I embarked at New York in the packet which sailed for Albany, situated on the upper reaches of the Hudson River. The company was numerous. On the evening of the first day we were served with a collation consisting of fruits and milk; the women sat on the benches on deck, the men on the deck at their feet. Conversation was not long maintained: at the sight of a beautiful natural picture, one involuntarily lapses into silence. Suddenly some one or other exclaimed:
"There is the place where Asgill[473] was arrested."
A Quakeress from Philadelphia was asked to sing the ballad known as Asgill. We were passing between mountains; the fair passenger's voice died away on the water, or rang out when we hugged the bank more closely. The fate of a young soldier, a lover, a poet and a hero, honoured by the interest of Washington and the generous intervention of an unfortunate queen, lent additional charm to the romance of the scene. The friend whom I have lost, M. de Fontanes, let fall some courageous words in memory of Asgill at the time when Bonaparte was preparing to ascend the throne upon which Marie Antoinette had sat. The American officers appeared touched by the song of the fair Pennsylvanian: the memory of the past troubles of their country made them appreciate more highly the calm of the present moment. They gazed with emotion upon those spots but lately filled with troops, resounding with the clash of arms, and now wrapped in profound peace; those spots gilded with the fading light of day, enlivened with the singing of the cardinal-birds, the cooing of the ring-doves, the song of the mocking-birds, while the inhabitants, leaning against their fences fringed with trumpet-flowers, watched our bark pass below them.
I arrive at Albany.
On arriving at Albany I went in search of a Mr. Swift, for whom I had been given a letter. This Mr. Swift traded in furs with the Indian tribes enclosed in the territory ceded to the United States by England; for the civilized Powers in America, republican and monarchical alike, unceremoniously share among themselves land which does not belong to them. After listening to what I had to say, Mr. Swift made some very reasonable objections. He told me that I could not undertake a journey of this importance at first sight, alone, without assistance, without support, without letters of recommendation to the English, American, and Spanish stations by which I should be obliged to pass; that if I had the good fortune to cross so many solitary tracts of country, I should arrive at frozen regions where I should perish of hunger; he advised me to begin by acclimatizing myself, suggested that I should learn the Sioux, Iroquois, and Esquimaux languages, and live among the coureurs and the agents of the Hudson's Bay Company. Having gained this preliminary experience, I might then, in four or five years, with the assistance of the French Government, proceed on my hazardous mission.
This advice, whose justice, in my heart of hearts, I admitted, annoyed me. Had I trusted to my own judgment, I should have set out then and there to go to the Pole, as I might go from Paris to Pontoise. I concealed my vexation from Mr. Swift, and asked him to find me a guide and horses to take me to Niagara and Pittsburg: from Pittsburg I would go down the Ohio and gather ideas for my future plans. I still had my first project in my head. Mr. Swift engaged a Dutchman on my behalf, who spoke several Indian dialects. I bought two horses and left Albany.
The whole stretch of country between the territory surrounding that town and Niagara is now inhabited and cleared; the New York Canal crosses it; but at that time a great part of the district was unfrequented. When, after crossing the Mohawk, I entered woods which had never known the axe, I was seized with a sort of intoxication of independence; I went from tree to tree, left and right, saying to myself:
"Here are no more roads, no more cities, no more monarchies, no more republics, no more presidents, no more kings, no more men!"
And, in order to test whether I was really reinstated in my original rights, I indulged in acts of will which infuriated my guide, who in his heart believed me mad.