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ing, we suppose, arises from the loss of his nose; the ridicule, from what remains.

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'On taking leave of Virginia, (he says,) I must observe, that I found more misery in the condition of the negroes, and a much higher tone of moral feeling in their owners than I had anticipated; and I depart confirmed in my detestation of slavery, in principle and practice; but with esteem for the general character of the Virginians.'-p. 22. Here we find our traveller quite delighted with the lofty tone of morality' of the Virginian planter; though he had described this same planter just before as lax in morals, irascible, and commonly provided with a dirk,'-for no peaceable purpose, we presume:-But the reader of Mr. Birkbeck must be prepared for these contradictions. His natural shrewdness and turn for observation unconsciously counteract his prejudices, and his facts and his opinions are therefore continually at issue.

Proceeding to the Potowmack, our emigrant and his companions (for besides Mr. Flower, he had several women and children in his train) embark in the steam-boat for Washington. This federal city, including George Town, is said to contain 20,000 inhabitants, scattered over an immense space like a number of petty hamlets in a populous country. Here again our Friend is sore troubled in spirit at the thought that ninety marble capitals should have been imported at vast cost from Italy to crown the columns of the Capitol, and shew how un-American is the whole plan.' There is nothing in America,' he adds, to which I can liken this affectation of splendor, except the painted face and gaudy head-dress of a half-naked Indian.'

At M'Connel's Town the road joins the great turnpike from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and the line of stages from George Town terminates; so here we are,' he says, 'nine in number, one hundred and thirty miles of mountain-country between us and Pittsburgh!'-No vehicles were to be procured, and the only alternative was that of staying where they were or making the journey on foot: they preferred the latter, and, each taking his little bundle, they set out on their pilgrimage, over the Alleghany ridge. 'We have now,' he repeats for the third or fourth time, 'fairly turned our backs on the old world, and find ourselves in the very stream of emigration. Old America* seems to be breaking up and moving westward.' This accords with an observation in a letter now. before us from a very intelligent native of Cambridge near Boston. Our towns and cities,' he says, 'on the salt sea shores

*

Strange as it may appear, the south-western part of the New World has already begun to consider the north-eastern as having passed the meridiau of life, and accordingly given it the name of Old America. The line of the Alleghany mountains forms the phy. sical, as in no great length of time it will probably do the political, barrier, or line of demarcation between the two countries.

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are not improving so fast as our interior. Indeed people are emigrating daily and hourly from the Atlantic shores, especially from the coast of New England to the interior of Kentucky and Ohio, carrying with them the characteristic enterprize of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode island.' During the revolutionary war,' adds our Cambridge correspondent, the physical and intellectual power of these colonies might be compared to a wedge, the broadest end of which was here in New England, and the thinnest in Georgia, but now, alas! the wedge is turned end forward, and the thickest end is in the south-west.'

The following is the picture which Friend Morris gives of family groups deserting poor old worn out America, and travelling to seek new homes amidst the freshness of the back settlements.

'A small waggon (so light that you might almost carry it, yet strong enough to bear a good load of bedding, utensils and provisions, and a swarm of young citizens,—and to sustain marvellous shocks in its passage over these rocky heights) with two small horses; sometimes a cow or two, comprises their all; excepting a little store of hard-earned cash for the land office of the district; where they may obtain a title for as many acres as they possess half-dollars, being one fourth of the purchase-money. The waggon has a tilt, or cover, made of a sheet, or perhaps a blanket. The family are seen before, behind, or within the vehicle, according to the road or the weather, or perhaps the spirits of the party.

The New Englanders, they say, may be known by the cheerful air of the women advancing in front of the vehicle; the Jersey people, by their being fixed steadily within it; whilst the Pennsylvanians creep lingering behind, as though regretting the homes they have left. A cart and single horse frequently affords the means of transfer, sometimes a horse and pack-saddle. Often the back of the poor pilgrim bears all his effects, and his wife follows, naked-footed, bending under the hopes of the family.'

The mountainous district is pronounced to be a land of plenty,' and that to which they are proceeding a land of abundance;' an earnest of which is given by the noble droves of oxen met on the road from the western country, in their way to the city of Philadelphia. But though the cattle were good and plentiful, and the horses excellent, the sheep were few and miserable. Twenty or thirty half-starved creatures are seen now and then straggling about in much wretchedness,'—a comfortable sight for the flower of Merino farmers!

The Americans, it seems, are fond of journeying; they are, in fact, a migrating people; they have few or none of those local attachments and fixed habits, which make it in Europe so painful a task to separate from those objects which time and memory have endeared. We are told, that not fewer than 12,000 waggons

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passed between Baltimore and Philadelphia in the preceding year, besides stage-coaches, carts, and innumerable travellers on horseback and on foot, presenting a scene of bustle and business, which our author assures us is truly wonderful. He is now, for the first time, happy and at home-All is urbanity, politeness and civilization; even in the remotest districts, he tells us, a vast superiority, in every department of common life, both in habits and education, prevails, when compared with the same class in England; nay, the very pilot whom they took on board off Cape Henry was a well informed and agreeable man; and the Custom House officer a perfect Chesterfield—' a gentlemanly youth, without a shade of the disagreeable character which prevails among his European brethren.' The taverns too-but these shall be described in the author's own words.

At these places all is performed on the gregarious plan: every thing is public by day and by night;-for even night in an American inn affords no privacy. Whatever may be the number of guests, they must receive their entertainments en masse, and they must sleep en masse. Three times a-day the great bell rings, and a hundred persons collect from all quarters, to eat a hurried meal, composed of almost as many dishes. At breakfast you have fish, flesh and fowl; bread of every shape and kind, butter, eggs, coffee, tea-every thing, and more than you can think of. Dinner is much like the breakfast, omitting the tea and coffee; and supper is the breakfast repeated. Soon after this meal, you assemble once more, in rooms crowded with beds, something like the wards of an hospital; where, after undressing in public, you are fortunate if you escape a partner in your bed, in addition to the myriads of bugs, which you need not hope to escape.

'But the horrors of the kitchen, from whence issue these shoals of dishes, how shall I describe, though I have witnessed them.-It is a dark and sooty hole, where the idea of cleanliness never entered, swarming with negroes of all sexes and ages, who seem as though they were bred there: without floor, except the rude stones that support a raging fire of pine logs, extending across the entire place; which forbids your approach, and which no being but a negro could face.

In your reception at a western Pennsylvania tavern there is something of hospitality combined with the mercantile feelings of your host. He is generally a man of property, the head man of the village perhaps, with the title of Colonel, and feels that he confers, rather than receives a favour by the accommodation he affords; and rude as his establishment may be, he does not perceive that you have a right to complain: what he has you partake of, but he makes no apologies; and if you shew symptoms of dissatisfaction or disgust, you will fare the worse; whilst a disposition to be pleased and satisfied will be met by a wish to make you so.'

The next stage was the city of Pittsburgh, the Birmingham of America,' where Mr. Birkbeck expected to have been enveloped

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in clouds of smoke issuing from a thousand furnaces, and stunned with the din of ten thousand hammers; but he soon found that he had been deceived by an American figure of rhetoric of extensive use in description; he calls it anticipation, by way of softening down the vulgar and proper term, and explains it by informing the reader that it simply consists in the use of the present indicative, instead of the future subjunctive.' The past tense, by his own account, would have been most appropriate, as the manufacturers were under great difficulties, and many on the eve of suspending their operations, owing to the influx of depreciated fabrics from Europe; that is to say, if Friend Morris would put aside the American figure of rhetoric' and speak out plainly, the manufactures of America cannot possibly flourish so long as Europe shall be able to supply them with good articles at a cheaper rate than they can afford to make bad or indifferent ones; so long as a new lock from Europe can be purchased in America for less money than an old lock can be repaired, the locksmith of Pittsburgh must 'suspend his operations.'

At Pittsburgh our travellers purchased horses for fifty dollars a piece, to enable them to proceed by land through the state of Ohio to Cincinnati, though the usual mode of travelling is down the Ohio, on long floating rooms built on a flat bottom, with rough boards, and arranged within for sleeping and other accommodations.' Such machines are here called arks,' of which hundreds of various sizes are at all times to be purchased; the boatmen are hired, and the ark is sold for what it will fetch at the end of the journey. On the 5th of June they set out for Washington in Pennsylvania.

Washington is said to be a thriving town, with 2500 inhabitants; it has a college with about a hundred students. But, says our author, from the dirty condition of the schools, and the appearance of loitering habits among the young men, I should suspect it to be a coarsely conducted institution; all this, however, he ascribes to the fatal influence of the concourse of free negroes.

Mr. Birkbeck finds the western territory at once healthy, fertile, and romantic. The little history of his host may serve as an example of the natural growth of property, in this young country, as he calls it.

'He is about thirty; has a wife and three fine healthy children: his father is a farmer; that is to say, a proprietor, living five miles distant. From him he received five hundred dollars, and " began the world," in true style of American enterprize, by taking a cargo of flour to New Orleans, about two thousand miles, gaining a little more than his expences, and a stock of knowledge. Two years ago he had increased his property to nine hundred dollars; purchased this place; a

house,

house, stable, &c. and two hundred and fifty acres of land, (sixty-five of which are cleared and laid down to grass,) for three thousand five hundred dollars, of which he has already paid three thousand, and will pay the remaining five hundred next year. He is now building a good stable, and going to improve his house. His property is at present worth seven thousand dollars: having gained, or rather grown, five thousand five hundred dollars in two years, with prospects of future accumulation to his utmost wishes. Thus it is that people here grow wealthy without extraordinary exertion, and without any anxiety." -p. 42.

The subject of emigration from Great Britain to the United States, Mr. Birkbeck says, has been a primary object of his attention; and he is anxious that his information on this important subject should produce no false impressions on the minds of his countrymen. The following extracts will shew what his views are.

'From what I have seen, and heard from others, of America, east of the Alleghany mountains, I judge that artisans in general will succeed in any part of it; and that labourers of every description will greatly improve their condition: in so much, that they will, if saving and industrious, soon lay by enough to tempt them to migrate still farther in quest of land, on which they may establish themselves as proprietors. That mercantile adventurers would be likely to succeed as well, but not better than in England; that clerks, lawyers, and doctors, would gain nothing by the exchange of countries. The same of master manufacturers in general.'--p. 48.

Here again we must correct our Friend. 'All kinds of artizans,' he says, will succeed in any part of America.' He had just assured us, that many of the manufacturers of iron were on the eve of suspending their operations; and he soon after adds, that a hatter, who was in quest of employ, said to him, 'There are in this western country more artizans than materials; shoe-makers are standing still for want of leather, and tanners for want of hides.' Mr. Birkbeck is an apt scholar; he is already familiar with the American figure of anticipation,' and, like his adopted countrymen, 'contemplates what may be, as though it were in actual existence." We have now some little account of the difficulties to which the new settlers are exposed.

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The land, when intended for sale, is laid out in the government surveys in quarter sections of 160 acres, being one fourth of a square mile. The whole is then offered to the public by auction, and that which remains unsold, which is generally a very large proportion, may be purchased at the land office of the district, at two dollars per acre, one fourth to be paid down, and the remaining three fourths at several instalments, to be completed in five years.

'The poor emigrant, having collected the eighty dollars, repairs to the land office, and enters his quarter section, then works his way without another" cent" in his pocket, to the solitary spot, which is to

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