Chapter III: Part 3

It was a terrible night's work. He was sorry he had undertaken it; but having started he could not bear to give it up. Half the way was through the woods, and every noise he heard he thought was a wild beast coming to kill him, and even the piercing notes of the whippoorwill made his hair stand on end. When he passed a house the dogs were after him in full cry, and he spent the whole night in terror. Let us hope the caresses of his mother compensated him for this suffering.

The next year when his master had a job thirty miles distant, he frequently walked the distance on a hot summer's day, with his carpenter's tools upon his back. At that time light vehicles, or any kind of one-horse carriage, were very rarely kept in country places, and mechanics generally had to trudge to their place of work, carrying their tools with them. So passed the first years of his apprenticeship.

All this time he was thinking of quite another business,--that of clock-making,--which had been developed during his childhood near his father's house, by Eli Terry, the founder of the Yankee wooden-clock manufacture.

This ingenious Mr. Terry, with a small saw and a jack-knife, would cut out the wheels and works for twenty-five clocks during the winter, and, when the spring opened, he would sling three or four of them across the back of a horse, and keep going till he sold them, for about twenty-five dollars apiece. This was for the works only. When a farmer had bought the machinery of a clock for twenty-five dollars, he employed the village carpenter to make a case for it, which might cost ten or fifteen dollars more.

It was in this simple way that the country was supplied with those tall, old-fashioned clocks, of which almost every ancient farm-house still contains a specimen. The clock-case was sometimes built into the house like a pillar, and helped to support the upper story. Some of them were made by very clumsy workmen, out of the commonest timber, just planed in the roughest way, and contained wood enough for a pretty good-sized organ.

The clock business had fascinated Chauncey Jerome from his childhood, and he longed to work at it. His guardian dissuaded him. So many clocks were then making, he said, that in two or three years the whole country would be supplied, and then there would be no more business for a maker. This was the general opinion. At a training, one day, the boy overheard a group talking of Eli Terry's _folly_ in undertaking to make two hundred clocks all at once.

"He'll never live long enough to finish them," said one.

"If he should," said another, "he could not possibly sell so many. The very idea is ridiculous."

The boy was not convinced by these wise men of the East, and he lived to make and to sell two hundred thousand clocks in one year!

When his apprenticeship was a little more than half over, he told his master that if he would give him four months in the winter of each year, when business was dull, he would buy his own clothes. His master consenting, he went to Waterbury, Connecticut, and began to work making clock dials, and very soon got an insight into the art and mystery of clock-making.

The clock-makers of that day, who carried round their clock-movements upon a horse's back, often found it difficult to sell them in remote country places, because there was no carpenter near by competent to make a case. Two smart Yankees hired our apprentice to go with them to the distant State of New Jersey, for the express purpose of making cases for the clocks they sold. On this journey he first saw the city of New York. He was perfectly astonished at the bustle and confusion. He stood on the corner of Chatham and Pearl Streets for more than an hour, wondering why so many people were hurrying about so in every direction.

"What is going on?" said he, to a passer-by. "What's the excitement about?"

The man hurried on without noticing him; which led him to conclude that city people were not over polite.

The workmen were just finishing the interior of the City Hall, and he was greatly puzzled to understand how those winding stone stairs could be fixed without any visible means of support. In New Jersey he found another wonder. The people there kept Christmas more strictly than Sunday; a thing very strange to a child of the Puritans, who hardly knew what Christmas was.

Every winter added something to his knowledge of clock-making, and, soon after he was out of his apprenticeship, he bought some portions of clocks, a little mahogany, and began to put clocks together on his own account, with encouraging success from the beginning.

It was a great day with him when he received his first magnificent order from a Southern merchant for twelve wooden clocks at twelve dollars apiece! When they were done, he delivered them himself to his customer, and found it impossible to believe that he should actually receive so vast a sum as a hundred and forty-four dollars. He took the money with a trembling hand, and buttoned it up in his pocket. Then he felt an awful apprehension that some robbers might have heard of his expecting to receive this enormous amount, and would waylay him on the road home.

He worked but too steadily. He used to say that he loved to work as well as he did to eat, and that sometimes he would not go outside of his gate from one Sunday to the next. He soon began to make inventions and improvements. His business rapidly increased, though occasionally he had heavy losses and misfortunes.

His most important contribution to the business of clock-making was his substitution of brass for wood in the cheap clocks. He found that his wooden clocks, when they were transported by sea, were often spoiled by the swelling of the wooden wheels. One night, in a moment of extreme depression during the panic of 1837, the thought darted into his mind,--

"A cheap clock can be made of brass as well as wood!"

It kept him awake nearly all night. He began at once to carry out the idea. It gave an immense development to the business, because brass clocks could be exported to all parts of the world, and the cost of making them was greatly lessened by new machinery. It was Chauncey Jerome who learned how to make a pretty good brass clock for forty cents, and a good one for two dollars; and it was he who began their exportation to foreign lands. Clocks of his making ticked during his lifetime at Jerusalem, Saint Helena, Calcutta, Honolulu, and most of the other ends of the earth.

After making millions of clocks, and acquiring a large fortune, he retired from active business, leaving his splendid manufactory at New Haven to the management of others. They thought they knew more than the old man; they mismanaged the business terribly, and involved him in their own ruin. He was obliged to leave his beautiful home at seventy years of age, and seek employment at weekly wages--he who had given employment to three hundred men at once.

He scorned to be dependent. I saw and talked long with this good old man when he was working upon a salary, at the age of seventy-three, as superintendent of a large clock factory in Chicago. He did not pretend to be indifferent to the change in his position. He felt it acutely. He was proud of the splendid business he had created, and he lamented its destruction. He said it was one of his consolations to know that, in the course of his long life, he had never brought upon others the pains he was then enduring. He bore his misfortunes as a man should, and enjoyed the confidence and esteem of his new associates.

CAPTAIN PIERRE LACLEDE LIGUEST,

PIONEER.

The bridge which springs so lightly and so gracefully over the Mississippi at St. Louis is a truly wonderful structure. It often happens in this world that the work which is done best conceals the merit of the worker. All is finished so thoroughly and smoothly, and fulfills its purpose with so little jar and friction, that the difficulties overcome by the engineer become almost incredible. No one would suppose, while looking down upon the three steel arches of this exquisite bridge, that its foundations are one hundred and twenty feet below the surface of the water, and that its construction cost nine millions of dollars and six years of time. Its great height above the river is also completely concealed by the breadth of its span. The largest steamboat on the river passes under it at the highest stage of water, and yet the curve of the arches appears to have been selected merely for its pictorial effect.

It is indeed a noble and admirable work, an honor to the city and country, and, above all, to Captain James B. Eads, who designed and constructed it. The spectator who sees for the first time St. Louis, now covering as far as the eye can reach the great bend of the river on which it is built, the shore fringed with steamboats puffing black smoke, and the city glittering in the morning sun, beholds one of the most striking and animating spectacles which this continent affords.

Go back one hundred and twenty years. That bend was then covered with the primeval forest, and the only object upon it which betrayed the hand of man was a huge green mound, a hundred feet high, that had been thrown up ages before by some tribe which inhabited the spot before our Indians had appeared. All that region swarmed with fur-bearing animals, deer, bear, buffalo, and beaver. It is difficult to see how this continent ever could have been settled but for the fur trade. It was beaver skin which enabled the Pilgrim Fathers of New England to hold their own during the first fifty years of their settlement. It was in quest of furs that the pioneers pushed westward, and it was by the sale of furs that the frontier settlers were at first supplied with arms, ammunition, tools, and salt.

The fur trade also led to the founding of St. Louis. In the year 1763 a great fleet of heavy batteaux, loaded with the rude merchandise needed by trappers and Indians, approached the spot on which St. Louis stands. This fleet had made its way up the Mississippi with enormous difficulty and toil from New Orleans, and only reached the mouth of the Missouri at the end of the fourth month. It was commanded by Pierre Laclede Liguest, the chief partner in a company chartered to trade with the Indians of the Missouri River. He was a Frenchman, a man of great energy and executive force, and his company of hunters, trappers, mechanics, and farmers, were also French.

On his way up the river Captain Liguest had noticed this superb bend of land, high enough above the water to avoid the floods, and its surface only undulating enough for the purposes of a settlement. Having reached the mouth of the Muddy River (as they called the Missouri) in the month of December, and finding no place there well suited to his purpose, he dropped down the stream seventeen miles, and drove the prows of his boats into what is now the Levee of St. Louis. It was too late in the season to begin a settlement. But he "blazed" the trees to mark the spot, and he said to a young man of his company, Auguste Chouteau:--

"You will come here as soon as the river is free from ice, and will cause this place to be cleared, and form a settlement according to the plan I shall give you."

The fleet fell down the river to the nearest French settlement, Fort de Chartres. Captain Liguest said to the commander of this fort on arriving:--

"I have found a situation where I intend to establish a settlement which in the future will become one of the most beautiful cities in America."

These are not imaginary words. Auguste Chouteau, who was selected to form the settlement, kept a diary, part of which is now preserved in the Mercantile Library at St. Louis, and in it this saying of Captain Liguest is recorded. So, the next spring he dispatched young Chouteau with a select body of thirty mechanics and hunters to the site of the proposed settlement.

"You will go," said he, "and disembark at the place where we marked the trees. You will begin to clear the place and build a large shed to contain the provisions and tools and some little cabins to lodge the men."

On the fifteenth of February, 1764, the party arrived, and the next morning began to build their shed. Liguest named the settlement St. Louis, in honor of the patron saint of the royal house of France--Louis XV. being then upon the throne. All went well with the settlement, and it soon became the seat of the fur trade for an immense region of country, extending gradually from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains.

The French lived more peacefully with the Indians than any other people who assisted to settle this continent, and the reason appears to have been that they became almost Indian themselves. They built their huts in the wigwam fashion, with poles stuck in the ground. They imitated the ways and customs of the Indians, both in living and in hunting. They went on hunting expeditions with Indians, wore the same garments, and learned to live on meat only, as Indian hunting parties generally did. But the circumstance which most endeared the French to the Indians was their marrying the daughters of the chiefs, which made the Indians regard them as belonging to their tribe. Besides this, they accommodated themselves to the Indian character, and learned how to please them. A St. Louis fur trader, who was living a few years ago in the ninetieth year of his age, used to speak of the ease with which an influential chief could be conciliated.

"I could always," said he, "make the principal chief of a tribe my friend by a piece of vermilion, a pocket looking-glass, some flashy-looking beads, and a knife. These things made him a puppet in my hands."

Even if a valuable horse had been stolen, a chief, whose friendship had been won in this manner, would continue to scold the tribe until the horse was brought back. The Indians, too, were delighted with the Frenchman's fiddle, his dancing, his gayety of manner, and even with the bright pageantry of his religion. It was when the settlement was six years old that the inhabitants of St. Louis, a very few hundreds in number, gathered to take part in the consecration of a little church, made very much like the great council wigwam of the Indians, the logs being placed upright, and the interstices filled with mortar. This church stood near the river, almost on the very site of the present cathedral. Mass was said, and the Te Deum was chanted. At the first laying out of the village, Captain Liguest set apart the whole block as a site for the church, and it remains church property to this day.

It is evident from Chouteau's diary that Pierre Laclede Liguest, though he had able and energetic assistants, was the soul of the enterprise, and the real founder of St. Louis. He was one of that stock of Frenchmen who put the imprint of their nation, never to be effaced, upon the map of North America--a kind of Frenchman unspeakably different from those who figured in the comic opera and the masquerade ball of the late corrupt and effeminating empire. He was a genial and generous man, who rewarded his followers bountifully, and took the lead in every service of difficulty and danger. While on a visit to New Orleans he died of one of the diseases of the country, and was buried on the shore near the mouth of the Arkansas River.

His executor and chief assistant, Auguste Chouteau, born at New Orleans in 1739, lived one hundred years, not dying till 1839. There are many people in St. Louis who remember him. A very remarkable coincidence was, that his brother, Pierre Chouteau, born in New Orleans in 1749, died in St. Louis in 1849, having also lived just one hundred years. Both of these brothers were identified with St. Louis from the beginning, where they lived in affluence and honor for seventy years, and where their descendants still reside.

The growth of St. Louis was long retarded by the narrowness and tyranny of the Spanish government, to which the French ceded the country about the time when St. Louis was settled. But in 1804 it was transferred to the United States, and from that time its progress has been rapid and almost uninterrupted. When President Jefferson's agent took possession, there was no post-office, no ferry over the river, no newspaper, no hotel, no Protestant church, and no school. Nor could any one hold land who was not a Catholic. Instantly, and as a matter of course, all restricting laws were swept away; and before two years had passed there was a ferry, a post-office, a newspaper, a Protestant church, a hotel, and two schools, one French and one English.

ISRAEL PUTNAM.

It is strange that so straightforward and transparent a character as "Old Put" should have become the subject of controversy. Too much is claimed for him by some disputants, and much too little is conceded to him by others. He was certainly as far from being a rustic booby as he was from being a great general.

Conceive him, first, as a thriving, vigorous, enterprising Connecticut farmer, thirty years of age, cultivating with great success his own farm of five hundred and fourteen acres, all paid for. Himself one of a family of twelve children, and belonging to a prolific race which has scattered Putnams all over the United States, besides leaving an extraordinary number in New England, he had married young at his native Salem, and established himself soon after in the northeastern corner of Connecticut. At that period, 1740, Connecticut was to Massachusetts what Colorado is to New York at present; and thither, accordingly, this vigorous young man and his young wife early removed, and hewed out a farm from the primeval woods.

He was just the man for a pioneer. His strength of body was extraordinary, and he had a power of sustained exertion more valuable even than great strength. Nothing is more certain than that he was an enterprising and successful farmer, who introduced new fruits, better breeds of cattle, and improved implements.

There is still to be seen on his farm a long avenue of ancient apple trees, which, the old men of the neighborhood affirm, were set out by Israel Putnam one hundred and forty years ago. The well which he dug is still used. Coming to the place with considerable property inherited from his father (for the Putnams were a thriving race from the beginning), it is not surprising that he should have become one of the leading farmers in a county of farmers.

At the same time he was not a studious man, and had no taste for intellectual enjoyments. He was not then a member of the church. He never served upon the school committee. There was a Library Association at the next village, but he did not belong to it. For bold riding, skillful hunting, wood-chopping, hay-tossing, ploughing, it was hard to find his equal; but, in the matter of learning, he could write legibly, read well enough, spell in an independent manner, and not much more.

With regard to the wolf story, which rests upon tradition only, it is not improbable, and there is no good reason to doubt it. Similar deeds have been done by brave backwoodsmen from the beginning, and are still done within the boundaries of the United States every year. The story goes, that when he had been about two years on his new farm, the report was brought in one morning that a noted she-wolf of the neighborhood had killed seventy of his sheep and goats, besides wounding many lambs and kids. This wolf, the last of her race in that region, had long eluded the skill of every hunter. Upon seeing the slaughter of his flock, the young farmer, it appears, entered into a compact with five of his neighbors to hunt the pernicious creature by turns until they had killed her. The animal was at length tracked to her den, a cave extending deep into a rocky hill. The tradition is, that Putnam, with a rope around his body, a torch in one hand, and rifle in the other, went twice into the cave, and the second time shot the wolf dead, and was drawn out by the people, wolf and all. An exploit of this nature gave great celebrity in an outlying county in the year 1742. Meanwhile he continued to thrive, and one of the old-fashioned New England families of ten children gathered about him. As they grew towards maturity, he bought a share in the Library Association, built a pew for his family in the church, and comported himself in all ways as became a prosperous farmer and father of a numerous family.

So passed his life until he reached the age of thirty-seven, when he already had a boy fifteen years of age, and was rich in all the wealth which Connecticut then possessed. The French war broke out--the war which decided the question whether the French or the English race should possess North America. His reputation was such that the legislature of Connecticut appointed him at once a captain, and he had no difficulty in enlisting a company of the young men of his county, young farmers or the sons of farmers. He gained great note as a scouter and ranger, rendering such important service in this way to the army that the legislature made him a special grant of "fifty Spanish milled dollars" as an honorable gift. He was famous also for Yankee ingenuity. A colonial newspaper relates an anecdote illustrative of this. The British general was sorely perplexed by the presence of a French man-of-war commanding a piece of water which it was necessary for him to cross.

"General," said Putnam, "that ship must be taken."

"Aye," replied the general, "I would give the world if she was taken."

"I will take her," said Putnam.

"How?" asked the general.

"Give me some wedges, a beetle, and a few men of my own choice."

When night came, Putnam rowed under the vessel's stern, and drove the wedges between the rudder and the ship. In the morning she was seen with her sails flapping helplessly in the middle of the lake, and she was soon after blown ashore and captured.

Among other adventures, Putnam was taken prisoner by the Indians, and carried to his grave great scars of the wounds inflicted by the savages. He served to the very end of the war, pursuing the enemy even into the tropics, and assisting at the capture of Havana. He returned home, after nine years of almost continuous service, with the rank of colonel, and such a reputation as made him the hero of Connecticut, as Washington was the hero of Virginia at the close of the same war. At any time of public danger requiring a resort to arms, he would be naturally looked to by the people of Connecticut to take the command.

Eleven peaceful years he now spent at home. His wife died, leaving an infant a year old. He joined the church; he married again; he cultivated his farm; he told his war stories. The Stamp Act excitement occurred in 1765, when Putnam joined the Sons of Liberty, and called upon the governor of the colony as a deputy from them.

"What shall I do," asked the governor, "if the stamped paper should be sent to me by the king's authority?"

"Lock it up," said Putnam, "until we visit you again."

"And what will you do with it?"

"We shall expect you to give us the key of the room where it is deposited; and if you think fit, in order to screen yourself from blame, you may forewarn us upon our peril not to enter the room."

"And what will you do afterwards?"

"Send it safely back again."

"But if I should refuse you admission?"

"Your house will be level with the dust in five minutes."

Fortunately, the stamped paper never reached Connecticut, and the act was repealed soon after.

The eventful year, 1774, arrived. Putnam was fifty-six years of age, a somewhat portly personage, weighing two hundred pounds, with a round, full countenance, adorned by curly locks, now turning gray--the very picture of a hale, hearty, good-humored, upright and downright country gentleman. News came that the port of Boston was closed, its business suspended, its people likely to be in want of food. The farmers of the neighborhood contributed a hundred and twenty-five sheep, which Putnam himself drove to Boston, sixty miles off, where he had a cordial reception by the people, and was visited by great numbers of them at the house of Dr. Warren, where he lived. The polite people of Boston were delighted with the scarred old hero, and were pleased to tell anecdotes of his homely ways and fervent, honest zeal. He mingled freely, too, with the British officers, who _chaffed_ him, as the modern saying is, about his coming down to Boston to fight. They told him that twenty great ships and twenty regiments would come unless the people submitted.

"If they come," said Putnam, "I am ready to treat them as enemies."

One day in the following spring, April twentieth, while he was ploughing in one of his fields with a yoke of oxen driven by his son, Daniel, a boy of fifteen, an express reached him giving him the news of the battle of Lexington, which had occurred the day before. Daniel Putnam has left a record of what his father did on this occasion.

"He loitered not," wrote Daniel, "but left me, the driver of his team, to unyoke it in the furrow, and not many days after to follow him to camp."

Colonel Putnam mounted a horse, and set off instantly to alarm the officers of militia in the neighboring towns. Returning home a few hours after, he found hundreds of minute-men assembled, armed and equipped, who had chosen him for their commander. He accepted the command, and, giving them orders to follow, he pushed on without dismounting, rode the same horse all night, and reached Cambridge next morning at sunrise, still wearing the checked shirt which he had had on when ploughing in his field. As Mr. Bancroft remarks, he brought to his country's service an undaunted courage and a devoted heart. His services during the Revolution are known to almost every reader. Every one seems to have liked him, for he had a very happy turn for humor, sang a good song, and was a very cheerful old gentleman.

In 1789, after four years of vigorous and useful service, too arduous for his age, he suffered a paralytic stroke, which obliged him to leave the army. He lived, however, to see his country free and prosperous, surviving to the year 1790, when he died, aged seventy-three. I saw his commission as major-general hanging in the house of one of his grandsons, Colonel A. P. Putnam, at Nashville, some years ago. He has descendants in every State.

GEORGE FLOWER.

PIONEER.

Travelers from old Europe are surprised to find in Chicago such an institution as an Historical Society. What can a city of yesterday, they ask, find to place in its archives, beyond the names of the first settlers, and the erection of the first elevator? They forget that the newest settlement of civilized men inherits and possesses the whole past of our race, and that no community has so much need to be instructed by History as one which has little of its own. Nor is it amiss for a new commonwealth to record its history as it makes it, and store away the records of its vigorous infancy for the entertainment of its mature age.

The first volume issued by the Chicago Historical Society contains an account of what is still called the "English Settlement," in Edwards County, Illinois, founded in 1817 by two wealthy English farmers, Morris Birkbeck and George Flower. These gentlemen sold out all their possessions in England, and set out in search of the prairies of the Great West, of which they had heard in the old country. They were not quite sure there were any prairies, for all the settled parts of the United States, they knew, had been covered with the dense primeval forest. The existence of the prairies rested upon the tales of travelers. So George Flower, in the spring of 1816, set out in advance to verify the story, bearing valuable letters of introduction, one from General La Fayette to ex-President Jefferson.

With plenty of money in his pocket and enjoying every other advantage, he was nearly two years in merely _finding_ the prairies. First, he was fifty days in crossing the ocean, and he spent six weeks in Philadelphia, enjoying the hospitality of friends. The fourth month of his journey had nearly elapsed before he had fairly mounted his horse and started on his westward way.

It is a pity there is not another new continent to be explored and settled, because the experience gained in America would so much facilitate the work. Upon looking over such records as that of George Flower's History we frequently meet with devices and expedients of great value in their time and place, but which are destined soon to be numbered among the Lost Arts. For example, take the mode of saddling and loading a horse for a ride of fifteen hundred miles, say, from the Atlantic to the Far West, or back again. It was a matter of infinite importance to the rider, for every part of the load was subjected to desperate pulls and wrenches, and the breaking of a strap, at a critical moment in crossing a river or climbing a steep, might precipitate both horse and rider to destruction.

On the back of the horse was laid, first of all, a soft and thin blanket, which protected the animal in some degree against the venomous insects that abounded on the prairies, the attacks of which could sometimes madden the gentlest horse. Upon this was placed the saddle, which was large, and provided in front with a high pommel, and behind with a pad to receive part of the lading. The saddle was a matter of great importance, as well as its girths and crupper strap, all of which an experienced traveler subjected to most careful examination. Every stitch was looked at, and the strength of all the parts repeatedly tested.

Over the saddle--folded twice, if not three times--was a large, thick, and fine blanket, as good a one as the rider could afford, which was kept in its place by a broad surcingle. On the pad behind the saddle were securely fastened a cloak and umbrella, rolled together as tight as possible and bound with two straps. Next we have to consider the saddle bags, stuffed as full as they could hold, each bag being exactly of the same weight and size as the other. As the horseman put into them the few articles of necessity which they would hold he would balance them frequently, to see that one did not outweigh the other even by half a pound. If this were neglected, the bags would slip from one side to the other, graze the horse's leg, and start him off in a "furious kicking gallop." The saddle-bags were slung across the saddle under the blanket, and kept in their place by two loops through which the stirrup leathers passed.

So much for the horse. The next thing was for the rider to put on his leggings, which were pieces of cloth about a yard square, folded round the leg from the knee to the ankle, and fastened with pins and bands of tape. These leggings received the mud and water splashed up by the horse, and kept the trousers dry. Thus prepared, the rider proceeded to mount, which was by no means an easy matter, considering what was already upon the horse's back. The horse was placed as near as possible to a stump, from which, with a "pretty wide stride and fling of the leg," the rider would spring into his seat. It was so difficult to mount and dismount, that experienced travelers would seldom get off until the party halted for noon, and not again until it was time to camp.

Women often made the journey on horseback, and bore the fatigue of it about as well as men. Instead of a riding-habit, they wore over their ordinary dress a long skirt of dark-colored material, and tied their bonnets on with a large handkerchief over the top, which served to protect the face and ears from the weather.

The packing of the saddle made the seat more comfortable, and even safer, for both men and women. The rider, in fact, was seldom thrown unless the whole load came off at once. Thus mounted, a party of experienced horsemen and horsewomen would average their thirty miles a day for a month at a time, providing no accident befel them. They were, nevertheless, liable to many accidents and vexatious delays. A horse falling lame would delay the party. Occasionally there would be a stampede of all the horses, and days lost in finding them.

The greatest difficulty of all was the overflowing waters. No reader can have forgotten the floods in the western country in the spring of 1884, when every brook was a torrent and every river a deluge. Imagine a party of travelers making their westward way on horseback at such a time, before there was even a raft ferry on any river west of the Alleghanies, and when all the valleys would be covered with water. It was by no means unusual for a party to be detained a month waiting for the waters of a large river to subside, and it was a thing at some seasons of daily occurrence for all of them to be soused up to their necks in water.

Many of the important fords, too, could only be crossed by people who knew their secret. I received once myself directions for crossing a ford in South Carolina something like this: I was told to go straight in four lengths of the horse; then "turn square to the right" and go two lengths; and finally "strike for the shore, slanting a little down the stream." Luckily, I had some one with me more expert in fords than I was, and through his friendly guidance managed to flounder through.

Between New York and Baltimore, in 1775, there were more than twenty streams to be forded, and six wide rivers or inlets to be ferried over. We little think, as we glide over these streams now, that the smallest of them, in some seasons, presented difficulties to our grandfathers going southward on horseback.

The art of camping out was wonderfully well understood by the early pioneers. Women were a great help in making the camp comfortable. As the Pilgrim Fathers may be said to have discovered the true method of settling the sea-shore, so the Western pioneer found the best way of traversing and subduing the interior wilderness. The secret in both cases was to get _the aid of women and children_! They supplied men with motive, did a full half of the labor, and made it next to impossible to turn back. Mr. Flower makes a remark in connection with this subject, the truth of which will be attested by many.

"It is astonishing," he says, "how soon we are restored from fatigue caused by exercise in the open air. Debility is of much longer duration from labor in factories, stores, and in rooms warmed by stoves. Hail, snow, thunder storms, and drenching rains are all _restoratives_ to health and spirits."

Often, when the company would be all but tired out by a long day's ride in hot weather, and the line stretched out three or four miles, a good soaking rain would restore their spirits at once. Nor did a plunge into the stream, which would wet every fibre of their clothing, do them any harm. They would ride on in the sun, and let their clothes dry in the natural way.

It must be owned, however, that some of the winter experiences of travelers in the prairie country were most severe. In the forest a fire can be made and some shelter can be found. But imagine a party on the prairie in the midst of a driving snowstorm, overtaken by night, the temperature at zero. Even in these circumstances knowledge was safety. Each man would place his saddle on the ground and sit upon it, covering his shoulders and head with his blanket, and holding his horse by the bridle. In this way the human travelers usually derived warmth and shelter enough from the horses to keep them from freezing to death. Another method was to tie their horses, spread a blanket on the ground, and sit upon it as close together as they could.

Sometimes, indeed, a whole party would freeze together in a mass; but commonly all escaped without serious injury, and in some instances invalids were restored to health by exposure which we should imagine would kill a healthy man.

When George Flower rode westward in 1816, Lancaster, Pa., was the largest inland town of the United States, and Dr. Priestley's beautiful abode at Sunbury on the Susquehanna was still on the outside of the "Far West." He had more trouble in getting to Pittsburg than he would now have in going round the world. In the Alleghany Mountains he lost his way, and was rescued by the chance of finding a stray horse which he caught and mounted, and was carried by it to the only cabin in the region. The owner of this cabin was "a poor Irishman with a coat so darned, patched, and tattered as to be quite a curiosity."

"How I cherished him!" says the traveler. "No angel's visit could have pleased me so well. He pointed out to me the course and showed me into a path."

Pittsburg was already a smoky town. Leaving it soon, he rode on westward to Cincinnati, then a place of five or six thousand inhabitants, but growing rapidly. Even so far west as Cincinnati he could still learn nothing of the prairies.

"Not a person that I saw," he declares, "knew anything about them. I shrank from the idea of settling in the midst of a wood of heavy timber, to hack and to hew my way to a little farm, ever bounded by a wall of gloomy forest."

Then he rode across Kentucky, where he was struck, as every one was and is, by the luxuriant beauty of the blue-grass farms. He dwells upon the difficulty and horror of fording the rivers at that season of the year. Some of his narrow escapes made such a deep impression upon his mind that he used to dream of them fifty years after. He paid a visit to old Governor Shelby of warlike renown, one of the heroes of the frontier, and there at last he got some news of the prairies! He says:

"It was at Governor Shelby's house (in Lincoln County, Ky.) that I met the first person who confirmed me in the existence of the prairies."

This informant was the Governor's brother, who had just come from the Mississippi River across the glorious prairies of Illinois to the Ohio. The information was a great relief. He was sure now that he had left his native land on no fool's errand, the victim of a traveler's lying tale. Being thus satisfied that there _were_ prairies which could be found whenever they were wanted, he suspended the pursuit.

He had been then seven months from home, and November being at hand, too late to explore an unknown country, he changed his course, and went off to visit Mr. Jefferson at his estate of Poplar Forest in Virginia, upon which the Natural Bridge is situated. Passing through Nashville on his way, he saw General Andrew Jackson at a horse race. He describes the hero of New Orleans as an elderly man, "lean and lank, bronzed in complexion, deep marked countenance, grisly-gray hair, and a restless, fiery eye." He adds:--

"Jackson had a horse on the course which was beaten that day. The recklessness of his bets, his violent gesticulations and imprecations, outdid all competition. If I had been told that he was to be a future President of the United States, I should have thought it a very strange thing."

There are still a few old men, I believe, at Nashville who remember General Jackson's demeanor on the race ground, and they confirm the record of Mr. Flower. After a ride of a thousand miles or so, he presented his letter of introduction to Mr. Jefferson at Poplar Forest, and had a cordial reception. The traveler describes the house as resembling a French château, with octagon rooms, doors of polished oak, lofty ceilings, and large mirrors. The ex-President's form, he says, was of somewhat majestic proportions, more than six feet in height; his manners simple, kind, and polite; his dress a dark pepper-and-salt coat, cut in the old Quaker fashion, with one row of large metal buttons, knee-breeches, gray worsted stockings, and shoes fastened by large metal buckles, all quite in the old style. His two grand-daughters, Misses Randolph, were living with him then. Mr. Jefferson soon after returned to his usual abode, Monticello, and there Mr. Flower spent the greater part of the winter, enjoying most keenly the evening conversations of the ex-President, who delighted to talk of the historic scenes in which he was for fifty years a conspicuous actor.

George Flower and his party would have settled near Monticello, perhaps, but for the system of slavery, which perpetuated a wasteful mode of farming, and disfigured the beautiful land with dilapidation.

He had, meanwhile, sent home word that prairies existed in America, and in the spring of 1817 his partner in the enterprise, Morris Birkbeck, and his family of nine, came out from England, and they all started westward in search of the prairies. They went by stage to Pittsburg, where they bought horses, mounted them and continued their journey, men, ladies, and boys, a dozen people in all. The journey was not unpleasant, most of them being persons of education and refinement, with three agreeable young ladies among them, two of them being daughters of Mr. Birkbeck, and Miss Andrews, their friend and companion.

All went well and happily during the journey until Mr. Birkbeck, a widower of fifty-four with grown daughters, made an offer of marriage to Miss Andrews, aged twenty-five. It was an embarrassing situation. She was constrained to decline the offer, and as they were traveling in such close relations, the freedom and enjoyment of the journey were seriously impaired. Then Mr. Flower, who was a widower also, but in the prime of life, proposed to the young lady. She accepted him, and they were soon after married at Vincennes, the rejected Birkbeck officiating as father of the bride.

But this was not finding the prairies. At length, toward the close of the second summer, they began to meet with people who had seen prairies, and finally their own eyes were greeted with the sight. One day, after a ride of seven hours in extreme heat, bruised and torn by the brushwood, exhausted and almost in despair, suddenly a beautiful prairie was disclosed to their view. It was an immense expanse stretching away in profound repose beneath the light of an afternoon summer sun, surrounded by forest and adorned with clumps of mighty oaks, "the whole presenting a magnificence of park scenery complete from the hand of nature." The writer adds: "For once, the reality came up to the picture of the imagination."

If the reader supposes that their task was now substantially accomplished, he is very much mistaken. After a good deal of laborious search, they chose a site for their settlement in Edwards County, Illinois, and bought a considerable tract; after which Mr. Flower went to England to close up the affairs of the two families, and raise the money to pay for their land and build their houses. They named their town Albion. It has enjoyed a safe and steady prosperity ever since, and has been in some respects a model town to that part of Illinois.

The art of founding a town must of course soon cease to be practiced. It is curious to note how all the institutions of civilized life were established in their order. First was built a large log-cabin that would answer as a tavern and blacksmith's shop, the first requisites being to get the horses shod, and the riders supplied with whiskey. Then came other log-cabins, as they were needed, which pioneers would undertake to build for arriving emigrants for twenty-five dollars apiece. Very soon one of the people would try, for the first time in his life, to preach a sermon on Sundays, and as soon as there were children enough in the neighborhood, one of the settlers, unable to cope with the labors of agriculture, would undertake to teach them, and a log-cabin would be built or appropriated for the purpose.

Mr. Flower reports that, as soon as the school was established, civilization was safe. Some boys and some parents would hold out against it for a while, but all of them at last either join the movement or remove further into the wilderness.

"Occasionally," he says, "will be seen a boy, ten or twelve years old, leaning against a door-post intently gazing in upon the scholars at their lessons; after a time he slowly and moodily goes away. He feels his exclusion. He can no longer say: 'I am as good as you.' He must go to school or dive deeper into the forest."

All this is passing. Already it begins to read like ancient history.

George Flower survived until March, 1862, when he died at a good old age. Certainly the Historical Society of Chicago has done well to publish the record he left behind him.

EDWARD COLES,

NOBLEST OF THE PIONEERS, AND HIS GREAT SPEECH.

When James Madison came to the presidency in 1809, he followed the example of his predecessor, Mr. Jefferson, in the selection of his private secretary. Mr. Jefferson chose Captain Meriwether Lewis, the son of one of his Virginia neighbors, whom he had known from his childhood. Mr. Madison gave the appointment to Edward Coles, the son of a family friend of Albermarle County, Va., who had recently died, leaving a large estate in land and slaves to his children.

Edward Coles, a graduate of William and Mary college, was twenty-three years of age when he entered the White House as a member of the President's family. He was a young man after James Madison's own heart, of gentle manners, handsome person, and singular firmness of character. In the correspondence both of Jefferson and Madison several letters can be found addressed to him which show the very high estimation in which he was held by those eminent men.

Among the many young men who have held the place of private secretary in the presidential mansion, Edward Coles was one of the most interesting. I know not which ought to rank highest in our esteem, the wise and gallant Lewis, who explored for us the Western wilderness, or Edward Coles, one of the rare men who know how to surrender, for conscience' sake, home, fortune, ease, and good repute.

While he was still in college he became deeply interested in the question, whether men could rightfully hold property in men. At that time the best of the educated class at the South were still abolitionists in a romantic or sentimental sense, just as Queen Marie Antoinette was a republican during the American Revolution. Here and there a young man like George Wythe had set free his slaves and gone into the profession of the law. With the great majority, however, their disapproval of slavery was only an affair of the intellect, which led to no practical results. It was not such with Edward Coles. The moment you look at the portrait given in the recent sketch of his life by Mr. E. B. Washburne, you perceive that he was a person who might be slow to make up his mind, but who, when he had once discovered the right course, could never again be at peace with himself until he had followed it.

While at college he read everything on the subject of slavery that fell in his way, and he studied it in the light of the Declaration of Independence, which assured him that men are born free and equal and endowed with certain natural rights which are inalienable. He made up his mind, while he was still a student, that it was wrong to hold slaves, and he resolved that he would neither hold them nor live in a State which permitted slaves to be held. He was determined, however, to do nothing rashly. One reason which induced him to accept the place offered him by Mr. Madison was his desire of getting a knowledge of the remoter parts of the Union, in order to choose the place where he could settle his slaves most advantageously.

While he was yet a member of the presidential household, he held that celebrated correspondence with Mr. Jefferson, in which he urged the ex-President to devote the rest of his life to promoting the abolition of slavery. Mr. Jefferson replied that the task was too arduous for a man who had passed his seventieth year. It was like bidding old Priam buckle on the armor of Hector.

"This enterprise," he added, "is for the young, for those who can follow it up and bear it through to its consummation. It shall have all my prayers and these are the only weapons of an old man. But, in the mean time, are you right in abandoning this property, and your country with it? I think not."

Mr. Jefferson endeavored to dissuade the young man from his project of removal. Mr. Coles, however, was not to be convinced. After serving for six years as private secretary, and fulfilling a special diplomatic mission to Russia, he withdrew to his ancestral home in Virginia, and prepared to lead forth his slaves to the State of Illinois, then recently admitted into the Union, but still a scarcely broken expanse of virgin prairie. He could not lawfully emancipate his slaves in Virginia, and it was far from his purpose to turn them loose in the wilderness. He was going with them, and to stay with them until they were well rooted in the new soil.

All his friends and relations opposed his scheme; nor had he even the approval of the slaves themselves, for they knew nothing whatever of his intention. He had been a good master, and they followed him with blind faith, supposing that he was merely going to remove, as they had seen other planters remove, from an exhausted soil to virgin lands. Placing his slaves in the charge of one of their number, a mulatto man who had already made the journey to Illinois with his master, he started them in wagons on their long journey in April, 1819, over the Alleghany Mountains to a point on the Monongahela River. There he bought two large flat-bottomed boats, upon which he embarked his whole company, with their horses, wagons, baggage, and implements. His pilot proving a drunkard, he was obliged to take the command himself, upon reaching Pittsburg.