not of more than a moderate height. The medial elevation of the Apalachian chain above the ocean's level is only two thousand, or two thousand four hundred feet, though in some parts it is com puted to rise to the altitude of between three and four thous and, and even to seven thousand eight hundred in one part, a part detached from the main ridge, in the province of New Hampshire, called the white mountains, sometimes visible at sea at the distance of thirty leagues. On the eastern side, between the system of mountains and the At lantic, the country is rough with hills as far toward the south as Long Island ; but thence throughout it is a flat or shelving plain, varying in breadth from fifty to a hundred and eighty miles, encreasing in, width as it approaches the 214 CHAPTER V1J. ttivers. south. On the western side, to the banks of the Missisippi, it consists of plains of vast extent, traversed by low ridges in various directions. To the north of the river Ohio, the land; denominated the northwestern territory, forms an immense plain, or gently undulating surface, so elevated as to give source to rivers whose waters are conveyed in op posite directions, some to the south by the Missisippi, others to the north by the Saint Lawrence.* As the highest or middle region of this part of America displays a peculiarity in the arrangement and conformation of its mountains, so also has it some uncommon circumstan ces by which the courses of its rivers are affected. These, after having flowed, for some space, along the vallies, be tween the ridges of mountains, in streams parallel to them, tnrn suddenly into directions transverse to these ridges, through deep gaps, in which they pour their waters, whence they descend into the plains. Appearances strongly indicate, that, in times of antiquity, many vallies in the mountainous region formed vast lakes, the waters of which, in a course of ages, forced passages from their confinement, bursting their way, where the resistance was weakest, through the vast barriers by which they were pent, and thus forming those gaps through which the rivers are now seen to rush with such impetuosity. In this manner appear to have been scooped the channels of the rivers Hudson, Delaware, Sus- quehannah, Potowmak, and Jarnes, which traverse the ridges between the Atlantic and the spinal or properly called Apa- * Volney, p. 1842. See also the Tours of Burnaby, Smith, Chastel- iux, Weld, &c. &c. VIRGINIA. 215 lachian chain ; and such appears also to have been the case CHAPTER vii with the Ohio, which seems to have pierced the mounds ' between the spine and the Missisippi. The most remark able, or at least the most remarked, of the gaps through which the formerly imprisoned waters escape to the plains, is the breach through which the Potowmak runs> formed in the ridge called the Blue mountains^, a breach above a thousand feet deep,, and near four thousand wide, presenting, in some points of view, a fine object to the eye by the sub^ limity of the scene, and the mingled beauties of rocks and erdure.* The rivers named above, flowing with vast bodies of water, in broad and deep streams, together with several others,, form an extensive inland navigation, which has been already much improved by the excavation of canals, and will doubtless, in future times, with the encrease of wealth, be improved much further. Except in some parts where are portages or carrying places, where navigation is inter rupted by cataracts or other impediments, these Fivers are navigable by boats almost throughout, and those which fall into the Atlantic are navigable .by ships of burden far above their mouths, as the Hudson which enters the ocean at Long Island, the Delaware which is received by a bay of the same denomination, and the Susq,uehannah, the Potow- *nak, and the James, which disembogue into the gulf of the Chesapeak. Of all these the Potowmak is of the easiest navigation. On this any ordinary mariner, who has once * Voluey, p, 74 95 VIRGINIA. CHAPTER made the passage, may safely, without a pilot, conduct o vessel, drawing only twelve feet water, from the ChesapeaK to the city of Washington, a course of a hundred and forty miles. In the southern parts the rivers which run to the Atlantic are so barred by shoals and sand banks as not to admit heavy ships, except the Ashley, the Cooper, and Sa vannah, which however are not navigable by large vessels for within land. Among the cataracts of this country I shall only mention that of Cohoz, where the Mohawk river, on auxiliar of the Hudson, falls from the height of fifty feet, over a ledge of rocks which extends in a right line quite .across the channel, where the breadth of the stream is three hundred yards. On the western side of the Apalachians, the Ohio, by its great influent or auxiliar streams, affords a most extensive navigation, while itself bears ships, draw ing twelve feet water, through a space of above six hundred miles, to the Missisippi, on which such vessels may prose cute their voyage to the gulph of Mexico. Indeed, when all the windings are taken into the account, the length of the navigation, from Pittsburgh on the Ohio to New Orleans on the Missisippi, is reckoned above two thousand miles. In the provinces of Kentucky and Tenessee the soil is of such a nature that the brooks and even considerable rivers, are apt suddenly to disappear, sinking to a stratum of cal careous rock, along which, as on a nearly horizontal floor, they pursue their course in subterranean channels.* * Volnef , p. 2225. Weld's Travels, 8vo. London I79, vol. 1, p. 62, 63, 275. Morse's American Geography and Gazetteer, &c. &c. VIRGINIA. The lakes, which lie within the territories of the United States, are so vastly inferior in size to the immense bason of water in their vicinity, on the northwestern quarter, as not to attract comparatively much notice. Vet lake Champ- Jain, which, on one end, receives a stream from lake George, and, on the other, discharges its redundant waters by an outlet to the river Saint Lawrence, is accounted two hun dred miles long, and from one to eighteen broad, has a depth of water sufficient for the largest vessels, and contains above sixty islands, one of which is twenty-four miles in length, and from two to four wide. Lake George itself, whose water is supposed to be a hundred feet higher than that of Champlain, is thirty-six miles long, and from one to seven broad. The lakes Cayuga and Seneca, each nearly forty miles long, communicate with each other, and, by an effluent stream, with the great Ontario. This also is the case with some smaller lakes, as the Oneida, and one called the salt lake, whose water is impregnated strongly with salt. Prom the nature and position of the ground in many parts of these regions, the waters form bogs of a species called swamps, which are commonly overspread with a very thick growth of reeds, shrubs, and treesj of various kinds. Of these the most noticed is one called the Dismal swamp, situ ated in the low country which borders on the Atlantic, between Virginia proper and North Carolina, extending thirty miles in length, with a medial breadth of ten, covered mostly with a dense forest of enormous trees. which .yjeld valuable timber, and bordered in many parts, especially toward the south, with a kind pf meadows occupied by E e CHAPTER VII... Lakes* 18 VIRGINIA. CHAPTER reeds, which afford the most nourishing food for cattle. """ L The waters of a canal, cut in this dreary tract, are of the colour of brandy, and accounted rather salubrious than otherwise, which is supposed to be caused by the roots of juniper, or other trees. In the center is a lake or pond, about seven miles in length. Some spaces in the south have been cleared, and are found fertile in rice : but far the greater portion, consisting of an undrainable quagmire, is incapable of culture. For the production of rice, large tracts have been reclaimed in another wide marsh, called also the Dismal, by some the Great Aligator swamp, which lies to the south of Albemarle sound, and contains a lake eleven miles long- In the province of Georgia, on the borders of Florida, is the Ekanfanoka marsh, supposed to be three hundred miles in circuit, forming in rainy seasons a lake, and containing several islands, which are said to be inhabited, and concerning which the neighbouring savages relate some fabulous stories.* springs. Thermal waters of various qualities are found in the mountainous parts, particularly in those which belong to Virginia proper, as in Botecourt county, where are those which are called the Sweet Springs, held in such estimation for supposed sanative properties, as to be frequented by considerable numbers in summer. Beside several others, are Warm Spring and Hot Spring in Augusta county, at the distance of above forty miles from the above-mentioned, near the sources of the river James. Hot Spring raises the 5 Weld, Morse , Bar tram, &c VIRGINIA^ 219 mercury in Fahrenheit's thermometer to a hundred and CHAPTER VII- twelve degrees at least. Warm Spring, which is much larger, rises in the bottom of a deep valley, shaped like an inverted cone, which shews every indication of having been the crater of a volcano now extinct. The temperature of its water, which is ammoniacal and sulphureous, fills a bason of thirty feet in diameter, and flows in a sufficient stream for the turning of a mill, is measured by the ninety- sixth degree of the same thermometer.* Whether by the operations of water, the marks of whose violence are strongly impressed on many parts of these territories} or by those of another element, some strange excavations have been formed, has not as yet been ascer tained. Of these the most extraordinary is a stupendous natural bridge, thrown over a frightful chasm, in the county of Rockbriclge, in Virginia proper, between Augusta and the river James. " It extends across a deep cleft in the mountain, which, by some great convulsion of nature, has been split asunder from top to bottom ; and it seems to have been left there purposely to afford a passage from one side of the chasm to the other. The cleft or chasm is about two miles long, and in some places upwards of three hun dred feet deep. The depth varies with the height of the mountain, being greatest where the mountain is most lofty. The breadth of the chasm also varies, but, in every part it is uniformly wider at top than toward the bottom. The arch consists of a solid mass of stone, or of stones cemented so strongly together that they appear but as one. The * Volney) p. 40. Weld, vol. 7, p. 210. Morse's Gazetteer, &C.&G. VIRGINIA. CHAPTER height of the bridge to the top of ;he parapet is two huu- ^ dred and thirteen feet, the thickness of the arch forty, the span of the arch at top ninety, and the distance between the a-butments at bottom fifty. The abutments consist of a solid mass of limestone on either side, and, together with the arch, seem as if they had been chiseled out by the hand of art. A small stream, called Cedar creek, running at the bottom of the fissure, over a bed of rocks, adds much to the beauty of the scene. From the bottom of the chasm the stupendous arch appears in all its glory, and seems to touch the Very skies. To behold it without rapture is impossible ; and the more critically it is examined, the more beautiful and surprising it appears."* On one side of the bridge is a natural parapet of fixed rocks ; but on the other, where a near approach to the brink is dangerous, no fence is fur nished, except trees, which cover in general the arch, and both sides of the chasm. The breadth of the bridge, over the middle of which a road frequented by waggons lies, is from brink to brink about eighty feet. Of the caverns the most noted is that which is called Maddison's cave, situate also in Virginia proper, about fifty miles northward of the natural bridge, in a hill of about two hundred feet in elevation, forming on one side a precipice, washed at the foot by a river. In the steep side is found the entrance of the cavern, which extends about three hun dred feet into the earth, dividing into two branches, which irregularly descend till they terminate each in a pool of un known dimensions. The two pools are suspected to com- ? Weld, vol. 1, p. 220225. See also Jefferson's Notes on Virginia. VIRGINIA. 221 municate with each other and with the river. The height CHAPTER v ii of the cavern is commonly from about twenty to fifty feet, ' and the sides and roof are of solid limestone. The stalac tites in some parts form massy pillars, and in others hang from the ceiling 1 like elegant drapery.* In temperature and seasons this portion of America dif- Temperature fers widely from the western countries of the Old Continent between the same parallels, and has this peculiarity, that its maritime lowlands, washed by the Atlantic, are colder than those of the interior, beyond the mountainous- region, in the same degrees of latitude. From the contour of this vast country, and its position with respect to the gulf of Mexico and other tracts of water and of land, a most judi cious traveller has in great measure accounted for the state of its atmosphere f In the modification of the temperature and weather the winds are the great agents, which are here more general, or blow uninterrupted over a greater extent of surface, than in Europe. Those whidi here predominate are the northwest, southwest, and northeast ; insomuch that, if we suppose the year divided into thirty-six equal parts, " we may say that these three hare taken to them selves thirty or thirty-two., the northwest and southwest twelve each, the northeast, with the east, six or eight. The rest are distributed among the southeast, south, and west, since due north may be reckoned almost as nothing." To form a right idea of the temperature of this vast country, we must conceive it to be divided longitudinally, by lines run- * Weld, vol. 1, p. 225230. + Volney, p. 122249, VIRGINIA. j n a direction from northeast to southwest, into three regions, the eastern washed by the Atlantic, the middle or the mountainous, and the western or the valley of the Mis- sisippi. The Atlantic region, which, except its northern part, is level throughout, or a shelving plain between the moun tains and the ocean, resembles, not only in temperature, but even in soil, those parts of China and Tartary which are similarly situated, or between the same parallels. Here the cold of winter and the heat of summer are very sensibly greater, more especially the former, than in the western countries of Europe and Africa under the same degrees of latitude. The territories of New England, situated between the latitudes of forty-two and forty-five degrees, correspond ing to the south of France and the north of Spain, are so covered with snow for three or four months in winter, as to render the use of sledges general and habitual. Fahren heit's thermometer commonly varies in this season between the freezing point and eighteen or twenty-two degrees be low it, and sometimes sinks lower to thirty and even forty degrees under that mark. In the same territories, for forty or fifty days in summer, the mercury in this instrument is frequently seen to rise to the eightieth, eighty-sixth, and even ninetieth degree ; and few summers pass without its being found sometimes to rise to ninety-nine or a hundred and one, which is the temperature of the coasts of the Per sian gulf, or the lowlands of Arabia, In the middle pro vinces, between north and south, as Pensylvania, the dura tion of the^old is less, and that of the heat greater, but the TIRGINIA. 223 intensity of both remains nearly the same. The river Dela- CHAPTER ware, notwithstanding the rising of the tide to the height of : six feet,, is frozen entirely over, where H is a mile broad, hi twenty-four hours, and, except two or three intervals of thaw, continues obstructed about thirty, and sometimes forty days. It has been known to be so frozen in the space of even ten hours, as to bear people to walk across it. Fora long time after the summer solstice, and twenty days before it, the heat is so violent, that the streets of Philadelphia are totally de* serted from noon till five o'clock in the evening. In these middle provinces the annual variation between the usual maximums of cold and heat amounts to a hundred" and three or a hundred and eight degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer, and in the northern to a hundred and fourteen, but in the southern only to seventy-two or seventy-six, as the difference naturally diminishes in approaching the equa tor, under which it quite ceases to have existence. In even the southern provinces a smart cold is felt in winter, but fo? four months in summer the mercury of Fahrenheit is com* monly at between eighty and eighty-six degrees, and some times rises at Savannah to even a hundred and eight. Not only are the annual variations of temperature far greater than in Europe, but also the diurnal, particularly in the middle territories between north and south, as Pennsylvania and Maryland. The changes from cold to hot, and from hot to cold, are great and sudden. The thermometer fre* quently varies, in the space of eighteen hours, fourteen, twenty-eight, and sometimes, even in a single night, thirty degrees. It has been known to fall even forty-nine 224 VIRGINIA. CHAPTER in fifteen hours, and twenty within an hour and a half. The VII. : excessive variableness of the weather is thus described by an American writer.* " It appears that tire climate of Pen- sylvania is a compound of most of the climates in the world. Here we have the moisture of Britain in the spring, the heat of Africa in summer, the temperature of Italy in June, the sky of Egypt in the autumn, the cold and snows of Norway and the ice of Holland in the winter, the tempests, in a cer tain degree, of the West Indies in every season, and the variable winds and weather of Great Britain in every month of the year. In the course of our winters, particularly in January and February, there frequently happen variations from cold to hot, or from hot to cold, by which the health is considerably affected. Similar variations take place in summer, and piercing cold succeeds almost every night to the violent heats of the day." The physical geographer of this country says,f that what is here stated concerning Pen- sylvania " is applicable, with very little difference, to the coast of Virginia proper and the Carolinas." The changes are less observed on the coast of Georgia, where, from its southern situation, the head predominates, and where, from the discontinuation of the Appalachian ridges, the tempera ture becomes the same witli that of the western lowlands. .- In the Apalachian or mountainous region, the interme diate between the eastern and western, the cold of winter, from the nature of elevated surfaces, is greater, and of * Doctor Rush in the American Museum, vol. 7, p. 337. t Volney, p. 139. VII. VIRGINIA, 225 longer duration, and the heat of summer less violent, but CHAPTER varying- according to the height and aspect of the ground, than in the eastern or Atlantic tracts : but in the western region, the valley of the Missisippi, where a southwesterly wind, warm and moist, from the gulf of Mexico, prevails ten months in the year, the annual heat is greater than in the Atlantic coast by three degrees of latitude ; that is, the temperature, existing under any parallel in the former, is equal to tha* which has place in the latter in situations three degrees further to the south. This difference of tem perature between the eastern and western lowlands has ex istence only so far as they are separated by the Apulachian ridges, for it ceases both at the northern and southern ter mination of that chain. The superior warmth of the west ern region is therefore ascribed in part to these mountains, which in general stop the course of the southwesterly wind, preventing its passage to the eastern coasts. This current of air appears to be in fact a portion of the trade- wind of the Atlantic, which, having rushed into the vast bason of the Mexican gulf, forces thence its way, like the gulf-stream, by its easiest outlet, the vale of the Missisippi, where that of the Ohio somewhat changes its direction. The north west wind, fraught with sharp cold from frozen desarts and the icy ocean, is supposed to glide, in a diagonal current, over the aerial lake formed by the southwestern in the vast concaves or vallies of the Missisippi and Ohio, to pass over the summits of the Apalachian ridge, and thence to descend into the Atlantic region, the cold of whose portion of the atmosphere is thus augmented. F f VIRGINIA. Though certain winds are habitually prevalent in this por tion of America, their currents are much more inconstant or variable than in Europe. Volney says, " I can venture to affirm that, during a residence of near three years, I never saw the same wind blow thirty hours together, or the ther mometer continue at the same point for ten. The currents of air are perpetually varying, not one or two points merely, but from one quarter of the compass to its opposite : and these changes attract notice so much the more, since the alterations in the temperature are as great as they are sud den." The changes in the air from dryness to humidity are not less quick and violent. Though the air is dfyer, and the number of fair days much greater, than in the west of Europe, yet the quantity of water which falls in rain, within the year, is much greater. The showers are commonly sud den and prodigiously heavy, and the evaporation extremely quick. The dews are also excessively copious. The air is highly charged with electric matter. Of this, says the same traveller, " storms afford very terrifying proofs in the loud- ness of the claps of thunder, and the prodigious vividness of the flashes of lightning. When I first saw thunder storms at Philadelphia, I remarked, that the electric fluid was so copious, as to make all. the air appear on fire by the conti nued succession of the flashes. Their arrowy and zigzag lines were of a breadth and length of which I had no idea ; and the pulsations of the electric fluid were so strong, that they seemed to my ear and to my face to be the light wind produced by the flight of some nocturnal bird. These ef fects are not confined to the eye and ear, for they frequently occasion melancholy accidents*" People are frequently VIRGINIA. killed, and other damages sustained, by the lightning. CHAPTER mr * Hurricanes are most frequent in April and October, and most ' commonly produced by a northeast wind. tf These hurri canes have this peculiarity, that their fury is generally dis played in a narrow space, little more than half a mile broad, sometimes less, and only four or five miles in length. In this space they tear up by the root the trees of the forest, and make openings through the woods, as the sickle of a reaper would in passing over a few furrows in a corn-field." At other times, but these are rare, they traverse the whole length of the continent of North America. In this vast region, as in the North American continent in general, three seasons only fill the year, as here spring has no place. Though the cold is more severe than in Eu rope, the winter is more tardy. This season commences not fully, till the middle of December, or a Jittle before the solstice, even in the northern territories, though some inter vals of bad weather occur more early. The difference of latitude between the northern and southern territories is so great, a difference of fifteen degrees, that the difference of temperature in every season must be very considerable. In the northern and middle parts, the earth is covered with frost and snow at the brumal solstice. A thaw frequently has place in January, but this is succeeded by a cold more in tense. In February the snows are most abundant, and the cold most piercing., March is tempestuous and chilling, with showers of snow; nor, till the beginning of May, even in Virginia proper, is vegetation so revived that the trees of 228 VIRGINIA. CHAPTER the forest reclothe themselves with leaves ; (e which is the """ " more astonishing, since the rays of the meridian sun are in sufferably scorching from the middle of April." Thus from told to violent heat the transition is sudden, " with the in congruous circumstances of a freezing wind and a scorching sun, a winter's landscape and a summer's sky. When vege tation at length bursts forth, its progress is extremely rapid. Flowers are quickly succeeded by fruit, and this ripens more speedily than with us. When the sun, rising highest above the horizon, heats the whole continent, the northerly winds are repressed by those of the south and southwest. June brings on the most intense heats; July the heats of longest continuance, with the most frequent storms ; August and September the heats most oppressive, on account of the calms with which they are accompanied. At length the autumnal equinox again arrives, and the series already stated recommences ; thus dispensing to this country, in the course of a complete solar revolution, four months of heat, five or six of cold and storms, and only two or three of temperate weather." The last have place in autumn, which is more serene and pleas.mt than the other seasons. Some change is found to have been effected in the seasons, however, since the arrival of European colonists in these countries, by the partial destruction of the woods. " The winters are shorter, the summers longer, and the autumns later, but, without any abatement of intenseness in the winter's cold." From the extension of the cause, the clear ing of the ground, by an increasing population, still greater changes mny be expected in future times. VIRGINIA. 229 When such alterations shall have been effected, the conn- CHAPTER try will display a different face from that which it wears at present. The following is a sketch of the appearance which it exhibited at the end of the eighteenth century. ee Such is the general aspect of the territory of the United States : an almost uninterrupted continental forest : five great lakes on the north : on the west extensive savannahs : in the cerr-. ter a chain of mountains, their ridges running in a direction parallel to the sea coast, and sending off to the east and west rivers of longer course, of greater width, and pouring into the sea larger bodies of water, than ours in Europe, most of them having cascades or falls from twenty to a hundred and forty feet in height, mouths spacious as gulfs, and on the southern coasts marshes above two hundred and fifty miles in length : on the north snows remaining four or five months in the year : on a coast of three hundred leagues extent ten or twelve cities, all built of brick, or of wood painted of different colours, and containing from ten to sixty thousand inhabitants : round these cities farm houses, built of trunks of trees, and termed log-houses, in the center of a few fields of wheat, tobacco, or maize; these fields separated by a kind of fence made with branches of trees> instead of hedges, for the most part full of stumps of trees half burned, or stripped of their bark and still standing ; while both houses and trees are enchased as it were in the masses of forest, in which they are swallowed up, and dimi nish both in number and extent the farther you advance into the woods, till at length from the summits of the hills you perceive only here and there a few little brown or yel low squares on a ground of green. Add to this a fickle and 23Q VIllGINIA. CHAPTER variable sky, an atmosphere alternately very moist and very '""' "*""" dry, very mity and very clear, very hot an through genius and in dustry, regulated and directed by judgement, rose to a high pihaacle of physical discovery. He soon shewed that the mind, which could elicit fire from the heavens, eould eon- verge and reverberate the rays of moral and political light ."f On the notification of the stamp-act in America, the colo nists, from sullen displeasure, were roused into overt acts of violent resentment. Resolutions were formed throughout the states not to import any of the merchandize of Britain * Adolphus, Hist. George the Third. \ Bisset, Hist. George the Third* 240 VIRGINIA. CHAPTER until the obnoxious bill should have been repealed. De- vu. clarations were voted by the provincial assemblies in con demnation of the impost. So general a combination was formed to prevent by force the use of stamped paper, that none dared to attempt either to distribute or to receive it. Ministers, taking a middle course between two opposite parties, the favourers of liberty and the planners of despo tism, procured, in 1766, a repeal of the offensive bill, and at the same time a vote asserting the right of parliament to tax the colonies. In the following year duties were imposed on some articles, payable on importation into America. To frustrate this plan the colonists resolved not to import any of these articles. After various disputes, and a riot at Boston, between the mob and the soldiery, in which a few of the former were killed, tranquillity was in great measure restored by the repeal of the censurable imposts, in 1770, except one very moderate of three-pence a pound on tea, which was retained for the maintenance of the right arrogated by the parli ament. Determined always to resist such a claim, the Americans adhered to their former agreements of non-impor tation with respect to tea, but rescinded their resolutions concerning all the other articles. Great discontents arose in Massachusetts in 1772, and the succeeding year, from innovations in their political constitution, and the discovery of hostile sentiments entertained against them. These dis contents were communicated to the other colonies by means of corresponding committees. Amid the, general ferment intelligence arrived, that many cargoes of tea were con- VIRGINIA. signed from England to the ports of America, under the im- CHAPTER post specified above. Measures so effectual were every : " where taken, that in no place was the sale of this merchan dize permitted. Without attempting to land it many ships returned to Europe. Where its landing was effected, it perished unsold in warehouses. At Boston, where the go vernor consented not to the return of the cargoes to Europe, a mob, disguised in the garb of Mohawk savages, boarded the ships, and committed all the tea to the waves of the ocean. When all attempts for the taxation of the Americans, by the mere authority of the British legislature, were thus ren dered abortive, ministers had recourse to coercive measures, for the attainment of their ends by the terror or force of arms. Boston and the province of Massachusets were the first objects of ministerial resentment. Bills for this purpose were enacted by parliament ; one for the closing of the port of Boston, or the total suspension of the commerce of that city, until it should demonstrate full proofs of its obedience; another for such a change in the constitution of the province, as to abrogate its charter, and to render it virtually subject to the arbitrary will of the king or of his deputy; and a third for the empowering of the governor to send for trial to England any persons accused of murder, or any other capital crime, committed in the execution of the laws. This was in fact a bill of indemnity for all violences perpetrated by the ad herents of the crown in the enforcement of obedience. The unexpected intelligence of these proceedings spread asto nishment and alarm through the colonies. The punishment H h 242 CHAPTER of one province for having resisted a tax which all had re- ' sisted was a manifest indication of danger to all. Deputies from all the provinces, except Georgia, met in general congress at Philadelphia, ia 1774, on the fifth of September, to consult for their common safety. They framed a decla ration of the principles and objects of theia 1 association, a petition to the king and addresses to the people of Britain and the colonies These were compositions of a masterly kind, " Perhaps never subjects offered to their sovereign an address consisting of stronger and more comprehensive reasoning, with more impressive eloquence."* The sum of their demands amounted to the restoration of their constitu tional and chartered rights ; but all their applications were treated with imperious contempt, and an army was sent to Boston for the reduction of Massachusets, the prime object to ministers of coercion and punishment. A skirmish at Lexington, in 1775, on the nineteenth of April, between a body of militia and a detachment of the British garrison at Boston, sent to destroy American stores at Concord, was the commencement of a civil war in Ame rica of seven years* duration. To give here a narrative of the various events of this unhappy war, unjustly waged by the mother country against her children, comports not with the plan of this publication. Of these I have written a brief account in my history of the British Islands, f The general issimo of the colonists, in this rueful contest, was George * Bisset. f Gordon's History of the British Islands, Great Britain and Ireland jointly, vol. 4, chap. 71 and 72. VIRGINIA. 243 Washington, a native of Virginia proper, who had served in CHAPTER the American militia in the war against France, in which he had evinced strong military talents. This leader, like the Roman Fabius, was obliged long to confine his operations to defensive warfare, from the great inferiority of his troops in discipline, equipment, and even in number. He avoided the shock of battle, and, while by various means he impeded the enemy's progress, he endeavoured to preserve his men by retiring from post to post. And indeed nothing can shew more forcibly the zeal of his soldiers in the cause of freedom, and his influence over them, than the hardships to which they were persuaded to submit. ff His troops were in a state of such deplorable misery, that sometimes their march, from one place of encampment to the other, might be traced by the blood which their bare feet left in the snow, and hundreds were without blankets/' in these distressful movements. Though consternation, from the successes of the royal arms, pervaded the Americans, the congress, who fled for safety in 1776, from Philadelphia to Maryland, never in the least betrayed any symptom of despondency, but made vigo rous exertions for a renovation of the contest, and published an appeal well calculated to resuscitate the spirits of the people. The efforts of the congress were in no small de gree seconded by the conduct of the British commanders, who drove by despair to the ranks of rebellion multitudes well inclined to the British government. Above all the atrocious behaviour of the German mercenaries in British pay, particularly in New Jersey, filled with desperation 244; VIRGINIA. CHAPTER those who were willing to reunite with the mother country. Details of the enormities were taken on oath and published by the congress. When those who submitted found their condition worse than that of those who resisted, their minds received a bias repugnant to loyalty. Unwilling to expose herself to war, without a strong prospect of success> yet wishing to embarrass her formidable rival, France had fur nished secretly military stores to the Americans, while she made the most pucific professions to the court of Britain. At length, when a fair prospect of a favourable issue was displayed, on the capture of a British army, under general Burgoyne, in J777, she suddenly concluded a treaty of alli ance with congress, which produced, in the following year, a war between France and Britain. Spain, from similar motives, joined in 1779 the hostile confederacy against the British crown, whose forces proved inadequate, in the face of such a combination, to subjugate the colonies. Concili atory propositions had been repeatedly made to the Ame ricans by Lord North, the prime minister of Britain, which might have been severally effectual, if they had been pro posed early enough, before events had taken place which caused their rejection ; and now a virtual independence too late was offered to the United States, in federal connexion with the British crown. No situation could, in sober judge ment, be more desirable, but they could not with honour, prrhaps with safety, violate their recent engagement with France, to which they had been so imprudently driven. To this cause for the rejection of such advantageous terms of peace might also have been added the then.esta? VIRGINIA. Wished hatred of the colonists to their late sovereign and CHAPTER his partisans, whom they considered as having employed V11 ' every possible mode of barbarous warfare for their destruc tion, the burning- of their towns, the devastation of their territories, the frightful licentiousness of the ferocious mer cenaries from Germany, the instigation of slaves to murder or desert their masters, and the diabolical fury of the canni bal Indians. Of the butcheries perpetrated among the eolonists one in particular has stained the British annals with indelible infamy. A band of sixteen hundred Indians and American royalists, denominated tories, invaded the settlement at Wyoming, situate in a delightful tract on the river Susquehannah. Gaining possession of some forts by treacherous promises, and of others by force, they put to death all the inhabitants of both sexes and every age, some thousands in number, inclosing some in buildings which they set on fire, and roasting others alive. They then maimed all the cattle, and left them to expire in agonies^ and converted the whole charming plantation into a fright ful waste. Such were the deeds instigated by the ministers of a king, extolled to the highest pitch for compassionate clemency, and paternal affection for his subjects. To take vengeance on the Indians several parties of Americans made expeditions through the wilderness, in a considerable degree successful. After various turns of fortune, when the impossibility of conquest over the American states became too manifest to admit a doubt, their independence was established in the beginning of 1783 by a treaty of general pacification. Botb VIRGINIA. CHAPTKR Britain and her colonies sustained heavy losses by the war, and the condition of each party, after its conclusion, was considerably worse than before its commencement. Beside humiliating concessions to her old enemies, the French and Spanish courts, and the vast expenditure of blood, Britain added a hundred and thirty millions to her public debt, and suffered an alarming dismemberment of her empire. She was burdened also with the maintenance of some thousands of American royalists, whose properties were confiscated by the governments of the United States for their hostilities against their compatriots. The expense of this to the Bri tish nation amounted nearly to ten millions. An indepen dence far less desirable than a free constitution under the British crown, was acquired by the Americans, at the ex pense of devastations, a national debt of above seven millions contracted in the war, and a great loss of people by the sword, and by the expulsion of the royalists. Their population and riches have since rapidly increased, and wisdom directed their councils, so long as the great Wash ington, who was elected their chief magistrate, held a governing influence over their confederacy. For the exten sion of their commerce and agriculture by the possession of the Missisippi and its fertile valley, they acquired the addition of Louisiana to their already vast territorial domi nion, by purchase from France, in a treaty concluded in 1803. This country had been discovered by Ferdinand de Soto, a Spaniard, in 1558, and had been very feebly colo nized, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, by the French, who called it Louisiana, from Louis, the name of their sovereign, and founded the town of New Orleans, its VIRGINIA. capital By a treaty between the courts of Spain and Prance, CHAPTER from secret motives, in 1763, the dominion of all this terri- Vl1 ' tory was transferred to the Spanish crown ; but, forty years after, under Napoleon Buonaparte, it was sold, as French property, to the United States. The natural productions, the spontaneous growth, of the Vegetables, vast territory of these states, such as they were found by the first colonists, and such as they still remain where the face of the land has not been altered by agriculture, must vary, in a region of so great extent, with the nature of the soil, and temperature of the air. The indigenous trees, compo sing the primeval forest, which, for the for greater part, still subsists, occasion, by their difference, a distinction or divi sion of this immense wood into three parts, the southern, middle,, and northern. The southern forest includes in ge neral the maritime tracts from the gulf of Chesapeak south ward, " on a soil of gravel and sand, occupying in breadth from eighty to a hundred and thirty miles. The whole of this space, covered with pines, firs, larches, cypresses, and other resinous trees, displays a perpetual verdure to the eye, but would not on this account be tlie less barren, if the sides of the rivers, land deposited by the waters, and marshes, did not intermingle with it veins rendered highly productive by cultivation. The middle forest comprises the hilly part of the Carol inas and Virginia proper, all Pensylvania, the south of New York, all Kentucky, and the northwestern territory, as far as the river Wabash. The whole of this extent is filled witlt different species of the oak, beech, ma ple, walnut, sycamore, acacia, mulberry, plumb*, ash, birch, 248 VIRGINIA. CHAPTER sassafras, and poplar, on the coasts of the Atlantic ; and, i "" .addition to those on the west, the chorrytree, horse chesnut, papaw, magnolia, sumac, and others, all of which indicate a productive soil, the true basis of the present and future wealth of this part of the United States. These kinds of trees, however, do not any where exclude the resinous, which appear scattered throughout all the plains, and col lected in clumps on the mountains. The third district, or northern forest, likewise composed of pines, firs, larches, cedars, cypresses, and others such, begins from the confines of the former, covers the north of New York, the interior of Connecticut and Massachusets, gives its name to the state of Vermont,* and, leaving to the deciduous trees only the banks of the rivers and their alluvions, extends by the way of Canada toward the north, where it soon gives way to the Juniper, and the meagre shrubs thinly scattered among the desarts of the polar circle."f The trees in general, howsoever lofty, are not very gross, seldom exceeding thirty inches in diameter. In the low grounds, however, of Kentucky, and other parts of the western territory, they are found much larger, sometimes eighteen or twenty feet in girth :J and in the warm climates of the southern provinces, where splendidly flowering trees and shrubs abound, some species grow to an extraordinary size. The white cedar of the swamps is gigantic. Sup ported by four or five immense roots or stems, which unite s * Verd-mont in French ; green-mountain in English. + Volney, p. 911. J Weld, Tol. 1, p. 280. VIRGINIA. 249 at about seven feet above the ground, the trunk of this CHAPTER rises eighty or ninety feet, quite straight, and without any 1 branches, except at top, where they form a kind of beauti ful umbrella. But the chief ornament of the southern forests is the great magnolia. This rises above a hundred feet in height, with a perfectly straight trunk, supporting a shady cone of dark green branches, with purely white blossoms shaped like roses, which are succeeded by crimson cones containing red seeds. Among the indigenous products of the soil are the candleberry myrtle and the sugar maple. From the seeds of the former arises, by being boiled, to the surface of the water, a scum of a greenish colour, which, when purified, is of a middle nature between tallow and wax, serving for the making of excellent candles, and for other purposes still more valuable. The latter is a tree of about the size of the oak, the saccharine sap of which, pro cured by extillation from incisions made for the purpose, yielded sugar by evaporations, in like manner as the juice of the saccharine cane. But neither the quantity of sugar obtained from this tree, nor of tallow from the myrtle, is sufficient for its becoming an article of export, or even to supply the consumption of the inhabitants. Vines of various sorts are spontaneous and in plenty. One species, quite like the vine which bears the common grape, is of so poison ous a nature, as to blister the skin, when touched in the morning while rnoist with dew. The species of indigenous plants are extremely numerous, but require not here particular notice. Beside cotton and tobacco, and indigo in the south, the chief object of agri- i i VIRGINIA. CHAPTER culture is corn of various kinds, as wheat, barley, maize; VI I and rice, the last in the Carolinas chiefly and in Georgia. Tobacco, the favourite plant of Virginia proper, is much less cultivated now than formerly, since the crops of wheat have been found more profitable. To clear the land from wood, and to render it arable, the practice in these regions is as elsewhere, to burn the timber, and to convert its ashes to manure. To exhaust the vegetative powers of the soil by the incessant culture, without a renovation of manure, and then to leave it waste in a- state of sterility, has formerly been, but is not quite so much now, the custom. The lands thus abandoned, remain almost bare, or covered with use less herbs, such as a kind of coarse grass or sedge, which is wholely rejected by cattle, and which turns yellow at the approach of winter. The fruits are mostly of the same kinds as in Europe, but, except where they are carefully cultivated in gardens, they are not of such quality as to deserve much praise, as the peaches, for instance, which are small and little succulent. In comparison of the English, the Ameri can farmers are accounted slovenly, insomuch that, even in Pensylvania, one of the most agricultural provinces, a farmer is said not to raise more from two hundred acres than one in the well cultivated parts of England from fifty.* In Virginia proper, and the provinces situate farther south ward, the works of the fields are performed by slaves. Among these are many, on the estates of some planters, who are employed in handicraft works, such as those of car* penters, tanners, and wheelwrights. * Weld, vol. l,.p. 112, 113. VIRGINIA. 251 The cattle and other domestic animals of Europe have been imported into the territories of the United States, and are long naturalized in them. Of the indigenous kinds, Avhich are noticed in my accounts of Northwestern America and of Canada, some have disappeared, and some have be come scarce, according to the extension of agriculture, and the destruction made by hunters. The deer, which had become comparatively few, have begun to increase again in the woods of this region, particularly in the province of New York, where laws have been enacted against the wan- toii waste of these quadrupeds, since the venatic savages have abandoned these territories, and retired far westward. The wild fowl, particularly on the great rivers, are vastly numerous, and excellent as food, especially a species called the white duck or canvass-back, which is eagerly sought by epicures. Snipes are seen in prodigious numbers in the marshes. Immense flights of wild pigeons pass sometimes here as in Canada The turkey buzzard, a kind of vulture which devours putrid carcases, is, on account of its utility in that respect, taken under the protection of law in Caro lina. The birds are in general quite different from those of Europe, though many of them have received the same appellations from English colonists. Thus a bird, called a partridge, from a similitude of its appearance, has the size of only a quail. The singing birds in Virginia proper are accounted the finest in America. tf The notes of the mocking bird, or Virginian nightingale, are in parti cular most melodious. This bird is of the colour and about the size of a thrush, but more slender. It imitates the song of every other bird, but with increased strength and sweet- CHAPTER VM. Animals. 252 VIRGINIA. X CHAPTER ness. The bird, whose song it mocks, generally flies away,. as if conscious of being excelled by the other,, and dissatis fied with its own powers."* On the whole amount, how ever, the feathered tribes in these forests are inferior to the European in melody. Some are highly brilliant in plumage, as the blue bird, of about the size of a linnet, and the red bird, which is less than a thrush, and is of a vermilion hue, with a tuft on its head. A bird called whippervvill, from its loud and plaintive cry, resembling that articulate sound, which it begins at the dusk, and continues through the greater part of the night, is so extremely seldom seen, that some have imagined the noise to proceed from some species of frog, and not from any animal of the feathered kind. The frogs of this country are of various sorts and make Tarious kinds of noises ; some absolutely whistle, while the loud croaking of others is like the cry of a calf. This loud sound proceeds from the bull frog, which grows to the length of seven inches, and mqves with great agility, making leaps of prodigious length. The serpents are also in great variety. Some species are harmless, as the black snake, which is often six feet long, but very slender, and some beautifully variegated sorts, as the ribbon snake, the garter, and blueish green. Some are venomous, as the rattlesnake and the mocassin. The poison, of the latter, called also the copper snake, is found less subtle than that of the former, yet is mortal, without proper care. Among the insects is the lire-fly, which illuminates the nights in summer, in the sour CHAPTER VII. VIRGINIA. 253 them parts. To the indigenous tribes of this numerous class of animals have been added some by accidental or designed importation. Thus the weevil,, a species of moth, formerly unknown, has committed great havoc in corn in the latter part of the eighteenth century, in the maritime tracts, as also the Hessian fly, supposed to have been im ported in the baggage of the German mercenaries, in the war waged for the subjugation of the British colonies in America. Of a very different character is the bee, which appears to have been designedly carried here from the an cient continent. Of the countless tribes of aquatic animals, which swarm along the coast and in the rivers, I shall men tion only one, the oyster, which abounds in the streams of fresh water. These oysters, until they have undergone the ac tion of fire, are unpalatable to Europeans; while those of Eu rope are not, in any state, well relished by the Americans. This region in general seems far from deficient in a va- Foiis* riety of minerals and other fossils ; but iron as yet is the only metal which has been drawn in great quantity from the bowels of the earth. The ore of this metal, which in Maryland, Pensylvania, and Virginia proper, is found ex tremely tough, and fit for casting, for the making of cannon, and other purposes, is procurable in abundance, without much trouble, at little depth beneath the surface. Mines of lead, copper, and other minerals, have also been disco vered, but not extensively worked. Vast and numerous beds of coal, stores for the use of future generations, lie at present mostly neglected, as wood, which is so abundant, is- preferred for fuel. Fossil salt and saline springs are copious VIRGINIA. CHAPT-KR in many parts. Stone for building and other purposes is ' - procurable in general with convenience in sufficient plenty. According to the kind which forms the substratum of the soil in different parts, the territory of the United States is distinguished into different regions.* The granitic region, where "the soil rests on beds of granite, which forms the skeletons of the mountains, and admits beds of a different nature only as exceptions/' extends from Long Island to the mouth of the Saint Lawrence, and from the coast be tween these limits to Lake Ontario. The region of sand stone comprehends the mountainous country, from the rivers Mohawk and Hudson, and the sources of the Sus- quehanriah, southward to the northwestern angle of Georgia. The calcareous region, where the soil is found to rest on an immense stratum of limestone, occupies the land from the Tenessee to the Saint Lawrence, between the moun tains and the Missisippi. A stratum, or low ridge, of talky granite, foliated si one, or Muscovy glass, from two to six miles broad, and nearly five hundred long, runs in a direc tion parallel, to the coast, from the banks of the river Hudson to North Carolina. " This ridge every where marks its course by the falls which it occasions in the rivers, on their way to the ocean ; and these falls are the extreme limits of the tide :" but it is chiefly remarkable for being the line of separation between two regions, that of marine sand and that of alluvions soil. The former, in breadth from thirty to a hundred miles, between the ridge and the Atlantic., consists chiefly of the substance from Volney, p. 4372. VIRGINIA. which it takes its name. The soil of the latter, between the ridge and the mountains, is composed of various sub stances, which appear to have been carried from the high lands by tlte rivers. The commerce of these regions has been, and may pn> habiy long continue to be, rapidly progressive, with the progress of population, and the extension of agriculture. The articles of export chiefly consist of the produce of the forests, of the mines, of the cultivated farms, and of the fisheries, beside the peltry obtained in traffic from the sa vage tribes who inhabit vast wilds in the west. Thus we find these articles principally to be timber in various forms, bark for tanning and dying, pitch, tar, turpentine, potashes, iron in pigs and bars, wheat, maize, rice, tobacco, live cattle, beef, pork, dried and pickled fish, and skins and furs of various quadrupeds. The value of the exported articles, produced within the territories of the United Statesi amounted, in the year 1803, to above forty millions of dol lars ; and that of the articles of foreign produce to above thirteen millions. The values of both had in 1801 been greater, more especially of the latter, which had even exceeded forty-six millions : but the trade encreased after wards, insomuch that in 1806, the exports exceeded in value a hundred millions of dollars, or twenty-five mil lions of British pounds. The imports consist chiefly of various manufactured goods from Europe, sugar and other products of the West Indian regions, tea and other merchandize of southern Asia. The annual value of the imports from the British Islands alone had arisen to twelve millions of pounds, before the traffic was interrupted by 255 CHAPTEfl VH. Commerce. 256 VIRGINIA. CHAPTER Vil. Area* Population. political disputes., early in the nineteenth century. The tun- nage of shipping employed in the commerce of the United States amounted in 1801 to above a million of tuns, of which not quite a hundred and fifty-eight thousand were the property of foreigners. To what state it may arise in future ages, we cannot pretend to calculate with certainty, when the immense territory belonging to the United States shall have been furnished throughout with inhabitants. This territory extends above eleven hundred miles in length, since the acquisition of Louisiana, and perhaps still more in its greater breadth, if its western limits were deter mined, and contains an area of about a million of square miles, or six hundred and forty millions of English acres. The population is ill proportioned to so vast an area, which is for the far greater part entirely waste or very thinly peopled. The best inhabited parts are the province of Mas- sachusets and others of New England, the southern territo ries of New York, the interior of New Jersey, and the southeastern tracts of Pensylvania. In these on an average the population may be estimated at near eighty persons to the square mile, or at the rate of about forty acres to each family. The whole amount of the population, or number of persons subject to the government of the United States, was estimated in 1801 at above five millions and nine hundred thousand, and may doubtless since be supposed six millions. Of these above a million were blacks and rnulattoes, or peo ple of colour, and of this number above a tenth were free men, the rest slaves. Still within the territories regarded as under the dominion of this government are several tribes of VIRGINIA. 257 savages, conjectured, toward the end of the eighteenth cen- CHAPTER fciry, to consist of sixty thousand persons, but continually diminishing in number from causes assigned elsewhere. The division of the vast country of the United States is Government, immediately connected with its government. In the revo lutionary war, in the defence of the colonial constitutions against the aggression of the mother country, affairs were conducted by a provisional administration, under the direc tion of a congress, and not till the year 1789 was a perma nent system established. The government thus constituted is a republic, composed of a number of confederate states, each of which is separate and independent in its own internal administration. The sovereign power is vested in a president and two councils. The superior is called the senate, the infe rior the house of representatives. The former consists of members elected for six years, two from each state, the latter of members elected for two years, each representing from thirty-three thousand to fifty thousand people, according to the progress of population. The executive power is committed to thepresident, the supreme magistrate of the confederacy, elect ed for four years by a majority of electors nominated for the purpose by all the states severally. He can pardon offences, except in cases of impeachment, but cannot form treaties with foreign potentates without the consent of two-thirds of the senators, who are also to advise in the appointment of ambassadors. A vice-president is also chosen, to supply, in emergencies, the president's place. The great outlines of this government, only rendered more democratical, are taken from that of England, as also the laws in general : sk 258 VIRGINIA. CHAPTER VII. Division* but these in some degree vary in the different states, each of which has its particular provincial constitution, governed commonly by a senate and house of representatives, elected every year. The judicial function is performe* by one su preme court of justice, and others of a subordinate rank, and judges are appointed during good conduct. The city of Washington, in the district of Columbia, a district be longing to no particular state, but to the whole confederacy in common, has been chosen for the residence of the presi dent, and the seat of the federal government. The forces of the confederacy, military and naval, must vary with cir cumstances, as also the revenue, the gross amount of which has been stated at above twelve millions of dollars in 1802, but at little more than ten in the following year, at the rate of about four shillings and six pence to the dollar. The national debt may soon much exceed twenty millions of British pounds. The number of states composing this confederacy is liable to be augmented, according as the government, in the en- crease of population, may constitute new states, by con (er ring that honour on such provinces as may have become sufficiently populous to merit that consideration. In the revolutionary war the number of states was only thirteen ; but some have since been added, and others have grown into a state of admission, so that we may reckon them at eighteen. These are Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusets, Maine, Rhode-Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pen- sylvania, Delaware, Northwest territory, Maryland, Vir ginia proper, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tenessee, South VIRGINIA, Carolina, and Georgia. The six first of these are compre hended under the general denomination of New England. The modes of subdivision are not the same throughout the O states. Those of New England in general, New York J New Jersey, and Pensylvania, are subdivided into counties and townships ; and most of the townships in New England, are again subdivided into parishes and precincts. The territories of the states which are situated to the south of Pensylvania, are generally divided into counties only. The parts into which the lower country in South Carolina is divided are parishes, which are nearly of the same nature as counties elsewhere. The division into parishes, which was originally ecclesiastical, cannot be expected now to be regularly maintained throughout a country in which no national church exists ; for here all modes of faith and worship are quite in a state of political equality, the fol lowers of none heing excluded by law from offices in the ad ministration. The sects are numerous ; each supports its own clergy : and all maintain the same degree of concord as if they were members of one church. Doubtless they are all members of the church of Christ, except some deists and a small number of Jews. CHAPTER vu. Religion. A territorial subdivision into townships, incorporated dis tricts, with or without towns, has place in the northern states. As town and township in these countries are synonymous terms, a European traveller may be often disappointed in his expectation of meeting with a town, where only some scattered habitations can be seen. Many towns within the dominion of the United States are as yet in their infancy, 2 K 2 Towns. 260 CHAPTER VII. Boston. while some have arrived at the summit of thei* advance ment, and some have fallen into a state of decline. In gene ral those which are so situated, as to have a navigable com munication at once with the ocean and the interior country, are progressive in population and wealth ; while those which have a less favourable situation are in a stationary or retro grade condition. Thus Williamsburgh, formerly the capital of Virginia proper, is falling to decay, while Richmond and Norfolk, more especially the latter, are augmenting ra pidly. Many instances might be given ; but to be minute in the account of towns, in a country where changes are in such quick progression, that a totally different state of af fairs may be expected in a time not far distant, seems not expedient. 1 shall particularize a few, in the condition in which they stood at the beginning of the nineteenth cen tury. Boston, the chief city of New England, in the county of Suffolk, and state of Massachusets,, is seated on a- small pe ninsula, at the bottom of Massachusets bay. With the ex ception of two or three streets, it is irregularly built, but displays a handsome prospect to spectators in the harbour, from which it rises in amphi theatric form, adorned with spires, which are overtopped by a monument, commemorative of the revolution, o the highest spot, called Beacon-bilk The number of its inhabitants has been estimated at from. Boar fifteen to near nineteen thousand. Its harbour is excel lent, capable of containing five hundred ships in safety, but of so narrow an entrance as hardly to admit more than two abreast. From the want however of a navigable com- VIRGINIA. mimication with the interior country, this city, one of the oldest in the United States, encreases very slowly in trade and population. New York, the second city of the United States in popu lation and commercial wealth, stands on the southwestern angle of York Island, an insular tract, fifteen miles long, but not two in breadth, at the mouth of the Hudson river, washed also by the waters of the strait which separates Long Island from the main: With some exceptions, par ticularly a street called Broadway, which extends, with a breadth of near seventy feet, due northward almost from shore to shore this town is irregularly built and incommo dious with narrow lanes ; but by its vast extent of navigable intercourse with the interior country, by the river Hudson, and other conveniences, it increases so much in wealth and population, and, in consequence of the former, improves to such a degree in the taste of the builders that the additional parts are on a much better plan. Its inhabitants appear to have exceeded forty thousand in number at the commence ment of the nineteenth century. The roofs of the houses/ which are generally built of brick, are mostly covered with tiles. Here no bason forms a harbour; but the river, and the shelter of the Long Island, afford sufficient accommoda tion to shipping. The greatest city as yet in all the territory of the United States is Philadelphia, the capital, of Pensylvania, situate between the rivers Delaware and Skuylkil, five miles above their conflux, founded by William Penn in i683. The 261 CHAPTER VII. New York 262 VIRGINIA. CHAPTER space planned, by the founder, for the groundplot of the " : city was a righ tangled parallelogram, two miles long arid one broad, extending to the banks of both rivers ; but suc ceeding generations have so widely deviated from this plan, that the dwellings extend near three miles along the Dela ware, and nowhere more than to the distance of a mile from ils bank ; and a part, called water-street, has been built along the river, between the bank and margin, in so low a situation as to have, by neglected filth, generated malignant distempers. The houses, which stand outside the original groundplot, are said to be in the liberties, as they are ex empt from the jurisdiction of the corporation. In the liber ties the streets are very irregular : but in the city, accord ing to the projector's design, they all intersect one another at right angles, and are from fifty to eighty feet broad, except the principal one, which is a hundred feet wide. They are tolerably well paved with pebble stones in the middle, and with bricks for footways at the sides. Except a few of wood, the houses are of brick, but very few are elegant. With very little exception, the public buildings are heavy tasteless piles of red brick, ill according with the blue mar ble, with which they are ornamented. The population of Philadelphia may have encreased to above fifty thousand, and may still encrease to a much greater pitch, from its advantageous position on the Delaware, which is navigable to this city by ships of war of seventy-four guns, by sloops thirty-five miles higher, and by boats of nine tuns a hun dred miles still farther, beside an extensive navigation on the Skuylkil. VIRGINIA, The greatest town in Maryland, though not accounted the capital,, is Baltimore, which from an assemblage of some huts of fishermen, grew in thirty years into a population of sixteen thousand, and doubtless now contains above twenty thousand persons. The river Patapsco, on which it is situated, and which falls into the Chesapeak inlet, forms a harbour called the bason, capable of holding within it two thousand merchant vessels, but ships mostly stop, for greater convenience of wind and depth of water, at a place termed Fell's point, above a mile lower, where has been founded another town, encreasing fast in magnitude. The public buildings in Baltimore are mean, as are also the greater part. of the private houses, which are mostly, however, con structed of brick : but the plan of the town is good, resem bling that of Philadelphia. The streets intersect mostly at right angles, and are from forty to sixty feet broad, be side that the principal one is near eighty : but some are not paved, and consequently npt clean. Alexandria, seated on the southern bank of the river Patowmac, in Virginia proper, is at present small, but ex pected to be of considerable magnitude in future times, from the advantages of its situation, whence it was origi nally denominated Belhaven. It is as yet remarkable only for its extraordinary neatness in comparison with other towns in these countries. The houses are mostly of brick, and many of them extremely well built. The streets intersect one another at right angles, are well paved, and com modious. 863 CHAPTKR VII. Baltimore. Alexandria-. ^VIRGINIA, CHAPTER VI I - ll " ston ' 'Washington city, thus named from the great deader of the revolutionary American troops, intended for the seat of government of all the United States, and thence also deno minated the federal city, is in a situation most happily chosen, as being central between the northern and southern tracts, and convenient for a navigable communication with the At lantic, and an immense extent of country. It is seated on the Potamac, in the fork formed by that great river with what is called its eastern branch. The plan of this town, which is as yet in its infancy, but promises to be, in some future age, one of the greatest and most magnificent in the world, has been maturely studied, and is supposed to be superior to that of any other hitherto in existence. The streets, from ninety to above a hundred feet broad, cross one another at rijjht angles : beside which are to be avenues, a hundred O O ' and sixty feet wide, intersecting the streets obliquely, and hollow squares, at the mutual intersections of these avenues, destined for the reception of future monuments or decora tions. Among the public buildings are the capitol, or Jiouse of congress, the parliament-house, as it were, of the United States, founded in a central spot, the highest in the city ; and, a mile and a half from this, the patace of the president, also in a commanding, and most beautiful situa tion. Chariestown, the capital of South Carolina, stands at the confluence of the rivers Ashley and Cooper, whose streams united form a capacious harbour. The ground plot is flat and low, and the water brackish ; yet from ventilation of sea-breezes and from cleanliness, the air is accounted VIRGINIA. 265 wholesome. The streets, from about thirty-five to sixty-six feet broad, in general, are tolerably regular. The houses are in great part neat, built of brick, and covered with tiles. The number of inhabitants, which has probably since en- creased, amounted, toward the close of the eighteenth cen tury, to between sixteen and seventeen thousand, of whom nearly eight thousand were slaves. In a country as yet containing so few towns of consider able magnitude, and situated at so great distances asunder, the roads cannot be expected to be in general good. They are mostly indeed in very bad condition, particularly in lovr soft grounds, called bottoms, where they are often formed, as in Russia, of trunks of trees, laid transversely, side by- side, which are apt to sink into the yielding soil, or to break by the repeated attrition of the wheels of waggons. Nor in general are the bridges in much better plight than the roads. The bridges are mostly of wood. Many of them, covered with loose boards, totter under the carriages which pass over them. Some of a floating kind are well contrived, of which we find three in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia, over the river Skuylkil. " The floating bridges are formed of large trees, which are placed in the water transversely, and chained together. Beams are then laid lengthways upon these, and the whole boarded over, to render the way con venient for passengers. On each side there is a railing-. When very heavy carriages go across these bridges, they sink a few inches below the surface of the water ; but the Ll CHAPTER VII. Roaili.. Bridge*, VIRGINIA, CHAPTER passage is by no means dangerous. They are kept in an even direction across the river by means of chains and anchors, in different parts, and are also strongly secured on both shores. Over that part of the river where the channel lies, they are so contrived that a piece can be removed to allow vessels to pass through. These bridges are frequently damaged, and sometimes entirely carded away, during floods, at the breaking up of the winter, especially if there happens to be much ice floating in the river. To guard against this, when danger is apprehended, and the flood comes not on too suddenly, they unfasten all the chains, by which the bridge is confined in its proper place, and then let the whole float down with the stream to a convenient part of the shore, where it can be hauled up and secured/'* Bridges supported by boats are also in use, like that of Rouen in France, as at Richmond in Virginia proper, over the river James. Travellers are not better accommodated with inns than with roads and bridges. " The mode of conducting them is nearly the same every where. The traveller is shewn, on arrival, into a room which is common to every person in the house, and which is generally the one set apart for breakfast, dinner, and supper. All the strangers, who hap pen to be in the house, sit down to these meals promiscu ously, and, excepting in the large towns, the family of the house also forms a part of the company. It is seldom that a private parlour, or drawing-room, can be procured at any * Weld, Tol, 1, p. 33, VIRGINIA. gf)7 of the taverns, even in the towns ; and it is always with re- CHAPTER VII luctance that breakfast or dinner is served up separately to ' any individual. If a single-bed room can be procured, more ought not to be looked for ; but it is not always that even this is to be had, and those, who travel through the country, must often submit to be crammed into rooms where there is scarcely sufficient space to walk between the beds."* Often also (C at each house there are regular hours for breakfast, dinner, and supper ; and if a traveller arrives somewhat be fore the time appointed for any of these, it is in vain to call for a separate meal for himself : he must wait patiently till the appointed hour, and then sit down with the other guests who may happen to be in the house/'f Descendants all of emigrants from Great Britain and Ire- inhabitant*. land, except an ad mixture, small in proportion, of colonists from some other European countries, mostly from Germany, the people of the United States are almost wholly English in persons, language, manners, and customs. The devia,- tions from this standard are slight, the consequences of local and political causes. They seem to be in general of shorter lives than Europeans, and are almost universally subject to a very early decay of the teeth. The former may in great measure arise from the great and sudden changes of tempe rature in the air, which cause repeated colds and coughs, debilitating the frame. The latter is attributed, and both seem in a considerable degree attributable, to the constant use of salt meat for food, the indigestions occasioned by too * Weld, Tol. I, p. 28. i Idem, vol. 1. p. 41, 268 CHAPTER VII. Slaves. VIRGINIA. frequent eating, and the drinking of tea and other liquids in a hot state. Local differences, however, have place amono- * ^5 them. Thus in the lowlands of Virginia proper, the Caro- linas, and Georgia, the lower classes of people have a sallow complexion and sickly aspect ; while in the northern terri tories and the highlands throughout, more especially the latter, they are florid and of a healthy appearance. Beside the descendants of Europeans, two other kinds, of people inhabit the territories of the United States. Indians and Negroes. The former very few, and becoming annually still fewer, are elsewhere described. The latter, very nu merous in the southern provinces, not in the northern, are partly freemen, but mostly slaves. The slaves are differently treated according to the dif ferent disposition of their owners and the situations of affairs. In Virginia proper, f( the slaves on the large plan tations are in general very well provided for, and treated with mildness. Their quarters, the name whereby their habitations are called, are usually situated one or two hur*- dred yards from the dwelling house, which gives the ap pearance of a village to the residence of every planter. Ad joining their little habitations they commonly have small gardens and yards for poultry, which are all theic own property. They have ample time to attend to their own concerns, and their gardens are generally found well stocked, and their flocks of poultry numerous. Beside the food which they raise for themselves, they are allowed liberal rations of salted pork and Indian corn. They are forced to work certain hours in the. day : but, ia return, they are VIRGINIA. 269 clothed, dieted, and lodged comfortably, and saved all anxiety about provision for their offspring. Still, however, as long as the slave is conscious of being the property of another man, who can dispose of him according to the dic tates of caprice, particularly amid people who are constantly talking of the blessings of liberty, he cannot be supposed to feel equally happy with the freeman. What is here said respecting the condition and treatment of slaves appertains to those only who are upon the large plantations in Virginia proper. The lot of such as are unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the lower class of white people, and of hard taskmasters in the towns, is very different. In the Ca- rolinas and Georgia, again, slavery presents itself in very different colours from what it does even in its worst form in Virginia proper. It is no uncommon tiling there to see gangs of negroes staked at a horse race, and to see these unfortunate beings bandied about from one set of drunken gamblers to another, for days together. How much to be deprecated are the laws which suffer such abuses to exist I Yet these are the laws enacted by a people who boast of their love of liberty and independence, and who presume to say, that it is in the breasts of Americans alone that the blessings of fceedon* are held in just estimation."* This furnishes an idea, far from favourable, of manners in the southern provinces. In fact the use of slaves, where- ever it prevails, is observed to contaminate the morals of the people ; nor can literature be supposed to have extensive CHAPTER VII. Literature* 270 CHAPTER VII. Manners. VIRGINIA. influence in such a state of society. The use of letters indeed, so far as the reading and writing of the English language, is almost universally diffused, especially in the northern .parts, and hooks in abundance are procurable from England. Yet literature, comparatively with Britain, was in a very low state at the conclusion of the eighteenth century. The colleges deserved rather the title of grammar schools, and were in every respect very mean and poor.* These, however, have since increased in number and in merit. Academies have been established, whose discove ries and observations are regularly published. Information is much diffused by magazines and newspapers, though doubtless of inferior value, as in the British Islands ; and with growing wealth and population, where the press is quite free, we may expect a growing knowledge and taste in literature. In manners the inhabitants of these countries, denominated collectively Anglo-Americans, are as yet much inferior to the people of the British Islands, as being in a state of society more immature. This difference is much more conspicuous in the lower than in the higher classes, and more in some provinces and cities than in others. Society may be naturally expected to improve, and future ages to present a picture different from the present ; but we can only state affairs as they are described in our own times, or at least toward the commencement of the nineteenth century. Jn politeness, hospitality, and the pleasures of conversation * Weld, tol. 1, p. 167, 168, 2i9. VIRGINIA* 271 and social intercourse, the gentry of Philadelphia are ae- CH-APTER counted the most deficient. Here, " among- the uppermost - circles, pride,, haughtiness, and ostentation are conspicuous*. In the manners of the people in general there is a coldness and reserve, as if they were suspicious of some designs against them, which chills to the very heart those who- come to visit them. In their private societies a tristesse is apparent> near which mirth and gaiety can never approach. It is no unusual thing, in the genteelest houses, to see a party of from twenty to thirty persons assembled, and seated round a room, without partaking of any other amusement than what arises from the conversation, most frequently in whis pers, which passes between the two persons who are seated next to each other. The party meets between six and seven in the evening : tea is served with much form : and at ten, by which time most of the company are wearied with having remained so long stationary, they return to their home*. Still, however, they are not strangers to music, cards, or dancing. Their knowledge of music, indeed, is at a very low ebb ; but in dancing, which appears to be their most favourite amusement, they certainly excel."* This doubtless is not in unison with the system of the quakers, the founders of this city and colony : but the population is so altered by the influx of other sects, that quakere now con- , stitute hardly a fourth part of the inhabitants. The conduct of affairs in the theatre of gives not an idea of refinement in manners. * A * Weld, TO!. 1, p. 22,- 272 YIRGINIA. CHAPTER custom obtains of smoking tobacco in the house, which at VII. times is carried to such an excess, that those to whom it is disagreeable are under the necessity of going away. To the people in the pit, wine and porter is brought between the acts, precisely as if they were in a tavern. The actors are procured, with very few exceptions from Great Britain, and Ireland. None of them are very eminent performers, but they are equal to what are usually met with in the country towns in England/'* The gentry in Virginia pro per appear to be higher in the scale of civilization. In the rural parts they closely resemble their English progenitors, especially in the lowlands, where they are celebrated for their politeness and hospitality toward strangers. The citizens of Baltimore in Maryland have a similar reputa tion, as alo the gentry in other parts of this province : but the citizens of New York " have long been distinguished above those of all the other towns in the United States, un less the people of Charlestown should be excepted, for their politeness, gaity, and hospitality; and indeed, in these points, they are most strikingly superior to the inhabitants of the other large towns." In general the people of the sea ports, open to the Atlantic, are more improved in manners than those of the interior. With the exception of some sea-ports, the people of the lower classes in general are remarkable for an extreme rude ness of demeanour, an extraordinary selfishness, a restless ness with respect to their places of abode, a vexatiously * Weld, rol. 1, p. 24. VIRGINIA. 27S impertinent curiosity, and a proneness to faction. This CHAPTER rudeness is carried to its highest pitch in Philadelphia. The ^IL vulgar " return rude and impertinent answers to questions couched in the most civil terms, and will insult a person who bears the appearance of a gentleman, on purpose to shew how much they consider themselves upon an equality with him. Civility cannot be purchased from them on any terms. They seem to think that this is incompatible with freedom, and that there is no other way of convincing a stranger that he is really in a land of liberty, but by being surly and ill mannered in his presence." A sullen and disobliging be haviour is practiced even by those who are appointed to at tend the guests at inns. ff Nevertheless they will pocket your money with the utmost readiness, though without thanking you for it. Of all beings on earth Americans are the most interested and covetous." From the character of restlessness and of a factious spirit the colonists from Germany are excepted : but " by the desire of making mo ney both the Germans and Americans, of every class and description, are actuated in all their movements. Self-inte rest is always uppermost in their thoughts : it is the idol which they worship, and at its shrine thousands and thou sands would be found, in all parts of the country, ready to make a sacrifice of every noble and generous sentiment which can adorn the human mind."* This thirst of gain is the cause of the restless arid migratory disposition of the .people, who are perpetually on the search for bargains of land, removing from place to place in quest of their great object. * Weld, vol. 1, p. 30, 115, 127 M 111 74 VIRGINIA; CHAPTER Jn pursuit of this great end " the American is wholly re- """*"" gardless of the ties of consanguinity. He takes his wife with him, goes to a distant part of the country, and buries himself in the woods, hundreds of miles distant from the rest of his family, never perhaps to see them again. In the back parts of the country you always meet numbers of men prowling about to buy cheap land : having found what they like, they immediately remove : nor, having once removed, are these people satisfied : restless, and discontented with what they possess, they are forever changing. It is scarcely possible, in any part of the continent, to find a man, among the middling and lower classes o Americans, who has not changed his farm and residence many different times. Thousands of acres of waste land are annually taken up in unhealthy and unfruitful parts of the country, notwithstand ing that the best settled and healthy parts of- the middle states would maintain, five times the number of inhabitants which they maintain at present. The American, however* in every, change, hopes to make money."* The spirit of migration, which we find to have prevailed among the Phoe nicians, Grecians, and other nations of antiquity, by whair soever motives excited, is among, the means employed by Providence for the peopling of the earth. The impertinent curiosity of the Anglo-Americans gives great annoyance to. travellers. Immediately on his arrival among them, " a stranger must tell whence he came, wni- ther he is going, what his name is, what his business is ; until he gratifies their curiosity on these points, and * Weld. yol. 1, p. 126, VIRGINIA. g7 many others of equal importance, he is never suffered to re- CHAPTER main quiet for a moment. In a tavern he must satisfy every - fresh set that comes in, in the same manner, or involve him self in a quarrel, especially if it is found out that he is not a native, which it does not require much sagacity to discover." What renders this teazing custom still more provoking is, (hat these Americans te scarcely ever give satisfactory an swers at first to the enquiries which are made by a stranger respecting their country, but always hesitate, as if suspicious that he was asking these questions to procure some local information, in order to enable him to over-reach them in a bargain, or to make some speculation in land to their in jury." Beside this, when it is known, " that a stranger is from Great Britain or Ireland, they immediately begin to boast of their own constitution and freedom, and give him to understand, that they think every Englishman a slave, be cause he submits to be called a subject." Yet they are never satisfied with the administration of their own government. They are forever cavilling at some of the public measures. Party spirit is forever creating dissentions among them, and one man is continually endeavouring to obtrude his political creed upon another."* Their political constitution indeed is too democraticai, whence in great part arises the rudeness of their manners. The manners of the vulgar in the southern provinces, where doubtless they are worst, are more than rude, and may be justly denominated savage. Thus in Virginia pro- * Weld, Tol. 1, p. 124, 1*5, 134. 2 M 2 276 CHAPTER VII. islands. per, " whenever these people come to Wows, they fight just like wild beasts, biting, kicking, and endeavouring to tear each other's eyes out with their nails. It is by no means uncommon to meet with those who have lost an eye in a. combat, and there are men who pride themselves upon the dexterity with which they can scoop one out. This is called gouging* To perform the horrid operation, the combatant twists his fore fingers in the sidelocks of his adversary's hair, and then applies his thumbs to the bottom of the eye, to force it out of the socket. If ever there is a battle, in which neither of the persons engaged loses an eye, their faces are however generally cut in a shocking manner,, with the thumb nails, in the many attempts which are made at gouging. But what is worse than all, these wretches, in their combat, endeavour to their utmost to tear out each otherV virile parts. In the Garolinas and Georgia, the people are still more depraved in this respect that in Vir ginia proper, insomuch that in some particular parts of these provinces, every third or fourth man appears with only^ one eye.* The islandsj which lie along the coast of this vast region, are mostly of small importance in comparison of the im mense extent of territory to which they are politically attached. On the coast of Maine is Mount-desart Island, fifteen miles long, and twelve broad, and containing, in the * Weld, vol. 1, p. 192. The account here given, -where I have quoted only one traveller, is confirmed by several others. VIRGINIA. 277 year 1790., between seven and eight hundred persons. Two CHAPTER isles, called Cranberry islands, situated on the southeastern VII> side, assist to form a harbour where an inlet penetrates into the land. Nan tucket, politically belonging to the state of Massa- ohusets, extending fifteen miles in length, with a medial breadth of about four, and containing a harbour, is inha bited by near five thousand people, who chiefly subsist by fishing, particularly for whales, in the taking of which they are in the highest degree expert. The ancient woods have been totally destroyed, and the Indians, who formerly amounted to near three thousand, have, without any wars with the colonists, become extinct by diseases and the use of rum. Martha's vineyard, belonging also to Massachusets, twenty-one miles long and six broad, contains between three and four thousand inhabitants, who subsist by fishing, by agriculture, and by the breeding of cattle. Block Island, and Fisher's Island, the former of which, belonging politically to the continental state called Rhode Island, is inhabited by near seven hundred people, are quite inconsiderable. The latter is regarded as an appendage of Long Island, far the greatest of all on these coasts. Long Island, parted from the continent by a strait OP sound from three to twenty-five miles broad,, stretches to & 278 VIRGINIA. CHAPTER length of .a hundred and forty miles, with a medial breadth - : of ten. The land in the northern parts is rough with hills ; in the southern low, with a light sandy soil. Tracts of salt meadow abound on the coast. Near the center of the island isHampstead plain, sixteen miles long- and eight broad, never known to produce other vegetables of spon taneous growth than a particular kind of grass and some shrubs, although the soil, which is black, is apparently rich. Eastward .of this lies brushy plain, overspread with brush wood, which gives shelter to a vast number of grouse and deer. About the middle of the. isle is a lake or pond, termed Rockonkama^ about a mile in circuit, which is said to ebb and flow regularly in periods of years, from some unknown cause. The number of inhabitants, who are generally of Dutch descent, is estimated at near forty-two thousand, of whom near five thousand are slaves. This island, which belongs to the state of New York, is divided into three counties, which are subdived into nineteen townships, Staten Island, situated nine miles southward of New York city, extends about eighteen miles in length, with a medial breadth of six or seven. , It is rough with hills, ex cept # level tract on the southern side. Its inhabitants, mostly of Dutch and French descent, are estimated at nearly four thousand in number. The rest of the islands are too isconsiderable to merit a description. A chain of insulated stripes of land, or sandy beaches^ above a hundred miles long, but hardly a mile VIRGINIA. 279 broad, mostly covered with small trees or bushes, from the CHAPTER boundary and shelter of Pamlico sound, on the coast of North ' Carolina, from the Atlantic ocean. Ranges of small islands, at a short distance from the continent, are seen along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia. 281 CHAPTER VIII. THE BAHAMAS, TERMED also the Lucayas, form a numerous group of CHAPTER small islands, extending near seven hundred miles, in a ' northwesterly direction, from the vicinity of Hispaniola to that of Florida, parted from the vast island of Cuba by a sea called the Old Bahama Channel, and from the American continent by another sea, improperly denominated the gulf of Florida. The greater islands, including clusters of isles, are estimated at fourteen in number, the smaller at least at seven hundred. The latter consist in great part of rocky islets and what are called quays by mariners. These quays or keys are small sandy isles, appearing a little above the surf of the water, and destitute of other vegetation than a few shrubs or weeds. The Bahamas in general are nar row slips of land, and, with little exception or variety, low in surface, but rising almost perpendicularly from the bot tom of the ocean, in such a manner as to be immediately surrounded with unfathomable water. Many of them are environed, altogether or in part,, by reefs of rocks parallel to the shores, and at a small distance from them, imme diately outside of which the ocean often admits no soundings, N n THE BAHAMAS. CHAPTER but inside is found a bottom of fine white sand, or of rocks VIII covered with sea weed. Great part of the tract of ocean over which these isles are scattered is occupied by two exten sive shoals, called the great and little Bank, of which the edges are in many places marked by quays or islets, and the bottom of white sand, visible at the depth of twelve or twenty feet, gives a kind of a light colour to both the sea and sky. The great bank in the south seems three hundred leagues in circuit : the little bank in the north not half so much. Although, from the light colour of the bottom, and the transparency of the Water, navigation, with due attention, is easy and safe on the banks, yet these islands to navigators are dangerous in the extreme, particularly in the season of winter, from the violence and uncertainty of the currents and eddies. Often while the mariner is steering one course, he is carried by the current in an almost opposite direction^ and finds his vessel in a desperate situation before he is aware. The island called the great Inagua, situated near the mouth of the channel between Cuba and Hispaniola, termed the windward passage, is quite infamous for ship wrecks On a dangerous reef, at some distance from its shore, many ships have been driven to inevitable destruc tion. So perpetually expected are shipwrecks, that forty sail of small vessels, denominated wreckers, manned with expert seamen, well acquainted with every isle and channel, are licensed by the British government of the Bahamas to keep the sea in all weathers for the saving of the lives and properties of wrecked mariners, who pay salvage for the goods preserved by their exertions. THE BAHAMAS. The extraordinary dangers of navigation among these CHAPTER islands are not ascribed to a tempestuous atmosphere. Al though in winter the weather is very inconstant, and strong gales often add to the peril of seamen, yet that season is not so uniformly boisterous here as in more northern latitudes, and the trade-wind, with a little deviation toward the north, continues mostly to blow. The winter is doubtless the least comfortable part of the year ; yet its temperature is so mild, that the trees are never entirely stript of their fo liage, and the mean warmth of the air, in the hottest part of the day, is marked by at least seventy-two degrees of Fahrenheit's thermometer. Toward the middle of March a rigour of vegetation, which had previously been languid, denotes the spring. The mean heat of summer, in the hot test part of the day is rated at about eighty-six degrees of Fahrenheit. The mercury in that instrument has seldom risen above ninety degrees in the most ardent season, and as rarely sunk below fifty in the coldest. Through the greater part of the year the sky is delightfully serene, the temperature generally agreeable, and the air at all times wholesome.* The isle of Guanahani, one of the Bahamas, was the first American land discovered in 1492 by the renowned Columbus, who named it San Salvador, from the safety which it afforded him from the perils of his voyage. By the cruelty of the Spaniards the innocent and simple na- * The account of the Bahamas is principally taken from Tour through the British West Indies. London, 1804. 2*2 284 THE BAHAMAS. CHAPTER fives were in a few years wholly exterminated, and this group of islands long remained in a desert state. From the representations of Captain Sayle, an English navigator, who was driven on one of them, which he called New Pro vidence, in 1667, King Charles the Second of England made a grant of the Bahamas to the Duke of Albemarle and five other proprietors. The little colony, planted at New Pro vidence, became licentious, refused obedience to its gover nors, and committed depredations on the Spanish settlements. The Spaniards, after frequent ineffectual attempts to exter minate the obnoxious colony, at length, in 1708, assisted by the French, destroyed the plantation and expelled the colonists, who retired to the woods, and thence to Carolina. This, as well as the rest of the Bahamas, again became a desart, but was soon after chosen as a station by a body of pirates, who found it a convenient retreat on account of the shoal water on the banks, and the numerous quays inaces* sible to large vessels, and of dangerous approach to any. The most infamously daring of this crew was John Teach, nicknamed Blackbeard, whose successful audacity was so alarming, that in 1718 the British government sent a re spectable force to quell the depredators and reduce the colony to order. Since that event the colony of New Providence has remained under British government with little interruption, and has encreased in wealth and numbers, but the rest of the islands continued almost desert till the conclusion of the American war in 1783, when many loyal Americans emigrated to them from South Carolina and Georgia, and formed plantations in them. THE Bill AM AS. 285 So little successful have these new colonists been in their CH \PTER agricultural projects, that many, after years of trial and the ruin of their properties, have deserted the ungrateful soil to try their fortunes elsewhere, insomuch that, without some unexpected turn in their favour, these islands seem to threaten to become again desert. " Although nature in all these islands spontaneously brings forth many vegetables both curious and beautiful, she has hitherto refused to resign o herself to continued cultivation. The exotics, which are introduced, seem feebly and unsuccessfully to struggle with* cold winds, the droughts, and unfriendly seasons ;. while a crop of hereditary and worthless weeds takes possession o the soil prepared for cultivation, and extracts all its nourish ment to administer fertility, as they decay, to the native and unprofitable forest trees succeeding them." The planters have not found any of the indigenous vegetables fit objects of culture. Among these i& the wild lemon, the wild coffee, the wild tobacco, the wild pimento, the wild cinnamon, the eascarilla, the candlewood, which is so bituminous as to an swer in some respects the purpose of candles; the butter- bough, the greasy leaf of which is nutritious for cattle ; the cork wood> which is so light as to be a substitute for cork ; and the braziletto, which affords a beautiful scarlet dye. The timber, particularly the mahogany, is large enough for, being formed into the ribs and beams of small ships but not into boards and sheathing. Cotton, the staple object of culture in the Bahamas, was a product of the soil before their discovery by Europeans, but the sorts which are culr tivated are exotic. Beside that the soil becomes in a few years effete for the prouuction of this vegetable the crop is 286 THE BAHAMAS. CHAPTER often damaged or destroyed by insects called the red bu<> VIII. and the chenille. The ants are also destructive to the plantations. The chief articles of commerce furnished by these islands are cotton, salt, turtle., different kinds of fruit, mahogany timber, woods and barks for colouring. The salt is pro duced in vast quantities by the action of the sun-beams on the water of the ocean, admitted into shallow ponds in the land. " The calcareous rock, of which the land is composed, lies generally in horizontal layers. From the violent action of the sea, which has evidently, and perhaps recently, beaten over them, the surface every where appears worn, fretted, and broken into holes, or often deep excavations. Hence the ocean's water finds a passage, and has formed in many parts of the interior extensive salines or ponds. Early in. the year, when the powers of the sun begins to encrease, ac companied with dry weather, the salt every where in these natural ponds begins to crystallize and subside in solid cakes. It remains then only to break the crystals, and rake the salt on shore : and by this easy mode a single labourer may rake from forty to sixty bushels of salt in a day. The process however is facilitated by making small pans, which, as the salt is taken out, may be replenished with brine from the pond."* Among other amphibious animals the turtle or tortoise, so highly prized for its excellent flesh, resorts in great number to the quays least frequented by mankind, where it is occasionally taken by men to whom it is an ob- * Mac Kiimen, chap* 6 THE BAHAMAS. 287 ject of commercial speculation. The alligator, whose flesh CHAPTER resembles that of the sturgeon, is eaten by the inhabitants. * Among the few indigenous animals not aquatic is the guana. The offsprings of imported quadrupeds are not numerous, except that of the domestic cat, which has multiplied consi derably. Among the birds is the green parrot, the bald pigeon, and the beautiful crane called the flamingo. The last associates in great flocks far from the habitations of men. The total number of inhabitants in these islands is small, and seems also in a state of decrease. Some are absolutely desert, as the great Bahama, which has given its name to the vvhole group. Others contain only a few people. Thus on the cluster of isles called Caicos only twelve heads of fami lies and between two and three hundred slaves were enumerated : on crooked island forty plantations and a thousand negroes : on San Salvador forty heads of families and four hundred and fifty-eight slaves : and on New Providence, far the most populous, somewhat above five thousand persons of all sorts. The last named island approaches in form an equilateral pa rallelogram, with a diagonal of twenty-seven miles, and acute angles projecting to the east and west. Its land is uncultivated, except the environs of its capital, the town of Nassau, the seat of government of the Bahamas, within which almost all its inhabitants dwell. It owes its popula tion to the profits of a sea-faring life, and the excellence of its harbour, sheltered by a long quay, or insulated slip of land. The governor, with an income of near three thousand pounds a year, acts in conjunction with the two houses of 288 THE BAHAMAS, CHAPTER provincial legislature, the upper and lower, chosen from among the people of the several islands. With the exception of New Providence, the larger islands of this group are narrow in proportion to their length. This is most strikingly the case with Long Island, which extends near a hundred miles in length, but in medial breadth not more than three. Toward the end of the eighteenth century eight hundred slaves were employed here in agriculture, but many plantations have since been deserted. Crooked Island is remarkable for its irregular shape, and vast excavations formed in some of its rocks by the action of the waves. Of the clusters of small islands one is termed the Turks, from a dwarfish kind of cactus resembling a Turkish turban. Of these, abounding in salt, the greatest, called the Grand Turk, is about twelve miles long and two broad. Another cluster is that of the Caicos, consisting of some larger and many smaller isles, parted by narrow channels, and lying in the form of a crescent, which opens to the south. The soil in the middle isles of this cluster is accounted the best in the Bahamas. Lucaya and Bahama, each of which has given its name to the whole group, seem to be held in little estimation. 289 THE BERMUDAS, A solitary cluster, seated in the Atlantic, above two hun dred leagues from the coast of Virginia, the -nearest land, are accounted about four hundred in number, but most of them are barren islets. They form a figure approaching that of a crescent, about thirty-six miles long and six broad, environed by dangerous reefs of rocks and shoals. They were discovered in 1522 by John Bermudez, a Spanish navigator, who found them destitute of inhabitants. In 1593 they were visited by some Englishmen, and in 1609 Sir George Somers, an English captain, was wrecked on their coast, from whom they were denominated the isles of Somers, or the Summer Islands. Two years after this they received an English colony, which so increased that in the latter part of the seventeenth century it consisted of about ten thousand persons, but has since decreased to half that number. The land is generally high and rugged, interspersed with fertile spots of soil, and destitute of water, except what is preserved from rain in cisterns or procured by sinking wells. The temperature is so mild, that the trees are verdant through out the year, the spring is perpetual, and the air salubrious ; "but storms and thunder are frequent, and hurricanes are too often felt. The chief indigenous trees are cedar and pal metto. The chief object of culture is maize. The few quadrupeds are of imported breeds. The indigenous ani mals are chiefly birds of various kinds. No venomous o o 90 SABLE , ISLAND. re ptiles are found here. The principal island, called Saint George, sixteen miles long and two broad, contains the only town in the cluster, the town of Saint George, the seat of government, consisting of about five hundred houses. This island is divided into nine districts, to which the inha bitants of the rest severally belong. The chief objects of manufacturing industry are sailcloth, and the building of small vessels of cedar, which are valued for swift sailing. SABLE ISLAND, OR the Isle of Sand, situated alone in the Atlantic, twenty- three leagues distant from the nearest land, Cape Canso in Nova Scotia, extends in the form of a bow, in length eight leagues, in breadth not above half a league. It is destitute of inhabitants, and totally unfit to receive a colony. It is seated on a vast sand-bank OF shoal, the water on which gradually deepens in receding from the coast, to fifty fa thoms. Two bars extend far from the two ends of the isle, on which and on the shores the surf continually beats with Vast noise and violence. The coast is quite inhospitable, affording no harbour. The approach to it is dangerous even to boats. Landing is practicable on the northern SABLE ISLAND. 291 shore only, and in calm weather. The whole isle consists CHAPTER VIII* of fine white sand, mixed with white transparent stones. Its face presents a strange appearance, uneven with sand hills, knobs, and cliffs, confusedly jumbled. The sandhills are of a shape approaching a conical figure, of a milk-white hue, and sometimes near a hundred and fifty feet high. Along the middle of the island, through half its length, extends a narrow pond, supplied with water from the ocean at each tide of flood, through a narrow gut on the northern side, twelve feet deep at the time of low water, abounding in seals and other aquatic animals. Many ponds of fresh water are contained in other hollows, on the sides of which grow juniper, blueberries, and cranberries. No trees are here produced, but much of what is called beach-grass, wild peas, and other vegetables, the food of horses, cows, anil hogs, which here are wild in a state of nature. CHAPTER VIII. Cape.Breton. THE ISLANDS OF SAINT LAWRENCE, SEATED in the sea of Saint Lawrence, improperly termed a gulf under the same appellation, consist of the isles of Cape- Breton, Saint John or Prince Edward, Anticosti, and some others of inferior magnitude, all under subjection to the British crown. The first> termed also lie Roy ale by the French, is parted from Nova Scotia by the strait called Fronsac Passage or the gut of Canso, about half a league wide. This island, colonized early in the eighteenth cen tury by the French, was conquered by the English in the year 1758, under whose government it still remains. It extends about a hundred miles in length and sixty in breadth, but is so deeply indented as to be divided into two peninsu las, connected by an isthmus about half a mile broad. Its coast, environed by pointed rocks, some of which are visible above water, is high and almost inaccessible on the northern side, but affords many receptacles for shipping on the eas tern, all of which have a turning toward the south. One of these, the harbour of Louisburgh, with an entrance of four hundred yards in width , a winding length of four leagues, and a depth of at least seven fathoms every where, is one of the finest in the northern regions of America. The land is mountainous in the interior, and so abounds in lakes, that the lower grounds appear to be half covered with water. From these, which remain long, frozen, and from. the thick THE SAINT LAWRENCE ISLES. 293 forests wbich intercept the sun's rays, the air is cold and CHAPTER foggy, though not supposed unwholesome. From such a state of the atmosphere, and the poverty of the thin soil, which yields little else than moss, the land is little fit for either agriculture or the breeding of cattlei The inhabitants therefore, who are few in number, depend for subsistence on the fisheries in their neighbourhood. Mines of coal abound, also of plaister of Paris, and some say of iron. The go vernor, at orrce a civil and military officer, resides at the little town of Sidney, accounted the capital. The isle of Saint John, lately denominated Prince Edward^s saint John, island, is severed from the continent by a channel called the Red sea, from three to six leagues wide, and from nine to twenty-five fathoms deep, but of dangerous navigation on account of rocks which border its northern bank. The island, above a hundred and ten miles long, but scarcely ten broad, where widest, and deeply indented by many inlets, bends into a figure approaching that of a crescent, and terminates in two points, that of North cape in the northwest, and that of East point on the eastern side. The numerous inlets form many harbours and roads for anchorage, several of which are commodious. The winter is long, and intensely cold, as in all the neighbouring countries, but the air is healthy, although subject to fogs. The land is of a level nature, well watered, and fertile, furnishing copious supplies of excellent timber, and good pasturage, and productive, where cleared, of all the kinds of grain of northern Europe. The crops however are oft injured by fogs which cause mildew, and by destructive insects, which swarm in the heat of summer. 294 THE SAINT XAWRENCE ISLES. CHAPTER VIII. Anticosli. This island, colonized by the French in 1719, was seized in 1758 by the English, by whom it is still retained. It has been granted by the British government to several proprie tors in districts of twenty thousand acres each, called town ships, and also in smaller called half townships. An en- creasing colony has thus been established, the number of whose people was computed some years ago at seven thou sand. The seat of its government, subordinate to that of Nova Scotia, is Charlestown or Charlottestown, seated near the middle of the southern coast. Anticosti, situated at the mouth of the vast river Saint JLawrence, extends in length above one hundred and twenty miles, and in breadth, where it is widest, thirty. The coast is destitute of harbours, although the sea is very deep close to the shore; and flat rocks, which stretch far into the wa ter from each extremity, render to shipping the approach hazardous. From the shores, which are flat, the land rises gently toward the central parts, but not so high as to form hills. It is very scantily watered, containing only some pools and rivulets, the channels of which are dry in summer. The sandy soil mixed with rocks, is barren, yielding only stunted wood and plants. The whole is of little value. It is destitute of inhabitants, except that it is occasionally visited by savages engaged in hunting or the fishery. The property of the land, which belongs to some families in Quebec, under British government, might be purchased for a small sum. The smaller isles consist of those of Saint Paul, the Mao-- CHAPTER VIII dalenes, the Bird isles, Saint Peter, and Miquelon. The first is quite desert, parted from the northern extremity of SnuUer Cape-Breton by a safely navigable channel, four leagues wide. Of the Magdalene islands, eight in number, situated twelve league* to the north of Cape-Breton, the largest, containing a deep harbour, consists of a rock, covered with a thin stratum of earth, inhabited by a few fishermen. The Bird isles are two rocks, rising more than a hundred feet above the sea, and terminating above in flat surfaces, covered with the dung of immense flocks of birds, which fre quent them chiefly in the breeding season. The isles of Saint Peter and Miquelon lie near the southern coast of Newfoundland. They are barren and of no value except as convenient stations for the fishery. The former, two leagues in length, is furnished with a good harbour for small vessels, of which it can contain thirty. The latter is somewhat larger, and is less barren, as it produces more wood. Mi quelon however is conceived to consist of two isles, the greater and the less. The latter, situated southward of the former, is more woody, but otherwise not valuable. 296 NE WFO LTNDL AND, CH vm ER FORMING on one side the boundary of, the sea of Saint Lawrence, is parted from Labrador by the strait of Belleisle, which affords every where good anchorage in a depth of thirty or forty fathoms, but is of dangerous navigation in the night on account of the force and uncertainty of its currents. By a multitude of inlets, some of which penetrate very deeply into the land, the coasts of this great island are broken in so extraordinary a manner as to form a vast number and variety of capes and peninsulas. Of the two greatest and most remarkable of the latter one extends far northeastward from the western side, constituting the northwestern portion of this country, which nearly approaches a triangle in figure, The other, advancing from a very narrow isthmus toward the southeast, is itself so pierced by two opposite bays, that its eastern part forms also a peninsula. Of the multitude of inlets, by which the coast of Newfoundland is every where indented, so many are commodious for the reception of ships, that no country is known, in proportion to its size, to furnish so great a number of safe and convenient harbours. To enumerate all such would be to frame a larn;e catalogue. ~ o To particularize two or three may suffice. In the western side of the great northwestern peninsuly, lies a bay termed by the French Ingornachoix, which from a narrow, but per fectly safe, entrance divides into two branches, of which the northern., called port Saunders, is preferable oa account of NEWFOUNDLAND, its deeper water, but the whole forms one of the noblest CHAPTER harbours in the world. Far inferior in size, though near vm ' six miles in length, is Capelin bay, on the eastern side of the great southeastern peninsula, but not inferior to any in safety and convenience. Near this lies the smaller harbour of Ferryland, the inner part of which, called the Pool, is as completely sheltered from all winds as a dock. Bancroft Library The coasts of this island are generally rugged, and ser rated with rocky promontories. One of the most remark able is Cape Broyle, near Capelin bay, which presents to distant mariners the appearance of an enormous saddle. The interior parts exhibit a wild and dreary scene of bleak mountains and hills, marshy plains, quagmires, lakes, and dark forests. Many of the mountains approach the shores as those which border the bay of Saint George in the south western quarter, and the chain which is denominated Blow- me-down hills, in a more northern part of the western coast. The lakes and marshes, which occupy so great a portion of the surface, furnish waters to many rivers, of which none seem to be navigable by ships through any considerable length of course. They have however been Uttle explored. The greatest is the Humber, which, issuing from a conge ries of waters in the northwestern peninsula, flows toward the southwest, nearly parallel to the western coast, through a course of sixty leagues, to the bay of islands in that quarter. The river Main, the drain of extensive lakes and marshes, which falls into the bay of Saint George on the same coast, is broad and of considerable depth, but of extremely difficult entrance to boats on account of a bar of sand across its mouth, p p 298 NEWFOUNDLAND.* CHAPTER on Which the waves break with creat violence. Among- the VIH. ' cataracts is one called the Spout, on the eastern coast of the great southeastern peninsula, formed by a body of water impelled through a fissure of a rock, and falling from such a height as to exhibit the appearance of volcanic smoke, visi ble far at sea, and thus furnishing a landmark. The winter in Newfoundland is intensely cold, and of so long duration that the summer is too short for the bringing of corn, and other objects of agriculture, to maturity. The atmosphere is tempestuous, and in summer extremely foggy. Yet the air is wholesome in an uncommonly high degree. The fogs often render navigation dangerous, yet a circum stance has been observed concerning them which appears to be peculiar. " It often occurs that the whole of the ocean around Newfoundland is enveloped in so dense a fog, that it is apparently impossible for a ship to proceed on her course, without incurring the most imminent danger of ship wreck : but, at the same time, there is generally a small space, within a mile or two of the shore itself, entirely clear of the vapour, and, as it were, forming a zone of light around the coast : so that a person, acquainted with this singular phenomenon, will, in some cases, be enabled to attain his port ; while a stranger, on the other hand, is afraid to ap proach the island."* From the bleakness of the atmosphere, and the poverty of the thin soil, the efforts of agriculture would be vain for the sustenance of mankind. Moss, trees, and shrubs are the chief spontaneous products. The timber * Chappell's Voyage to Newfoundland, p. 63. NEWFOUNDLAND. 299 seems in general neither large, nor of much value except CHAPTER VIII for fuel. The trees by which the country is in general ' overspread, are mostly pine, spruce, fir, larch, and birch. From an infusion of the tender branches of the spruce, mingled with molasses, a wholesome beverage is made by the inhabitants. Among the shrubs is the juniper, and other kinds which yield berries of different species. Berries which are delicious in tarts or puddings may be found in marshy grounds in prodigious quantities. Where the land is so little productive, quadrupeds, except the aquatic sorts, cannot be numerous. Hares, deer, squir rels, porcupines, and bears are found in the woods. The reindeer and others of the venison are scarce. The porcu pines are in plenty, and their flesh is much esteemed. Wolves, foxes, lynxes, and martins are natives of the island. Some of the foxes in the northern parts are said to be black. Seals abound along the coast, and beavers and otters inhabit the borders of the lakes and rivers. Tame quadrupeds are very few except dogs, the genuine species of which, deno minated from this island, so highly esteemed for docility, patience of cold, and endurance in the water, has become very scarce. Dogs are here the beasts of draught, employed in the drawing of loads, particularly of wood for fuel. Aquatic birds are in vast number around the coast and in the lakes and marshes of the interior. Those which frequent the fresh .water are chiefly ducks-and geese. . Partridges are , in great plenty. A species, called the spruce-partridge from its feeding on the bark of the spruce, resembles the 300 NEWFOUNDLAND. CHAPTER common partridge of England in colour, shape, and size, VIII. but it perches on trees, and is so tame as to suffer itself often to be knocked down with poles. The flesh of this bird is bitter when roasted, but has a delicate taste when dressed as a fricassee. Among the insects is the musquitOi which proves a plague in the heat of summer. The lakes and rivers abound in fish, such as trout and salmon, to an extraordinary degree, and the neighbouring sea is most co piously stored, especially with cod. Of the fossils of this island, as no search has been made for them, we can only say that porphyry of several colours has been found, and that beds of coal are supposed to be abundant. This great island is valuable only for the abundance of codfish around its coasts, and on the Great Bank, or vast submarine tableland, in its vicinity, already noted in the General View prefixed ilh two hooks at each, held by the same man, are perpetually in motion, alternately pulled above the surface of the water, the one constantly descending while the other ascends. In the process of curing-, each fish passes through the hands of three men, to each of whom is assigned his particular office. " With such amazing celerity is the operation of heading, splitting, and salting performed, that it is not an unusual thing to see ten cod-fish decapitated, their entrails thrown into the sea, and their backbones torn out in the short space of one minute and a half."* After the salting the fish are dried in the sunbeams on shore, to render them fit for exportation* Fifty thousand tuns of shipping are supposed to be employed every year in this fishery, bearing twenty thousand men ; and six hundred thousand quintals, or hundred weights of cod, are computed to be annually exported from the island. This merchandize, with oil of seals and fish, constitutes almost the whole of the exports of this country, which is supplied with pro visions and manufactured goods from abroad. Newfoundland was discovered in 1497, or the following year, by an English squadron under the command of John Gabot, or Sebastian, his son, In some time after this, some English fishermen began to frequent the eastern coasts. To give a government to such, for the prevention of disputes * Chappell, p. 302 NEWFOUNDLAND. CHAPTER among- them, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in 1583, took posses- sion of these parts under a commission from Queen Eliza beth. Encouraged by the success of the English, the French formed settlements on the northern and southern coasts, particularly at the great bay of Placentia. After various disputes for the dominion of the island, the whole was surrendered by France to England by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, with a reservation to the French of a right to fish on the great bank, and of the possession for that purpose of the unfortified isles of Saint Peter and Miquelon. Since that time this country has constantly remained under the dominion of the British crown, but the French and Anglo-Americans are permitted to fish on the banks in its vicinity. The government is vested in a vice-admiral of the British navy, in whose absence, which has place in winter, when the harbours are frozen, his authority devolves to a military officer styled the lieutenant-governor. In case of the hitter's deatli the power is exercised by the chief justice until the vacancy is filled. The area of this triangular island, of which the southern base extends about three hundred miles, and the altitude from south to north near two hundred and eighty, may con tain, with allowance made for its inlets, full twenty-four mil lions of acres. The population is ill proportioned to such a space. The inhabitants consist of Europeans, and a very small number of indigenous people. Subsisting solely on the profits of the fishery, the former dwell only on the coasts, almost all indeed on the eastern. Of these the greater part are not permanent inhabitants, but return at NEWFOUNDLAND. 303 the end of the fishing season to Europe, where they remain CHAPTER VIII during the long winter. Of the permanent settlers, " the lower classes are generally composed of turbulent Irishmen, whose unwearied industry during the fishing season in sum mer, is forcibly contrasted with their unbounded licentious ness in winter. Indeed all ranks of society appear to con sider debauchery as the only antidote to the tcedium vitee, which prevails between the month of December and the recommencement of the fishery in the May following."* Of the number of Europeans in either summer or winter I can find no estimate on which we can rely. A colony of Miemacs, settled in Saint George's bay, emigrants from Cape-Breton and the neighbouring parts> are indigenous Americans, though not aboriginals of Newfoundland. They They have so intermarried with Europeans that in 1813, the number of purely indigenous exceeded not fifty persons of all ages and both sexes. Indeed the whole of the inhabitants around this bay, amounted not to more than two hundred and nine. The truly indigenous, termed Red Indians from a red colour with which they tinge the hair and skin, are extremely few, inhabiting the interior, and the northeastern, northern, and northwestern parts. Barbarously treated by ignorant fishermen,' these savages, who at first were found friendly and obliging, have conceived so implacable an enmity to Europeans as completely to avoid all kinds of intercourse with them. They " study the art of conceal ment so effectually, that, although often heard, they are seldom seen :' J f anil, when seen, they run away, and ex pertly disguise their tracks from the discovery of pursues * ChappeU, p. 52. t Idem, p. 180. 304 NEWFOUNDLAND. CHAPTER The town of Saint John, the capital, and indeed the only - collection of houses in the island which can merit the title of a town, is seated ou the eastern coast of the great south eastern peninsula, on an excellent harbour, with a long and narrow, but safe and not difficult entrance, between rocky precipices of enormous height on the northern side, and a rugged mountain on the southern. The town, which may perhaps be in a state of improvement, has hitherto con sisted of one street, narrow, mean-looking, and dirty, com posed chiefly of wooden houses, and extending all along one side of the harbour. The number of its inhabitants fluctu ates and is uncertain. They are numerous in summer, but few in winter. Placentia, situated on a bay of that name, is small, but next to Saint John's in size and population.* Many small islands lie around the coast of Newfoundland, of which none appear to have permanent inhabitants, nor to have been well described, except those which have been already mentioned, and probably very few can deserve a particular description. They are doubtless in general rocky, bleak, and barren. * Chappell ; Haye's Brief Relation of the Newfoundland ; WhitbourneV Discourse, &c, of Newfoundland. BELLEISLE, SOS AN island, which gives name to a strait separating La- CHA J*f f ER brador from Newfoundland, situated northeastward of the northwestern peninsula of the latter country, seems hardly so large as Miquelon, and is high, rugged, and barren, unin habited and apparently not habitable. Beneath the preci pitous rocks which line its coast, and against which the bil lows foam with tremendous fury, monstrous icebergs are often grounded, and form a strong contrast with black cliffe behind.