THE JOURNALS AND JOURNEYS OF AN EARLY BUFFALO MERCHANT.
On the frosty morning of February 5, 1822, a strange equipage turned out of Erie Street into Willink Avenue, Buffalo, drove down that steep and ungraded highway for a short distance, then crossed to Onondaga Street, and turning into Crow, was soon lost to sight among the snowdrifts that lined the road running round the south shore of Lake Erie. At least, such I take to have been the route, through streets now familiar as Main, Washington and Exchange, which a traveler would choose who was bound up the south shore of Lake Erie.
The equipage, as I have said, was a strange one, and a good many people came out to see it; not so much to look at the vehicle as to bid good-bye to its solitary passenger. The conveyance itself was nothing more nor less than a good-sized crockery-crate, set upon runners. Thills were attached, in which was harnessed a well-conditioned horse. The baggage, snugly stowed, included a saddle and saddle-bags, and a sack of oats for the horse. Sitting among his effects, the passenger, though raised but a few inches above the snow, looked snug and comfortable. With a chorus of well-wishes following him, he left the village and by nightfall had traveled many miles to the westward, taking his course on the ice that covered Lake Erie.
This was John Lay, a merchant of the early Buffalo, whom even yet it is only necessary to introduce to the young people and to new-comers. The older generation remembers well the enterprising and successful merchant who shared fortunes with Buffalo in her most romantic days. Before going after him, up the ice-covered lake, let us make his closer acquaintance.
Mr. Lay, who was of good New-England stock, came to Buffalo in 1810 to clerk in the general store of his brother-in-law, Eli Hart. Mr. Hart had built his store on Main near the corner of Erie Street, the site now occupied by the American Express Co.'s building. His dwelling was on Erie Street, adjoining, and between the house and store was an ample garden. The space now occupied by St. Paul's Church and the Erie County Savings Bank was a rough common; native timber still stood thick along the east side of Main, above South Division Street; the town had been laid out in streets and lots for four years, and the population, exceeding at that time 400, was rapidly increasing. There was a turnpike road to the eastward, with a stage route. Buffalo Creek flowed lazily into the lake; no harbor had been begun; and on quiet days in summer the bees could still be heard humming among the basswoods by its waters.
This was the Buffalo to which young Lay had come. Looking back to those times, even more novel than the condition of the frontier village, was the character of the frontier trade carried on by Mr. Hart. The trade of the villagers was less important than that which was held with the Canadians or English who were in office under the Government. To them they sold India goods, silks and muslins. Side by side with these the shelves were stocked with hardware, crockery, cottonades, jeans and flannels, Indian supplies, groceries and liquors. The young New Englander soon found that with such customers as Red Jacket and other representative red-men his usefulness was impaired unless he could speak Indian. With characteristic energy he set himself at the task, and in three months had mastered the Seneca. New goods came from the East by the old Mohawk River and Lewiston route, were poled up the Niagara from Schlosser's, above the falls, on flatboats, and were stored in a log house at the foot of Main Street.
Up to 1810 the growth of Buffalo had been exceedingly slow, even for a remote frontier point. But about the time Mr. Lay came here new life was shown. Ohio and Michigan were filling up, and the tide of migration strengthened. Mr. Hart's market extended yearly farther west and southwest, and for a time the firm did a profitable business.
Then came the war, paralysis of trade, and destruction of property. Mr. Lay was enrolled as a private in Butts's Company, for defense. The night the village was burned he with his brother-in-law, Eli Hart, were in their store. The people were in terror, fearing massacre by the Indians, hesitating to fly, not knowing in which direction safety lay.
"John," said Mr. Hart, "there's all that liquor in the cellar—the redskins mustn't get at that."
Together they went down and knocked in the heads of all the casks until, as Mr. Lay said afterwards, they stood up to their knees in liquor. As he was coming up from the work he encountered a villainous-looking Onondaga chief, who was knocking off the iron shutters from the store windows. They had been none too quick in letting the whisky run into the ground. Mr. Lay said to the Indian:
"You no hurt friend?"
Just then a soldier jumped from his horse before the door. Mr. Lay caught up a pair of saddle-bags, filled with silver and valuable papers, threw them across the horse, and cried out to his brother-in-law:
"Here, jump on and strike out for the woods."
Mr. Hart took this advice and started. The horse was shot from under him, but the rider fell unharmed, and, catching up the saddle-bags, made his way on foot to the house of another brother-in-law, Mr. Comstock. Later that day they came back to the town, and with others they picked up thirty dead bodies and put them into Rees's blacksmith shop, where the next day they were burned with the shop.
After starting his relatives toward safety, Mr. Lay thought of himself. The Onondaga had disappeared, and Mr. Lay went into the house, took a long surtout that hung on the wall and put it on. As he stepped out of the door he was taken prisoner, and that night, with many others, soldiers and civilians, was carried across the river to Canada.
And here begins an episode over which I am tempted to linger; for the details of his captivity, as they were related to me by his widow, the late Mrs. Frances Lay, are worthy of consideration. I will only rehearse, as briefly as possible, the chief events of this captivity in Canada, which, although not recorded in Mr. Lay's journals, resulted in one of his most arduous and adventurous journeys.
The night of December 30, 1813, was bitterly cold. The captured and the captors made a hard march from Fort Erie to Newark—or, as we know it now, Niagara, Ont., on Lake Ontario. The town was full of Indians, and many of the Indians were full of whisky. Under the escort of a body-guard Mr. Lay was allowed to go to the house of a Mrs. Secord, whom he knew. While there, the enemy surrounded the house and demanded Lay, but Mrs. Secord hid him in a closet, and kept him concealed until Mr. Hart, who had followed with a flag of truce, had learned of his safety. Then came the long, hard march through Canadian snows to Montreal. The prisoners were put on short rations, were grudgingly given water to drink, and were treated with such unnecessary harshness that Mr. Lay boldly told the officer in charge of the expedition that on reaching Montreal he should report him to the Government for violating the laws of civilized warfare.
In March he was exchanged at Greenbush, opposite Albany. There he got some bounty and footed it across the country to Oneida, where his father lived. As he walked through the village he saw his father's sleigh in front of the postoffice, where his parents had gone, hoping for news from him. They burned his war-rags, and he rested for a time at his father's home, sick of the horrors of war and fearful lest his constitution had been wrecked by the hardships he had undergone. It will be noted that this enforced journey from Buffalo through Canada to Montreal and thence south and west to Oneida had been made in the dead of winter and chiefly, if not wholly, on foot. Instead of killing him, as his anxious parents feared it might, the experience seems to have taught him the pleasures of pedestrianism, for it is on foot and alone that we are to see him undertaking some of his most extended journeys.
I cannot even pause to call attention to the slow recovery of Buffalo from her absolute prostration. The first house rebuilt here after the burning was that of Mrs. Mary Atkins, a young widow, whose husband, Lieut. Asael Atkins, had died of an epidemic only ten days before the village was destroyed. The young widow had fled with the rest, finding shelter at Williamsville, until her new house was raised on the foundation of the old. It stood on the corner of Church and Pearl streets, where the Stafford Building now is.
The reader is perhaps wondering what all this has to do with John Lay. Merely this: that when, at Mr. Hart's solicitation, Mr. Lay once more returned to Buffalo, he boarded across the common from the rebuilt store, with the Widow Atkins, and later on married her daughter Frances, who, many years his junior, long survived him, and to whose vigorous memory and kind graciousness we are indebted for these pictures of the past.
The years that followed the War of 1812 were devoted by Messrs. Hart & Lay to a new upbuilding of their business. Mr. Hart, who had ample capital, went to New York to do the buying for the firm, and continued to reside there, establishing as many as five general stores in different parts of Western New York. He had discerned in his young relative a rare combination of business talents, made him a partner, and entrusted him with the entire conduct of the business at Buffalo. After peace was declared the commercial opportunities of a well-equipped firm here were great. Each season brought in larger demands from the western country. Much of the money that accrued from the sale of lands of the Holland Purchase flowed in the course of trade into their hands. The pioneer families of towns to the west of Buffalo came hither to trade, and personal friendships were cemented among residents scattered through a large section. I find no period of our local history so full of activities. From Western New York to Illinois it was a time of foundation-laying. Let me quote a few paragraphs from memoranda which Mrs. Lay made relating to this period:
The war had brought men of strong character, able to cope with pioneer life; among others, professional men, surgeons, doctors and lawyers: Trowbridge, Marshall, Johnson, and many others. Elliot of Erie was a young lawyer, of whom Mr. Lay had often said, "His word is as good as his bond." Another friend was Hamot of Erie, who had married Mr. Hart's niece. He made frequent visits to his countryman, Louis Le Couteulx. [At whose house, by the way, John Lay and Frances Atkins were married, Red Jacket being among the guests.] At Erie, then a naval station, were the families of Dickinson, Brown, Kelso, Reed, Col. Christy, and many others, all numbered among Mr. Lay's patrons. Albert H. Tracy came here about that time; he brought a letter from his brother Phineas, who had married Mr. Lay's sister. He requested Mr. Lay to do for him what he could in the way of business. Mr. Lay gave him a room over his store, and candles and wood for five years. Even in those days Mr. Tracy used to declare that he should make public life his business.
Hart & Lay became consignees for the Astors in the fur business. I well remember that one vessel-load of furs from the West got wet. To dry them Mr. Lay spread them on the grass, filling the green where the churches now are. The wet skins tainted the air so strongly that Mr. Lay was threatened with indictment—but he saved the Astors a large sum of money.
Hart & Lay acquired tracts of land in Canada, Ohio and Michigan. To look after these and other interests Mr. Lay made several adventurous journeys to the West—such journeys as deserve to be chronicled with minutest details, which are not known to have been preserved. On one occasion, to look after Detroit interests, he went up the lake on the ice with Maj. Barton and his wife; the party slept in the wigwams of Indians, and Mr. Lay has left on record his admiration of Mrs. Barton's ability to make even such rough traveling agreeable.
A still wilder journey took him to Chicago. He went alone, save for his Indian guides, and somewhere in the Western wilderness they came to him and told him they had lost the trail. Before it was regained their provisions were exhausted, and they lived for a time on a few kernels of corn, a little mutton tallow, and a sip of whisky. Fort Dearborn—or Chicago—at that date had but one house, a fur-trading post. When Mr. Lay and his guides reached there they were so near starvation that the people dared give them only a teaspoonful of pigeon soup at a time. Nor had starvation been the only peril on this journey. An attempt to rob him, if not to murder him, lent a grim spice to the experience. Mr. Lay discovered that he was followed, and kept his big horse-pistols in readiness. One night, as he lay in a log-house, he suddenly felt a hand moving along the belt which he wore at his waist. Instantly he raised his pistol and fired. The robber dashed through the window, and he was molested no more.
Such adventurous journeyings as these formed no inconsiderable part of the work of this pushing Buffalo merchant during the half dozen years that followed the burning of the town. Business grew so that half a dozen clerks were employed, and there were frequently crowds of people waiting to be served. The store became a favorite rendezvous of prominent men of the place.
Many a war episode was told over there. Albert Gallatin and Henry Clay, Jackson and the United States banks—the great men and measures of the day—were hotly discussed there; and many a time did the group listen as Mr. Lay read from Niles' Register, of which he was a constant subscriber. There were sometimes lively scrimmages there, as the following incident, narrated by Mrs. Lay, will illustrate:
There was a family in New York City whose son was about to form a misalliance. His friends put him under Mr. Hart's care, and he brought the youth to Buffalo. Here, however, an undreamed-of difficulty was encountered. A young Seneca squaw, well known in town as Suse, saw the youth from New York and fell desperately in love with him. Mr. Lay, not caring to take the responsibility of such a match-making, shipped the young man back to New York. The forest maiden was disconsolate; but, unlike Viola, she told her love, nor "let concealment, like the worm i' the bud, feed on her damask cheek." Not a bit of it. On the contrary, whenever Suse saw Mr. Lay she would ask him where her friend was. One day she went into the store, and, going up to the counter behind which Mr. Lay was busy, drew a club from under her blanket and "let him have it" over the shoulders. The attack was sudden, but just as suddenly did he jump over the counter and tackle her. Suse was a love-lorn maid, but she was strong as a wildcat and as savage. Albert H. Tracy, who was in the store, afterwards described the trouble to Mrs. Lay.
"I never saw a fight," he said, "where both parties came so near being killed; but Lay got the better of her, and yanked her out into the street with her clothes torn off from her."
"I should think you would have helped John," said the gentle lady, as Mr. Tracy told her this.
By the close of the year 1821, although still a young man, the subject of this sketch had made a considerable fortune. Feeling the need of rest, and anxious to extend his horizon beyond the frontier scenes to which he was accustomed, he decided to go to Europe. Telling Mr. Hart to get another partner, the business was temporarily left in other hands; and on February 5, 1822, as narrated at the opening of this paper, Mr. Lay drove out of town in a crockery-crate, and took his course up the ice-covered lake, bound for Europe.
Recall, if you please, something of the conditions of those times. No modern journeyings that we can conceive of, short of actual exploration in unknown regions, are quite comparable to such an undertaking as Mr. Lay proposed. Partly, perhaps, because it was a truly extraordinary thing for a frontier merchant to stop work and set off for an indefinite period of sight-seeing; and partly, too, because he was a man whose love for the accumulation of knowledge was regulated by precise habits, we are now able to follow him in the closely-written, faded pages of half a dozen fat journals, written by his own hand day by day during the two years of his wanderings. No portion of these journals has ever been published; yet they are full of interesting pictures of the past, and show Mr. Lay to have been a close observer and a receptive student of nature and of men.
The reason for his crockery-crate outfit may have been divined. He wanted a sleigh which he could leave behind without loss when the snow disappeared.
Business took him first to Cleveland, which he reached in six days, driving much of the distance on the lake. Returning, at Erie he headed south and followed the old French Creek route to the Allegheny. Presently the snow disappeared. The crockery-crate sleigh was abandoned, and the journey lightly continued in the saddle; among the few impedimenta which were carried in the saddle-bags being "a fine picture of Niagara Falls, painted on satin, and many Indian curiosities to present to friends on the other side."
Pittsburg was reached March 2d; and, after a delay of four days, during which he sold his horse for $30, we find our traveler embarked on the new steamer Gen. Neville, carrying $120,000 worth of freight and fifty passengers.
Those were the palmy days of river travel. There were no railroads to cut freight rates, or to divert the passenger traffic. The steamers were the great transporters of the middle West. The Ohio country was just emerging from the famous period which made the name "river-man" synonymous with all that was disreputable. It was still the day of poor taverns, poor food, much bad liquor, fighting, and every manifestation of the early American vulgarity, ignorance and boastfulness which amazed every foreigner who ventured to travel in that part of the United States, and sent him home to magnify his bad impressions in a book. But with all its discomforts, the great Southern river route of 1822 proved infinitely enjoyable to our Buffalonian. At Louisville, where the falls intercepted travel, he reëmbarked on the boat Frankfort for a fourteen-days' journey to New Orleans. Her cargo included barrels of whisky, hogsheads of tobacco, some flour and cotton, packs of furs, and two barrels of bear's oil—how many years, I wonder, since that last item has been found in a bill of lading on an Ohio steamer!
I must hurry our traveler on to New Orleans, where, on a Sunday, he witnessed a Congo dance, attended by 5,000 people, and at a theater saw "The Battle of Chippewa" enacted. There are antiquarians of the Niagara Frontier today who would start for New Orleans by first train if they thought they could see that play.
April 27th, Mr. Lay sailed from New Orleans, the only passenger on the ship Triton, 310 tons, cotton-laden, for Liverpool. It was ten days before they passed the bar of the Mississippi and entered the Gulf, and it was not until June 28th that they anchored in the Mersey. The chronicle of this sixty days' voyage, as is apt to be the case with journals kept at sea, is exceedingly minute in detail. Day after day it is recorded that "we sailed thirty miles to-day," "sailed forty miles to-day," etc. There's travel for you—thirty miles on long tacks, in twenty-four hours! The ocean greyhound was as yet unborn. The chief diversion of the passage was a gale which blew them along 195 miles in twenty-four hours; and an encounter with a whaleship that had not heard a word from the United States in three years. "I tossed into their boat," Mr. Lay writes, "a package of newspapers. The captain clutched them with the avidity of a starving man."
Ashore in Liverpool, the first sight he saw was a cripple being carried through the streets—the only survivor from the wreck of the President, just lost on the Irish coast.[46]
He hastened to London just too late to witness the coronation of George IV., but followed the multitude to Scotland, where, as he writes, "the outlay of attentions to this bad man was beyond belief. Many of the nobility were nearly ruined thereby." He was in Edinburgh on the night of August 15, 1822, when that city paid homage to the new King; saw the whole coast of Fife illuminated "with bonfires composed of thirty tons of coal and nearly 1,000 gallons of tar and other combustibles"; and the next day, wearing a badge of Edinburgh University, was thereby enabled to gain a good place to view the guests as they passed on their way to a royal levee. To the nobility our Buffalonian gave little heed; but when Sir Walter Scott's carriage drove slowly by he gazed his fill. "He has gray thin hair and a thoughtful look," Mr. Lay wrote. "The Heart of Midlothian" had just been published, and Mr. Lay went on foot over all the ground mentioned in that historical romance. He stayed in pleasant private lodgings in Edinburgh for six months, making pedestrian excursions to various parts of Scotland. In twenty-eight days of these wanderings he walked 260 miles.
Instead of following him closely in these rambles, my readers are asked to recall, for a moment, the time of this visit. Great Britain was as yet, to all intents and purposes, in the eighteenth century. She had few canals and no railroads, no applied uses of steam and electricity. True, Stephenson had experimented on the Killingworth Railway in 1814; but Parliament had passed the first railway act only a few months before Mr. Lay reached England, and the railway era did not actually set in until eight years later. There is no reference in the Lay journals to steam locomotives or railways. Liverpool, which was built up by the African slave trade, was still carrying it on; the Reform Bill was not born in Parliament; it was still the old régime.
Our traveler was much struck by the general bad opinion which prevailed regarding America. On meeting him, people often could not conceal their surprise that so intelligent and well-read a man should be an American, and a frontier tradesman at that. They quizzed him about the workings of popular government.
I told them [writes this true-hearted democrat] that as long as we demanded from our public men honesty and upright dealings, our institutions would be safe, but when men could be bought or sold I feared the influence would operate ruinously, as all former republics had failed for lack of integrity and honesty.
His political talks brought to him these definitions, which I copy from his journal:
Tory was originally a name given to the wild Irish robbers who favored the massacre of the Protestants in 1641. It was afterward applied to all highflyers of the Church. Whig was a name first given to the country field-elevation meetings, their ordinary drink being whig, or whey, or coagulated sour milk. Those against the Court interest during the reigns of Charles II. and James II. and for the Court in the reigns of William and George I. were called Whigs. A Yankee is thus defined by an Englishman, who gives me what is most likely the correct derivation of the epithet: The Cherokee word eanker [?] signifies coward or slave. The Virginians gave the New Englanders this name for not assisting in a war with the Cherokees in the early settlement of their country, but after the affair of Bunker Hill the New Englanders gloried in the name, and in retaliation called the Virginians Buckskins, in allusion to their ancestors being hunters, and selling as well as wearing buckskins in place of cloth.
In Edinburgh he saw and heard much of some of Scotia's chief literary folk. Burns had been dead twenty-six years, but he was still much spoken of, much read, and admired far more than when he lived. With Mr. Stenhouse, who for years was an intimate of Burns, Mr. Lay formed a close acquaintance:
Mr. Stenhouse has in his possession [says the journal] the mss. of all of Burns's writings. I have had the pleasure of perusing them, which I think a great treat. In the last of Burns's letters which I read he speaks of his approaching dissolution with sorrow, of the last events in his life in the most touching and delicate language.
The journal relates some original Burns anecdotes, which Mr. Lay had from the former companions of the bard, but which have probably never been made public, possibly because—in characteristic contrast to the letter referred to above—they are touching but not delicate.
Our Buffalonian encountered numerous literary lions, and writes entertainingly of them. He speaks often of Scott, who he says "is quite the theme. He is constantly writing—something from his pen is shortly expected. I saw him walking on the day of the grand procession. He is very lame, has been lame from his youth, a fact I did not know before." James Hogg, author of the "Winter Evening Tales," lived near Edinburgh. Mr. Lay described him as "a singular rustic sort of a genius, but withal clever—very little is said about him."
I have touched upon Mr. Lay's achievements in pedestrianism, a mode of travel which he doubtless adopted partly because of the vigorous pleasure it afforded, partly because it was the only way in which to visit some sections of the country. A man who had walked from Fort Erie to Montreal, to say nothing of hundreds of miles done under pleasanter circumstances, would naturally take an interest in the pedestrian achievements of others. Whoever cares for this "sport" will find in the Lay journals unexpected revelations on the diversions and contests of three-quarters of a century ago. Have we not regarded the walking-match as a modern mania, certainly not antedating Weston's achievements? Yet listen to this page of the old journal, dated Edinburgh, Aug. 27, 1822:
I went to see a pedestrian named Russell, from the north of England, who had undertaken to walk 102 miles in twenty-four successive hours. He commenced his task yesterday at 1.15 o'clock. The spot chosen was in the vale between the Mound and the North Bridge, which gave an opportunity for a great number of spectators to see him to advantage; yet the numbers were so great and so much interested that there were persons constantly employed to clear his way. The ground he walked over measured one eighth of a mile. I saw him walk the last mile, which he did in twelve minutes. He finished his task with eleven minutes to spare, and was raised on the shoulders of men and borne away to be put into a carriage from which the horses were taken. The multitude then drew him through many principal streets of the city in triumph. The Earl of Fyfe agreed to give him £30 if he finished his work within the given time. He also got donations from others. Large bets were depending, one of 500 guineas. He carried a small blue flag toward the last and was loudly cheered by the spectators at intervals.
Nor was the "sport" confined to Scotland. August 4, 1823, being in London, Mr. Lay writes:
To-day a girl of eight years of age undertook to walk thirty miles in eight consecutive hours. She accomplished her task in seven hours and forty-nine minutes without being distressed. A wager of 100 sovereigns was laid. This great pedestrian feat took place at Chelsea.
A few weeks later he writes again:
This is truly the age of pedestrianism. A man has just accomplished 1,250 miles in twenty successive days. He is now to walk backward forty miles a day for three successive days. Mr. Irvine, the pedestrian, who attempted to walk from London to York and back, 394 miles, in five days and eight hours, accomplished it in five days seven and one-half hours.
With men walking backwards and eight-years-old girls on the track, these Britons of three-quarters of a century ago still deserve the palm. But Mr. Lay's own achievements are not to be lightly passed over. Before leaving London he wrote: "The whole length of my perambulations in London and vicinity exceeds 1,200 miles."
The journals, especially during the months of his residence in Scotland, abound in descriptions of people and of customs now pleasant to recall because for the most part obsolete. He heard much rugged theology from Scotland's greatest preachers; had an encounter with robbers in the dark and poorly-policed streets of Edinburgh; had his pockets picked while watching the King; and saw a boy hanged in public for house-breaking. With friends he went to a Scotch wedding, the description of which is so long that I can only give parts of it:
About forty had assembled. The priest, a Protestant, united them with much ceremony, giving them a long lecture, after which dinner was served up and whisky toddy. At six, dancing commenced and was kept up with spirit until eleven, when we had tea, after which dancing continued until three in the morning. The Scotch dances differ from the American, and the dancers hold out longer. The girls particularly do not tire so early as ours at home. We retired to the house where the bride and groom were to be bedded. The females of the party first put the bride to bed, and the bridegroom was then led in by the men. After both were in bed liquor was served. The groom threw his left-leg hose. Whoever it lights upon is next to be married. The stocking lighted on my head, which caused a universal shout. We reached home at half past six in the morning, on foot.
I have been much too long in getting Mr. Lay to London, to go about much with him there. And yet the temptation is great, for to an American of Mr. Lay's intelligence and inquiring mind the great city was beyond doubt the most diverting spot on earth. One of the first sights he saw—a May-day procession of chimney-sweeps, their clothes covered with gilt paper—belonged more to the seventeenth century than to the nineteenth. Peel and Wilberforce, Brougham and Lord Gower, were celebrities whom he lost no time in seeing. On the Thames he saw the grand annual rowing match for the Othello wherry prize, given by Edmund Kean in commemoration of Garrick's last public appearance on June 10, 1776. Mr. Lay's description of the race, and of Kean himself, who "witnessed the whole in an eight-oared cutter," is full of color and appreciative spirit. He saw a man brought before the Lord Mayor who "on a wager had eaten two pounds of candles and drank seven glasses of rum," and who at another time had eaten at one meal "nine pounds of ox hearts and taken drink proportionately"; and he went to Bartholomew's Fair, that most audacious of English orgies, against which even the public sentiment of that loose day was beginning to protest. As American visitors at Quebec feel to-day a flush of patriotic resentment when the orderly in the citadel shows them the little cannon captured at Bunker Hill, so our loyal friend, with more interest than pleasure, saw in the chapel at Whitehall, "on each side and over the altar eight or ten eagles, taken from the French, and flags of different nations; the eagle of the United States is among them, two taken at New Orleans, one at Fort Niagara, one at Queenston, and three at Detroit"; but like the American at Quebec, who, the familiar story has it, on being taunted with the captured Bunker Hill trophy, promptly replied, "Yes, you got the cannon, but we kept the hill," Mr. Lay, we may be sure, found consolation in the thought that though we lost a few eagle-crested standards, we kept the Bird o' Freedom's nest.
On July 5, 1823, he crossed London Bridge on foot, and set out on an exploration of rural England; tourings in which I can not take space to follow him. When he first went abroad he had contemplated a trip on the continent. This, however, he found it advisable to abandon, and on October 5, 1823, on board the Galatea, he was beating down the channel, bound for Boston. The journey homeward was full of grim adventure. A tempest attended them across the Atlantic. In one night of terror, "which I can never forget," he writes, "the ship went twice entirely around the compass, and in very short space, with continual seas breaking over her." The sailors mutinied and tried to throw the first mate into the sea. Swords, pistols and muskets were made ready by the captain. Mr. Lay armed himself and helped put down the rebellion. When the captain was once more sure of his command, "Jack, a Swede, was taken from his confinement, lashed up, and whipped with a cat-o'-nine-tails, then sent to duty." The dose of cat was afterwards administered to the others. It is no wonder that the traveler's heart was cheered when, on November 13th, the storm-tossed Galatea passed under the guns of Forts Warren and Independence and he stepped ashore at Boston.
He did not hurry away, but explored that city and vicinity thoroughly, going everywhere on foot, as he had, for the most part, in England. He visited the theaters and saw the celebrities of the day, both of the stage and the pulpit. At the old Boston Theater, Cooper was playing Marc Antony, with Mr. Finn as Brutus, and Mr. Barrett as Cassius.
On November 20th he pictures a New-England Thanksgiving:
This is Thanksgiving Day throughout the State of Massachusetts. It is most strictly observed in this city; no business whatever is transacted—all shops remained shut throughout the day. All the churches in the city were open, divine service performed, and everything wore the appearance of Sunday. Great dinners are prepared and eaten on this occasion, and in the evening the theaters and ball-rooms tremble with delight and carriages fill the streets.... A drunken, riotous gang of fellows got under our windows yelping and making a great tumult.
A week later, sending his baggage ahead by stage-coach, he passed over Cambridge Bridge, on foot for Buffalo, by way of New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Pittsburg and Erie.
Once more I must regret that reasonable demands on the reader's patience will not let me dwell with much detail on the incidents and observations of this unusual journey. No man could take such a grand walk and fail to see and learn much of interest. But here was a practical, shrewd, observant gentleman who, just returned from two years in Great Britain, was studying his own countrymen and weighing their condition and ideas by most intelligent standards. The result is that the pages of the journals reflect with unaccustomed fidelity the spirit of those days, and form a series of historical pictures not unworthy our careful attention. Just a glimpse or two by the way, and I am through.
The long-settled towns of Massachusetts and Connecticut appeared to him in the main thrifty and growing. Hartford he found a place of 7,000 inhabitants, "completely but irregularly built, the streets crooked and dirty, with sidewalks but no pavements." He passed through Wethersfield, "famous for its quantities of onions. A church was built here, and its bell purchased," he records, "with this vegetable." New Haven struck him as "elegant, but not very flourishing, with 300 students in Yale." Walking from twenty-five to thirty-five miles a day, he reached Rye, just over the New York State line, on the ninth day from Boston, and found people burning turf or peat for fuel, the first of this that he had noticed in the United States.
At Harlem Bridge, which crosses to New York Island, he found some fine houses, "the summer residences of opulent New Yorkers"; and the next day "set out for New York, seven miles distant, over a perfectly straight and broad road, through a rough, rocky and unpleasing region." In New York, where he rested a few days, he reviewed his New England walk of 212 miles:
The general aspect of the country is pleasing; inns are provided with the best, the people are kind and attentive. I think I have never seen tables better spread. I passed through thirty-six towns on the journey, which are of no mean appearance. I never had a more pleasant or satisfactory excursion. There are a great number of coaches for public conveyance plying on this great road. The fare is $12 for the whole distance. Formerly it was 254 miles between Boston and New York, but the roads are now straightened, which has shortened the distance to 212 miles.
He had experienced a Boston Thanksgiving. In New York, on Thursday, December 18th, he had another one. Thanksgiving then was a matter of State proclamation, as now, but the day had not been given its National character, and in many of the States was not observed at all. We have seen what it was like in Boston. In New York, "business appears as brisk as on any other laboring day." The churches, however, were open for service, and our traveler went to hear the Rev. Mr. Cummings in Vanderventer Street, and to contribute to a collection in behalf of the Greeks.
Four days before Christmas he crossed to Hoboken, and trudged his way through New Jersey snow and mud to Philadelphia, which he reached on Christmas. At the theater that night he attended—
a benefit for Mr. Booth of Covent Garden, London, and was filled with admiration for Mr. Booth, but the dancing by Miss Hathwell was shocking in the extreme. The house was for a long time in great uproar, and nothing would quiet them but an assurance from the manager of Mr. Booth's reappearance.
This of course was Junius Brutus Booth. Here is Mr. Lay's pen-picture of Philadelphia seventy-six years ago:
The streets of Philadelphia cross at right angles; are perfectly straight, well-paved but miserably lighted. The sidewalks break with wooden bars on which various things are suspended, and in the lower streets these bars are appropriated for drying the washwomen's clothes. Carpets are shaken in the streets at all hours, and to the annoyance of the passer-by. Mr. Peale of the old Philadelphia Museum was lecturing three nights a week on galvanism, and entertaining the populace with a magic lantern.
It is much the same Philadelphia yet.
January 8th, Mr. Lay took his way south to Baltimore, making slow progress because of muddy roads; but he had set out to walk, and so he pushed ahead on to Washington, although there were eight coaches daily for the conveyance of passengers between the two cities, the fare being $4. The road for part of the way lay through a wilderness. "The inns generally were bad and the attention to travelers indifferent."
In Washington, which he reached on January 14th, he lost no time in going to the House of Representatives, where he was soon greeted by Albert H. Tracy, whose career in Congress I assume to be familiar to the reader.
On the day named, the House was crowded to excess with spectators, a great number of whom were ladies, in consequence of Mr. Clay's taking the floor. He spoke for two hours on the subject of internal improvements, and the next day the question of erecting a statue to Washington somewhere about the Capitol, was debated warmly.
On his return North, in passing through Baltimore, he called on Henry Niles, who as editor of Niles' Weekly Register, was to thousands of Americans of that day what Horace Greeley became later on—an oracle; and on January 18th struck out over a fine turnpike road for Pittsburg.
The Pittsburg pike was then the greatest highway to the West. The Erie Canal was nearing completion, and the stage-routes across New York State saw much traffic. Yet the South-Pennsylvania route led more directly to the Ohio region, and it had more traffic from the West to the East than the more northern highways had for years to come. In the eastern part of the State it extends through one of the most fertile and best-settled parts of the United States. Farther west it climbs a forest-clad mountain, winds through picturesque valleys, and from one end of the great State to the other is yet a pleasant path for the modern tourist. The great Conestoga wagons in endless trains, which our pedestrian seldom lost sight of, have now disappeared. The wayside inns are gone or have lost their early character, and the locomotive has everywhere set a new pace for progress.
When Mr. Lay entered the Blue Ridge section, beyond Chambersburg, he found Dutch almost the only language spoken. The season was at first mild, and as he tramped along the Juniata, it seemed to him like May. "Land," he notes, "is to be had at from $1 to $3 per acre." It took him seventeen days to walk to Pittsburg. Of the journey as a whole he says:
At Chambersburg the great stage route from Philadelphia unites with the Baltimore road. Taverns on these roads are frequent and nearly in sight of each other. The gates for the collection of tolls differ in distance—some five, others ten, and others twenty-five miles asunder. Notwithstanding the travel is great the stock yields no profit, but, on the contrary, it is a sinking concern on some parts, and several of the companies are in debt for opening the road. About $100 per mile are annually expended in repairs. It cost a great sum to open the road, particularly that portion leading over the mountains and across the valleys.
Taverns are very cheap in their charges; meals are a fourth of a dollar, beds 6¼ cents, liquors remarkably cheap. Their tables are loaded with food in variety, well prepared and cleanly served up with the kindest attention and smiling cheerfulness. The women are foremost in kind abilities. Beer is made at Chambersburg of an excellent quality and at other places. A good deal of this beverage is used and becoming quite common; it is found at most of the good taverns. Whisky is universally drank and it is most prevalent. Places for divine service are rarely to be met with immediately on the road. The inhabitants, however, are provided with them not far distant in the back settlements, for almost the whole distance. The weather has been so cold that for the two last days before reaching Pittsburg I could not keep myself comfortable in walking; indeed, I thought several times I might perish.
In Pittsburg he lodged at the old Spread Eagle Tavern, and afterwards at Conrad Upperman's inn on Front Street at $2 a week. He found the city dull and depressed:
The streets are almost deserted, a great number of the houses not tenanted, shops shut, merchants and mechanics failed; the rivers are both banked by ice, and many other things wearing the aspect of decayed trade and stagnation of commerce. Money I find purchases things very low. Flour from this city is sent over the mountains to Philadelphia for $1 per barrel, which will little more than half pay the wagoner's expenses for the 280 miles. Superfine flour was $4.12½ in Philadelphia, and coal three cents per bushel. Coal for cooking is getting in use in this city—probably two-thirds the cooking is with coal.
He had had no trouble up to this point in sending his baggage ahead. It was some days before the stage left for Erie. All was at length dispatched, however, and on February 14th he crossed over to Allegheny—I think there was no bridge there then—and marched along, day after day, through Harmony, Mercer and Meadville, his progress much impeded by heavy snow; at Waterford he met his old friend G. A. Elliott, and went to a country dance; and, finally, on February 20th found himself at Mr. Hamot's dinner-table in Erie, surrounded by old friends. They held him for two days; then, in spite of heavy snow, he set out on foot for Buffalo. Even the faded pages of the old journal which hold the record of these last few days bespeak the eager nervousness which one long absent feels as his wanderings bring him near home. With undaunted spirit, our walker pushed on eastward to the house of Col. N. Bird, two miles beyond Westfield; and the next day, with Col. Bird, drove through a violent snow-storm to Mayville to visit Mr. William Peacock—the first ride he had taken since landing in Boston in November of the previous year. But he was known throughout the neighborhood, and his friends seem to have taken possession of him. From Mr. Bird's he went in a stage-sleigh to Fredonia to visit the Burtons. Snow two feet deep detained him in Hanover town, where friends showed him "some tea-seed bought of a New-England peddler, who left written directions for its cultivation." "It's all an imposition," is Mr. Lay's comment—but what a horde of smooth-tongued tricksters New England has to answer for!
The stage made its way through the drifts with difficulty to the Cattaraugus, where Mr. Lay left it, and stoutly set out on foot once more. For the closing stages of this great journey let me quote direct from the journal:
I proceeded over banks of drifted snow until I reached James Marks's, who served breakfast. The stage wagon came up again, when we went on through the Four-mile woods, stopping to see friends and spending the night with Russell Goodrich. On February 29th [two years and twenty-four days from the date of setting out] I drove into Buffalo on Goodrich's sleigh and went straight to Rathbun's, where I met a great number of friends, and was invited to take a ride in Rathbun's fine sleigh with four beautiful greys. We drove down the Niagara as far as Mrs. Seely's and upset once.
What happier climax could there have been for this happy home-coming!