Chapter V: Preface: To Volume XXI (4)

When we arrived at the town of Independence, Dr. Jacob Wyeth, Palmer, Styles, and myself bought a canoe, being tired of travelling by land, and impatient to get on, and this was the last of my money except a single six-cent piece. A thick fog prevented our early departure, as it would be dangerous to proceed on account of the snags and sawyers in the river. To pass away the tedious time, I strolled out around the town, and lost my direct way back. At length the fog cleared off, and after my companions had waited for me an hour, they pushed off and left me behind! They, be sure, left word that they would wait for me at the next town, Boonsville,[62] twenty miles' distance. I hurried, however, as fast I could five miles down the banks of the river; when, finding that I could not overtake them, and being fatigued by running, I gave over the chase in despair. I was sadly perplexed, and vexed, at what I conceived worse than savage usage. In this state of mind, I saw a small skiff, with a pair of oars, when an heroic idea came into my half-crazed brain, and feeling my absolute necessities, I acted like certain ancient and some modern heroes, and jumped into the boat, cast off her painter, and pulled away for dear life down the stream. {69} The owner of the boat discovered me when not much more than a quarter of a mile on my way. He and another man got into a canoe and rowed after me, and gained upon me; on perceiving which, I laid out all my strength, and although two to one, I distanced them, and they soon saw they could not overtake me. When I started it was twelve o'clock, and I got to the next town, Boonsville, the sun half an hour high,--the distance about twenty miles. When my skiff struck the shore my pursuers were about twenty rods behind me. I ran into the first barn of a tavern I could reach. They soon raised the neighbors, and placed a watch around the barn, one side of which opened into a cornfield. In searching for me they more than once trod over me, but the thickness of the hay prevented them from feeling me. I knew the severe effects of their laws, by which those who were too poor to pay the fine were to atone for their poverty by stripes, which were reckoned to be worth a dollar a stripe in that cheap country; and hence I lay snug in the hay two nights and one day without any thing to eat. Hunger at length forced me from my hiding-place, when I went into the tavern, where I found Dr. Jacob Wyeth, Walter Palmer, and Styles. I told the landlord I was starving for want of food, and he gave me supper; and then I went back into the barn again, where I slept that night.

[62] Boonville was the successor of Franklin as the metropolis of
central Missouri. The site was first settled by the Cole family
in 1810, laid out as a town in 1817, and made the seat of Cooper
County upon the latter's erection in 1818. Its period of greatest
prosperity was before the building of the railroad (1830-40), when
it was the shipping point for northern Arkansas and southwest
Missouri. It had a population in 1900 of 4,377.--ED.

The next morning I went into the tavern again, and there I found my pursuers, and they found their prisoner, whom they soon put under the custody of two constables, who ordered me breakfast, which having eaten with a good relish, I watched my opportunity, while they were standing thick {70} around the bar, and crept unobserved out of the back-door into the extensive cornfield, and thence into the barn window out of which they threw manure, and regained my snug hiding-hole, where I remained one day and one night more. I now and then could see the constables and their _posse_ prowling about the barn, through a crevice in the boards. In the midst of my fears, I was amused with the solemn, and concernful phizes of the two constables, and one or two others. In the morning very early, I ventured out again, and ran down to the river; and there spying a boat, and feeling heroic, I jumped into her and pushed across the river, and landed on the opposite bank, so as to elude the pursuit of the authorities, who I knew would be after me on the right bank of the river, while I marched on the left. When I came to the ferry near St. Louis, I had only a six-cent piece, which the ferryman took for his full fare which was twelve cents, and so I got safe to St. Louis, but with scarcely clothing enough for decency, not to mention comfort: and yet I kept up a good heart, and never once despaired. My companions arrived a day before me; they on Thursday, I on Friday, at four o'clock in the afternoon; they in the steam-boat, like gentlemen, while I, the youngest in the whole Oregon company, like a runaway. But I do not regret the difference, seeing I have a story worth telling, and worth hearing.

Where to get a lodging that night I did not know, nor where to obtain a morsel of bread. I went up to a large tavern, and asked permission of the keeper to lodge in his barn that night, but he sternly refused. I then went to the other tavern, and made the like request, when the landlord {71} granted it, saying that he never refused a man sleeping in his barn who was too poor to pay for a lodging in his house. I wish I knew his name. I turned in and had a very good night's rest. Should any one enquire how I came to leave my old companions, and they me, I need only say that I had a very serious quarrel with one of them, even to blows; and with that one too who ought to have been the last to treat me with neglect; "and further the deponent saith not."

The next morning I went round in search of work, but no one seemed disposed to hire me; nor do I much wonder at it; for in truth I was so ragged and dirty, that I had nothing to recommend me; and I suffered more depression of spirits during the following six days of my sojourn at St. Louis, than in any part of my route. The steam-boats refused me and Dr. Wyeth started off for New Orleans before I could see him. Palmer let himself by the month on board a steam-boat running between St. Louis and Independence, while I was left alone at the former place six days without employ, victuals, or decent clothing. I could not bear to go to people's doors to beg; but I went on board steam-boats and begged for food. I was such a picture of wretchedness that I did not wonder they refused to hire me. My dress was buck-skin moccasins, and pantaloons; the remains of a shirt I put on in the Rocky Mountains, the remnants of a kersey waistcoat which I had worn ever since I left Cambridge, and a hat I had worn all the time from Boston, but without any coat whatever, or socks, or stockings; and to add to the wretchedness of my appearance, I was very dirty, and I could not help it. My looks drew the attention of a great many spectators. I thought {72} very hard of it then, but I have since reflected, and must say that when people saw a strong young man of eighteen in high health, and yet so miserable in appearance, it was natural in them to conclude that he must be some criminal escaped from justice, or some vagabond suffering under the just effects of his own crimes.

At length, wearied out by my ill fortune, I plucked up courage, and went to the Constitution steam-boat, Captain Tufts, of Charlestown, near Boston, and told him my name and family; and detailed to him my sufferings, and said that he _must_ give me a passage, and I would work for it. To my great joy he consented, and he gave me shirt, pantaloons, &c.; and I acted at a _fireman_, or one who feeds the fire with pine wood under the steam-boilers. I forbear narrating the particulars of my sufferings for want of food during the six days I tarried at St. Louis. Suffice it to say, that I was in a condition of starvation, and all owing to my wretched appearance. When I at times went on board the steam-boats, I was glad to scrape up any thing after the sailors and firemen had done eating. At length I obtained employ in the steam-boat Constitution, and a passage to New-Orleans, on the condition of acting as one of the firemen, there being twelve in all, with five men as sailors, and two hundred and forty passengers, party emigrants, but chiefly men belonging to the settlements on the Mississippi, going down to Natchez, and to New-Orleans to work. We tarried one night at the Natchez; but soon after we left it the _cholera_ broke out among the passengers, eighty of whom died before we reached New-Orleans, and two of our own firemen. A most shocking scene followed.

{73} I felt discouraged. My miseries seemed endless. After trying day after day in vain to get a passage in a steam-boat, I was made happy in procuring one, though I paid for it, by working as a fireman, the hardest and most disagreeable occupation on board; still I was contented, as I had victuals enough to eat; and yet, after all, I saw men perishing every minute about me, and thrown into the river like so many dead hogs. It is an unexaggerated fact that I witnessed more misery in the space of eight months than most old men experience in a long life.

On arriving at New-Orleans, Captain Tufts sent off every man of the passengers, leaving those only who belonged to the boat. He gave me shirts and other clothing, and offered me twenty dollars a month, if I would go back to St. Louis with him. I remained on board about a week; and so desirous was I to get home, that I preferred going ashore, although I knew that the yellow fever and black vomit, as well as cholera were committing great havoc in the city. The shops, stores, taverns, and even the _gambling-houses_, were shut up, and people were dying in-doors, and out of doors, much faster than they could be buried. More white people were seized with it than black; but when the latter were attacked, more died than the former. The negroes sunk under the disorder at once. When a negro gets very sick, he loses all his spirits, and refuses all remedies. He wishes to die, and it is no wonder, if he believes that he shall go into a pleasant country where there are no white men or women.

I soon got full employ as a grave-digger, at two dollars a day, and could have got twice that sum had I been informed of the true state of things. In {74} the first three days we dug a separate grave for each person; but we soon found that we could not clear the hearses and carts. I counted eighty-seven dead bodies uninterred on the ground. Yet where I worked, was only one of the three grave-yards belonging to the city, and the other two were larger. We therefore began on a new plan. There were twenty-five of us grave-diggers. We dug a trench fifty-seven feet long, eight feet wide, and four feet deep, and laid them as compactly as we could, and filled up the vacant spaces with children. It was an awful piece of business. In this large trench we buried about, perhaps, three hundred; and this business we carried on about a month. During this time, you might traverse the streets of New-Orleans, without meeting a single person, except those belonging to the hearses, and carts, loaded with the dead. Men were picked up in the morning who died after dark before they could reach their own houses. If you ask me if they died with yellow fever, or cholera, I must answer that I cannot tell. Some said the one, and some the other. Every thing was confusion. If a negro was sent by his master to a carpenter, for what they called a coffin, which was only a rough board box, he was commonly robbed of it before he got home. I myself saw an assault of this kind, when the poor black slave was knocked down and the rude coffin taken from him. New-Orleans is a dreadful place in the eyes of a New-England man. They keep Sunday as we in Boston keep the 4th of July, or any other day of merriment and frolic. It is also a training day every other Sunday for their military companies.

I was in part witness to a shocking sight at the marine hospital, where had been many patients {75} with the yellow fever. When the doctors, and those who had the care of that establishment had deserted the house, between twenty-five and thirty dead bodies were left in it; and these were so offensive from putrefaction, that when the city corporation heard of it, they ordered the house, together with the bodies to be burnt up; but this was not strictly complied with. A number of negro slaves were employed to remove the bodies, which being covered with wood and other combustibles, were all consumed together.

At length I was attacked myself with symptoms of the yellow fever,--violent pain in my head, back, and stomach. I lived at that time in the family of a Frenchman, who, among his various occupations, pretended to skill in physic. He fed me on castor oil. I took in one day four wineglasses of it, which required as much resolution as I was master of: but my doctor assured me that he had repeatedly scared away the yellow fever at the beginning of it, by large and often repeated doses of that medicine. Its operation was not one way, but every way. I thought I should have no insides left to go home with. Yet it is a fact, and I record it with pleasure, that it carried off all my dreadful symptoms, and in a very few days, I had nothing to complain of but weakness, which a good appetite soon cured. I therefore recommend a man in the first stage of yellow fever to take down a gill of castor oil, made as hot as he can swallow it; and repeat the dose in eight hours.

I remained nine weeks in New-Orleans, a city so unlike Boston, in point of neatness, order, and good government, that I do not wonder at its character for unhealthiness. Stagnant water remains in the streets as {76} green as grass, with a steam rising out of it that may be smelt at the distance of half a mile. Besides this, their population is so mixed, that they appear running against each other in the streets, every one having a different object and a different complexion. In one thing they seem to be agreed, and to concur in the same object, namely, _gaming_. In that delirous pursuit, they all speak the same language, and appear to run down the same road to ruin.

I am glad that it is in my power to support what I have said respecting the Marine Hospital, by the following public testimony, published by authority, taken from one of their newspapers.

"NEW-ORLEANS.--The following report from a committee appointed to examine one of the hospitals, will account, in some degree, for the unprecedented mortality which has afflicted New-Orleans. The report is addressed to the mayor.

"The undersigned, standing committee named by the city council during the prevalence of the epidemic now desolating the city, have the honor to report, that, in consequence of information given by sundry respectable persons, relative to the condition of the hospital kept by Dr. M'Farlane, they repaired to-day, at half-past one o'clock, to said hospital; that in all the apartments they found the most disgusting filth; that all the night _vessels_ were full, and that the patients have all declared that for a long time they had received no kind of succour; that in many of the apartments of the building they found corpses, several of which had been a number of days in putrefaction; that thence they repaired to a chamber adjoining the kitchen, where they found the body of a negro, which had been a long time dead, in a most offensive state. They finally went to another apartment opposite the kitchen, {77} which was equally filthy with the other rooms, and that they there found many corpses of persons a long time dead; that in a bed, between others, they found a man dying, stretched upon the body of a man many days dead.

"Finally, they declare that it is impossible for one to form an idea of what they have witnessed, without he had himself seen it; that it is indispensably necessary for the patients to evacuate this hospital, and above all, to watch lest the corpses in a state of putrefaction occasion pestilence in that quarter, and perhaps in the whole city.

"_November 7._ The standing committee has the honor to present the following additional report.

"In one of the apartments where were many living and dead bodies, they found under a bed a dead body partly eaten, whose belly and entrails lay upon the floor. It exhaled a most pestiferous odor. In a little closet upon the gallery there were two dead bodies, one of which lay flat upon the floor, and the other had his feet upon the floor and his back upon the bed forming a curve; the belly prodigiously swelled and the thighs green. Under a shed in the yard was the dead body of a negro, off which a fowl was picking worms. The number of corpses amounted to twelve or fourteen.

"Signed, E. A. CANNON, _Chairman_.

FELIX LABATUT,
_Alderman_, _Second Ward_.

CHARLES LEE,
_Alderman_, _First Ward_."

I took passage in the ship Henry Thomson, Captain Williams, and arrived in Boston, January 2d, 1833, after an absence of ten months, having experienced in that time a variety of hardships.

{78} CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS

The lesson to be collected from this short history is the great danger in _making haste to be rich_, instead of relying upon patient industry, which never fails to give a man his just deserts. Making haste to become rich is the most fruitful source of the calamities of life; for here cunning, contrivance, and circumvention, take the place of diligence. After the schemer's plans have all failed, there seems only one tempting means left to obtain riches in a hurry, and that is by gaming, the most prosperous invention ever devised by the arch enemy of mankind; and when that fails, the next downward step to destruction, excepting drunkenness, is robbery, many instances of which we find recorded in the annals of Newgate and the records of the Old Bailey in London. Such atrocities have never, or very rarely, occurred in our own country, and never will so long as we are wisely contented with the fruits of patient industry, and so long as we believe that the diligent hand maketh rich. These reflections refer to extreme cases, and are not applicable, or meant to be personally applicable, to the unfortunate expedition in which we have been concerned. It is not meant to reprehend those enormous vices and crimes which are known in the old countries, but only to correct a spirit of discontent in men well situated and circumstanced. "_If you stand well, stand still_," says the Italian proverb.

Some may say this doctrine, if put in practice, would check all enterprise. Not entirely so, provided the means and the end were cautiously adjusted. Christopher Columbus ran a great risk; {79} yet he knew, from the reasonings of his capacious mind, that there must be "another and a better world" than that he was born in; and under that strong and irrestistible impression he tempted the trackless ocean and found it. But what shall we say of our Oregon adventurers, who set out to pass over the Rocky Mountains, and thence down the Columbia river to the Pacific ocean, in boats upon wheels? and that too with a heavy load of goods, and those chiefly of iron. What renders the project more surprising is, that they should take with them the most ponderous articles of a blacksmith's shop,--anvils, and a large vice. It is more than probable that the old and long established wholesale Indian traders at St. Louis laughed in their sleeves, when they saw such a cargo fresh from the city of "_notions_," paraded with all the characteristic confidence of the unwavering Yankee spirit. After assuring them that their ingenious and well-constructed amphibious vehicles would not answer for travelling in such a rough country as they must go through, they purchased all three of them, and advised our leader to buy sheep and oxen to live on between the white settlements and the country of the savages, and not to trust to their guns for food. This turned out very wholesome advice, as they must have starved without that provision.

The party under Captains Lewis and Clarke, sent out by the government of the United States, consisted of nine young men from Kentucky, fourteen soldiers of the United States army who volunteered their services, two French watermen,--an interpreter and hunter,--and a black servant belonging to Captain Clarke. All these, except the last, were enlisted to serve as privates during the expedition, {80} and three sergeants were appointed from amongst them by the captains. In addition to these, were engaged a corporal and six soldiers, and nine watermen, to accompany the expedition as far as the Mandan nation, in order to assist in carrying the stores, or repelling an attack, which was most to be apprehended between Wood river and that tribe. This select party embarked on board three boats. One was a keel-boat fifty-five feet long, drawing three feet of water, with a large square sail, and twenty-two oars, with a forecastle and cabin, while the middle was covered by lockers, which might be raised so as to form a breast-work. There were beside two _periogues_, or open boats of seven oars each. They had two horses, for any purpose, which they led along the banks; and fourteen bales of goods, with a variety of clothing, working utensils, locks, flints, ammunition, and richly-laced coats, and other gay dresses, and a variety of ornaments suited to the taste of the Indians, together with knives, flags, tomahawks, and medals.[63] Yet all these articles were exhausted, without any accident or particular loss. The party was led by two experienced military officers, and the men were under military regulations; which was not the case with the Cambridge adventurers, who were upon shares, and all on a level.

[63] These statements in regard to the Lewis and Clark expedition
are taken verbatim from the published edition (Biddle's, 1814)
of the journals. For recent light on the personnel of the party,
consult O. D. Wheeler, _On the Trail of Lewis and Clark_ (New York,
1904).--ED.

We are unwilling that our readers should rely entirely on our opinion of the inadequacy of the outfits for such a formidable undertaking as that of going from the Atlantic shore of New-England to the shore of the Pacific by land. We shall therefore subjoin the opinion of a sensible gentleman, who had spent some time in the Missouri territory, and traversed its dreary prairies, where no tree {81} appears, and where there is, during the greater part of the year, no fuel for cooking, nor water fit to drink. He says: "Do the Oregon emigrants seek a fine country on the Oregon river? They will pass through lands [to get to it] of which they may buy two hundred acres for less than the farther expenses of their journey."[64] He tells us that a gentleman (Mr. Kelly) has been employing his leisure in advising schemes to better the condition of his fellow countrymen, and has issued advertisements, inviting the good people of New-England to leave their homes, their connexions, and the comforts of civilized society, and follow him across the continent to the shores of the Pacific. He tells those who may reach St. Louis, that they will find there many who have been to Oregon, and found no temptation to remain there;--that they may possibly charter a steamboat from St. Louis to the mouth of the river Platte, but no farther, as that stream is not navigable for steamboats unless during freshets. And after they reach the mouth of the Platte, they will have a _thousand_ miles to go before they reach the Rocky Mountains; and the country through which the adventurers must pass is a level plain, where the eye seeks in vain for a tree or a shrub,--that in some places they must travel days and nights without finding wood or water, for that the streams only are scantily fringed with wood. Our Cambridge emigrants actually found this to be the case, as they had no other fuel for cooking their live stock than buffalo-dung. The writer says, (and he had been there), that the ground is covered with {82} herbage for a few weeks in the year only, and that this is owing to the Indians burning the Prairies regularly twice a year, which occasions them to be as bare of vegetation as the deserts of Arabia. The same experienced traveller assures them that they could not take provisions with them sufficient for their wants, and that a dependence on their guns for support was fallacious, and the same uncertainty as to the buffaloes;--that sometimes those animals were plenty enough, and sometimes more than enough, so as to be dangerous. When they trot smartly off, ten thousand and more in a drove, they are as irresistible as a mountain-torrent, and would tread into nothing a larger body than the Cambridge fortune-hunters. Their flesh is coarse beef, and the grisly bear's, coarse pork; but this kind of bear, called the _horrible_ from his strength and ferocity, is a most terrific beast, and more disposed and able to feed on the hunter than the huntsman upon him. We can assure the emigrants, says the writer already quoted, from our own experience, that not one horse in five can perform a journey of a thousand miles, without a constant supply of something better than prairie-grass.

[64] See New-England Magazine for February and April, 1832, under
the signature of W. J. S.--WYETH.

_Comment by Ed._ The _New England Magazine_ was published monthly
(1831-35) by J. T. and E. Buckingham, Boston.

The journal of Lewis and Clarke to the Pacific ocean, over the Rocky Mountains, was a popular book in the hands of every body; and the Expedition of Major Long and company was as much read; and both of these works detail events and facts enough, one would suppose, to deter men from such an arduous enterprise; not to mention the hostile tribes of Indians through which they must pass. It seems strange, but it is true, that a theoretical man need not despair of making the multitude believe any thing but truth. They believed the enthusiastic {83} Mr. Hall J. Kelley, who had never been in the Oregon territory, or seen the Rocky Mountains, or a prairie-dog, or a drove of buffaloes, and who in fact knew nothing of the country beyond some guess-work maps; yet they would not read, consider, or trust to the faithful records of those officers who had been sent by the government to explore the country and make report of it.

There is a passage in the essay written by W. J. S. which we shall insert here on his authority, as it cannot be supposed that we, at this distance, should be so well acquainted with the affairs in Missouri, as one who had resided on the spot. We assume not to keep pace with the professed eulogist of Oregon, of its river, and its territory, its mild climate, its exuberant soil, and its boisterous Pacific, so inviting to the distressed poor in the neighbourhood of Boston; who are exhorted by him to pluck up stakes and courage, and march over the Rocky Mountains to wealth, ease, and independence. The passage we allude to reads thus:--"About twelve years since, it was discovered by a public-spirited citizen of St. Louis, that the supply of furs was not equal to the demand. To remedy this evil, he raised a corps of sharp-shooters, equipped them with guns, ammunition, steel-traps, and horses, and sent them into the wilderness to teach the Indians that their right was only a right of occupancy. They did the savages irreparable injury. They frightened the buffaloes from their usual haunts,--destroyed the fur-clad animals, and did more mischief than we have room to relate." He adds, sarcastically, that "the Indians were wont to hunt in a slovenly manner, leaving a few animals yearly for breeding. But that the white hunters were more thorough-spirited, {84} and made root-and-branch work of it. When they settled on a district, they destroyed the old and young alike; and when they left it, they left no living thing behind them. The first party proving successful, more were fitted out, and every successive year has seen several armed and mounted bands of hunters, from twenty to a hundred men and more in each, pouring into the Indian hunting grounds; and _all this has been done in open and direct violation of a law of the United States, which expressly forbids trapping and hunting on Indian lands_. The consequence has been that there are now few fur-clad animals this side the mountains."

Lewis and Clarke, and some other travellers, speak of friendly Indians,--of their kindness and hospitality, and expatiate on their amiable disposition, and relate instances of it. Yet after all, this Indian friendship is very like the affection of the negroes in the Southern States for their masters and mistresses, and for their children,--the offspring merely of fear. There can be no friendship where there is such a disparity of condition. As to their presents, an Indian gift is proverbial. They never give without expecting double in return.

What right have we to fit out armed expeditions, and enter the long occupied country of the natives, to destroy their game, not for subsistence, but for their skins? They are a contented people, and do not want our aid to make them happier. We prate of civilizing and Christianizing the savages. What have we done for their benefit? We have carried among them _rum_, _powder_ and _ball_, small-pox, starvation, and misery. What is the reason that Congress,--the great council of the nation,--the collected wisdom of these United States, has turned a deaf {85} ear to all applications for establishing a colony on the Oregon river? Some of the members of that honorable house of legislation know that the district in question is a boisterous and inclement region, with less to eat, less to warm the traveller, and to cook with, than at the mouth of any other known river in the United States. We deem the mouth of the river St. Lawrence as eligible a spot for a settlement of peltry merchants as the mouth of the Columbia. When Lewis and Clarke were on that river, they had not a single fair day in two months. They were drenched with rain day and night; and what added to their comfortless condition was the incessant high winds, which drove the waves furiously into the Columbia river with the tide; and on its ebb, raised such commotion, and such a chopping sea, that the travellers dared not venture upon it in their boats; yet the Indians did, and managed their canoes with a dexterity which the explorers greatly admired, but could not imitate. The boisterous Pacific was among the new discoveries of our American adventurers. Had their expedition been to the warm climate of Africa, or to South America, they would have been sure of plenty to eat; but in the western region, between the Rocky Mountains and the great river of the West, the case is far otherwise.

It is devoutly to be wished that truth may prevail respecting those distant regions. Indeed the sacred cause of humanity calls loudly on its votaries to disabuse the people dwelling on these Atlantic shores respecting the Oregon paradise, lest our farmers' sons and young mechanics should, in every sense of the phrase, stray from home, and go they know not whither,--to seek they know not what. {86} Or must Truth wait on the Rocky Mountains until some Indian historian,--some future _Clavigero_[65] shall publish his annals, and separate facts from fiction? We esteem the "_History of the Expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clarke to the Sources of the Missouri, thence across the Rocky Mountains, and down to the Pacific Ocean_," substantially correct. Their conduct towards the Indians was marked throughout with justice and humanity; and the journal of that expedition will be a lasting monument of their judicious perseverance, and of the wisdom of the government of the United States.

[65] The Abbé Clavigero, a native of Vera Cruz, who resided forty
years in the Provinces of New Spain, spoke the language of the
natives, and has written the History of Mexico.--WYETH.

Reader! The book you have in your hands is not written for your amusement merely, or to fill up an idle hour, but for your instruction,--particularly to warn young farmers and mechanics not to leave a certainty for an uncertainty, and straggle away over a sixth part of the globe in search of what they leave behind them at home. It is hoped that it may correct that too common opinion that the farther you go from home the surer you are of making your fortune. Agriculture gives to the industrious farmer the riches which he can call his own; while the indefatigable mechanic is sure to acquire a sufficiency, provided he "build not his house too high."

Industry conducted by Prudence is a virtue of so diffusive a nature that it mixes with all our concerns. No business can be managed and accomplished without it. Whatever be a man's calling or way of life, he must, to be happy, be actuated by {87} a spirit of industry, and that will keep him from want, from dishonesty, and from the vice of gambling and lottery-dealing, and its long train of miseries.

The first and most common deviation from sober industry is a desire to roam abroad, or in one word, a feeling of _discontent_,--a making haste to be rich, without the patient means of it. These are reflections general and not particular, as it regards all such high hopes and expectations, as lead to our Oregon expedition and to its disappointments. The most that we shall say of it is,--that it was an injudicious scheme arising from want of due information, and the whole conducted by means inadequate to the end in view.

Oh happy--if he knew his happy state,
The man, who, free from turmoil and debate,
Receives his wholesome food from Nature's hand,
The just return of _cultivated_ land.

THE END

TOWNSEND'S NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY ACROSS THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, TO THE COLUMBIA RIVER

Reprint of pp. 1-186, 217-264, of original edition: Philadelphia, 1839. "A Visit to the Sandwich Islands, Chili, &c., with a Scientific Appendix," also contained in this edition, is here omitted as irrelevant to the scope of the present series.

NARRATIVE

OF A

JOURNEY ACROSS THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS,

TO

THE COLUMBIA RIVER,

AND

A VISIT TO THE SANDWICH ISLANDS, CHILI, &c.

WITH

A SCIENTIFIC APPENDIX.

BY JOHN K. TOWNSEND,
Member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.

PHILADELPHIA:
HENRY PERKINS, 134 CHESTNUT STREET.
BOSTON: PERKINS & MARVIN.

1839.

ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1839, by
JOHN K. TOWNSEND,
in the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the Eastern
District of Pennsylvania.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Columbia River Fishing and Trading Company was formed in 1834, by several individuals in New York and Boston. Capt. WYETH, having an interest in the enterprise, collected a party of men to cross the continent to the Pacific, with the purpose chiefly of establishing trading posts beyond the Rocky Mountains and on the coast.

The idea of making one of Capt. Wyeth's party was suggested to the author by the eminent botanist, Mr. NUTTALL, who had himself determined to join the expedition across the North American wilderness. Being fond of Natural History, particularly the science of Ornithology, the temptation to visit a country hitherto unexplored by naturalists was irresistible; and the following pages, originally penned for the family-circle, and without the slightest thought of publication, will furnish some account of his travels.

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