think no more of taking a journey of five hundred or a thousand miles, than they would of visiting their county town in England a short time before. A few hundred miles more after crossing the mighty ocean, seem but a drop in the bucket not worthy of a thought. Our Canadians will not hesitate, for the difference of a few pounds, to change their farms instanter, and to remove to a distance of two or three hundred miles. The disease is not, therefore, peculiar to the republicans, though they are, perhaps, more deeply affected by it than their northern neighbours. Its greatest evil is not so much the loss consequent on continual change of place, thus giving up all the benefits acquired by previous experience; as that it tends to destroy those feelings of predilection for a particular spot, for, in one word, home, which seem so closely allied to family affection. This constant habit of considering every place but as a temporary abode, that may at any time be abandoned on the slightest temptation, prevents the growth of those feelings attached to home in other countries; and by early scattering the different branches of a family, weakens and nearly destroys those ardent feelings of affection that are the greatest ornament of our nature. Whether the influence of climate, or the habit of wandering be the principal cause, the fact itself is certain, that whatever may be the virtues of the Americans, and they have many, they participate largely in the apathy of the Indian character, and show little of that warmth of affection, love, and friendship we are accustomed to see exemplified in Europe. Most strange it is, that, with this apparent apathy, they should surpass the liveliest nations of the Old World in their displays of religious enthusiasm. Every people has had its hot and cold fits of religious zeal, but none has preserved it so long and so extensively as the Americans. The Anabaptists of Germany, the Presbyterians of Scotland, and the Methodists of England, had their early fits of enthusiasm long since quenched by the cooling ordeal of philosophy; but all sects in the New World preserve a vigorous spirit of proselytising, that has no recent examples in the peaceful and unambitious churches of Europe. Much of these effects must be attributed to the circumstances and situation of the people. Scattered over such an extensive territory, in many places remote from neighbours, and far distant from a church of their own faith, the inhabitants make amends for these cooling influences by periodical assemblages in the woods, that recall all the fire of their devotion. They have too high an opinion of themselves to believe implicitly in priest or presbyter, so that superstition has little or no influence over their minds; but the solitude of their habitations, and the gloomy scenery amidst which they pass their lives, naturally engender those morbid feelings of religion, which make the will of the Deity seem to them clearly spoken by the momentary flashes of thought that strike their imagination. This is not confined to one or more sects; for all maintain, with more or less zeal, that these inward feelings or convictions are the true criteria of sincere religion. These sentiments, however, and the assemblages that produce such an outbreaking of religious fervour, are perhaps peculiar to the circumstances in which the people are placed, and may, therefore, be passed over without animadversion. If misery make us acquainted with strange bed-fellows, travelling in the Western woods brings us into contact with strange characters. In the boats I met with on my voyage, or in the villages along the shore, where I sojourned for a time, it was my lot to fall in with men who had borne a share, more or less important, in almost every convulsion that has agitated Europe for the last thirty years. Many delightful hours have I spent in listening to tales of warfare from men of all countries, from the Vistula to the Tagus, and in comparing our respective reflections on past events and the scenes that lay before us. But these are vulgar incidents, such as might have occurred in any country in Europe-not so some rare characters, whom it was my good fortune to meet with as a specimen of the "olden times." These were three Frenchmen, far advanced in life, and scattered along distant parts of the Ohio. Whatever may be the changeability of the French mind, the French character is undoubtedly the most fixed and unchangeable of any in Europe,—a fact I rather suspected before, but which I never saw so fully exemplified as by these three worthies. More than thirty years had elapsed since they had left the banks of the Seine and the Garonne; and during that long period they had resided among the rude backwoodsmen, or the wilder Indians: yet, changed in years, though not in mind, they remained unaltered and unalloyed by foreign manners, as at their first importation. They had changed their country, but scarcely their tongue; for though their French was but a rude patois, their English had the merit of being a language completely sui generis. Their love of fun, frolic, chansons grivoises, frills, finery, pomatum, and snuff, with the usual concomitants, was altogether as complete as if they had acted a pageant at the court of that great actor of royalty, Louis the Fourteenth, of happy and immortal memory. It need scarcely be added, that the queue of the ancien regime was a neverfailing appendage to those venerable remnants of ancient folly, along with all the formal manners and ceremonious practices that distinguished the middle ranks of Frenchmen before that horrible catastrophe, yclept the Revolution, had swept away, in undistinguishing ruin, politesse, powder, and pomatum. Sic transit gloria mundi, as the sculptor inscribes over the defunct. Though these expatriated Frenchmen presented, in the fulness of their ancient costume, and in the formality of their manners, a striking contrast to the abrupt ways and unpicturesque dress of their present compatriots, yet they had a simplicity and bonhommie in their whole demeanour, that blunted the edge of ridicule, while their kindness, humanity, and social virtues, gained them the unbounded esteem of the people among whom they dwelt. In the years 1789 and 90, some speculative Americans circulated through different cities of Europe spacious plans of fine plantations, with towns and villages appended; and all this on the Ohio river, where scarcely a village existed at the time; they succeeded, however, (like some of our traders on the Stock Exchange) in exchanging titles to uncleared lands for lots of solid gold. Along with many hundreds of their countrymen, our three worthies bought estates in the land of promise,-but, alas! for many years they found it not to be a land of performance. About three hundred miles below Pittsburgh, they built the town of Gallipolis; but just as they were beginning to surmount their manifold difficulties, the Ohio Company failed in performing its engagements with the government, which claimed and took the cleared and uncleared lands from the luckless colonists. This was the downfal of the settlement, and its members were immediately dispersed over all the states of the American union. Before leaving Paris, they had paid five francs for land not then worth five farthings per acre; they had cultivated it for some years, though daily exposed to the tomahawks of the Indians (who kindly prevented the approach of famine, by thinning their numbers); and after surviving all disasters, they were turned from their homes in their old age, and exposed to want and penury! Such, too, was the fate of Boon, the discoverer of Kentucky. That enterprising hunter first climbed the Alleghany Mountains, in North Carolina, and looked down upon the fertile plains that extended towards the Ohio; he ventured into this garden of the Indians, this hunting paradise, and after many bloody struggles, and the unceasing warfare of years, he succeeded in driving every Indian beyond its bounds; yet, after all his achievements (unequalled even by the deeds of chivalry), was this veteran warrior forced in his old age to remove beyond the Mississippi! When my Gallic friends were turned from their homes, they all betook themselves to the same livelihood-they became doctors, which, of course, includes the positive, comparative, and superlative degrees of the medical profession; and in making this choice, they doubtless reasoned, like the Mussulman, that "when God gives a place, he gives the talent to fill it." Their practice was, I believe, very harmless, however; at least there was but one Sangrado amongst them, and his striking predilection for bleeding in its various branches, and blistering the head, including shaving, comme de raison, inclined me to give him credit for having obtained a real diploma from the Parisian College of -barber-surgeons! From these veteran anomalies among the American colonists, I received some amusing information relative to the settlement on the Sciota, the situation of the Indians in early times, and the progress of change along the great rivers of the West. My own experience in Canada had already given me some little insight into the habits of French emigrants; and, shortly after the period in question, I travelled over nearly all the old traces of their early settlements, that had been established since the time of La Salle. But of this hereafter. It is well known that the French extended a chain of forts from Canada to the Mississippi long before the settlement of Louisiana; and that while the English colonies on the coast were struggling with the Natives, their rivals had already obtained a complete ascendancy over the Indian tribes, and were, in fact, the true sovereigns of North America. They had penetrated beyond Lake Huron more than two hundred years ago; and the accounts written by their missionary priests are still the only authentic records of these remote posts which at this moment remain the ultima Thule of accurate geography to the Canadians of the nineteenth century! Such was the enterprising spirit of the Frenchmen of those days, who, at the same moment, laid the foundations of extensive empires in Asia, Africa, and America, that have since been lost by the apathy and thoughtlessness of their descendants. Vincennes on the Wabash, and Kaskaskias on the Mississippi, (fifteen hundred miles from the coast,) were founded prior to New York and Philadelphia. Had the government at home adequately supported the Canadian settlers of those times, the whole of the coun 1 try, now known as the United States, would have owned France as its father-land, and the French language would have enjoyed the same pre-eminence as the English now possesses. But the French settlers were little qualified for founding a firm and stable empire amidst the circumstances with which they were surrounded. To conquer or to conciliate the Natives, they well knew; but in the arts of peace and industry that distinguished the English exiles, in those habits of foresight, order, and perseverance, that change the face of a wilderness, they were miserably deficient. With the gaiety, thoughtlessness, and improvidence of their countrymen of those days, they were little fitted to contend in the race for empire with the stern religionists of New England. Yet their very defects gave them unbounded influence over the savage inhabitants of the wilderness. Thoughtless, daring, and improvident, like the Indians by whom they were surrounded, their similarity of habits attached their wild neighbours to their cause, and ever since made them invariably regard a Frenchman as a friend. They mingled with the Natives without constraint, adopted their habits, and soon boasted all the simplicity of manners, love of inde. pendence, and spirit of adventure, that distinguished the red men of the woods. These feelings are common enough to all settlers, of whatever nation, when they live in contact with the Indians; but by none were they ever adopted to such an extent as by the French Canadians. Intermediate breeds of French Indians soon appeared; and at Prairie du Chien, Prairie du Rocher, Michilimackinac, and other remote posts of the fur-traders, these mongrel descendants of the soldiers of the Grand Monarque, with their Creole speech, French frippery, and Indian indifference, may be seen at the present day. Y. FRACTUS AND VIDUA. A Tale. FRACTUS had topp'd the part of Rover But bits of blood, who fiercely dash on, And bide the mettled racer's fate: A marquis too, the which mayhap A man so lame and halt as he. Thus humbled by the paralytics, He own'd the truth, and damn'd the critics. Vidua, you see a cominon fate The cause comes on, the motion 's lost, And parties left in statu quo; Defendant order'd to provide CELER. |