Travels in North America, From Modern Writers

As Mr. Birkbeck approached the Little Miami River, the country became more broken, much more fertile, and better settled than before. After crossing this rapid and clear stream, he had a pleasant ride to Lebanon, which is not a mountain of cedars, but a valley, so beautiful and fertile that, at its first opening on the view, it seemed rather a region of fancy than a real back-settlement scene.

Lebanon is itself one of those wonders which are the natural growth of these back woods. In fourteen years, from two or three cabins of half-savage hunters, it has grown to be the residence of a thousand persons, with habits and looks in no respect differing from their brethren of the east. Before Mr. Birkbeck and his party entered the town, they heard the supper-bells of the taverns; and they arrived just in time to take their seats at one of the tables, together with travellers like themselves, and several store-keepers, lawyers, and doctors; men who regularly board at taverns, and make up a standing company for the daily public table.

Mr. Birkbeck and his family next passed through Cincinnati, [a town which presents a scene of great life and activity. The market-house is an excellent building; and the market is under judicious regulations. Provisions are here plentiful and cheap; but articles of clothing, house-rent, and journeymen's wages are all very high.

This interesting town is situated on the banks of the Ohio, and contains from eight to ten thousand inhabitants, including blacks, who are numerous. It is built on the same plan as Philadelphia. There is a school, in which children are educated on the Lancasterian plan; and which, in 1817, contained one hundred and fifty children. Owing, however, to the "untamable insubordination of the scholars, it was found impossible to put in practice most of the punishments that are directed by the founder of the system. Two weekly newspapers are published at Cincinnati; one called "The Western Spy," and the other, "Liberty Hall."

There are, at this place, a woollen manufactory, a steam corn-mill, and a glass-house, on a tolerably large scale; and, in the main street, English goods abound in as great profusion as in Cheapside. The tradesmen import some of their goods direct from England, but they usually purchase them at Philadelphia; the journey to and from which place occupies three months; and goods are generally about fifty days in arriving.

There are, in Cincinnati, three banks; and paper-money is here so abundant, that specie, even of the smallest amount, is rarely to be seen. The little that does exist, consists chiefly of cut Spanish dollars. Notes of two shillings and two-pence, thirteen pence, sixpence halfpenny, and even of three-pence farthing, are very common: indeed, they constitute the chief part of the circulating medium.

Cincinnati is a very handsome town; a town, in fact, which must astonish every traveller, when he considers how recently it has been formed. Some of the houses are on a large scale; and the number of moderate-sized and well-built brick buildings is considerable. The churches are neat; and the post-office, in arrangement and management, would bear comparison with that of London.]

After having passed through Cincinnati, Mr. Birkbeck and his family entered the state of Indiana, and proceeded towards Vincennes. Indiana was, evidently, newer than the state of Ohio; and the character of the settlers appeared superior to that of the settlers in Ohio, who, in general, were a very indigent people. Those who fix themselves in Indiana, bring with them habits of comfort and the means of procuring the conveniences of life. These are observable in the construction of their cabins, and the neatness surrounding them; and, especially, in their well-stocked gardens, so frequent here, and so rare in the state of Ohio.

The country, from the town of Madison to the Camp Tavern, is not interesting, and a great part of the land is but of medium quality. At the latter place commences a broken country, approaching to mountainous, which, if well watered, would form a fine grazing district. In their progress, Mr. Birkbeck, one of the ladies, and a servant boy, were benighted at the foot of one of these rugged hills; and, without being well provided, they were compelled to make their first experiment of "camping out," as it is called.

A traveller, in the woods, says this gentleman, should always carry with him a flint, steel, tinder, and matches; a few biscuits, a half-pint vial of spirits, a tin cup, and a large knife or tomahawk; then, with his two blankets, and his great coat and umbrella, he need not be uneasy, should any unforeseen delay require his sleeping under a tree.

In the present instance, the important articles of tinder and matches were in the baggage of the division that had proceeded; and, as the night was rainy and excessively dark, the benighted party were, for some time, under considerable apprehension, lest they should be deprived of the comfort and security of a fire. Fortunately, Mr. Birkbeck's powder-flask was in his saddle-bags, and he succeeded in supplying the place of tinder, by moistening a piece of paper, and rubbing it with gunpowder. He then placed the touchpaper on an old cambric handkerchief. On this he scattered gunpowder pretty copiously, and with a flint and steel he soon succeeded in raising a flame: then, collecting together a quantity of dry wood, he made a noble fire. There was a mattress for the lady, a bear-skin for Mr. Birkbeck, and the load of the pack-horse served as a pallet for the boy. Thus, by means of great coats and blankets, and their umbrellas spread over their heads, they made their quarters tolerably comfortable; and, placing themselves to the leeward of the fire, with their feet towards it, they lay more at ease than they could have done in the generality of taverns. They had a few biscuits, a small bottle of spirits, and a phial of oil. By twisting some cord very hard, and dipping it in the oil, they contrived to make torches; and, after several fruitless attempts, they succeeded in finding water. "Camping out," when the tents are pitched by day-light, and the party are furnished with the articles, which Mr. Birkbeck was obliged to supply by expedients, is pleasant in fine weather. The lady was exceedingly ill, which had in fact occasioned their being benighted; and never was the night's charge of a sick friend undertaken with more dismal forebodings. The rain, however, having ceased, the invalid passed the night in safety; so that the morning found them more comfortable than they could have anticipated.

The town of Vincennes is scattered over a plain, lying some feet lower than the banks of the Wabash: a situation seemingly unfavourable to health; and, in fact, agues and bilious fevers are frequent here during the autumn.

The road from Sholt's Tavern to this place, thirty-six miles distant, lies partly across "barrens," that is, land of middling quality, thinly set with timber, or covered with long grass and shrubby underwood; generally level and dry, and gaudy with marigolds, sunflowers, martagon lilies, and many other beautiful flowers. On the whole, the country is tame, poorly watered, and not desirable as a place of settlement; but, from its varied character, it is pleasant to travel over. Vincennes exhibits a motley assemblage of inhabitants as well as visitors. The inhabitants are Americans, French Canadians, and Negroes. The visitors are chiefly Americans from various states; and Indians from various nations: Shawnees, Delawares, and Miamies, who live about a hundred miles northward, and who come here to trade for skins. The Indians were encamped, in considerable numbers, round the town, and were continually riding into the place, to the stores and the whiskey-shops. Their horses and accoutrements were generally mean, and their persons disagreeable. Their faces were painted in various ways, which gave an appearance of ferocity to their countenances.

One of them, a Shawnee, had his eyes, or rather his eyelids and the surrounding parts, daubed with vermilion. He thus looked hideous enough at a distance; but, on a nearer view, he had good features, and was a fine, stout, and fierce-looking man. Some of the Indians were well dressed. One young man, in particular, of the Miami nation, wore a clear, light blue cotton vest, with sleeves; and had his head ornamented with black feathers.

They all wear pantaloons, or rather long moccasins of buck-skin, covering the foot and leg, and reaching half way up the thigh, which is bare: a covering of cloth, a foot square, passes between the thighs, and hangs behind like an apron. Their complexion was various: some were dark, and others were not so swarthy as even Mr. Birkbeck; but he saw none of the copper-colour, which he had imagined to be their distinguishing characteristic. These Indians are addicted to drinking spirits, and are often intoxicated. They use much action in their discourse, and laugh immoderately. Their hair is straight and black, and their eyes are dark. Many of the women are decently dressed and good-looking.

Mr. Birkbeck remarks that, in Great Britain, the people are so circumscribed in their movements, that, with them, miles seem equal to tens of miles in America. He says that, in America, travellers will start on an expedition of three thousand miles, by boats, on horseback, or on foot, with as little deliberation or anxiety, as an Englishman would set out on a journey of three hundred.

At Vincennes, the foundation had just been laid of a large establishment of mills to be worked by steam. Water-mills of great power were building on the Wabash, near Harmony; and undertakings of similar kind will, no doubt, be called for and executed, along the banks of this river, and of its various tributary streams.

On entering Vincennes there is nothing which tends to make a favourable impression on a stranger; but it improves on acquaintance, for it contains agreeable people: and there is a spirit of cleanliness, and even of neatness, in the houses and manner of living. There is also a strain of politeness in the inhabitants, which marks the origin of this settlement to be French.

At Princeton, a place scarcely three years old, Mr. Birkbeck and his family went to a log-tavern, where neatness was as well observed as at many taverns in the cities of England. The people of this town belong to America in dress and manners; but they would not disgrace old England in the general decorum of their deportment.

Mr. Birkbeck lamented here, as in other parts of America, the small account that is had of time. Subsistence is easily secured, and liberal pursuits are yet too rare to operate as a general stimulus to exertion: the consequence is, that life is whiled away in a painful state of yawning lassitude.

Twenty or thirty miles west of this place, in the Illinois territory, is a large country where settlements were beginning; and where, Mr. Birkbeck says, there was an abundant choice of unentered lands, of a description, which, if the statements of travellers and surveyors, even after great abatements, can be relied on, he imagined would satisfy his wishes.

Princeton affords a very encouraging situation for a temporary abode. It stands on an elevated spot, in an uneven country, ten miles from the river Wabash, and two from the navigable stream of the Patok; but the country is rich, and the timber is vast in bulk and height.

The small-pox is likely soon to be excluded from this state; for vaccination is very generally adopted, and inoculation for the small-pox is prohibited altogether; not by law, but by common consent. If it should be known that an individual had undergone this operation, the inhabitants would compel him to withdraw from society. If he lived in a town, he must absent himself, or he would be driven away.

On the 25th of July, Mr. Birkbeck explored the country as far as Harmony and the banks of the Ohio. He lodged in a cabin, at a very new town, on the banks of the Ohio, called Mount Vernon. Here he found the people of a character which confirmed the aversion he had previously entertained to a settlement in the immediate vicinity of a large navigable river. Every hamlet was demoralized, and every plantation was liable to outrage, within a short distance of such a thoroughfare.

Yet, to persons who had been long buried in deep forests, the view of that noble expanse was like the opening of a bright day upon the gloom of night. To travel, day after day, among trees a hundred feet high, without a glimpse of the surrounding country, is oppressive to a degree which those cannot conceive who have not experienced it.

Mr. Birkbeck left Harmony after breakfast, on the ensuing day, and, crossing the Wabash, at a ferry, he proceeded to the Big Prairie, where, to his astonishment, he beheld a fertile plain of grass and arable; and some thousand acres of land covered with corn, more luxuriant than any he had before seen. The scene reminded him of some open well-cultivated vale in Europe, surrounded by wooded uplands. But the illusion vanished on his arrival at the habitation of Mr. Williams, the owner of an estate, on which, at this time, there were nearly three hundred acres of beautiful corn in one field; for this man lived in a way apparently as remote from comfort, as the settler of one year, who thinks only of the means of supporting existence.

The inhabitants of the Prairie are healthy, and the females and children are better complexioned than their neighbours of the timber country. It is evident that they breathe better air: but they are in a low state of civilization, being about half Indian in their mode of life. They are hunters by profession, and would have the whole range of the forests for themselves and their cattle. Strangers appear, to them, invaders of their privileges; as they have intruded on the better founded and exclusive privileges of their Indian predecessors.

After viewing several Prairies, which, with their surrounding woods, were so beautiful as to seem like the creation of fancy; (gardens of delight in a dreary wilderness;) and after losing their horses, and spending two days in recovering them, Mr. Birkbeck and his party took a hunter, as their guide, and proceeded across the little Wabash, to explore the country between that river and the Skillet Fork.

The lonely settlers, in the districts north of Big Prairie, are in a miserable state: their bread-corn must be ground thirty miles off; and it occupied three days to carry to the mill, and bring back, the small horse-load of three bushels. To struggle with privations has now become the habit of their lives, most of them having made several successive plunges into the wilderness.

Mr. Birkbeck's journey across the little Wabash was a complete departure from all mark of civilization. Wandering without track, where even the sagacity of the hunter-guide had nearly failed, they at length arrived at the cabin of another hunter, in which they lodged. This man, his wife, his eldest son, a tall, half-naked youth, just initiated in the hunter's arts; his three daughters, growing up into great rude girls, and a squalling tribe of dirty brats, of both sexes, were of one pale yellow colour, without the slightest tint of healthful bloom. They were remarkable instances of the effect, on the complexion, produced by living perpetually in the midst of woods.

Their cabin, which may serve as a specimen of these rudiments of houses, was formed of round logs, with apertures of three or four inches: there was no chimney, but large intervals were left between the "clapboards," for the escape of the smoke. The roof, however, was a more effectual covering, than Mr. Birkbeck had generally experienced, as it protected him and his party very tolerably from a drenching night. Two bedsteads, formed of unhewn logs, and cleft boards laid across; two chairs, (one of them without a bottom,) and a low stool, were all the furniture possessed by this numerous family. A string of buffalo-hide, stretched across the hovel, was a wardrobe for their rags; and their utensils, consisting of a large iron-pot, some baskets, one good rifle, and two that were useless, stood about in corners; and a fiddle, which was seldom silent, except when the inhabitants were asleep, hung by them.

These hunters, in the back-settlements of America, are as persevering as savages, and as indolent. They cultivate indolence as a privilege: "You English (they say) are industrious, but we have freedom." And thus they exist, in yawning indifference, surrounded by nuisances and petty wants; the former of which might be removed, and the latter supplied, by the application of one tenth part of the time that is loitered away in their innumerable idle days.

The Little Wabash, which Mr. Birkbeck crossed in search of some Prairies, that had been described to him in glowing colours, was, at this season, a sluggish and scanty stream; but, for three months of the latter part of winter and the beginning of spring, it covers a great space of ground, by the overflow of waters collected in its long course. The Skillet Fork is a river of similar character; and the country that lies between them must labour under the inconvenience of absolute seclusion, for many months every year, until bridges and ferries are established. Having made his way through this wildest of wildernesses to the Skillet Fork, Mr. Birkbeck crossed that river at a shoal. The country, on each side of it, is flat and swampy; so that the water, in many places, even at this season, rendered travelling disagreeable; yet here and there, at ten miles' distance, perhaps, the very solitude tempts persons to pitch their tents for a season.

At one of these lone dwellings Mr. Birkbeck found a neat, respectable looking female, spinning under the little piazza at one side of the cabin, which shaded her from the sun. Her husband was absent on business, which would detain him some weeks: she had no family, and no companion except her husband's dog, which usually attended him during his bear-hunting, in the winter. She said she was quite overcome with "lone," and hoped the party would tie their horses in the wood, and sit awhile with her, during the heat of the day. They did so, and she rewarded them with a basin of coffee. She said her husband was kind and good, and never left her without necessity. He was a true lover of bear-hunting; and, in the preceding winter, had killed a great number of bears.

On the second of August the party lodged at another cabin, where similar neatness prevailed, both within and without. The woman was neat, and the children were clean in skin, and whole in their clothes. The man possessed good sense and sound notions, and was ingenious and industrious. He lived on the edge of the Seven Miles' Prairie, a spot charming to the eye, but deficient in water.

Mr. Birkbeck considers Shawnee Town as a phænomenon, evincing the pertinacious adherence of man to the spot where he has once established himself. Once a year, for many successive springs, the Ohio, in its annual overflowings, has carried away the fences from the cleared lands of the inhabitants, till at length they have given them up, and ceased to cultivate them. Once a year the inhabitants of Shawnee Town either make their escape to higher lands, or take refuge in the upper stories of their houses, until the waters subside, when they recover their position on this desolate sand-bank.

At Shawnee Town there is an office for the south-east district of Illinois. Here Mr. Birkbeck constituted himself a land-owner, by paying seven hundred and twenty dollars, as one-fourth part of the purchase-money of fourteen hundred and forty acres. This land, with a similar purchase made by a Mr. Flower, constituted part of a beautiful and rich Prairie, about six miles distant from the Big Wabash, and the same distance from the Little Wabash.

The land was rich, natural meadow, bounded by timbered ground: it was within reach of two navigable rivers; and, at a small expence, was capable of being rendered immediately productive.

The geographical position of this portion of territory appeared to be extremely favourable. The Big Wabash, a noble stream, which forms its eastern boundary, runs four hundred miles, through one of the most fertile portions of this most fertile region. By means of a portage of eight miles to the Miami of the lakes, it has a communication, well known to the Indian traders, with Lake Huron, and with all the navigation of the north.

Mr. Birkbeck left Shawnee town on the third of August. He had found here something of river-barbarism, the genuine Ohio character; but he had met with a greater number, than he had expected, of agreeable individuals: and the kind and hospitable treatment he experienced at the tavern, formed a good contrast to the rude society and wretched fare he had left at the Skillet Fork.

On his return to Harmony, the day being Sunday, he had an opportunity of seeing, grouped and in their best attire, a large part of the members of this wonderful community. It was evening when he arrived, and he observed no human creature about the streets: soon the entire body of the people, about seven hundred in number, poured out of the church, and exhibited the appearance of health, neatness, and peace.

This colony is useful to the neighbourhood. It furnishes, from its store, many articles of great value, not so well supplied elsewhere; and it is a market for all spare produce. Many kinds of culinary plants, and many fruit-trees are cultivated here; and the Harmonites set a good example of neatness and industry. When we contrast their neatness and order, with the slovenly habits of their neighbours, we see (says Mr. Birkbeck) the good that arises from association, which advances these poor people a century, at least, on the social scale, beyond the solitary beings who build their huts in the wilderness.

At Harmony Mr. Birkbeck and his family lived at the tavern, and their board there cost two dollars per week, each person: for these they received twenty-one meals. Excellent coffee and tea, with broiled chickens, bacon, &c. for breakfast and supper, and a variety of good, but simple fare at dinner. Except coffee, tea, or milk, no liquor but water is thought of at meals in this country.

Mr. Birkbeck observes that, when the back country of America is mentioned in England, musquitoes by night, and rattlesnakes by day, never fail to alarm the imagination: to say nothing of wolves and bears, and panthers, and Indians still more ferocious than these. His course of travelling, from the mouth of James River, and over the mountains, up to Pittsburg, about five hundred miles; then three hundred miles through the woods of the state of Ohio, down to Cincinnati; next, across the entire wilderness of Indiana, and to the extreme south of the Illinois: – this long and deliberate journey, (he says,) one would suppose, might have introduced his party to an intimate acquaintance with some of these pests of America. It is true that they killed several of the serpent tribe; black snakes, garter-snakes, &c. and that they saw one rattlesnake of extraordinary size. They experienced inconvenience from musquitoes in a few damp spots, just as they would have done from gnats in England. In their late expeditions in the Illinois, where they led the lives of thorough backwoods-men, if they were so unfortunate as to pitch their tent on the edge of a creek, or near a swamp, and mismanaged their fire, they were teased with musquitoes, as they would have been in the fens of Cambridgeshire: but this was the sum total of their experience of these reported plagues.

Wolves and bears are extremely numerous, and commit much injury in the newly-settled districts. Hogs, which are a main dependance for food as well as profit, are the constant prey of the bears; and the holds of these animals are so strong, that the hunters are unable to keep down their numbers.

[In the autumn of the year 1817, Mr. Birkbeck removed, with his family, to the property he had purchased, between the Great and Little Wabash, and to which he has given the name of "English Prairie." In his "Notes on America," and in his "Letters from the Illinois," he has described, in an interesting manner, the face of the country, its soil, productions, mode of culture, and capacities of improvement; and has pointed out the great advantages which it offers to settlers, especially to labourers and to farmers with small capital. The confidence that is reposed in his judgment and agricultural skill, has already induced several persons to emigrate into the same neighbourhood, both from England and the United States; but the singularity of his religious opinions, and his objection to the admission of religious instructors of any description into his settlement, had prevented many conscientious persons from joining him, who might have proved useful members of his little community.]

From this place we must return to Philadelphia, for the purpose of accompanying Mr. Weld on a journey to Washington, the federal city or metropolis of the United States.