ADVERTISEMENT.

FEW works have had a more rapid sale than the following; two large editions having been disposed of in two years. This induced the proprietors to print a third: but, as soon as this impression was finished, I purchased both the printed copies and the copy-right.

I have since added to the work, some Account of the Author’s life, and an Index to the Travels, which are published separately, for the convenience of the purchasers of the first and second editions; on whom, I was unwilling to raise an extraordinary tax for the third edition.

John Coakley Lettsom.

London, March 30, 1781.

TO
JOSEPH BANKS, Esq;
PRESIDENT
OF THE
ROYAL SOCIETY.

SIR,

WHEN the Public are informed that I have long had the Honour of your Acquaintance——that my Design in publishing the following Work has received your Sanction——that the Composition of it has stood the Test of your Judgment——and that it is by your Permission a Name so deservedly eminent in the Literary World is prefixed to it, I need not be apprehensive of its Success; as your Patronage will unquestionably give them Assurance of its Merit.

For this public Testimony of your Favour, in which I pride myself, accept, Sir, my most grateful Acknowledgments; and believe me to be, with great Respect,

Your obedient

humble Servant,

J. CARVER.

AN
ADDRESS
TO THE
PUBLIC.
THE SECOND EDITION.

The favourable reception this Work has met with, claims the Author’s most grateful acknowledgments. A large edition having run off in a few months, and the sale appearing to be still unabated, a new impression is become necessary. On this occasion was he to conceal his feelings, and pass over, in silence, a distinction so beneficial and flattering, he would justly incur the imputation of ingratitude. That he might not do this, he takes the opportunity, which now presents itself, of conveying to the Public (though in terms inadequate to the warm emotions of his heart) the sense he entertains of their favour; and thus transmits to them his thanks.

In this new edition, care has been taken to rectify those errors which have unavoidably proceeded from the hurry of the press, and likewise any incorrectness in the language that has found its way into it.

The credibility of some of the incidents related in the following pages, and some of the stories introduced therein, having been questioned, particularly the prognostication of the Indian priest on the banks of Lake Superior, and the story of the Indian and his rattle snake, the author thinks it necessary to avail himself of the same opportunity, to endeavour to eradicate any impressions that might have been made on the minds of his readers, by the apparent improbability of these relations.

As to the former, he has related it just as it happened. Being an eye-witness to the whole transaction (and, he flatters himself, at the time, free from every trace of sceptical obstinacy or enthusiastic credulity) he was consequently able to describe every circumstance minutely and impartially. This he has done; but without endeavouring to account for the means by which it was accomplished. Whether the prediction was the result of prior observations, from which certain consequences were expected to follow by the sagacious priest, and the completion of it merely accidental; or whether he was really endowed with supernatural powers, the narrator left to the judgment of his readers; whose conclusions, he supposes, varied according as the mental faculties of each were disposed to admit or reject facts that cannot be accounted for by natural causes.

The story of the rattle snake was related to him by a French gentleman of undoubted veracity; and were the readers of this work as thoroughly acquainted with the sagacity and instinctive proceedings of that animal, as he is, they would be as well assured of the truth of it. It is well known, that those snakes which have survived through the summer the accidents reptiles are liable to, periodically retire to the woods, at the approach of winter; where each (as curious observers have remarked) takes possession of the cavity it had occupied the preceding year. As soon as the season is propitious, enlivened by the invigorating rays of the sun, they leave these retreats, and make their way to the same spot, though ever so distant, on which they before had found subsistence, and the means of propagating their species. Does it then require any extraordinary exertions of the mind to believe, that one of these regular creatures, after having been kindly treated by its master, should return to the box, in which it had usually been supplied with food, and had met with a comfortable abode, and that nearly about the time the Indian, from former experiments, was able to guess at? It certainly does not; nor will the liberal and ingenuous doubt the truth of a story so well authenticated, because the circumstances appear extraordinary in a country where the subject of it is scarcely known.

These explanations the author hopes will suffice to convince his readers, that he has not, as travellers are sometimes supposed to do, amused them with improbable tales, or wished to acquire importance by making his adventures savour of the marvellous.

SOME
ACCOUNT
OF
CAPTAIN J. CARVER.

THERE is a disposition peculiar to every mind, that early predominates, and continues its influence through every period of life. Many circumstances may, indeed, obscure or divert its progress; but on all interesting occasions this constitutional bias will recur, and exhibit the natural character and genius of the individual.

Jonathan Carver, the author of the following work, was grandson of William Joseph Carver, of Wigan, in Lancashire, who was a captain in the army under king William, and served in Ireland with such distinguished reputation, that that prince was pleased to reward him with the government of Connecticut in New-England, which appears to have been the first appointment to that station by the crown.

Our author was born, anno 1732, at Stillwater, in the province of Connecticut, since rendered famous by the surrender of the army under General Burgoyne; his father, who resided at this place, and acted as a justice of the peace, died, when he was only fifteen years of age. He had received the rudiments of as liberal an education as could be procured in that neighbourhood, and, being designed for the practice of medicine, he was soon after his father’s death placed with a gentleman of that profession in Elizabeth Town, in the same province. A profession that requires not only a close and regular attention, but likewise a steady perseverance, was not suited to that spirit of bold enterprize and adventure, which seemed to be the ruling passion of our author, who, at the age of eighteen, purchased an ensigncy in the Connecticut regiment, in which, as I have been informed, he acquired so much reputation, as to obtain the command of a company. Of this event, however, I have not found the least mention among his papers, nor, indeed, of any other important circumstance of his life till the year 1757, when he was in the army under General Webb, and fortunately escaped the dreadful massacre at Fort William Henry, where nearly 1500 brave troops were destroyed in cold blood by the Indians in the French army of General Montcalm.

In the ensuing year, 1758, a battalion of light infantry, commanded by Colonel Oliver Partridge, was raised in the province of Massachusets Bay, by order of Governor Pownall, for the purpose of invading Canada, in which our author served as second lieutenant of Captain Hawks’s company; and in 1760 he was advanced to be captain of a company in Colonel Whetcomb’s regiment of foot, during the administration of Governor Hutchinson. In Governor Barnard’s time, in 1762, Captain Carver commanded a company of foot in Colonel Saltonstall’s regiment.

I have not been able to collect any anecdotes of our author, during his military services; but from the written recommendations in my hands, of persons high in office, under whom he acted, he appears to have acquitted himself with great reputation, and much to the satisfaction of his superior officers. These recommendations are not confined to military conduct merely; they uniformly introduce him as a person of piety, and of a good moral character. Throughout the narrative of his travels, indeed, an animated regard to the duties of religion is evidently prevalent, which must procure a credibility to the facts he mentions, that might otherwise be suspended. If authors, who have visited countries unknown to their contemporaries, had always been actuated by a sacred regard to truth and moral rectitude, history in general would have been developed with just and convincing relations, and not left involved in doubt and obscurity.

This firm integrity and undaunted courage appeared evident upon every interesting occasion: they were, indeed, essentially requisite to conduct him through the most dangerous enterprizes with a perseverance that is more generally the offspring of true fortitude, than of daring boldness or impetuosity of imagination.

With so many favourable requisites for success and advancement, descended from parents respectable for their military and civil dignity, as well as for their fortune; endued with courage, sagacity, and a spirit of enterprize, rarely united in one individual, it might be an object of enquiry, why Captain Carver, whose conduct was so excellent, in a moral as well as in a military view, should never have been promoted above the command of a company.

It is a truth confirmed by history, that true fortitude is the genuine offspring of an humble mind. Whatever we acquire by industry and labour, we are apt highly to estimate; it is a kind of new creation of our own; and a persuasion of this, inspires ambition, and even a forward ardour for distinction; and what a partial imagination magnifies to ourselves, we naturally magnify to others, and gradually acquire a consequence, and reap rewards adequate, if not superior, to desert: but the naturally brave is naturally modest; what is innate, does not present itself to the imagination as its own; it neither begets vanity, nor excites ambition; and thus great endowments, which might have been cherished, and turned to the most important advantages, are frequently neglected, and lost to society. Whatever natural or acquired excellencies were possessed by Captain Carver, not only seemed unnoticed by himself, but were accompanied by a diffidence, which in some instances was extraordinary indeed; and the reader must be convinced of this, when he is informed, that Captain Carver died, through want, with three commissions in his pocket.

The year after his commission under Colonel Saltonstall was signed, the peace of Versailles took place, namely, anno 1763, when our author, having discharged his military obligations to his country, retired from the army. But his natural turn for enterprize, and the pursuit of novelty, did not suffer him to enjoy a life of useless ease; he began to consider, to use his own sentiments (having rendered his country some services during the war) how he might continue still serviceable, and contribute, as much as lay in his power, to make that vast acquisition of territory, gained by Great Britain in North America, advantageous to it; and here he commences his own biographer, continuing his relation in the following history of his travels, till his visit to England in the year 1769.

Though I have not been able to procure many additional anecdotes of this ingenious traveller, yet a respect to his memory, and a sense of his services to the nation at large, excited a desire to bring together a few outlines of his character, and probably at some future period, when the present unhappy contest between this kingdom and the American colonies shall have subsided, particulars of more importance than I have been able to meet with, may be procured from that part of the world, which he has taken so much useful labour to describe.

This barrenness of materials is, however, in some degree compensated by the important relations he has communicated in the succeeding pages, which not only regard himself, but likewise a part of the great American continent, hitherto almost unknown to the inhabitants of Europe, and even to those of the cultivated parts of the same continent.

In his descriptions of these vast regions, he seems to have embraced every opportunity of pointing out the advantages which might be derived in a commercial view, from a just knowledge of them, and of the policy of the various tribes who possess them. In his picturesque view of the scenery round Lake Pepin, his imagination, animated as it was by the magnitude, the novelty, and grandeur of the objects, is not so far transported, as to interrupt the most scrupulous attention to the situation, as improveable for commercial and national advantages.

In the midst of a new and rich creation, he suggested the probability of rendering this lake, and its variegated environs, the center of immense traffick, with a people whose names and tribes were scarcely known to the commercial parts of either side of the British empire, but whose dispositions and pursuits seemed calculated to promote and secure this interesting and national benefit.

The lake, which is about twenty miles in length, and six in breadth, and through which the Mississippi directs its course, is about two thousand miles from the entrance into the gulf of Mexico, and as many westerly from Quebec, Boston, and New-York; it is situated between 42 and 43 degrees of north latitude. The plains in its vicinity are extensive, and fit for immediate cultivation: elk, deer, and other quadrupeds, including the beaver, otter, mink, martin, sable, musk-rat, and the largest buffaloes in America, are the inhabitants of this region, whilst various species of wild fowl frequent the lake, whose waters are stored with fish in great abundance; vegetation is luxuriant in the meadows, where the maple is indigenous, of whose sap the Indians make great quantities of sugar, capable of fermentation, and of producing spirit; the grapes hang in such clusters, that almost any quantity of brandy might, under a like process, be distilled from them; rice, a grain adapted to many useful purposes of life, is also very plentiful.

The number of hunting Indians, who frequent Lake Pepin, is not less than 2000, each of whom brings about one hundred pounds weight of beaver to barter, which, at the lowest price, in the London market, is five shillings a pound; hence a trade at this place will command annually 200000 crowns worth of furs, besides skins. But there is reason to conclude, that when a general mart is established here, furnished with a sufficient assortment of goods, and a supply of liquors, that there would be a more general resort of traders.

The French, indeed, supported a trade at this lake, before the English had made a conquest of the country; but they never attempted the lucrative branch of distilling spirituous liquors upon the spot, though they have been conveyed hither two thousand miles of difficult carriage, and produced considerable profit.

It may be doubted in a moral, if not in a political view, whether such a traffic of rendering the means of inebriation more easily attainable, should meet with the encouragement of the legislature. Captain Carver, however, computed that 2000 gallons of brandy could be made on the spot, as cheap as in the West-Indies; and that by avoiding the expence of 3000 miles carriage also, the traders would make a saving of 2000 per cent. besides duties and various contingencies: and as, by a moderate computation, every gallon of spirits will produce there what will amount to ten pounds in the London market, it must eventually prove a most lucrative branch of trade, if pursued with proper caution and policy.

The great plenty of the edible necessaries of life, will afford a cheap, easy, and salutary supply; and the goodness of the soil, with very little labour, will render provisions still more easily attainable, and altogether form a place of traffic hitherto unequalled.

From Captain Carver’s long residence in the neighbourhood of Lake Pepin, among the Naudowissie and Chipéway Indians, he acquired a knowledge of their languages, and an intimacy with many of their chiefs, which, with his spirited and judicious conduct in acting as a mediator between these two nations, conciliated their attachment and friendship; and as an acknowledgment of their grateful sense of his happy interference, the Naudowissies gave him a formal grant of a tract of land, lying on the north side of Lake Pepin. The original, duly subscribed by two chiefs, is in my possession; and as an Indian deed of conveyance may prove a curiosity to many readers, I shall here insert a copy of it.

“To Jonathan Carver, a chief under the most mighty and potent George the Third, King of the English and other nations, the fame of whose courageous warriors have reached our ears, and has been more fully told us by our good brother Jonathan aforesaid, whom we rejoice to see come among us, and bring us good news from his country. We, chiefs of the Naudowissies, who have hereto set our seals, do by these presents for ourselves and heirs for ever, in return for the many presents, and other good services done by the said Jonathan to ourselves and allies, give, grant, and convey to him the said Jonathan, and to his heirs and assigns for ever, the whole of a certain tract or territory of land, bounded as follows: (viz.) from the fall of St. Anthony, running on the east banks of the Mississippi, nearly south-east, as far as the south end of Lake Pepin, where the Chipéway river joins the Mississippi, and from thence eastward five days travel, accounting twenty English miles per day, and from thence north six days travel, at twenty English miles per day, and from thence again to the fall of St. Anthony, on a direct straight line. We do for ourselves, heirs, and assigns, for ever, give unto the said Jonathan, his heirs and assigns, for ever, all the said lands, with all the trees, rocks, and rivers therein, reserving for ourselves and heirs the sole liberty of hunting and fishing on land not planted or improved by the said Jonathan, his heirs and assigns, to which we have affixed our respective seals, at the great cave, May the first, one thousand seven hundred and sixty-seven.”

Hawnopawjatin his mark (top)
Otohtongoomlisheaw his mark (bottom)

Soon after the above period, our author concluded to return to Boston, where he arrived in 1768, having been absent two years and five months, during which time he had travelled about seven thousand miles. After digesting his journal and charts, he sailed for England, and arrived there in the year 1769. The reasons which induced him to undertake this voyage, are amply related by himself in his travels (page [177].) to which I refer.

Few objects have excited a more general enquiry than the discovery of a north-west passage, in order to open a communication with the great pacific ocean and the East Indies, by a shorter navigation than by doubling those immense promontories, the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. Every allurement of gain, and national emolument, has been proposed to encourage the attempt, but, hitherto, every attempt hath been fruitless, though the most experienced seamen have engaged in the undertaking. Our traveller suggested an attempt by land, across the north west parts of North America, and actually drew a chart of his proposed route for effecting his project, which, however visionary it may now be deemed, affords at least a proof of the enterprizing spirit of Captain Carver, and which he would, probably, have attempted, had any encouragement been afforded him: (introd. pag. [6]. and append. pag. [539], et seq.)

When he visited England, he appeared with the most favourable credentials of his character in every respect: many of these are now in my possession; but that which seemed to promise the most beneficial advantages, was conferred upon him by General Gage, and, in consequence of a petition presented to the king, and referred to the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, our traveller had formed the fond hope of seeing his labours so far rewarded, as to be reimbursed those sums he had expended in the service of government, agreeable to the relation conveyed in the introduction to his travels.

In a large, free, and widely extended government, where every motion depends upon a variety of springs, the lesser and subordinate movements must be acted upon by the greater, and consequently the more inferior operations of state will be so distant, as not to be perceived in the grand machine: whether Captain Carver’s disappointments resulted from these principles, or that government did not estimate his services in equal proportion to his own idea of them, is not so easily ascertained, as that he thought himself not only neglected, but treated with injustice.

The condition of a suppliant is what his mind must have submitted to with reluctance. Men of superior endowments are liable to be jealous of the least inattention, which they are apt to consider as an insult on their distress. A feeling mind, like his, conscious of its dignity and superior merit, might not be able to stoop to that importunity and adulation, which are sometimes requisite to insure the smiles and favours of those in power; otherwise it might naturally be suggested, that his extensive acquaintance with America, and with the customs and languages of the Indians, in the interior parts of that vast continent, then the theatre of an unnatural and bloody contest, would have pointed him out as a most useful instrument in the hands of government.

With the advantages, however, of an intimate knowledge of Indian affairs, he united a determined loyalty to the king, and a fixed attachment to his American countrymen; and thus the principle of acting agreeably to the feelings of conscience, would equally operate upon him respecting the contending parties. He had repeatedly risked his life in the service of his prince, against whose government he was equally averse from drawing his sword, as against his transatlantic brethren: he might not, therefore, be deemed an important acquisition to the ruling powers here, and the prayer of his petition was scarcely heard in the clamours of popular commotion.

Persons of ingenuity, however oppressed by their own sufferings, in a busy commercial country, may strike out some means of subsistence; but, in a domestic state, where many depend upon the industry of an individual, the difficulty of procuring support is not only rendered more affecting to the feeling mind, but likewise greatly augmented. Captain Carver, after having exhausted his fortune, had now a family to support, without knowing how to turn his abilities to any means of succouring them. Distress of mind begets debility of body, which is still aggravated by penury, and a want of the common necessaries of life. His constitution, naturally firm, gradually grew weaker and weaker; but his regard to his family animated his spirit to exertions beyond the strength of his body, which enabled him to preserve existence through the winter of 1779, by acting as a clerk in a lottery-office; but the vital powers, succoured as they were by this casual support, diminished by certain, though imperceptible, degrees, till at length a putrid fever supervening a long continued dysentery brought on by want, put an end to the life of a man, who, after rendering, at the expence of fortune and health, and the risk of life, many important services to his country, perished through want in the first city of the world.

In size, Captain Carver was rather above the middle stature, and of a firm muscular texture; his features expressed a firmness of mind and boldness of resolution; and he retained a florid complexion to his latest moments.

In conversation he was social and affable, where he was familiar; but his extreme diffidence and modesty kept him in general reserved in company. In his familiar epistles, he commanded an easy and agreeable manner of writing; and some pieces of his poetry, which have been communicated to me, afford proofs of his lively imagination and of the harmony of his versification.

His only authentic publications I have seen are the present work, and a Treatise on the Culture of the Tobacco Plant, anno 1779. The former will speak for itself: the opinion of the public has, indeed, been fully testified by the rapid sale of two large editions of this work in the space of the last two years.

The Treatise on Tobacco is a small octavo of fifty-four pages, containing two engravings of the plant, and an account of its cultivation on the American continent. As this vegetable constitutes one of the most considerable branches of commerce betwixt the old and new hemispheres of the world, and thrives luxuriously in Europe as well as in America, it is now pretty generally known: from the elegance of the plant and beauty of its flowers, it is cultivated in gardens for ornament; in which character it will appear from a view of the annexed engraving of it.

It was first sent into Spain, in 1560: from Tabaco, a province of Yucatan, by Hermandez de Toledo, and from the place of its growth it received the name which it still bears.

Drawn and Engrav’d for Carver’s Travels, as the act directs by F. Sanson N. 16 Maiden Lane Cheapside
The Tobacco Plant
Published Novr. 1st. 1779

It was called, by the French, Nicotiana, after John Nicot, who went soon after it was discovered, as ambassador to that court, from Francis the Second of Portugal, and carried some of it with him.

Before the present contest between Great-Britain and the Colonies, about 96,000 hogsheads were annually imported from Maryland and Virginia, which, with the duties on the home consumption, and the returns on foreign export, produced an immense revenue to this country.

The general uses of Tobacco are well known; besides which, it is found nearly equal to the best oak-bark for tanning leather, especially with thinner sorts of hides; and would probably be used for this purpose, were it as cheap as the bark of the oak.

Few subjects have been more copiously treated on than Tobacco: Monardes, Stephanus, Everhartus, Thorius, Neander, Pauli, have each wrote upon it largely. Neander published a volume on this subject, entitled, Tobacologia, and ornamented it with plates, to exhibit its cultivation and manner of preparation; and, lately, Captain Carver published the above-mentioned Treatise on the Culture of this Plant, with a view to instruct landholders in the method of cultivating it with profit, and to this pamphlet I shall refer the reader for further particulars.

Our author died on the 31st of January 1780, at the age of forty-eight years, and lies interred in Holywell-Mount burying-ground.