Our regrets may and will follow the disappearance of the Indians from the face of the globe, but their doom is certain, and not far off, in point of time. Our legislative bodies, from the best of motives, are endeavoring to preserve Indian names of places, rivers, mountains, &c., but our gross ignorance of Indian languages, prevents us from even retaining proper names. Hoo, for instance, in some Indian dialects, means elk, and uk is river, so Hoosuk means “elks river.” “Sooske,” means hunting, and “hannah,” in a Delaware dialect, means river. Sooskehannah means “hunting river,” which we call Susquehanna river.
No Indian, who heard us pronounce the word Potomac would suspect that we meant to say the river Potum; so of Rappa-hannah, he would not know that we meant the river Rappa. So of the river Roan, which we call Roanoak, instead of calling it simply the river Roan. But enough, perhaps, too much of Indian languages. We give, however, the names correctly: Hoo, Sooske, Potum, Rappa and Roan. After spending several hours with Mr. Gallatin in his library, and after conversing with him on my business, which had brought me to the city, in which he took an interest, I returned to my lodgings in Broad street. He invited me to call on him again, and spend some time with him, on his birth day, when he would be eighty-three years old.
I next visited Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins and their daughter, who boarded with Mrs. Lentner, No. 15 Amity street, near Broadway. In this house, kept by the present occupant, Colonel Trumbull spent the last twenty years of his life. Here he lived and here he died, not long before my visit. It was in this house that Colonel Trumbull executed his splendid paintings which now adorn the rotundo in the capitol at Washington city. These paintings are seen by a great number of persons every day in the year. The Declaration of Independence, the Surrender of Cornwallis, &c. &c. will confer an unfading fame on Colonel Trumbull. Mrs. Lentner will always be remembered for her care of the painter, which so greatly contributed to preserve his useful life, until he was more than eighty-seven years old. I saw in Mrs. Lentner’s parlor a likeness of Colonel Trumbull, painted by himself, in his last years. It was said to be a very correct one. So said Mrs. Lentner.
After taking dinner and supper with Mrs. Lentner and her family, I returned in the omnibus to my lodgings. If any persons could prolong human life and render it happy, Mrs. Lentner, her sister, and the domestics around her, could certainly effect that object. So it seemed to me during the six hours that I spent at number 15, Amity street, New York. She is the Mrs. Ballard of New York.
On Mr. Gallatin’s birth day, when he had arrived at the age of eighty-three years, I went to see him as early in the morning of that day as I could, after taking a very early breakfast. I found him up in his library, busily engaged in his favorite study of Indian languages. He was quite active, quick in his motions, his cheeks were ruddy, his eye clear and piercing, his step elastic, his eye sight, by the aid of his glasses, good. He repeatedly ran up his ladder like a squirrel to get a book for me. His hearing is unimpaired, and his memory of past events, wherein he had been concerned, excellent. His reasoning powers were good, and so was his judgment. On my former visit I had, at his request, related to him what I had known of the transactions of his life, in which I had left many blanks, especially when he had been in Europe as our diplomatic agent. To-day Mr. Gallatin filled up those blanks and recounted to me what he had done, ever since he landed at New York, a poor foreigner, ignorant of our language, unlearned and not twenty years old; but now I saw before me, at the age of eighty-three, a man of wealth, of learning, of great practical knowledge and of vast mental powers, whose fame as a diplomatist, as a man of business and as a statesman, was co-extensive with the civilized world. He more than once told me that he was relating the manner in which he had succeeded in life, so that I might profit by his experience, whereas I expected to die long years before he would. So I thought, but said nothing, because any remark in reply or by way of inquiry, seemed to discompose his mind very much. In the course of his long story of four or five hours in length, he more than once gave the credit of his success to his wife and her relatives in New York. He had married a daughter of Commodore Nicholson. She had entered into all his concerns, political, moral, social and mental with her whole heart. She even watched the newspapers, to learn what they said of Mr. Gallatin. He related to me an anecdote of Mr. Gales, who in his Intelligencer had said of Mr. Gallatin, after his arrival in Washington, “that the venerable Mr. Gallatin had arrived in the city.” Soon after that paper appeared, when a party of gentlemen had convened to give Mr. Gallatin a public dinner, perhaps, the latter gentleman said aloud, so that all present heard him, “Mr. Gales, my wife says, you make her husband quite too venerable.” Mr. and Mrs. Gallatin sent by me their best respects to all their old friends in the District of Columbia, with a very pressing request, that I would give him an accurate account of these friends, and what had befallen them since January 1830, which was the last time Mr. Gallatin had been in Washington city. On my return to Washington I executed my commission in a way that I supposed would be satisfactory to all concerned—that is, to Mr. and Mrs. Gallatin and to their surviving friends in the District. On the whole, we may safely pronounce Mr. Gallatin a very fortunate man, who, by his industry, economy, perseverance and sleepless energy, has acquired honors, wealth and fame. Sixty years ago, he was a surveyor of wild lands along and near the Ohio river, naming the smaller streams that run into that river, ascertaining the latitude and longitude of particular points, and extending his surveys quite into what is now the State of Kentucky. George Washington was a surveyor in that region at the same time. Mr. Gallatin spoke of himself, as a man in rather limited circumstances, whose annual income amounted to only about five thousand dollars. When he so informed me, I thought that many a man in the western States would consider himself well off, provided he had that sum as his whole estate. As to size, Mr. Gallatin is rather under the common one, extremely well formed in person, and has in his head a piercing, hazle coloured eye. His memory is remarkably good, and he is almost infinitely better qualified to be the Secretary of the Treasury, than the man *******. His old clerks all retain a warm friendship for him, and so do their families. Mrs. Gallatin is remembered by them, and all her old neighbors in Washington, with heartfelt gratitude, on account of her numerous unostentatious hospitalities and charitable acts. The comparison which all in this city, who lived here in Gallatin’s time and still reside here, are compelled to make, is quite mortifying to their feelings. While the mass of the people of Washington city have become better, some of the higher officers of the government have become worse—much worse. Esconsed, malignant, haughty, distant, reserved, lazy, inattentive to the duties of their offices, one of them, scarcely ever reaches his office until noon, carrying his gold headed cane, horizontally suspended in his hand, he signs his name to a few papers, which Mr. ***** and his clerks, *** and others had prepared for his signature, and he departs to his house to write for the newspapers against the administration, one of which he is. A President who would dare to brush off a musquito from his hand, that was biting it, would clear out such a fellow forthwith.[A] It is an old maxim with me, “to mark the man, whom God has marked.” When I see a deformed mouth and a cocked eye, I expect to find their owner a man actuated by malice, treachery and deceit; a cold hearted wretch, whom no one pities and no one loves. Under some frivolous pretence, such a creature hides himself in his house as an owl does in his hollow tree in the day time, and prowls, like the wolf or the owl, during the night. That man’s father says, that his son is the worst man in the world.
[A] While this form was passing through the press, the President brushed off the musquito from his hand.—Thank you Sir.
During the time I was in New York city, the Customhouse officers were kept very busy. The duties on the imported goods were of great amount, and the officers were employed all day long in the open air, from sun-rise till dark, when the thermometer was many degrees below zero. General Waller was thus employed, weighing iron from Sweden and Russia, all day long.
Goods by wholesale are sold much cheaper in New York than I had supposed, and I had no correct idea of the vast amount of its commerce, until I had been in the city two weeks. Considerable as the amount of duties on goods received in this city, is, yet the goods not paying any duty, such as cotton, Orleans sugar, and domestic manufactures, is still greater. The amount too, of flour, wheat, corn, pork, beef, lard, &c., brought here, is much more than I had supposed it to be. When we have a despotism in this country, all these goods will pay a duty to the government. It might amount to twenty millions of dollars annually, and would then be a very low duty on domestic products. We say this for the lovers of low wages and free trade.
As this nation increases in numbers—as the western States fill up with people—as the amount of agricultural and manufactured goods increases, and as the foreign goods, consumed in this great and growing nation, increase, the city of New York will increase its numbers of people, its commerce, wealth and power. Her ships and commerce will float on every sea and every ocean, until she will rival London herself in trade, wealth and power. The position of New York, so near the main ocean, on an island, laved too by the North river and the Sound, affords every facility which she needs or could desire, for extending her commerce not only to foreign countries, but into the interior of this vast country. She will only need a rail-road to the Pacific, and a dense population, settled along its whole route, to enliven and animate the scenery along its way. In that event, steam vessels, running from Astoria to China and Japan and all the islands of the northern Pacific, would soon be seen on the Upper Pacific, conveying the productions of the whole world to a market. Such a rail-road might be made by the nation, from the land sales in the new regions to be settled by our people. What a sublime, moral, political and commercial prospect is held out to our enraptured eyes! Christians, statesmen, Americans and scholars, look on this picture!
From surveys actually made by Lieut. Freemont, it is certain, that a rail-road from Cumberland, in Maryland, to the Pacific, is entirely within our means as a nation, at an expense of only about fifty millions of dollars or less; and it is equally certain that the new lands to be brought into market by making the road, would defray every dollar of the expense of making it. We live in the infancy of the greatest nation that now exists, ever did, or ever will exist, on the face of the globe. Looking through the vista of futurity, we can now behold a nation consisting of five hundred millions of people, all speaking our language, and governing the world in peace without a rival in commerce, arts or arms. Should the British lion growl at us, the Gallic cock would flap his wings and crow at our success, and the Russian bear smile upon us. The American eagle will yet soar above both, into his own pure air, where he can revel in the brilliant beams of his own flaming sun. The trade between the East Indies and Europe will eventually pass across our territory, east and west, and the time of passing from London to Canton might not occupy more than two months. Such a state of things would add to the wealth, numbers, commerce, agriculture and manufactures of this whole nation. Such a nation, whose territory extended from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Icy sea in the north to the Isthmus of Darien in the south, would present a sublime spectacle. What a vast field in which free government might exercise its energies! The human imagination is lost in its contemplation of such a prospect, for the future generations of our posterity.