[INLAND TRADE WITH NEW MEXICO]
Into what nook of our globe can we penetrate, and not find our citizens with their 'trade and traffic?' We not long since read in a paper, that a Yankee captain was running a steam boat in the Yellow sea. In farthest India—in the islands of the gentiles—along the new countries recently discovered in the Antarctic sea, the undisputed throne of winter, and the habitation of sea monsters—wherever winds can waft, human foot-step be imprinted, or the Argus ken of industry and enterprise discover the most distant prospect of a harvest, there we shall find Americans. We delight to consort, as a listener, among the crowds of American tars. Their peculiar dress and step, walking the firm earth as if 'she' reeled; their frank, reckless and manly port; their voice, formed to its tones and expression amidst the roar of the winds and the dash of the waves; their dialect, their outlandish phrase, all furnish food for imagination. We hear them speak of China, of Japan, of Borneo, the Cape of Good Hope, and Cape Horn, as familiarly as the transit from New York to Greenwich. Their language seems to imply that distance and space are ideas unknown to them. Imagination follows them in their long and dangerous course [256] through the trackless brine, and realizes how many storms they have encountered, how many hardships endured, and deaths dared, during these passages; of which they speak as familiarly as of their diurnal visits on shore.
Though the adventures and voyages of the mariner furnish most food for the imagination; though the immense distances and the mysterious depths, that he traverses, and the indifferent hardihood, with which he encounters his perils and toils, naturally inspire an undefined admiration; yet the real exposure, toils and dangers of the interior journeys of our adventurous landsmen are, probably, quite as numerous, though they elicit much less of that feeling of romance and homage to daring, which is so readily called forth in the case of the other. The sailor carries his home with him. The fathomless and swelling cerulean is to him as the scenery of his birth place. No verdure, no enclosures of his paternal home are more pleasant, desired or natural, than good sea room. The winds and waves are chartered alike to convey him from danger, and to furnish him with the spectacles, varieties and pleasures of new ports. Not so with the landsman, far from home in the land of the stranger. Every new object, every variety of soil, climate, vegetation, strange plants and trees, strange men, dresses, religions, modes of building, strange customs, and, more than all, strange speech, awaken every moment those feelings, which made the Romans denominate the strange host by a word, that implies an enemy. At every step nature puts on new forms of hostility, and warns him against uncalled espionage of her privacy, and familiarity with her secrets. His weary steps, his worn down horse or mule, furnish no facilities of escape from those combinations of danger that imagination so readily creates, where they do not really exist. A whole community, with all their innate and national likes and dislikes, are always ready to yield to the natural human repugnance to whatever is a departure from its own ways, and to make a war of extermination upon the defenceless and desolate strangers. The ancient bard admired the temerity of [257] those, who first dared, with only a thin plank to interpose, between them and death, to commit themselves to the winds and waves. If we viewed the daring in all its aspects and bearings it would furnish equal ground for admiration, to contemplate one or a few solitary travellers setting forth on a journey of a thousand leagues, through strange countries, among people at war with each other, and in language, manners and religion furnished with a radical and unchangeable ground of jealousy, dislike and hostility. How happens it, under such circumstances, that men ever break the tender ties, the natural and strong charities of home, and go far away, to enter askance, embarrassed and afraid, the habitation of the stranger, knowing nothing of his language and character, and only knowing that the stranger has a religion and customs, not only different, but hostile? The love of gain, curiosity, the disposition to meet adventures, and the wandering protuberance can only furnish adequate motives.—We believe, that Americans, and particularly the New Englanders have more ample endowments of these combinations, than any other people. If we have ever for a moment given place to the traveller's vanity, in thinking, that in visiting some new and distant region, we had achieved an exploit,—on reaching the desired point, that vanity has been instantly corrected by finding compatriots there before us, who seemed quite at home, and wholly unconscious, that the attainment of their new domicil had given them any claims to celebrity.
We were recently indulged with the reading of a manuscript journal of an overland tour from Jackson, in Tennessee, by way of Memphis, the Arkansas, and one of its long and undescribed branches, over the wide prairies to the mountains that separate between our territory and that of New Mexico; to Santa Fe and the towns in that vicinity; and thence back, over the arid plains between Santa Fe and the Council Bluffs, on the Missouri. The caravan noted in their journal, as a common matter, that their trip had extended between five and six thousand miles. It was not a little amusing, or furnishing moderate excitement of interest and play of the imagination, to become [258] acquainted with the thoughts of these hardy denizens of the forests of Tennessee, as they first emerged from the dark woods upon the ocean prairies of the Arkansas. Their reasonings upon the strange country over which they past, in one place covered with countless buffaloes, in another with moving sands, and still in another offering the temperature of winter in summer, in parallels south of their nativity; upon the different soils, temperatures and configurations of the country, have an intrinsic interest. They are not the reasonings of cosmogonists, or geologists, or chemists, or botanists, or philosophers; but of men, who reason from first impressions,—who make short work of knotty and debateable points, and where they cannot untie the Gordian knot, make no ceremony in cutting it with the hunter's knife. Nothing could be more interesting, than to witness this little caravan surrounded by hordes of the ruthless red Tartars of the desert, brandishing their lances on horseback, and scenting the plunder with panther keenness of instinct. Forewarned by the fate of caravans that had preceded them, how little they had to hope, except from the fears of these Ishmaelites, they poise themselves on their native intrepidity, arrange their little phalanx, and remind the classical reader of the deportment of the ten thousand amidst the strange and innumerable hordes of barbarians, through which, partly by battle, and partly by policy, they made their way. The interest does not diminish, when we see them intermix with the Spanish strangers, equally ignorant and bigoted; the one calling in act cupidity and cunning, to countervail the cupidity and cunning of the other. What a spectacle must be furnished by the encounter of such a band with countless thousands of buffaloes! What scenes are witnessed in their encampments for a month, with no other itinerary, than the windings of an unknown river, the course of the planets, or the distant blue mountains, whose peaks yet want a name! How different their incidents, thoughts, views, food and rest—their nightly encamping and morning departure along the grass plains, that vision cannot measure, from the pursuits and themes of us, who dwell in towns! Yet painful [259] and laborious and hazardous as are these distant excursions, those who engage in them, soon acquire an invincible attachment to them, that renders all other pursuits in comparison stale and tedious!
After wandering six or eight weeks over these prairies, living on buffalo meat without bread or salt, and begrimmed with grease, smoke and the fine dust of the prairies to a brotherly resemblance with the red men, and not at all particular about making their toilet of a dress, which in the first instance smacked nothing of dandyism, nothing can be more amusing, than their ablutions, and beautifyings, and conversations, as, in a mountain-bounded vale, with a rivulet for mirror, they talk of the Spanish beauties, and lustrate and prepare for entering upon the scene of their profits and conquests.
In an article before us, we propose to take a brief survey of the journal of Dr. Willard, an amiable and very correct young man, now residing in our city, and calculating to become a permanent inhabitant, of a journey to the interior of New Mexico, and a residence for some years in the interior, and, more than all, a descent of the Rio del Norte from its head springs to Matamoras, at its mouth,—an immense extent of interesting country, as far as our reading extends, wholly unexplored. Our regret is equal to his own, that while passing down this long, interesting and undescribed river, he had not been more particular in noting the physical aspect of the country, the character of the soil and productions, animal and vegetable, on his route. But, not contemplating any thing beyond refreshing his own recollections, by noting down obvious and diurnal facts and incidents, the journal wants that fulness and variety, which he would probably give to it, were he privileged to travel over the same ground again. How much it is to be desired, that travellers should remember, while traversing new and unexplored regions, that what may seem trivial and common, while under the eye, will assume a different interest and importance, when surveyed anew by memory. No journal of travels in a new country can be uninteresting, so that the traveller is full and faithful in noting [260] down, in the freshness of vision and actual occurrence, what is passing and spread under his eye.
Dr. Willard was a citizen of St. Charles, on the Missouri; and joined a Missouri caravan to New Mexico, as it appears, with mixed inducements. He had something of the common American propensity to seek his fortune; and seems to have been disposed to make his debut and perform his first quarantine among the Spaniards, choosing to make his first experiment in spoiling the tents of the Philistine, rather than the children of his own people.
Dr. Willard left St. Charles, May 6, 1825. The caravan consisted of thirty-three persons. He had not journeyed beyond the settlements of the Missouri until the 16th, when he records in his tablets, that he slept under a tent for the first time in his life. The greater part of the long distance between St. Charles and the mountains at the sources of the Arkansas, is a country of rolling prairies, until we reach the great plains of the Arkansas, generally covered with grass, and of but moderate fertility. A narrow belt of the last portion of the distance is not unlike the deserts of Arabia,—a sterile plain of sand heaps, with but here and there a few of the hardier weeds and plants, which seem to have settled here, as outcasts from more fertile and genial regions. The route, laying across the head sources of the larger rivers of the Missouri and Arkansas, traverses but few rivers or creeks, that are not fordable.[133] Although it has the reputation of being an exceedingly arid region, one of the most frequent occurrences noted in his journal, is being drenched with rains. On the 22d, he remarks, that the earth, over which they travelled, was completely saturated with rain; it having rained every day, save two, since their departure. Another occurrence, which we have noted in all similar journals, and one of the most unpleasant character, is the escape, or what is called the breaking away of the horses. One mode of securing them on these boundless grass plains is technically called 'hoppling'—we imagine a corruption of the word 'hobbling.' The fore and hind legs of the horse are fastened by a kind of fetter, generally [261] of leather. Horses accustomed to this kind of impediment can travel with ease far enough to feed; but with not sufficient facility to evade the owner. But the more general security is the feeling of companionship with each other, and with their owners, which these generous animals soon acquire; and which has so much influence, that affright, or the calls of wild horses, or some extraneous circumstance, is necessary to overcome it. But these circumstances frequently occur; and though the caravans have, or should have a guard of one eighth of the company, of sleepless vigilance, to guard against such disasters, it often happens, that the horses break away; and we can imagine few employments, except dunning and borrowing, more irksome and hopeless, than that of turning out upon the great buffalo pasture a thousand leagues by five hundred in extent, in pursuit of horses, which after all make it a matter of choice, even if discovered, whether they will be taken or not. But it so happens, that these animals, with the municipal habits of settled life, and certain remembrances of country and home, start back on the track of their outward march, and with their heads towards the natal spot; and from this circumstance it seldom happens, that, when overtaken by their owners, they are not persuaded to be retaken.