Peter the Whaler

by William Henry Giles Kingston

This information, though very flattering to me, added to my regret. I was now obliged to consider what I should next do. After the free wild life I had been leading, the idea of returning to Ireland was odious to me. I can scarcely now account for my conduct in this respect, but I had but once written home on my arrival at Quebec; and during my long excursions to the backwoods, I never had time. I was now ashamed to write—I seldom ever thought of those at home. I had sunk, I felt, from their grade, whenever I recollected them. My whole attention had been for so long occupied with the present, that the past was, as it were, a blank, or as a story which I had read in some book, and had almost forgotten. I therefore hardly for a moment thought of going back, if I did so at all; but I was anxious to fall in again with Captain Dean. I fancied the pleasures of a sea life more than those of a hunter, but I was not yet altogether tired of the backwoods. I had still a hankering to trap a few more beavers, and to shoot some more raccoons and deer.

On making further inquiries of the ship-broker, I discovered that there was a possibility of Captain Dean’s going to New Orleans, and I at once formed the idea of finding my way, by land and river, to that city. I knew a little more of the geography of the country than I did on my arrival, but the immense distance no way daunted me. I wanted to visit the States, and I was certain that my gun would always afford me the means of proceeding by any public conveyance, when I required it. I had a good sum remaining from the sale of the peltries I had saved; and with this in my pockets I once more started for the lakes of Upper Canada, purposing from thence to work my way through the western States down the Mississippi to New Orleans.

An American vessel, which I found at Goodrich, conveyed me, through Lake Huron, to a fort at the southern extremity of Lake Michigan, called, if I recollect rightly, Fort Dearborn. The voyage was long and tiresome. The feeling that one is in a fresh-water lake, and at the same time being out of sight of land for days together, is very curious. It gives one a more perfect notion than anything else can of the vastness of the country in which such inland seas exist. I must be excused from giving any minute account of my adventures at this period, as I made no notes, and I do not recur to them with much satisfaction. In fact, I was weary of the solitary life of a hunter and trapper, and longed once more to be among people with whom I could have some thoughts and feelings in common.

Till I got into the settled districts, I shot and trapped as before. My rifle always supplied me with abundance of food; and, whenever I reached a trading-post, I was able to exchange my peltries for a fresh store of powder and shot. When passing through the more inhabited districts, I was invariably hospitably received by the settlers, whatever was the nation to which they before belonged. Travelling through a large portion of the State of Indiana, I entered that of Illinois, and at length I embarked with a party of hunters in a canoe on the river of the same name, which runs through its centre. With these people I proceeded to Saint Louis, a city situated on the spot where the mighty streams of the Mississippi and Missouri join their waters.

Saint Louis was founded by the French, and is still very French in its general aspect. I here easily disposed of my remaining skins for a good sum of money, which I secured in a band round my waist. I remained here only two days, for I was anxious to proceed to the south; and, finding a steamer starting down the Mississippi, I went on board, and for about eight dollars engaged a passage on deck to New Orleans. The passage occupied ten days. By my usual way of proceeding, on foot, I should have been as many months, with a constant probability of dying of fever on the way.

I must make a remark for the benefit of Englishmen who may contemplate settling in the United States. They expect to find land cheap, no taxes, and few laws to hamper their will. In this they will not be disappointed; but there will be a considerable expense incurred in reaching those settlements where land is cheap. They will probably be a very great distance from a market for their produce; and, though they have no taxes and few laws, neither will they have the advantages which taxes and laws afford. They will be far removed from the ordinances of their Church, and the opportunities of education; there will neither be the where to buy nor to sell. In fact, they must be deprived of many of the advantages of civilisation; added to which, many parts of the western States are unhealthy in the greatest degree, of which the wretched, sallow, ague-stricken beings inhabiting them afforded melancholy proof; and these people, I found, were once stout, healthy peasants in England, and would have continued healthy, and gained what they hoped for besides, had they emigrated to Canada or to any other British colony, or even had they possessed more knowledge of the territory of the United States. I do not say that many British emigrants who give up their country, and become aliens in the States, do not succeed, and thus the accounts they send home encourage others to go out; but I do say that thousands of others die miserably of sickness and disappointment, without a friendly hand to help or cheer them, or any one to afford them the consolations of religion, and of their fate we never hear a word.

People talk a great deal of the advantages of liberty and equality, and the freedom of a wild life; but let me assure them that the liberty of having one’s eye gouged out, the equality which every ruffian claims, and the freedom which allows a man to die without any one to assist him, are practically far from desirable; and yet such are the false phantoms by which many are allured to a land of strangers, away from the home of their countrymen and friends. However, I am not writing a lecture on colonisation. I will finish the subject, by urging my readers to study it, and to become the advocates of British colonisation.

New Orleans is justly called the wet grave of the white man, for yearly pestilence sweeps off thousands of its inhabitants; and as water is found but two feet below the surface, it fills each last receptacle of the dead as soon as dug. Yet pestilential as is the clime, the scenery is very beautiful. The stream, which is here a mile broad, rolls its immense volume of water with calm dignity, in a bed above two hundred feet deep, past this great commercial mart of the south. The banks on either side are covered with sugar plantations, from the midst of which rise numberless airy mansions of the wealthy owners, surrounded with orange, banana, lime, and fig trees, with numberless other productions of the tropics; while behind them can be seen the sugar-houses and the cabins of the negroes, to remind one of the curse which hangs over the land.

The city itself stands in the form of a half-moon on the banks of this mighty stream, and before it are moored craft of every description—backwood boats, keel boats, steamers and ships, brigs and schooners, from every part of the world. I may remark that directly behind the city is an impenetrable swamp, into which all the filth from the houses is led, for the ground is lower than the surface of the Mississippi; and then we cannot be surprised that plague and fever prevail to a terrific extent.

As soon as I landed I set to work to try and discover the Mary, if she was there, or to gain tidings of her should she have sailed, as, from the length of time I had occupied in my journey, I was afraid might be the case. I walked along the quays, examining every ship in the river, and, after a long search, I was convinced that the Mary was not there. I next had recourse to the ship-brokers and ship-chandlers, but from none of them could I gain any information. I then began to make inquiries of the people I found lounging about the quays smoking, and otherwise killing the time. At last I saw a man who stood lounging against a post, with a cigar in his mouth and his arms folded, and who, by the glance he cast at me, seemed to court inquiry.