The King entered at the hour appointed, with four or five of his orderly officers about him, and, on casting his eyes around the room, his first exclamation was that of surprise at its unexpected extent and picturesque effect.
My friend M. Vattemare, and also another friend, Maj. Poore, from the United States, were by my side, and greatly amused and pleased with the remarks made by the King during the interview, relative to my paintings, and also to incidents of his life amongst the Indians of America during his exile. His Majesty soon recognised the picture of an Indian ball-play, and several other scenes he had witnessed on the American frontier, and repeatedly remarked that my paintings all had the strong impress of nature in them, and were executed with much spirit and effect. He seemed pleased and amused with the various Indian manufactures, and particularly with the beautiful Crow wigwam from the Rocky Mountains standing in the middle of the room, the door of which I opened for his Majesty to pass under.
After his visit of half an hour he retired, appointing another interview, telling me that the Queen must see the collection with him, and also commanding the director of the Louvre to admit my little children to his presence, having heard of their misfortune of losing their mother, for which he felt much sympathy.
At the time appointed, a few days after, I met his Majesty again, with a number of his illustrious friends, in my collection; and after he had taken them around the room awhile to describe familiar scenes which he had met there on his former visit, I continued to explain other paintings and Indian manufactures in the collection. ([Plate No. 22.])
In the midst of our tour around the hall his Majesty met something that again reminded him of scenes he had witnessed in his rambling life in the backwoods of America, and he held us still for half an hour during his recitals of them. He described the mode in which he and his two brothers descended the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in an old Mackinaw boat which they purchased at Pittsburg, and in which they made their way amongst snags and sawyers and sandbars to the mouth of the Ohio, six hundred miles, and from that down the still more wild and dangerous current of the Mississippi, one thousand miles, to New Orleans, fifty-two years ago, when nearly the whole shores of these rivers, with their heavy forests, were in their native state, inhabited only by Indians and wild beasts. They lived upon the game and fish they could kill or purchase from the various tribes of Indians they visited along the banks, and slept sometimes in their leaking and rickety boat, or amongst the canebrake, and mosquitos, and alligators, and rattlesnakes on the shores.
I took the liberty to ask his Majesty on this occasion whether the story that has been current in the American prints “of an Indian bleeding him” was correct; to which he replied, “No, not exactly; it had been misunderstood. He had bled himself on one occasion in presence of some Indians and a number of country people, when he had been thrown out of his waggon, and carried, much injured, to a country inn; and the people around him, seeing the ease and success with which he did it, supposed him, of course, to be a physician; and when he had sufficiently recovered from his fall to be able to start on his tour again, the neighbours assembled around him and proposed that he should abandon his plan of going farther west; that if he would remain amongst them they would show him much better land than he would find by proceeding on, and they would also elect him county physician, which they stood much in need of, and in which capacity he would meet no opposition. He thanked them for their kindness, assuring them that he was not a physician, and also that he was not in search of lands, and, taking leave, drove off.”
No. 22.