THE SOLITARY HUNTER
I
PRAIRIE TRAVEL
In the year 1847 John Palliser, an Irishman, sailed from Liverpool by the good ship “Cambria” for an extended trip in America to make acquaintance with “our Trans-Atlantic brethren, and to extend my visit to the regions still inhabited by America’s aboriginal people—now, indeed, driven far westward of their rightful territories and pressed backward into that ocean of prairies extending to the foot of the great Rocky Mountains.”
Palliser was a young man of good family, the son of Colonel Wray Palliser, of Comragh, County Waterford. Like so many of his race, he was energetic, quick-witted, forceful, and possessed a great fund of humor. He seems to have been first of all a hunter, and like all successful hunters to have been a keen and close observer. Some time after his return to England he wrote a book giving his experiences of adventure in the Far West. It is one of the best books of hunting adventure ever written—terse, always to the point, modest, giving facts and conclusions, and very little about his own views of life. The book has long been out of print and is now not easily obtained, but it is really a model in the picture that it paints of old-time conditions and in the self-effacement of the author.
Palliser has long been forgotten. Almost equally forgotten are two of his shipmates, whose names at one time were familiar enough throughout the civilized world. These were “General Tom Thumb” and P. T. Barnum, who was bringing Tom Thumb back to the United States after a season of exhibition in Europe.
The “Cambria” touched for coal at Halifax and then came on to Boston and New York, where the traveller stopped at the Astor House, which, he says, is “far larger than any hotel I ever beheld in the old world.” From New York he went down to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cumberland, and Wheeling, and from there down the Ohio River to the Mississippi and to St. Louis and New Orleans. His whole journey, though described briefly, is full of effective touches, and his comments and criticisms are keen but kindly. To a description of New Orleans he gives some space, and speaks with cordial warmth of the friendliness and hospitality of the Creole inhabitants.
From New Orleans he went up the Mississippi and Arkansas (spelled phonetically Arkansor) Rivers, and spent some time hunting small game, deer, bear, and, by good fortune, killed a fine panther. A more or less amusing tale, which Palliser quotes from an experience of his brother a year before, is worth repeating.
“One day, when comfortably seated with Jackson and his family, in the neighbourhood of Lake Jefferson, a little nigger come running in, shouting, ‘Oh, massa! terrible big alligator; him run at me,’ When we got him to speak a little more coherently, it appeared that he had been bathing in the lake, and that an alligator had suddenly rushed at him, and when the boy, who luckily was not in deep water, had escaped by running to land, the brute had actually pursued him for some distance along the shore. We instantly loaded our rifles and started off in quest of the monster, accompanied by the boy, who came as guide. After carefully exploring the bank and reeds, though unsuccessfully, we concealed ourselves, in hopes of seeing him rise to the top of the water when he thought the coast was clear; but as we waited a long time without any result, we proposed what certainly was a most nefarious project; namely, to make the boy strip off his clothes and start him into the water again as a bait for the alligator. It was some time before we could get the boy to come round to our view of the matter: his objections to our plan were very strong, and his master’s threats failed completely, as indeed they generally did; for he was the kindest-hearted man in the world to his negroes. At last I coaxed him with a bright new dollar. This inducement prevailed over his fears, and the poor boy began to undress, his eyes all the while reverting alternately from the water to the dollar, and from the dollar to the water. We told him we did not want him to go in so deep as to be obliged to swim. ‘By golly, then, me go for dollare’; and in he walked, but had hardly reached water higher than his knees, when crash went the reeds, and the little fellow cut in towards our place of concealment at an astonishing pace, pursued by the alligator. The savage beast, as before, came right out on the bank, where we nailed him with two capital shots through the head, that effectually checked his career. He struggled violently, but uselessly, to regain his congenial element, and, after two or three furious lashes of his ponderous tail, sullenly expired. The triumph of the boy was complete.”
Palliser next went to Louisville, Ky., and after a pause in that State to inspect the Mammoth Cave, returned to Louisville, where he took the boat for St. Louis to make preparations for his Rocky Mountain trip. He locates in St. Louis that excellent story which has been so often told in the last sixty years about the two great talkers who were matched on a bet to see which should outtalk the other.
“Old Mr. Cohen was universally considered a great talker, so much so, that he even admitted it himself; but this evening a formidable rival appeared against him in the person of a strange character from Kentucky, who fairly met him on his own ground, and after supper evinced such unceasing powers of conversation, that old Mr. Cohen was unable to get in a word, and was fain to claim a hearing. ‘Let me speak, let me speak,’ he gasped several times but with no avail; till, at last, the fool’s argument was resorted to, and a bet made which should talk the longest. An umpire was chosen to determine which of the two loquacious combatants should be the winner; but, as might naturally be supposed, none of us had the patience to sit out the contest, so we went off to bed, leaving a plentiful supply of brandy, sugar, and iced water. Next morning, at a quarter past five, victory was declared for Missouri, the umpire returning at that hour and finding the Kentucky man fast asleep in his arm chair, and old Mr. Cohen sitting up close beside him and whispering in his ear.”