Travels in the United States of America / Commencing in the Year 1793, and Ending in 1797. With the Author's Journals of his Two Voyages Across the Atlantic.

by William Priest

EXTRACT.

"You know the position of our settlement; therefore I need not describe it. To the west it is enclosed by a chain of mountains, reaching to——. To the east, the country is yet but very thinly inhabited. We are almost insulated, and the houses are at a considerable distance from each other. From the mountains we have but too much reason to expect our dreadful enemy, the Indians; and the wilderness is a harbour, where it is impossible to find them. It is a door through which they can enter our country at any time; and as they seem determined to destroy the whole frontier, our fate cannot be far distant. From lake Champlain almost all has been conflagrated, one after another. What renders these incursions still more dreadful is, that they most commonly take place in the dead of the night. We never go to our fields, but we are seized with an involuntary fear, which lessens our strength, and weakens our labour. No other subject of discourse intervenes between the different accounts, which spread through the country, of successive acts of devastation; and these, told in chimney corners, swell themselves in our affrighted imaginations into the most terrific ideas. We never sit down, either to dinner, or supper, but the least noise spreads a general alarm, and prevents us from enjoying the comforts of our meals. The very appetite proceeding from labour and peace of mind is gone! Our sleep is disturbed by the most frightful dreams! Sometimes I start awake, as if the great hour of danger was come; at other times the howling of our dogs seems to announce the arrival of the enemy: we leap out of bed, and run to arms; my poor wife, with panting bosom, and silent tears, takes leave of me, as if we were to see each other no more. She snatches the youngest children from their beds, who, suddenly awakened, increase by their innocent questions the horrour of the dreadful moment! She tries to hide them in the cellar, as if our cellar was inaccessible to the fire! I place all my servants at the window, and myself at the door, where I am determined to perish. Fear industriously increases every sound; we all listen; each communicates to each other his fears and conjectures. We remain thus, sometimes for whole hours, our hearts and our minds racked by the most anxious suspense! What a dreadful situation! A thousand times worse than that of a soldier engaged in the midst of a most severe conflict! Sometimes feeling the spontaneous courage of a man, I seem to wish for the decisive minute; the next instant a message from my wife, sent by one of the children, quite unmans me. Away goes my courage, and I descend again into the deepest despondency: at last, finding it was a false alarm, we return once more to our beds; but what good can the sleep of nature do us, when interrupted with such scenes?"

* * * * *

But we will suppose our planter to have escaped the scalping knife and tomahawk; and in the course of years situate in a thick, settled neighbourhood of planters like himself, who have struggled through all the foregoing difficulties: he is now a man of some consequence, builds a house by the side of his former hut, which now serves him for a kitchen; and as he is comfortably situate, we will leave him to the enjoyment of the fruits of his industry.

Such a being has often ideas of liberty, and a contempt of vassalage and slavery, which do honour to human nature.

The planter I have endeavoured to describe, I have supposed to be sober and industrious: but when a man of an opposite description makes such an attempt, he often degenerates into a demisavage; he cultivates no more land than will barely supply the family with bread, or rather makes his wife, and children perform that office. His whole employment is to procure skins, and furs, to exchange for rum, brandy, and ammunition; for this purpose he is often for several days together in the woods, without seeing a human being. He is by no means at a loss; his rifle supplies him with food, and at night he cuts down some boughs with his tomahawk, and constructs a wigwam[Footnote: The Indian name for their huts so constructed.], in which he spends the night, stretched on the skins of those animals he has killed in the course of his excursion. This manner of living he learned from his savage neighbours, the Indians, and like them calls every other state of life slavery. It sometimes happens, that an unsuccessful back settler joins the Indians at war with the states. When this is the case, it is observed he is, if possible, more cruel than his new allies; he eagerly imbibes all the vices of the savages, without a single spark of their virtues. Farewell,

Yours &c.

Philadelphia, March 18th, 1794.

Dear Friend,

My present intention is to give you some conception of the family of a planter, whose ancestors had in some degree gone through all the difficulties I described in my last.

We will suppose them descended from the original english emigrants, who came over with Penn; like them, to possess a high sense of religion; and that this family are now in the quiet possession of about three hundred acres of land, their own property[Footnote: There are very few farms properly so called in the United States.], situate in Pennsylvania, about seventy or eighty miles from Philadelphia. Whatever difficulties they, or their ancestors, struggled formerly with, are now over; their lands are cleared, and in the bosom of a fine country, with a sure market for every article of produce they can possibly raise, and entirely out of the reach of the most desperate predatory excursions of the savages.

They enjoy a happy state of mediocrity[Footnote: The quakers in particular. I have seen at a meeting in West Jersey, in a very small town, upwards of two hundred carriages, one horse chairs, and light waggons, which are machines peculiar to this country, and well adapted to the sandy soil of the state of New Jersey; they are covered like a caravan, and will hold eight persons; the benches are removable at pleasure, and they are also used to convey the produce of the country to market.], between riches and poverty, perhaps the most enviable of all situations. When the boys of this family are numerous, those the father cannot provide for at home, and who prefer a planter's life to a trade, or profession, are, when married, presented with two or three hundred acres of uncultivated land, which their parents purchase for them as near home as possible. The young couple are supplied with stock, and supported till they have a sufficient quantity of land cleared to provide for themselves.

If unsuccessful through want of industry, &c., they often sell off, and emigrate to Kentucky, or some other new country seven or eight hundred miles to the S.W., and begin the world again as back settlers.

The daughters are brought up in habits of virtue and industry; the strict notions of female delicacy, instilled into their minds from their earliest infancy, never entirely forsake them. Even when one of these girls is decoyed from the peaceful dwelling of her parents, and left by her infamous seducer a prey to poverty and prostitution in a brothel at Philadelphia, her whole appearance is neat, and breathes an air of modesty: you see nothing in her dress, language, or behaviour, that could give you any reason to guess at her unfortunate situation; (how unlike her unhappy sisters so circumstanced in England!) she by no means gives over the idea of a husband, she is seldom disappointed: and, I am informed, often makes an excellent wife.

The chief amusement of the country girls in winter is sleighing, of which they are passionately fond, as indeed are the whole sex in this country. I never heard a woman speak of this diversion but with rapture. You have doubtless read a description of a sleigh, or sledge, as it is common in all northern countries, and can only be used on the snow. In British America this amusement may be followed nearly all the winter; but so far to the south as Pennsylvania, the snow seldom lies on the ground more than seven or eight days together. The consequence is, that every moment that will admit of sleighing is seized on with avidity. The tavern and inn-keepers are up all night; and the whole country is in motion. When the snow begins to fall, our planter's daughters provide hot sand, which at night they place in bags at the bottom of the sleigh. Their sweethearts attend with a couple of horses, and away they glide with astonishing velocity; visiting their friends for many miles round the country. But in large towns, in order to have a sleighing frolic in style, it is necessary to provide a fiddler who is placed at the head of the sleigh, and plays all the way. At every inn they meet with on the road, the company alight and have a dance. But I perceive I am dancing from my subject, which I suppose you are by this time heartily tired of; I shall therefore conclude, by assuring you,

I am

Yours sincerely, &c.

* * * * *

"There be also store of frogs, which in the spring time will chirp, and whistle like birds: there be also toads, that will creep to the top of trees, and sit there croaking, to the wonderment of strangers!"

"To a stranger walking for the first time in these woods during the summer, this appears the land of enchantment: he hears a thousand noises, without being able to discern from whence or from what animal they proceed, but which are, in fact, the discordant notes of five different species of frogs!"

Philadelphia, April 27th, 1794.