to be all carried to distant markets, too much of it is therefore converted into spirits. There is much peach brandy, and also a concentrated cider, called cider royal. In the older settlements there is cider, and in every considerable town are breweries for porter and beer. Several vineyards produce tolerable wine, but not enough for more than local consumption: when, however, the rich soil and sunny climate of the West shall produce wines enough to supply the demand for them, it is probable that not only there, but in the whole country, the consumption of ardent spirits will be much diminished. From natural indications, the grape must thrive well in the West. There is no wild vine there which grows more luxuriantly than the grape, and it is common to see vines 6 inches and more in diameter, running up and covering the tops of the highest trees. In Arkansas, and several other places, the wild grapes are delicious.

15. Diseases. These are generally bilious fevers, for the pulmonary complaints are not, compared with the same in New England, as 1 to 50. Intermittent fevers are common and troublesome, though to have the ague is in some places so common, that the patient can hardly claim the privileges of sickness. In some few places, half the people are said to have agues. Many large districts, however, are entirely free from them, and they are everywhere becoming less. The great remedies used are bark and calomel. The diseases, however, are so regular, that most families have some book of domestic medicine, to which they trust in common cases. "Indian Doctors are esteemed by the more ignorant people; these practise generally in the herbs, used or represented to be used by the Indians. They are "Faith Doctors," also, who receive their title from the perfect confidence which they require in the patient, to some mysterious medicine.

16. Traveling. The people of the West, like those of the East, are distinguished for their propensity to travel. Their country is intersected with navigable streams, so that the farmer's best market is at New Orleans, distant thousands of miles, and there are very few people of substance who have not been there. An Englishman resident in the West remarks, that people here think less of a journey of 3,000 miles, than men do of 300 in England. Conceptions of space and distance are on no ordinary scale, though with respect to facility of communication, Pittsburg is as near to New Orleans as Edinburgh to London. The people are therefore well acquainted with various parts of their own section of country.

There are lines of stagecoaches, though less commodious than in the East; but generally, the traveling on land is on horseback, as the roads are too rough for comfortable motion in carriages. The traveler has an oiled cover for his hat, a portmanteau, and umbrella, and thus appointed, even ladies travel thousands of miles. The rivers, however, are the great natural roads, and on these there is a choice of every water conveyance ever invented, and of many which have never received a name.' * There are the rude, shapeless masses, that denote the

Parkersburg, Va.

Point Pleasant

Cincinnati

3 173 5.00 37 210 6.00 50 260 7.00 47 307 8.00 12 319 9.00 46 355 10.00 79 434 11.00 13 447 11.00

100 587 15.00

35 622 15.00

25 647 15.00

40 687 18 00

12 699 18.00 53 752 18.00 63 815 18.00

66

881 20.00 75 956 22.00

150 1,106 25.00

85 1,191 26.00

307 1,498 30.00 110 1,608 30.00 300 1,908 35.00

The above prices of passage include boarding. The prices of deck passage are about one fourth of these, the passengers finding themselves. Thus, to Louisville, the deck passage is $3, cabin, $12; to New Orleans, deck, $8, cabin, $35. The deck is covered, and contains berths, but it is a very undesirable way of traveling. The passage to Louisville is generally performed in two days and a half, and to New Orleans in from eight to ten; returning, nearly double this time. The ordinary speed of the boats is 12 miles an hour down the river, and 6 up.

infancy of navigation, and the light steamboat, which makes its perfection; together with all the intermediate forms between these extremes." * The most inartificial of all water-craft, is the ark, or Kentucky flat, a huge frame of square timbers, with a roof. It is in shape a parallelogram, and lies upon the waters like a log; it hardly feels the oar, and trusts for motion mainly to the current. It is 15 feet wide, from 50 to 80 feet long, and carries from 200 to 400 barrels. These arks are often filled with the goods and families of emigrants, and carry even the carriages and domestic animals. They are used also for shops of various kinds of goods, which are sold at the different towns, and some of them are fitted up as the workshops of artificers.

Mouth of De Moines River, Mo.

Keokuk, Iowa

Commerce, Ill., head of De Moines rapids
Appanoose, do., opposite Fort Madison

Burlington, Iowa'

Yellow Banks, Ill.

New Boston, Ill., opposite mouth Iowa River
Iowa, near mouth of Pine River

Rockport, Ill, mouth of Rock River
Montevideo, Iowa, opposite Rockport S
Senasepo, Iowa

Stevenson, Ill.

Davenport, Iowa, opposite Stevenson

Rock Island, Ill., foot of rapids

Canaan, do. head of R. 1. rapids

New Philadelphia, Iowa

Savanna, Ill.

Smithville, do.

Belleview, Iowa

Fever River, Ill.

Galena

Du Buque, Iowa

Cassville, Wisconsin Territory
Prairie La Porte

Prairie du Chien

Falls of St. Anthony, about

505

8 513 22 535 265 800

Portage de Sioux, Mo.
Randolph, Ill.

Alton, Ill.

Missouri River

Chippeway, mo. Wood R.

2 182 40

7 189 50

pop. 3,625.

pop. 16,207.

The price of passage from St. Louis to Peoria is $5 for cabin, $2.50 for deck. From Peru or Ottawa, $3 for cabin, $1.50 for deck. Way passages are much higher in proportion.

* "In the spring, 100 boats have been numbered, that landed in one day at the mouth of the bayou at Madrid. I have strolled to the point, on a spring evening, and seen them arriving in fleets. The boisterous gayety of the hands, the congratulations, the moving picture of life on board the boats, in the numerous animals, large and small, which they carry, their different loads, the evidence of the increasing agriculture of the country above, and more than all, the immense distances which they have already come, and those which they still have to go, afforded me copious sources of meditation. They have come from regions thousands of miles apart; they have floated to a common point of union. The surfaces of the boats cover some acres. Dunghill fowls are fluttering over the roofs, as an invariable appendage. The chanticleer raises his piercing note; the swine utter their cries; the cattle low; the horses trample, as in their stables. There are boats fitted on purpose, and loaded entirely with turkeys, that, having little else to do, gobble most furiously. The hands travel about from boat to boat, make inquiries and acquaintances, and form alliances to yield mutual assistance to each other, on their descent from this to New Orleans. After an hour or two is passed in this way, they spring on shore to raise the wind in town.

"About midnight, the uproar is all hushed. The fleet unites once more at Natchez or at New Orleans, and, although they live on the same river, they may, perhaps, never meet each other again on the earth. Next morning, at the first dawn, the bugles sound. Everything in and about the boats, that has life, is in motion. The boats, in half an hour, are all under way. In a little while, they have all disappeared, and nothing is seen, as before they came,

There are also

Sometimes, also, they are used as museums of wax figures, and other shows. keel-boats and barges, which are light and well-built; skiffs, that will carry from 2 persons to 5 tons, "dug-outs," or pirogues, made of hollowed logs, and other vessels, for which language has no name, and the sea no parallel. There are a few small boats that are moved by a crank, turned by a single man. These are on the principle of steamboats. Since the use of steamboats, numbers of the other craft have disappeared, and the number of river boatmen has been diminished by many thousands.

The great thoroughfares are thronged with singular assemblages of travelers. Many are miserably poor, but others, more like the patriarchs, with herds and slaves. On land, they often sleep in their wagons, or tents, and cook for themselves; and on the rivers they get provisions plentifully from the shore. The steamboats are good hotels, and the traveler is hard to please, who is not delighted in going in them, down the Mississippi or Ohio. The course is often too swift to enjoy perfectly the beauty of the banks, and the scene is so constantly shifting, that it is with a feeling of regret, that one is carried so swiftly by the opening rivers, forests, farms, and towns. The explosions in steamboats are the least of the dangers in traveling in them, at the West; though they are the chief perils in the Eastern States. The navigation of the Mississippi has many obstructions and dangers, against which caution is of no avail. The channels and banks are constantly shifting, and the stream contains many huge trees, partly imbedded in the mud. A boat often strikes upon these, and is so shattered, that it fills instantly with water, which sometimes comes in so fast that all the passengers cannot escape. The boats, however, have a snag-room, or bulwark, 10 or 15 feet before the bows, which is a complete defence. The expenses in the steamboats are not great, and the upper deck is fitted to carry emigrants, or passengers, who find their own bedding and food. To such, the fare from New Orleans to St. Louis, is but 8 dollars. The roads are seldom good, and after rains they are exceedingly slippery, from the clayey nature of the soil. The inns are but such as may be supported in a new country, where more travelers desire shelter than luxury. In the large towns they are well conducted, but in small villages and remote places, if the most fastidious traveler finds a single bed, he is indebted for it to chance, and not to custom.*

but the regular current of the river. In passing down the Mississippi, we often see a number of boats lashed, and floating together. I was once on board a fleet of 8, that were in this way moving together. It was a considerable walk, to travel over the roofs of this floating town. On board of one boat they were killing swine. In another, they had apples, cider, nuts, and dried fruit. One of the boats was a retail, or dram-shop. It seems, that the object in lashing so many boats, had been to barter, and obtain supplies. These confederacies often commence in a frolic, and end in a quarrel, in which case, the aggrieved party dissolves the partnership by unlashing, and managing his own boat in his own way. While this fleet of boats is floating separately, but each carried by the same current, nearly at the same rate, visits take place from boat to boat in skiffs. While I was at New Madrid, a large tinner's establishment floated there in a boat. In it all the different articles of tin-ware were manufactured and sold by wholesale and retail There were large apartments, where the different branches of the art were carried on in this floating manufactory. When they have mended all the tin, and vended all that they could sell, in one place, they flated on to another. A still more extraordinary manufactory, we were told, was floating down the Ohio, and shortly expected at New Madrid. "Aboard this was manufactured axes, scythes, and all other iron tools of this description, and in it horses were shod. In short, it was a complete blacksmith's shop, of a higher order, and it is said, that they jestingly talked of having a triphammer worked by a horse-power, on board. I have frequently seen a dry goods shop in a boat, with its articles very handsomely arranged on shelves. Nor would the delicate hands of the vender, have disgraced the spruce clerk behind our city counters. It is now common to see flat boats worked by a bucket wheel, and a horse power, after the fashion of steamboat move inent. Indeed, every spring brings forth new contrivances of this sort, the result of the farmer's meditations over his winter's fire." Flint's Residence.

*The following is Mr. Flint's description of one of the various perils that sometimes beset the traveler on the western waters. He was in a boat, accompanied only by his wife and small children.

"We arrived opposite to the second Chickasaw bluff on the 26th of November. The country on the shore receives and deserves the emphatic name of 'wilderness.' At 10 in the morning we perceived indications of a severe approaching storm. The air was oppressively sultry. Brassy clouds were visible upon all quarters of the sky. Distant thunder was heard. We were on a wide sandbar, far from any house. Opposite to us was a vast cypress swamp. At this period, and in this place, Mrs. F. was taken in travail. My children, wrapped in blankets, laid themselves down on the sand-bar. I secured the boat in every possible way, against the danger of being driven by the storm into the river. At 11 o'clock the storm burst upon us in all its fury. Mrs. F. had been salivated during her fever and had not yet been able to leave her couch. I was alone with her in this dreadful situation. Hail, and wind, and thunder, and rain in torrents, poured in upon us. I was in terror, lest the wind would drive my boat, notwithstanding all her fastenings, into the river. No imagination can reach what I endured. The only alleviating circumstance was her perfect tranquillity. She knew that the hour of sorrow, and expected that of death, had come. She was so perfectly calm, spoke with such tranquil assurance about the future, and about the dear ones, that were at this moment biding the pelting of the pitiless storm,' on the sand-bar, that I became myself calm. A little after 12, the wind burst in the roof of my boat, and let in the glare of the lightning, and the torrents of rain upon my poor wife. I could really have expostulated with the elements in the language of the poor old Lear. I had wrapped my wife in blankets, ready to be carried to the shelter of the forest, in case of the driving of my boat into the river. About 4 o'clock the fury of the storm began to subside. At 5, the sun in his descending glory burst from the dark masses of the receding clouds. At 11

17. Character, Manners, &c. The character of the Western States is mixed, but the predominant traits are those of Virginia, and of New England. Kentucky was settled from Virginia and North Carolina, while Ohio is a scion of New England. These two States have in turn sent their population further west. But there is much sectional character, much of the openness and boldness of the men and their descendants who contested every inch of territory with savages, whose houses were garrisons, and who fought at the threshold for their hearths and altars. The Kentucky character pervades, more or less, all the Western States, and it is a creditable, though a peculiar mark. To estimate the sons, we must describe the fathers, and many of the early settlers yet alive. The "Big Knives," as the first hunters were called by the Indians, from their swords, had too little fear of danger to shrink from a forest so stained with massacres, that it was called the "Dark and Bloody Ground." This was the appalling name of Kentucky. Beautiful as it now is, it was more so in its uncultivated state, when the "wilderness blossomed as the rose." It was a forest solitude, unrivalled on earth. It was shaded with trees that had no parallel eastward of the mountains, and under them the tall grass supplied food for innumerable herds of buffalo and deer. It was a grand natural park, where nations came to take their game. Everything in this wonderful country was found to be on a scale of magnificence. The trees were giants of the vegetable creation; the caves extended under navigable rivers, to the extent of eastern counties; and bones of the mammoth lay strewed around the springs, indicating a new and wonderful aspect of animal life. This lonely paradise of woods, waters, and flowers, to which every animal that was in Eden seemed gath ered, was the hunting-ground, not the abode, of savages.

The first explorers were lost in admiration, and their reports were received like the accounts of the New World, in Spain. Before this, the country had not, indeed, been fully discovered. The navigators had entered inlets and bays, and the settlers were on the line of coast. The true discoverers, the bold Argonauts to these Hesperides, were Finley and Boone. These were men of rude nurture but of high poetic feeling, yet cool, circumspect, and the bravest of the brave. They were no misanthropes, though they had a passion for the solitude of the forest. They "loved not man the less, but nature more." Their May of life was in the waving woods, and danger was a cheap price for their favorite pursuit.

These adventurers were more daring than Cortez or Pizarro, for they went singly to invade nations. Harrod, one of the settlers, became so much attached to sylvan life, that, long afterwards, when the country was studded with villages, and bending with harvests, when he had wealth and honors, and a happy family around him, he used to stray away for weeks in the distant forest. A tree looked to him like a friend, and the forest seemed to be his home. He died as he had lived; from his last excursion he returned not, and the time and manner of his death are alike mysterious. Had he thus disappeared in ancient Greece, we should have had in Ovid the account of his metamorphosis or transformation to some noble tree. Boone, also, died in his forest; he retired before the wave of emigration, and required a wilderness to himself. He was dislodged like a hunted deer, from one covert to another. He died in old age, far from men, and his body was found in the attitude of shooting; he was sitting, resting his rifle on a log, and bending his eye along the barrel. Boone was an extraordinary man. He was a hunter fit to stand by Nimrod, "and give direction." He was a patriot, but in his conception, the civil compact was an association of hunters, in which the authority belonged to the most steady of heart, hand, and eye. Roads and canals, agriculture and manufactures, formed no part of his Utopia; and he was never so happy as when most distant from all trace of them. But Kentucky, the child of his affections, became a changeling, and he left it for more solitary regions.

in the evening, Mrs. F. was safely delivered of a female infant, and, notwithstanding all, did well. The babe, from preceding circumstances, was feeble and sickly, and I saw could not survive. At midnight, we had raised a blazing fire. The children came into the boat. Supper was prepared, and we surely must have been ungrateful not to have sung a hymn of deliverance. There can be but one trial more for me, that can surpass the agony of that day, and there can never be on this earth, a happier period than those midnight hours. The babe stayed with us but a day and a half, and expired. The children, poor things, laid it deeply to heart, and raised a loud lament. We were, as I have remarked, far away from all human

aid and sympathy, and left alone with God. We deposited the body of our lost babe, laid in a small trunk for a coffin,-in a grave amid the rushes, there to await the resurrection of the dead. The prayer made on the occa sion by the father, with the children for concourse and mourners, if not eloquent, was, to us, at least, deeply af fecting. The grave is on a high bank, opposite to the second Chickasaw bluff, and I have since passed the rude memorial which we raised on the spot; and I passed it, carrying to you my miserable and exhausted frame, with little hope of renovation, and in the hourly expectation of depositing my own bones on the banks of the Missis sippi."

The peculiar character of the West partakes of that of Kentucky, though there is hardly any exact standard. All European nations have sent emigrants, and there are separate communities of foreigners. In general, all the heterogeneous inhabitants mingle together with amity, and are becoming gradually incorporated into one mass. Society is nearer to its elements than in older communities, and the distinction of classes is slight. All are mutually dependent. There is a deep foundation for independent feeling; men grow up in the pursuits of agriculture, and form their own characters, receiving less of the impress of society than in New England. Brought up to depend upon themselves, they are prompt to decide and to act. They feel in their state of society, the equality which everything renders practical, and the laborer is as bold in his bearing, and as independent in his feelings, as the merchant or the land-holder. Few but the traveling emigrants are miserably poor, and many of these are entirely destitute.* The traveler in the Western States will form his opinion of the people somewhat from those with whom he associates in the steamboats. He will perhaps find them too much given to "rude mirth," but he will estimate highly a spirit of civility, and mutual accommodation.

The boatmen, who, to the number of many thousands, were found on the rivers, have nearly disappeared since the general use of steamboats. They were a riotous, depraved, and depraving class; and though the practice of gouging was never in use among them, or in the West, yet they were so bad in all things, that they could gain no defence from any charge, by appealing to their general character. Many of the pioneers of civilization are rude and unprincipled; but a desperate course of life, and the dangers of the frontiers, have left few of those reckless people in the Western States. Many there are, who live in the distant territories, by hunt

Mr. Flint gives the following descriptions; and similar sufferings are but too common.

"I found in Cincinnati great numbers of emigrants, most of them from the North. They were but too often wretchedly furnished with money, and the comforts almost indispensable to a long journey. It seemed to have been their impression, that if once they could arrive at the land of milk and honey, supplies would come of course. The autumn had been unusually sickly. The emigrants had endured great exposure in arriving here. Families were crowded into a single, and often in a small and uncomfortable apartment. Many suffered, died, and were buried by charity. Numerous instances of unrecorded suffering, of the most exquisite degree, and with every agonizing circumstance, occurred. The parties were of ten friendless, moneyless, orphans, infants, widows in a strange land, in a large town as humane as might be expected, but to which, unfortunately, such scenes of suffering had become so frequent and familiar, as to have lost their natural tendency to produce sympathy and commiseration. The first house which I entered in this town was a house, into one room of which was crowded a numerous family from Maine. The husband and father was dying, and expired while I was there. The wife was sick in the same bed, and, either from terror or exhaustion, uttered not a word during the whole scene. Three children were sick of fevers. If you add, that they were in the house of a poor man, and had spent their last dollar, you can fill out the picture of their misery. It is gloomy to reflect, that the cheering results of the settlement of our new States and Territories, are not obtained without numberless accompaniments of wretchedness like this."

"I will record in this place another narrative, that impressed me deeply. It was a fair sample of the cases of extreme misery and desolation, that is often witnessed on this river. In the Sunday School at New Madrid we received three children, who were introduced under the following circumstances. A man was descending the river with these three children in his pirogue. He and his children had landed on a desert island, on a bitter, snowy evening in December. There were but two houses, which were at a little prairie opposite the island, within a great distance. He wanted more whisky, although he had already been drinking it too freely. Against the persuasions of his children he left them, to cross over in his pirogue to these houses, and renew his supply. The wind blew high, and the river was rough. Nothing would dissuade him from this dangerous attempt. He told them he should return to them that night, left them in tears, and exposed to the pitiless pelting of the storm, and started for his ca

rouse. The children saw the boat sink, before he had half crossed the passage. The man was drowned. These forlorn beings were left without any other covering than their scanty and ragged dress, for he had taken his last blanket with him. They had neither fire nor shelter, and no other food than uncooked pork and corn. It snowed fast and the night closed over them in this situation. The elder was a girl of six years, but remarkably shrewd and acute for her age. The next was a girl of four, and the youngest a boy of two. It was affecting to hear her describe her desolation of heart, as she set herself to examine her resources. She made them creep together and draw their bare feet under her clothes. She covered them with leaves and branches, and thus they passed the first night. In the morning the younger child wept bitterly with cold and hunger. The pork she cut into small pieces and made them chew corn with these pieces. She then persuaded them to run about by setting them the example. Then she made them return to chewing corn and pork. It should seem as if Providence had a special eye to these poor children, for in the course of the day some Indians landed on the island, found them, and, as they were coming up to New Madrid, took them with them."

6

"The terms of the navigation are as novel as are the forms of the boats. You hear of the danger of 'riffles,' meaning, probably, ripples, and planters, and sawyers, and points, and bends and shoots, a corruption, I suppose, of the French chute.' You hear the boatmen extolling their prowess in pushing a pole, and you learn the received opinion, that a 'Kentuck' is the best man at a pole, and a Frenchman at an oar. A firm push of the iron-pointed pole on a fixed log, is termed a reverend set.' You are told when you embark, to bring your plunder' aboard, you hear about moving fernenst the stream; and you gradually become acquainted with a vocabulary of this sort. The manners of the boatmen are as strange as their language. Their peculiar way of life has given origin not only to an appropriate dialect, but to new modes of enjoyment, riot and fighting. Almost every boat, while it lies in the harbor, has one or more fiddles on board, to which you often see the boatmen dancing. There is no wonder that the way of life which the boatmen lead, in turn extremely indolent and extremely laborious; for days together requiring little or no effort, and attended with no danger, and then, on a sudden, laborious and hazardous, beyond Atlantic navigation; generally plentiful as respects food, and always so as regards whisky, should always have seductions, that prove irresistible to the young people that live near the banks of the river."