“If it should become necessary to use her in defense of liberty, in my time, I will do as I have done before; and if in the struggle I am buried in the dust, I will leave her in the hands of some one who will honor your present, in standing for our country’s rights.”
The rifle was a fine specimen of the best Pennsylvania workmanship, and accompanying it were a tomahawk, hunting-knife, and all the accoutrements that went with a gun.
During the next few days Davy spoke at the Fourth of July performance in the Chestnut Street Theatre, met Daniel Webster and other celebrities at the Fish-House club on the Schuylkill, and received a present of half a dozen canisters of the best brand of Dupont’s powder from Mr. Dupont in person. He then started for Pittsburg. Arriving at Harrisburg by rail, he took up his quarters upon the canal-boat which Dickens has minutely described in the chapter ending with this mention of the stuffy cabin of the best packet on the line:
“No doubt it would have been a thought more comfortable if the driving rain, which now poured down more soakingly than ever, had admitted of a window being opened, or if our number had been something less than thirty; but there was scarcely time to think as much, when a train of three horses was attached to the tow-rope, the boy upon the leader cracked his whip, the rudder creaked and groaned complainingly, and we had begun our journey.”
Two and a half days were used up in going to the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains. Between the western end of the canal and the other, or western, side of the mountains, there was then a railway, over which the cars, or coaches, were hauled by stationary engines, there being five inclines, or switch-backs, on each side. From this railway the trip continued by another canal, and upon the evening of the fourth day Davy found himself for the first time in the Smoky City. He was enthusiastic over the future of the State. He saw in Pittsburg a perfect workshop, increasing every year in extent, beauty, and population.
His voyage down the Ohio was enlivened by salutes from the citizens of various towns, by speaking at Cincinnati, and by the gathering of the largest crowd that Louisville had ever known. Dickens gives this description of the voyage down the Ohio:
“A fine broad river always, but in some parts much wider than in others; and then there is usually a green island, covered with trees, dividing it into two streams. Occasionally we stop for a few minutes, maybe to take on wood, maybe for passengers, at some small town or city (I ought to say city, every place is a city here), but the banks are for the most part deep solitudes, overgrown with trees, already in leaf and very green. For miles, and miles, and miles, these solitudes are unbroken by any sign of human life or trace of human footstep; nor is anything seen to move about them but the blue-jay, whose color is so bright and yet so delicate, that it looks like a flying flower. At long intervals, a log cabin, with its little space of cleared land about it, nestles under a rising ground, and sends its thread of blue smoke curling up into the sky. It stands in the corner of the poor field of wheat, which is full of great unsightly stumps, like earthly butchers’-blocks. Sometimes the ground is only just now cleared: the felled trees lying yet upon the soil, and the log house only this morning begun. As we pass this clearing, the settler leans upon his ax or hammer, and looks wistfully at the people from the world. The children creep out of their temporary hut, which is like a gipsy tent upon the ground, and clap their hands and shout. The dog only glances round at us, and then looks up into his master’s face again, as if he were rendered uneasy by any suspension of the common business, and had nothing more to do with pleasures. And there is still the same, eternal foreground.”
From Louisville Davy left for Mills’ Point with his “trunk, gun-case, old lady’s pitcher a rough drive of thirty-five miles, a glimpse of waving corn gleamed through the scattered pines, and like a voice from the other world rang the cry of the bear-hunter through the wilderness. The scarred and sorrowful hounds about the cabin leaped to their feet as they caught the welcome sound, and with baying that gave the bears of the “harricane” an uneasy quarter of an hour, the gaunt pack rushed to meet the master they loved so well. At his own door there was the joyful reunion to which, in the midst of civic honors and the luxuries of civilization, Davy had looked forward with unsuppressed longing. As the family and the neighbors crowded about him, he placed upon a rude mantel the china pitcher for his wife, and took from its leather case the splendid rifle given him in Philadelphia. There was joy and wonder in plenty for all. His suit of broadcloth was touched with something like awe and reverence by those who had worn homespun all their lives.
When the neighbors came together, from time to time, Davy heard the stories of some who were just from the Texas border, or from that unquiet land itself. There were twenty thousand Americans already there, sullen with wrath against the officials of the dual government of Texas and Coahuila who enforced harsh orders and arbitrary laws by means of renegades and ignorant natives in gaudy uniforms. No man like Stephen F. Austin could endure the sight of these rude and often bloodthirsty creatures. The man in a hunting coat became the natural enemy of the officer with gorgeous epaulets and dirty linen, who relied upon the glitter of a clumsy blade to overawe the keen-eyed riflemen from Kentucky and Tennessee. Such matters as these, frequently discussed, awoke in the hunters of the Obion a longing to free their friends and relatives from Mexican rule. The question of Mexico’s right to rule was not considered. The thirteen colonies had grown too great for the mother tree, and, taking new root in the land of their choice, had severed in the whirlwind passions of rebellion the ligaments that hampered both. There was at the bottom of the discontent in Texas the working of the old, invincible law, the “simple plan,”