EDWARD JARVIS'S JOURNAL

dward Jarvis's Journal of a Journey from Louisville, Kentucky, to New Orleans, of a Visit of Eight Days, and of His Return to Louisville, 16 April to 6 May 1841

Edited by Sarah Chapin

Introduction Edward Jarvis was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1803. He was educated in Concord schools, Harvard College (1826), and the Harvard Medical School (1830). His father, a baker, conveyed to his children the cardinal values of a self-made man: deep respect for good education, a moral obligation to accept one's share of responsibility for community affairs, and Yankee thrift. The Rev. Dr. Ezra Ripley (1751-1841), Concord's spiritual guardian, led Edward from the austerities of Calvinism into the serenity of Unitarianism and nourished his belief in repentance and eternal life. Samuel Hoar (1778-1856), tall and lean, with the profile of a Roman senator, was the standard-bearer of Concord's moral character. In addition to a great judicial mind, Squire Hoar had the. gift of simplicity and directness, and it pleased him to demonstrate to youthful Concordlans like Edward that justice and liberty could prevail both in and out of court. An upbringing in Concord's "nursery of strength and virtue"I might have assured a smooth passage through life for Edward, but he was a sensitive fellow and his Concord background (with its

I SARAH CHAPIN was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She lives in Concord. She teaches adults and children to play the piano and as an independent scholar she researches historic manuscripts from the Special Collections of the Concord Free Public Library. The Journal of Edward Jarvls's trip along the Mississippi River is her third publication of Jarvls's writings. See acknowledgments and editor's note at end of article on page 303. I Rev. Andrew P. Peabody. "Memoir of Edward Jarvls MD" in The New England Historical & Genealogical Register 39 (1885): 217.

TI•e Fllson Club History Quarterly Vol. 70. No. 3, July 1996 227 228 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

emphasis on accomplishment and fortitude) clashed with the standards of medical conduct current in the early nineteenth century. There was something iniquitous, Edward thought, about dispensing medicine whose active ingredients were imperfectly understood. Moreover, ff the same medication (usually calomel) were given for different morbid conditions, surely the doctor could not take credit if the patients recovered. Good medical practice, Edward argued, should consist of consultations to prevent disease. Patients should seek advice from a doctor "as the commercial and Financial world consult[s) the legal profession ...... 2 Since health is the natural condition of humankind, it could be sustained by attention to sensible health habits, good nutrition, and sanitary disposal of waste products. Such a high moral tone appeased Edward's conscience, but it had disastrous practical consequences for his medical practice. Edward's career began in Northfleld, Massachusetts, in 1830. To his dismay, it proved to be neither financially rewarding nor professionally satisfying. He left Northfleld after two years to return to Concord where, surrounded by family and friends, he expected {but failed) to fare better. After four years in Concord, Edward's income was still insufficient to meet his and his wife's needs. Having been assured that the people of Louisville would welcome an "eastern" doctor, he went to Kentucky to continue his quest for a secure professional career. He positioned himself favorably within the medical community, joined social, medical, and religious conversation clubs and served on the Louisville Board of School Visitors. His long-standing interest in history (part of the Concord benefaction from his father) was stimulated by his new surroundings, and he proposed formation of a historical society to preserve Kentucky's manuscripts and documents. Edward tried to "learn the life and character of the West, "3 yet he was never really

2 RosalbaDavico, ed.,AutobiographyofEdwardJarvls (1803-1884)(London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1992), 24. 3 Ibid., 57. 1996] Edward Jarvls's Journal 229

able to set his New England ways aside. Invariably, "there was wanting that completeness of sympathy and co-operation that belong to those whose radical notions and training have been the same. •4 He was repelled by slavery and tried to mitigate its perversion by doing his personal chores himself and only hiring men whom he could pay directly for their services, but he could never really escape its ignominious injustice. By 1840, Edward's practice had dwindled as it had in Northfleld and Concord: patients came, they got well--but they did not return. Even making allowance for the fact that his office, located near the waterfront, attracted mainly the transient river population, it was evident to Edward that his reliable core of patients was too small. Disappointed yet again in the progress of his medical career, Edward, true to his Concord heritage, turned to writing essays for literary, medical, and religious magazines on such far-ranging subjects as education in Massachusetts, the rationale for humanitarian treatment of animals, and the lack of adequate care for the insane in the southern states. He wrote informally about life in the south for the Concord newspaper: he wrote letters discouraging easterners from moving west: he wrote home to his family in Concord and his brothers in New Orleans. Altogether, he wrote 2049 letters in five and one-half years. 5 With Edward's father's death in the autumn of 1840 and Dr. Ripley growing increasingly feeble, the potency of the Concord legacy began to wane. By spring, Edward was restless and in need of a change; he longed to visit his two brothers in New Orleans. After characteristic hesitation, discussion, reflection, and prayerful consideration, he took passage on the Edward Shlppen bound for

4 Ibid. Jarvls was a charter member of the Academy of Medicine, an attending physician of the Marine Hospital {elected by the Louisville City Council). a member of the Louisville Conversation Club, a member of the Louisville Board of School Visitors [ 1838-1842). a founder of the State Historical Society with the Reverend BenJaznin Peers. Mr. Leonard Bliss, Judge Henry Ptrfle, "and others." See ibid., 52. 5 Ibid.. 54. 230 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

New Orleans. It was his first vacation in two years and, as far as we know, his last for twenty more years. Once under way, Edward yielded to the diversions of travel. H!s habits of introspection and obsession with failure were neutralized by the novel effects of his surroundings, and, unable to "suppress a glow of exhilaration," he concentrated on the .immediacy of the unfolding scene. He barely took time to wash his face for fear of missing "some new view, some island, some trees, some eddy.... " The rich mixture of the exotic colors, sounds, and smells of New Orleans jolted Edward's provincial temperament. His family, determined to awaken their solemn-minded brother to the attractions of modern life, made an effort to show him "every place of note in New Orleans." Among the sights were a theatre, where Edward was shocked by a dancer's "exposure of her person," a ballroom where he was "strictly examined" for weapons, and a bowling alley where, despite past experience in his childhood, he "failed most sadly." It was all a dazzling change from life in Louisville. Edward summed up his journey in words of personal pleasure and admiration for the river's shoreline towns and the people who traveled or earned their living on its waters. "I had enjoyed eight days of uninterrupted pleasure.., and received much knowledge, and laid the foundation of further happiness in future." Thoreau, traveling in 1839 on another river which "has come out of the clouds, and down the sides of precipices worn in the flood •..until it found a breathing place in this low land,"6 surveyed the bordering landscape and cozy country towns with a thoroughness similar to Edward's. Both travellers sailed along the water "beholding from its placid bosom a new nature and new works of men, as it were with increasing confidence, finding Nature still habitable, genial and propitious. "7 Thoreau's woods and water reflected meanings consonant with Edward's expression of humbler

6 Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1966; originally published in 1849l, 99-I OO. 7 Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack, 131. 1996] Edward Jarvts's Journal 231

ecstasy. "Still, the river and its banks are beautiful today," Edward wrote simply. "I enjoy them. I like to be in sight of them, and I feel that all the time spent below is lost. I shall never regret this journey." Edward returned to Massachusetts the following summer. He decided not to live in Concord but in the Boston suburb of Dorchester ("a very desirable town, but not strong in medical supply"), and to open his home as an exclusive private sanitarium for the mentally ill. His plan worked. Patients came and were cured. More followed. Edward made friends, wrote articles, and conferred with other doctors interested in his specialty. He was sought after not only as a compiler of data pertinent to the care and treatment of the mentally ill but also as an authority on accurate retrieval of census information. His trip to Europe to visit asylums and to attend the International Congress of Statisticians in 1860 "gave a greater power to his other knowledge" and "established exchanges. "8 Four years before Edward's death in 1884, his old friend George Hosmer wrote to him nostalgically:

Do you remember how, slxty years ago, we used to stop studying our Latin lesson and try to look forward? I yield the palm to you. Life has come about me and made me do what I have done. You have won your way; you have done a more dilllcult and honorable service than you ever thought of doing when you began .9

Edward's Calvinistic heritage, which bedeviled the first twelve yeai-s of his medical career, served him more effectively in the second half of his life. His mature efforts to record accurate social statistics, his advocacy of enlightened treatment for the mentally ill, and his personal reminiscences of Concord succeeded in part because he learned to temper his message of uncompromising integrity with sympathy and tact. The Mississippi journal offers a glimpse into the early stages of that meliorative process.

8 Davieo, Autobiography, 146. 9 George Washington Hosmer to Edward Jarvis, 6 December 1880 in Memorial of George Washington Hosmer, D.D. {1882), Edited by his Children, 202. Hosmer was a childhood friend of Edward's. He was a Unitarian minister who preached occasionally in Kentucky and who encouraged Edward to move to Louisville. 232 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

Edward Jarvis's Journey from Louisville Ky to New Orleans On board the steamboat Edward Shlppen James Charles Russel, Commodore April 16th to May 6, 1841

Friday, 16th April. At half past eleven o'clock, we left the wharf at Louisville. I left the hotel, my wife, my home, at I0 o'clock--the time the boat had proposed to start. Rev. Mr. John H. Heywood, our minister, accompanied me to the boat and staid with me until we started; Mr. A. G. Munn came also. Mr. Ellston and Mr. Bennet came to bring letters for me to carry to New Orleans. The weather is cold, rainy, uncomfortable; my great coat is not amiss. We have about twenty passengers on board, business-looking men, no ladies. At 111/2 o'clock we started, ascended the river to near the Mile Island and turned then for the south and southwest. We went over the falls rapidly; the water is so high as to show but little more than the rapids over the falls. Nevertheless, the boat heaved and pitched some, where was the greatest current, io We passed the falls in a very few minutes, passed Shippingport and turned and fastened the boat to the shore at Portland, where some stock, fifty-sixty cattle, were to be taken in. But the New Albany was doing the same and occupying the place where the cattle could come down the bank. We had to wait patiently til she could finish her business. It is now one o'clock and yet we have not moved from our first stopping place nor has the Albany. I wonder how soon she will get through. If I bad known we should be detained thus, I would have waited at home and taken the hack to Portland. Now the servants are cutting the dinner [preparing the midday meal]. I do not feel hungry. I feel almost impatient to go, for I am bound to New Orleans. I have prepared myself with everything for

I0 The faUs. called the "Falls ofthe Ohio," were bypassed ln 1830bytheLouisvflle and Portland Canal. In high water, steamboats could traverse the fails safely; evidently this was the case with the Edward Shlppen. 1996] Edward Jarvls's Journal 233

comfort on the way. Books--I have Prltchard on Insanity and Dr. Woodman's two last reports on the Worcester Hospital (for I take much interest in that subject and am about preparing an article for the Medical Journal on that subject); Cyril Thornton, Far West. I I

I have writing materials, spy glass {which my wife thinks I shall not use or want}, thermometer (which also my wife thinks is not desirable on the boat). The passengers are impatient as I am; they dld not expect to stay thus. The dinner bell has rung, but still the boat is waiting for the New Albany. Dined. We had only ten at dinner. Looked out. Found the Capt. had concluded not to wait for the other boat and has several men digging down the bank, which is about ten or fifteen feet higher than the boat, so that he may receive the cattle here. Several more passengers have come down in a hackney coach. I have taken State Room J, no one with me, just against the after part of the wheel on the starboard side (rlght). It is dark but I do not wish to sit or lay or read in it, so I need no light. Now the boat is moving forward a little and the engine jars me much. I guess they don't like the place of digging but will try another. The N. Albany has not gone. I wonder what detains her so long! The weather is more comfortable now, 2 o'clock. Rain has ceased. Yet we have fire in cabin. Now I will go out to see what progress the cattle make toward the boat, or whether they think it worthwhile to come out on a cloudy day. 21/2 o'clock. With much pulling with ropes, with much beating, shouting, and coaxing; with resistance, hanging back, retreating, rearing, and hooking, they have got eight cattle on board. Sixteen more are to come and then we shall be off for New Orleans.

11 The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton, a military novel by Thomas Hamilton {1789-1842}. Hamilton was a Scottish writer who fought for the British in the American Revolution. See Encyclopedia Brtitanlca (l lth edition), s.v. -Hamilton." Hamilton Is referred to by Mark Twain as "Author of Cyril Thornton. etc., a now forgotten literary celebrity." See Mark Twain. Life on the Mtsslsslppl (Penguin edition; New York, 1948}, 289. There is insufficient data to identify Edward's reference to Far West. 234 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

Since we have been here, the Marie and the Duquesne have both been down and the little ferry has gone through, completing many ofher little voyages from Indiana to Kentucky and back. I have talked much with an iron manufacturer, from near Nashville, Tennessee, who has been up to Cincinnati with eighty tons of blooms for which he could get only $60 per ton. He is a sensible looking man of open, hard features. Home is a fort in Tenn. he said, about forty-four years ago. [He] has been in many Indian wars and heard many an Indian bullet whiz by him, though none ever touched him. I have been below to see my fellow passengers and find two large flocks of sheep (eighty in each) on the lower ground behind the wheels, a parcel of pigs in boxes one above the other. I did not see them but heard their infantile grunting, innocent as childhood and as contented, for they but live to eat. Why may they not llve to be eaten? Also I found six cattle and one calf below and, a little beyond these on the same floor and in the same apartment, some deck passengers. Their bunks were comfortless and cheerless. In one was corn for cattle, in the next a bed for men, and in a third a man by himself; and sometimes in these are women and children. Above on the hurricane deck we have fourteen coops of hens about thirty-eight in each, and they cluck and cackle as merrily as in a farmyard or in a meadow full of free birds. Add to these a lot of ducks and you know all. It seems almost strange to me that I have left my business, my wife, and my home to go to New Orleans, fifteen hundred miles in the sunny south. I go to see my two brothers and my sister[-in-law] 12 who live there. I have devoted myself to my profession almost without cessation in Louisville for near two years and am somewhat weary of the labour. ! have not seen my brother

12 Nathan Jarvis (1808-1851), a wholesale druggist, died in the S. S. Anglo-Norman boiler explosion in 1851. Stephen Jarvis [1806-1855) was a successful seaman, but an injury to his leg ended his sailing career. He and Nathan then became partners in the wholesale drug business. He married Lydia Grafton in 1838. Edward refers to Lydia as his sister. For Jarvis family history and information, see The Branch. Harrls. Jarvls, and Chlnn Book: A Family Outline. Composed by members of these families and brought together in this form by. Benjamin H, Branch, Jr., December 31, 1963. 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 235

Stephen for near a year, nor Nathan for near two years, nor L•cdia for the same space. They are perpetually urging me to see them. They cannot come to me. I want to see them to get their sympathy, their encouragement, and their counsel. I want to visit the South, to see the Mississippi, to see different men and women, to gather to myself more knowledge, wider experience and [to] have a fund of greater happiness, more expanded thought, and higher improvement. I would leave my business now as well as ever. We have had much sickness thls spring, but now it has subsided. It is not time for the summer complaints to appear. It is not probable I should have much more to do for a few weeks. Tis true I left this morning seven patients, but they were mostly doing well and were willing to employ Dr. Flint [Dr. Joshua Flint, 1801-1864] as my substitute. 131 come after much anxious thought as to the propriety, much consultation with my wife and my brothers, and they all agree with me as to the journey. I trust it wlll be a happy one. I pray God's blessing on its progress, its termination, and its results. Now 3 o'clock. I'll go and see how the cattle move and what is our hope of departure from this placel I went. They had just got In the last ox, no, not the last but the last but one. That one, like the rest, rebelled but not like the rest without success, for he fled and who shall next report him? Not me to the New Orleans butcher. By the look of the cattle driving, and beating, at the other boat, I suspect this voyage to the South Is as unpopular with those cattle as with ours. However with our cattle, our sheep, our pigs, our hens and our ducks, with our cabin and our deck passengers, we started •from Portland at quarter past 3 o'clock and went on our way. Just as we were starting and I was on the hurricane deck, came along the tiny Lily, its little paddle wheel no bigger than a wheelbarrow wheel (considerably enlarged however). She is a dirty thing and an old one. I wonder who travels on her. I would not. So

13 Dr. Joshua Barker Flint (I 801-1864) was a charter member of the Academy of Medicine In Louisville and a close friend of Edward's. See Davico, Autobiography, 44. 236 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

filthy. She went up. Then came along the Atalanta down. She rounded to, landed two men and went off, rounded to again, and we left her. I went on deck, great coat on, very cold wind in my teeth, sat ruminating before the pilot house. Now 4V2 o'clock near Salt River. We are taking in wood on the Indiana shore, $2 a cord. This boat burns forty cords a day going down and forty-flve coming up. Capt. says he could get a-plenty at $1.50 a cord yet takes this. Now then, that music. Oh, it is a bugle on theAtalanta sweeping down loaded with plows all over the hurricane deck. She's bound for St. Louis, I guess, for they carry many ploughs to St. L. and to the Illinois River. What a clanking the engine makes! It jars so that I cannot write well. It makes as much ado about going alone for fun, I suppose, as when it carries the big wheel of the boat, and all its contents, and people for business. So boys at play shout more than when they are at harder work. 14 Now 71/2 o'clock about ten miles below Evansville. Now passing Henderson. All yesterday afternoon I spent on the hurricane deck. The clouds cleared away, the sun shone out brightly, the air was clear and the prospect on each side before and behind was beautiful. The rapid progress of the boat created a strong current of river as we were going at the rate of eighteen miles an hour as I measured by the reputed distance of the plan [pilot's chart]--five miles--which we passed in 13 minutes. This is really 18 2/3 miles per hour. 15 I found a young man, William Davis, in the pilot house learning to be [a] pilot. He was very uncommunicative, much interested in his profession and in the boat, which he seemed to think the crack boat of the river. When we found her going only eighteen miles an

14 Henry David Thoreau, in a similar situation, observed: "Sometimes we sailed as gently as steadily as the clouds overhead, watching the receding shores and the motions of our sail; the play of its pulse so llke our own lives, so thin and yet so full of life. so noiseless when it labored hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective." See Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack, 450. 15 Actually, the speed was 22.22 miles per hour. 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 237

hour, he said, "Oh, she aint a-going at all now. When she gets her steam up then we will show you her speed, for she can go thirty-five miles an hour." (I write this in my lap, my feet on the rounds of another chair, and yet the boat Jars so you see how it shakes my pen and my book. I could not write at all on the table. I think by and by I will go qulte forward and write where the boat shakes less.) I was really disappointed when I got up this morning to find it raining hard. I tried to make the clouds promise that that little opening in the west would grow more and more until it should cover the heavens, but no, no, it closed up and the rain kept on. Now near 8 o'clock it has just slacked, the clouds look thin and feathery all about, and I hope soon they will vanish into the unseen regions. Will you not so oblige me, nuisance clouds? But I have not told of all the sights and the thoughts of yesterday. I suspect the clouds will wait for my record until I go back to yesterday's doings. We wooded at a place in Harrison County, Indiana. A good-looking farm house, two stories high, once painted white, yard rail-fenced in front, some windows broken. [In] a little barn were pigs, carts, a sled with part of a load of wood on it on the ground. A fine orchard; beautiful green wheat field. Three women, one child, on the whole good appearance of comfort and prosperity tho the negligence of small matters as is general in the west. I went up the bank: loamy, rather moist and slippery, and asked the woman for some well water. They had none but used river water which I do dislike. Nevertheless the older lady was easiest in her manner and asked me about the boat, and I asked her about the wood. She questioned about kinds of money current in Louisville, and I inquired of her about farm land, schools, on all of which matters she was free to speak, and furthermore she told me much of her history. She is a widow . . . of five years standing. Her husband, fifteen or twenty years ago, gave $10 an acre for his land and now it is worth $25. Wood costs 50¢ and board for cutting about 62V2€ in all for a man will cut two cords a day and board is worth 25¢ a 238 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

day. It costs about 37'/2¢ to haul it to the river and then sells for $2 a cord making $1 profit. But the Independence did not pay for the fifteen cords which she took about three or four months ago, and another boat passed off money Which was 20-25% below par. Nevertheless, the widow does pretty well with her wood. Now her son supplies the boats. He was away: and the widow, the sister, a pretty, healthy rose-cheeked lady of about twenty in plain country dress, and another woman with a child in her arms--probably wife of the son--all these three were very anxious lest this event should not deal fairly with the boy who was in the present instance the wood merchant's deputy. We cheered them with the praises of the Capt., the high character of the boat owners, and they are satisfied. Albeit the young lady said the boat had cut down the wood 1/2 cord, for according to her brother's measure there were 261/2 cords whereas the boat had only called it 26. I told her that was but a small discount and hardly worth thinking of. Yes, she said, one dollar! Then the bell rang, and we ran down to the boat, bidding the ladies good evening which they very politely returned. I forgot to say the widow said they had a free school a mile or two off, and a church three miles. The school is supported from the sale of the quarter section of land given for this purpose by Congress .... 11/2 o'clock. Clouds are thin and no rain. I have been out till noon, and at this moment it begins to rain again, not hard. It is much warmer than yesterday.... Paducah. 3 o'clock: just twenty-four hours since we left Portland. Three hundred twen6] miles. Since I wrote we met the Somerville, Telegraph, General Pike and then we met the Gallant for Pittsburgh and the Gallatus for Nashville. We found the redbud and the dogwood, Cornus florida, in bloom. They look sweetly, the pretty pink and purple flowers of the first all along the hills, the white flowers in the others so neat and gay. Along the Ohio bank on the north is mostly a low range of hills not more than fifty feet high. Often the cliffy rocks come perpendicularly against the water, at other times the shore is low, 1996] Edward Jarvts's Journal 239

not more than three or four or five feet above the river which is now full. Very few inhabitants are along the shore, some few pretty good farms, and about the Saline Creek in Illinois are several beautiful farms, and orchards, and houses, but mostly they are log houses and dirty environs, and no house and no patches of cleared land. On the Kentucky side, less signs of cultivation yet there are some elegant mansions almost in the wilderness. The shores are mostly forest-clad, even down to the water, with poplar, cottonwood and willow. The last are most frequent in the low ground and on the low sandy Islands which just peer above the water and are covered with these small trees of stinted growth. They call them tow heads from their flaxen appearance. We had rain in the morning till noon. Then bright clear weather with very strong westerly wind, dead ahead, and impeding our progress at least a mile an hour. Nevertheless we have come about sixteen miles an hour today. We saw Evansville at sunrise In the rain. A busy-looking, dirty place. We saw Mount Vernon, at least the others did and told me, and without doubt they recorded its appearance in their journals, to which my readers are referred for a better description. Shawneetown is pretty with court-house, bank, stores, more homes of brick, and boat stores with large signs of their occupations. Golconda is also pretty, with no appearance of business but the courthouse, where they probably try men for being without any visible means of support whereby they might try the whole town. Henderson is upon a bluff, Brandenburgh on several hills and near by was a mill under a rocky cliff, Ilfty or eighty feet above it, and from a hole near its bottom ran a stream or spring stffflciently powerful to turn the mill. This is the first time I ever saw anything of the subterranean rivers of the western country. This stream has worn away some sandy stratum beneath the strata of limestone. Cave in Rock is apparently twenty feet long and ten feet high, how deep I could not tell, but surely it looked dark inside Judging from twenty or thirty rods distance, and a passenger told me he could go in twenty or more feet and then ascend to another chamber 240 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

above which however he had not tried. This cave is about eight or ten feet above the water and is said to have been formerly the resort of the river robbers. Smithland is built of brick and wood and in genteel and shabby style intermingled to suit all tastes; the streets look exceedingly muddy. Nevertheless we took in one lady and some gentlemen. Therein we are glad, for this was the first time I was ever in a steamboat for so long a time without ladies. Then we ran down to Paducah at the mouth of the Tennessee. Muddy, muddy, clayey, plastering the feet and boots, and the most miserable landing I ever have seen. A pretty lady came down on a drag, her baggage with her. How many we took in I know not. But as we ran nigh against one boat and partially on a fiat, and upset a man's eggs and some of his crockery, and as the llne slipped off the post and the boat fell back and the Capt. swore, and the mate called, and the men tugged, and the plank splashed in the water, and the lady had finally to walk in some of the mud, I suppose we shall remember Paducah without gratitude. Nevertheless it is built of brick, and the stores have large signs telling what they offer to people--bread, whiskey, flour, wine, clothes, medicines, law, Justice, potatoes, wood, silk; and loafers in abundance.... So a better goodbye we bid to Paducah than she gave us welcome. On, on we go for Orleans again now its 3:30 and we are forty-eight miles from the great Mississippi which we shall see in 21/2 hours. How grand, the sight will be .... On we go, the low banks covered with green, the cottonwood, the willow. Now and then the breeze has died away and the air is warm and balmy, and I'll go to the hurricane deck. Good bye to ye, all my readers. I'll tell you more when I come back. At precisely half past eight in the evening of Saturday, the 17th of April 184 I, I for the first time, entered on the River Mississippi. It is dark, rainy and comfortless. We came to Cairo half an hour previously and landed passengers. I eagerly cast my eyes across the point to see the great river and by the light of the lightning flashes I first beheld the mighty waters. And now I am on the Mississippi!! 1996] • Edward Jarvls's Journal 241

What in my early dreams seemed to be beyond hope is now reality. That which I looked upon in my fellows as an achievement above common ambition, I am at this moment doing. These waters gathered from the remotest regions east, west and north, now united in one mass and bear me around toward the south. I have left the beautiful Ohio for the grander stream. Yet I cannot see it only as the lightning flits across the water and I see Missouri. Tomorrow is the Sabbath. I will arise early and view my highway. This magnificent creation of God. This blessing to so many people which will bear me on and on til I find my brothers. The Ohio is indeed a beautiful stream but not so beautiful below as above Louisville. The banks are more tame, less hilly, but mostly low and monotonous, skirted with forest. As far as the eye could reach there was forest. On the Mississippi. Here am I fastened to the Arkansas shore while the boat is taking in wood. Last evening, yesterday afternoon, I could not suppress a glow of exhilaration for I was soon to see the great Mississippi. I felt impatient yet the boat went very slowly and we were delayed a good while at Paducah. There is a puff-puff. I'll go and look ff it is a boat going up to Louisville; perhaps I may be able to send Almlra's letter up. No, no; it is the Gulnare going up to St. Louis---that won't do for a letter to Louisville. Well, she may go on. I won't trouble her but she might have had the grace to be going to Louisville seeing that I want to send that letter which I have just written to my dear wife. We were long wooding below Metropolis, but I say that we saw Metropolis? That we almost landed at Metropolis! That we saw all the mighty big store at Metropolis! That we brought his worship the mayor of Metropolis from Paducah to his own dominions! Well, we did. His worship came with us! on our boat! and like all truly great men who know their dignity is inward and not outward, he carried his own saddlebags on his own worshipful arm! When we landed, I saw perhaps the board of Aldermen and council come out to meet him, for there were fourteen men, two boys, and one dog on the wharf, some men laying prostrate on the sand, some leaning against 242 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

the fence, some sitting on the stumps, and all looking one way or another, some to our boat, but all with the eye ready to look toward the whiskey shop as soon as his worship should land. And he did land, and they went with him. I don't know where they went but went away from there. This Bubbleton consists of a huge store, about sixty to seventy by fifty feet, brick, unfinished but suspended, unfilled with goods, yet filled with the dirt shavings of the unsweeping builders; and also about a dozen houses. And it is a city and has a mayor--that we saw, Another city, Humbugville, is not far from this and was intended to be a rival of this and is doubtless a rival in business, but not of gentility and refinement of society. For the whole city consists of one huge store about the size or rather longer than the store in Metropolis. But not another house, store, barn, shop, or pigpen, or hen coop, was visible within the limits of the great city of commerce. Verily it is exclusively a place of trade. City lots are doubtless high in both of these places and I perceive their owners have made imaginary fortunes there, but I hope they have not involved themselves in extravagance in consequence of thelr paper prosperity as some others have. City manufacture has been the favorite business of the west, and the geography of Illinois will, like that of Egypt, tell of the places of cities. But one will tell where they have been and the others where they were hoped and promised to be. The country of the last thirty or forty miles of the Ohio was apparently one vast forest. This came down to the shore and met the waters. Generally the banks were not more than four or five feet above the surface of the river. But often they were lower and the water entered the woods. Where we wooded, the bank was ten or twelve feet higher, but about ten or fifteen rods back was a low line of swamp filled with water extending above and below the wood landing, how far I do not know. On both sides of the river the land was as low, and as we looked upon the trees it seemed to be one vast interminable forest, level and unvaried. The wood is the cotton 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 243

tree, and pecans and some buttonwood. The boat moves again and I must stop my writing.... I have spent all morning on the upper deck, looking or gazing. As soon as I could see, I got up. I had slept well all night. I found myself at a wood yard in Arkansas. The boat had just stopped. The ringing of the bell, to warn the woodsmen of our wants, awakened me. I rose, put on my clothes intending to run ashore the first thing, not even waiting to wash, but I found it took some time to fasten the boat. (We have had trouble in this respect many times, and as the Capt. showed impatience, | suspect we have less than the usual skill in the mate, or proper officer, who attends to this matter. We were troubled at Portland, [and] each of the wood yards in Paducah, Cairo and Smithland.) While thus Waiting to get the boat filled and planked out, I washed, but could not afford time to shave, then ran ashore in the state of Arkansas, which I had not trodden before. I found the land clayey, heavy, wet. I went into the woods a little way. The trees are cottonwood and poplar, maple, ash, gum, willow, not so large as I had supposed. The water laid on the surface of the moist earth, and seemed to walt for the sun to evaporate it, for the surface was too level for it to run off and too dense for it to penetrate below. As far as I could see in the thick forest, the same wet, fiat, swampy soil presented itself. I went to a log house which was enclosed in a heavy worm fence with a good gate. At one end of the log house was the dwelling of the wood merchant. I went in. The room was about sixteen or seventeen feet square. At one end the fireplace: chimney outside of the house, fireplace of stones, chimney of wood, plastered within. But there was a hole through the back of the fireplace through which I could see out of doors. In the room were two beds of common size for two persons each, and one trundle bed. In this was one or more children, asleep. This seemed to be all the dwelling. I found no woman--perhaps there are none there. It must be an unhealthy place, so damp, so full of exhalations and in the woods, and yet exposed to the intense heat of the noonday sun. This country has been the graveyard of many a woman. Perhaps the mother of this family has died. There were two young men and 244 The Fllson Club History Quarterly [July

two boys, sixteen or eighteen years old, and the little children. They said this was government land. They were squatters. They had no neighbors. They raised a little corn, had some cotton but depended principally upon selling wood for support. I wanted to see the Inside of the house. I intended to ask for milk to drink as an errand, but they so hospitably invited me in and to sit with them that no errand seemed necessary. One was reading a book, and a file of newspapers hung over a string against the log wall. But what a solitude! What a place to educate children in, for society, for the responsibilities of life[ Coming down the river we passed many woodpiles like this on the bank as near as possible and not fall in, ready for the boats. And near to them are always log huts, for the wood merchants. They are mostly on the Arkansas side, very few on the Tennessee side. There Is nothing apparently In the land, soft, forest, or river that should make any difference, but perhaps the land on the east hank is sold, and in the hands of individuals, while the other belongs In truth to the government, and is in possession of squatters who ean cut off the wood, sell it and get their pay and be off out of reaeh before the land is offered for sale by the owner. This is the Mississippi I have seen all the day, till now, noon--feasted my eyes upon it. I staid up till breakfast. I then determined to eat, shave and dress, but when I had eaten I found some new "clew, some island, some trees, some eddy might be lost If I staid longer, and I went up again, and then resolved, as soon as I passed this island, I would go and finish my toilet. Then I wanted to see this chute [rapidsl, then this eddy, then from the next point, for who knew but some beauty or grandeur might be behind that? So I staid and looked and enjoyed till It was more than 10 o'clock and some ladles appearing on the hurrleane deck warned me that I ought to finish my dressing. I earne down then to dress and write in this journal. But when I had clone the first, it was tmae to go back, • for something might he lost by longer waiting, so I went up and waited till now. 19961 • Edward Jarvls's Journal 245

I enjoy this Mississippi. It is grand, it is far more beautiful than I had supposed. There is very little apparent current, but a boiling up of the water as ff the under current were partially upward as well as onward. It has an appearance of depth. It looks a little like the surface of the Niagara River, Just below the fall•luiet, but rolling, and noiseless. In one place there was a great boiling up--the surface looked as flit would be impossible to let the boat pass over it safely, but we did, though it rocked us some. Like the banks of the lower Ohio, the shores are low, come down to meet the water, oftentimes not more than a foot is between the level bank and the river, but there is no slope. The bank is steep, perpendicular, and caving in perpetually. The river is indeed full. In some places it is over the bank and flows, into the woods of cottonwood and poplar. These forests present an almost unbroken line on their tops, and we can scarcely see any elevations beyond the front line, no rising as of hills or even ascending land behind, but as ff there were interminable level of forest. Neither is the line broken by clearings nor now and then a farm on the west bank. Yet there are often fields with the dead, girdled trees standing naked, barkless and desolate, with no green field below to relieve the eye, for the wheat is either not raised so far south as this, or the farmers are not so thrifty as those on the Ohio. There is nothing that looks like comfort in their houses, or on these farms, or at these wood yards. Some of the log cabins are so open that I could see through them from the river, and I saw neither a farm nor a brick house this forenoon--save one very nice house in Tennessee and a large good barn, and fields, smooth and cultivated and green, like the best in Kentucky. This and some houses in one town, Randolph, are the only exceptions to the general discomfort. Randolph is sixty miles above Memphis, on the east bank, a parcel of huts, and of shore-ties and houses and shops, ready to tumble down. This hamlet is built just below the bluff, a few houses on its top. Some of the houses are partially undermined, several have one end, some feet lower, than the other, many have windows 246 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

broken, all bespeak thriftlessness. I guess there are a dozen homes, and as many stores of various sorts, all crammed into this sand bank that is fast washing away. We took in seventeen passengers here. Ashport is another town of two houses, one cotton shed, one sawmill, some barns, how many stores I don't know. This however is merely the landing place of the back country. This is the first place where cotton is found, as I observed. This river is full of islands and many of them are exceedingly beautiful. (Bell rings. I will go out and see.) We were just a-going into Memphis. It was one o'clock (18th). I had only time, while several passengers got out and some came in, to get my letter for Almira, sign it, date it, the very place and hour, seal it and give it to a gentleman in the wharf boat and ask him to marl it, which he promised to do, in the river mail. Memphis is a much more pretty, substantial and busy place [than] I have seen on this river. Its brick stores, blocks, its pretty houses, and many people, and several fiat-boats all betoken thrift. Just below it is another rival town lald out: Fort Pickering. I saw a house or two, and some brick yards under the bluff, and a very good road that went off the declivity, but no houses on the elevation. Yet there was a great sign out, on a long board, painted "Lots in Fort Pickering, to be sold April 28th," as if they thought people had not already bought more town lots than they could pay for and far more than they can build upon these hundred years. Memphis is an important outlet for the cotton and other produce of this corner of Tennessee and of the adjoining part of Mississippi. It contains one thousand or more people. While there the Montezuma passed up, about 8 or 9 o'clock. The Lexington and another boat passed us going up---they went behind a little island and before the last one came out we were too far off to read the name. At daybreak, while we were wooding, the St. Louis passed us. We had already passed her in the night--she was going down from St. Louis. In the forenoon we passed her again while we were at Memphis. She, the second time, passed us and before we had left that place an hour, we passed her the third time. She is a fast boat, 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 247

but Is very deeply laden, and we are comparatively light. We passed also the Rocky Mountain which, with her old frame and small wheel and groaning engine, was tugging her way upward to Nashville, I think. Flat-boats, fiat-boats almost without number we see floating lazily downward. Early in the morning we passed a fleet of seven. Bell rings. I must go and see .... Well, we are rounding to.... It was only the landing of a passenger on the Arkansas side, in the yawl. 16 Where we stopped was one good log house, a little home, a corn-cracking machine, five negroes, and a field enclosed with a worm fence, beside a woodpile. Perhaps this is a city, some Promiseburgh, or even Dreamville. So now having given this city-egg or rather city-nest a due notice (I didn't learn any more statistics than those above noticed) we will go to the more humble business of fiat-boats. We passed, just at the Devil's Elbow at island No. 38, one hundred seventy-eight miles below the mouth of the Ohio, a fleet of eleven fiat-boats, within another mile. Those nearest to us were loaded with corn on the ear. My business friend said they were all Wabash boats which came out of that river in this last rise of water. So also my other friend, Mr. [blankl of [blank] fiat-boat, for we took him off of one yesterday. 17 He seems to know all about such boats. Mr. Porter of Ripley, formerly of Pennsylvania, a sensible business man, who is going down to Vicksburg to meet some boat or boats which he has sent down, began business fiat-boating. Now he does business in Ripley, Ohio. My other fiat-boat friend will go to New Orleans first and be back to Vicksburg in season to meet his boat. It seems that these men consider Vicksburg the best market for their pork, corn, flour, and other notions. Mr Beasley of Vincennes (of Crawfordsville) Is in the pork business, but whether engaged in fiat-boats I don't know, yet he seems to know all about them.

16 The yawl was used for finding "the best water" to pass through when the river was low or when there was uncertainty about the depth of the channel. See Mark Twain, "Old Times on the Mississippi," Atlantic Monthly 35 (1875): 567. 17 Edward left these blank. Evidently he expected them to fill them In later and then never did. 248 The Fllson Club History Quarterly [July

Edward Jarvls, 1803-1884 Concord Free Public Library, Concord, Massachusetts

We have passed these boats almost without number, We rarely are out of sight of some. Nearly haft--perhaps more than half----of the produce of the upper country goes down in these boats. These men tell me it is [a] cheaper mode of transportatl0n than steam, and they have the advantage of stopping to trade, without the expense of storage or of reshipping. In good stages ofthe water, and with agood pilot, a boat can go down from Vincennes on the Wabash to New Orleans, twelve hundred seventy-two miles in twelve days. They ought to make one hundred miles in twenty-four hours. Yet if the nights be foggy or water low, they must run only in the daytime. I • J' 'I• ¸ • i,:g•F• i¸ :i!•j !•I•: '¸,, !• I •!,r•'• I ,,, I II'

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But these boats float so lazily along, only with the current which is about three or at most four miles an hour. The men do so little except the almost vain effort to keep the head down stream and keep the wind from blowing the boat upon the banks. We passed by them so suddenly that it seemed as ff their voyage was one of life to get to New Orleans. We are conUnually passing islands. Often the channel is narrow between them. They lay on the bosom of the water sleeping so sweetly, their rich green foliage coming quite down to the river surface, and never higher than the height of trees, for the surface of the islands is fiat. They are so round and pretty that they make a most delightful view to the traveler. The river varies much in width, often among the islands, and sometimes more than one of these is parallel. Then the river may run in two or several narrow channels, of two to four (or more) hundred yards wide. Again we see the whole width of the river, and it is three or four miles wide. At another time a sudden bend of the wide stream turns to one or the other hand, and the river suddenly seems to have widened for several miles, as far as the next turn. We seldom can see far on the river so many and so short its turns. As far as the eye can reach, the view is bounded by the green forest that meets the water everywhere, on the sides and at the end, so that these views seem like deep bays run up, deep into the wooded land. Before and behind, we have the same beautifully-facing termination in green. We do not seem to be on a river that seems on a long course but on a pretty lake of rather irregular shape, whose surface is not ruffled with the wind, but whose bottom is disturbed beneath and is continually boiling upward. We look down the stream and see the woods at the end. I wonder where will be the outlet, to the right or to the left? Neither seems to open, but as we go down, the lake or bay seems to extend to one side or the other, and the end is ever far before us, ever delighting us with its beauty. And this is the Mississippi! This the grand, the magnificent, but stale and monotonous river which so many have attempted to describe. But to me it is neither monotonous nor stale. 250 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

It is full of varied beauty. It is so rich, so sweet to the eye, that with all its sameness of foliage,'I am never wearied, but am ever looking for new forms of scenery. Perhaps if it had mountains and valleys, it might be more picturesque. If it had more towns and cities, it would have been richer. If it had narrow gorges and rapids and falls, it would have been more curious. But as God so pleased to create it, so he formed my eye, and I am thankful that he has brought me to it. I feel here as I did at the falls of Niagara, as ff nearer to God's first creation, to his work as it originally came from his hands. I have passed a delightful Sabbath on this river. I love to gaze at it, to think, to ruminate, to feel. Hour after hour have I spent on the hurricane deck and scarcely spoken, except to talk with the pilot, Mr Jordan, or William, or Mr. Williams, who are very willing to talk with me about the river. I use the Captain's spy-glass much, and find it an improvement on my eyes. I am never without my spectacles. I have not read, except in the pilot book. I have not opened the Bible today. Why should I need God's word, spoken thro Moses and the prophets, when he is speaking to me directly to my own eyes and ears! I am glad of this opportunity to see this work of his hands, and God grant that my soul may become elevated and my spirit strengthened by this experience on the gTeat Mississippi River. We are now, 3:40, at Island No. 59, having come from Paducah in twenty-four hours and from Louisville or rather Portland in forty-eight hours. We think we shall reach Vicksburg tomorrow noon, and New Orleans near night of day after tomorrow.... It is now just dark. We are taking in wood at a farm on the Arkansas shore, about ten or twelve miles below Helena. Since I wrote this afternoon, I spent the time on the deck above, and looked and enjoyed as before. The shores, the forests and islands have the same cheerful freshness as when I first saw them. Though I have gazed at them all day, and they are called unvarying, uninteresting and even wearisome, they are to me beautiful and unpalling on my long fixed attention. The same long unchanging line of woods, so 1996] Edward Jarvls's Journal 251

even at the top, at the very verge overhanging the water, that one might suppose that they had been measured and leveled and clipped by the carpenter's rule to make the line as exact as the floor. Beyond this line, the eye looks in vain for some elevation, some sign of a hill, some grove overtopping the rest, some ambitious tree shooting above the others. But all is level, and the eye is convinced that the land beneath is as level, and stretches back in the same horizontal height, for distance unmeasured. Yet we have some variations from this, though not much. The four Chickasaw Bluffs, on the Tennessee shore, are high lands that come close to the river sometimes twenty, at others sixty feet, above the river. Generally they are caving down and present a surface of raw sand and earth to the eye, but in some places they slope down to the water and are covered with small trees. These bluffs are not very long, I guess not more than ten to thirty miles, leaving the most of the Tennessee bank as fiat and level as the others. At Helena, Arkansas, there are hills fifty or sixty feet high, with an appearance of rolling country behind. Yet mostly the land is dead fiat, not more than four or five feet, and often not more than one foot above the water. The river is changing its positions, wearing away from one side and throwing the alluvium upon the other so we find, on one side, the bank precipitous, perpendicular. A boat can go up close to the bank. Here the old and large trees grow to the very edge and arc falling into the river as their foundations are washed away. Here the upper surface of the forest is the perfectly exact level before spoken of. On the other hand, where the shore is receiving a deposit of sand or loam, there we see the new growth of wood, cotton trees at first. There in the latest soils are small bushes [which] look like under shrubs. Then behind these we see the same species of trees a little larger; and the older deposit has a still greater race of trees to cover it. These show the increase of the land in successive years. When the eye beholds at a distance the latest growth, which is the lowest level, and the older growth overtopping this and one after another, it immediately thinks there arc corresponding elevations of land 252 The ,Wilson Club History Quarterly [July beneath, and rejoices in the sight of a hill. Yet all is plain, dead flat as the surface of the water. The river changes not only Its great bed but Its subordinate channels. At one time, one chute through the islands is the princlpal channel, and the deepest. Then the main body of water takes another route, and the first is partially blocked up with the sandy deposit. Some islands, or what were formerly islands, are now attached to the main land, the channel which separated them from the shore being filled up. One was pointed out to me by William, the young pilot, which he said was once the principal channel. Now, I only saw a little stream ofwater, almost filled and choked with young trees, which seemed to be growing inward from either side. The river Is making new channels. Just below this place is an incipient channel across the horseshoe bend. This bend is about twelve miles round and the passage across the neck Is not more than two miles. A shallow canal of not more than two feet depth now runs across this when the water is high, but the upper surface is so dense with clay, for twelve feet, that the water makes very little progress in this new channel. But when it gets through this clay and comes to the sand it will soon finish its channel and save itself the trouble ofgoing round the horseshoe bend. In many places, the water is higher than the back land. The immediate bank being between and higher than both, occasionally we see the water running thro the bank to the swamps in the rear. One bayou was running on the Mississippl to the Yazoo River whence it will again return to the Mississippi. We are now in the midst of greenness and luxuriant vegetation. On the Ohio, the willows were getting yellow with the fresh twigs and first leaves. The poplars were green, but the gum trees, peccans, and hickory trees were Just beginning to put out their pale leaves. When I awoke this morn, I found all green, yet the leaves were not fully developed. But this has been changing every step we take, and now the whole vegetation is as full as it is in July at Massachusetts. These forests are very dense and so filled with under wood of small cottonwood that we cannot see into the woods. We see the 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 253

green surface above and the mixture of the dark trunks and the green foliage of the smaller trees below. Beside these, we see occasionally the corn, the sycamore, the elm, the ivy running over the other trees. Here we first found cypress, which has a pinnate leaf, very pretty and fresh. These leaflets are about one-half inch long, needle shaped, yet I suspect not fully grown. I found it shrubby; and also a tree of a foot in diameter, fifty or sixty feet high. Here we went ashore, while wooding, and went into the woods, a quarter of a mile, three of us--Mr. North of Miss., Mr. ]blank] of Phila.--then we returned to the boat, and finding we had a-plenty of time, we went up the bank eighty rods to the house of the woodman. First we came to a small log cabin, the chinks between the logs not filled, wooden chimney and fireplace. The chimney had caught on fire and, you know, such a chimney on fire is a more serious matter than the fire of such a brick chimney as yours, but this fire has been put out, as we saw. We looked in and saw the interior. ]There was] a bed-stead with split slats with one end supported on one of the logs of the wall and the other on a stick which had one end on a log of the other side and the other nailed to a stake. No floor. This probably was the dwelling of wood cutters. We went on further, found a better log house; looked in. It was filled with corn stalks. Went on further. Found cattle in a neat yard, well fed cows, fat, with large bags; geese, chickens, two hounds, and a very neat log house with a roof twice as large as the walls. These walls ]were] built of hewn logs, neat and close. The floor of the house was elevated about three or four feet above the ground, whether to escape the river floods or for health, I cannot say. Everything about this house bespoke neatness and comfort. The body of the house was about sixteen or eighteen feet square. It was surrounded with a good fence of rafts. We wanted to go in, but the windows and doors were shut, and we supposed no one was there. Coming away, we met a woman and some children going in. Where they had been I know not. I could see nothing of any neighbors, nor road, nor path save from the house to the barn and woodpile .... 254 The Fllson Club History Quarterly [July

At Warfield's wood yard. We stopped here at sunrise, and I have been ashore in Mississippi while the men were wooding, and saw a cotton plantation. That house is a pretty one, white, green blinds, one story beside the basement, piazza. But who would have thought of making chambers in the garret, for sleeping in this hot climate? Two or four Leucom (I don't know how the carpenters spell it... they in Concord used to call the garret windows which peered thro the roof and had each a little roof of its own; Leucom or some such name.) 18 At any rate the Warfleld house has garret windows on the roof and at the ends. For what should they be there but for sleeping, and as his house indicated but two rooms in the body of the house, where should he and his family sleep, but in this garret. If I had built the house, t would have built it two stories high, and left the garret for trumpery. Yet it is useless to advise him, for first, he don't want my advice and second, it is too late as the home is built. Yet here, for the good of the next builder, I record my protest against these one-story cottages in this warm climate. Nevertheless, forgiving his architect, I have no charge against his gardener, especially for the roses which I gathered, for a lady there told one gentleman he might have as many as he wished, indicating thereby a willingness to give all of us some. So we, a dozen of us (three in my company), went and gathered. I got enough to make these bouquetts [sic] for two tumblers one of which I sent in to the ladies' cabin. The other I put on the ladles' end of the breakfast table where I eat. I went with Mr. Earp to see the cotton press and cotton gin, which were very interesting to me, and new. I got some of the cotton as it comes out of the pod and some of the seed both of which I have in my state room to carry home. How street-like that long row of eleven negro huts looks, all of logs, whitewashed (I suppose), one story high, two rooms, front door in middle, path before all, enclosed in a pretty grass field, all neat, tidy, comfortable. I did not go in (the sun is getting hot, here in my

18 The word Edward is searching for is "lucome" (in French lucarne], meaning dormer. See Flske Kimball, Domestic Archltecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic {New York: Dover Publications, 1966), 18. 1996] Edward Jarvls's Journal 255

state room it is only 8 am, the thermometer is at 69°; it was 66° at sunrise, yester morn it was 72°, three hundred miles above]. No, I didn't go into the negro huts. They were all elevated on timbers or posts two or three feet above the ground. That nearest the road was longer than the others and, on a post, twenty feet high by the side of it, was a bell as big as that on the Concord schoolhouse. This the woman servant rang while we were out, to call the men to eat breakfast, I suppose .... We saw the cotton growing, just come up, like beans, its cotyledons [seed leaf; the first pair of leaves of a seed plant] on the stalk which the negro said were not true leaves--they would rot off. This plantation has one thousand acres under cultivation, eight hundred cotton and two hundred in corn. They work eighty hands, have about one hundred in all, women and children and men. They make five hundred to six hundred bales of cotton in good years, and sell a great quantity of wood. The wood is piled on the bank, against which the boat could lay as against a wharf at Boston. The bank is fast working away here. The men showed me where the home stood a few years ago; a part of the site is now gone. Now the house stands back about thirty rods from the river, with a beautiful deep yard in front, and a gravel walk leading through the whole to the front fence which is within about one hundred feet of the river. Along this walk were an abundance of roses in bloom, fig trees, quince bushes, lilacs and other shrubs. Here for the first time in my life I saw fig trees, and the Chlna-tree and cotton. The pilot said we had passed some free plantations and regretted I had not been up. He came to call me, but did not know my stateroom, so I lost the sight of those and of the Arkansas River. Now it must be breakfast time. I will go out and go on deck again before I write. 11:3•Just leaving Lake Providence, which is a town of twenty or thirty houses, two or three stores, one Dr. T. U. Davis, one attorney at law, what I supposed to be a court house, one house with a large sign on the end painted: "Grocery and Billiards." 256 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

The houses are mostly wood (some of brick), one tavern, one storage. The levee, raised two or three feet above the land bank, is twelve or twenty feet wide, and on this is the road or street, and the houses are just back of this. No other road that I saw. Here were, as I counted at several places, fifteen horses tied, saddled, belonging to the country people, who had come to the village for various purposes. I saw about twenty-five or thirty (or perhaps more) gentlemen standing about looking at us, and three more coming into the town from the south on horses. Just above were three negro women by the water side, working, and they had a fire there to warm their water. Here the country is more cleared than any I have seen. The land is as level as the surface of the river and apparently one or two feet lower than the river. As far back as the eye could reach----or at least for two, three, or four miles--the same, level, smooth, green surface of soil presented itself. The end was bordered with woods. Since morning, we have passed many plantations. They are almost always in sight, tho we sometimes go nine or ten miles without passing one. I have spent all the morning on deck, with spy glass in hand, gazing and enjoying. All these plantations are on the very bank of the river. The houses are generally within ten or twenty rods of the water, and the bank is hardly even more than one foot above its level---often as at Providence lower than the water. These plantations seem to be little encroachments on the forest, with so small a clearing, compared with the whole, that they look completely secluded. Very often the woods are not cut down, only the small trees are cleared away, and the large ones girdled and dead. [They] present a miserable, lifeless, dreary prospect, with their barkless trunks, and naked tops, white or black, but not green. As far as the eye can reach, we can see their evidence of death standing before the green background of the forest behind. Then are all cotton plantations with each, or almost each, a gin house which is a building open below for the horse farmer, and the great wheel enclosed above for the machinery, two stories high, with 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 257

large and capacious roof. That on Mr Warfleld's plantation was about 40-60 feet, and the others appeared to be about as large. The negro houses on the plantations are in most cases in a single row. They are (in some form) pretty, white washed or painted, mostly of logs, some of boards; but in more than half the cases they are brown, dingy, with bare wooden chimneys, just reaching above the point of the roof, and hardly sufficient to carry the smoke off. I have counted these in many cases. One had eleven houses, another ten, another nine, eight, seven, and indeed all numbers from three to fifteen, according to the wealth of the planter. The owners' houses are mostly of one story.... 1:00. We took in a passenger from a plantation on the Miss. side. His house was of one story, piazzaed, as most are. Here were six negro houses, double, with two rooms, two front doors, one chimney, clapboarded of white, shingled. I did not see whether there were any wings or rooms back. At another plantation we just passed, I counted the same houses with the same arrangements. Another had eight, or ten, small white blocks, dark, dingy, apparently not more than ten or twelve feet square, chimney just as high as the roof. We passed a plantation from which Mr. Reynolds ran off with all his movable property--negroes, horses, cattle, etc. to Texas. Here is an elegant house, two stories high, with a double piazza on each end, with green window blinds, and in all (except the back piazza) like those most elegant homes in Cambridge, Mass. His negro houses were white, clapboarded and double, and with trees in front. Land along here is worth $25 to $30 an acre. But all the good land on the river is taken up, and much that is worthless was bought four or five years ago of government for $ 1.25 per acre. A good deal of this now could not be sold for 21/2€ an acre. Though all the forest lands may be bought and occupied, I should not suppose that one tenth of the land, within a mile of the river, was cleared. Indeed the clearings seem rarely to extend a quarter of a mile from the bank. Wherever the land is cleared, we see the same dead level as before, not a sign of elevation. The bank is hardly even more than a foot 258 The Fllson Club History Quarterly [July

above the water, and generally there is a levee raised. Often-times we found the land overflowed. The growth of wood is yet cotton, ash, willow and poplar with the under brush of hackherry, and a species of elder. We come to No. 98 island, four hundred thirty-nine miles above New Orleans at 121/2 this noon. We were at No. 94•twenty-fotir miles back at 11 o'clock, having run 350 miles in twenty-five hours, since yesterday at 10 o'clock. We were at Randolph at 10 o'clock yesterday, and at Princeton today at 10 o'clock, having run three hundred twenty-one miles In twenty-four hours which Is slightly less than thirteen miles an hour. ]9 It takes a great while to wood, having but few hands, and no deck passengers We want to get to New Orleans tomorrow afternoon. At the rate of thirteen miles an hour, we shall get there in thirty-three hours, which will be tomorrow night at l0 o'clock, too late I fear to see my brothers, Nathan and Stephen. I don't know why we go slowly. We make twenty-four revolutions of the wheel a minute. The wheel is sixty feet in circumference, and every revolution should carry us forward forty-six feet, two-thirds of the motion of the wheel, which is only 12 2/3 miles an hour according to the theory. But we do, when mo'clng, go faster than this. 2° I am much interested in the hen man about on the upper deck, with his thirty-eight dozen of fowls, for which he hopes to get $5 a dozen in New Orleans. It costs him S 1 a dozen for transportation and the risk of loss on the way. The poor creatures are so cooped up that they grow poor and sickly and some die. He has lost eight already, in a little more than two days. He lets some of them out, and so spiritless are they that they will not even try to escape. One miserable case would not murmur if we hit him with the foot. He seemed to doubt whether It were best to die of consumption now or walt for the butcher. But I suspect the consumption could not wait for the other. Very likely he was one of the eight that fell sacrifiee to

19 Actually It is 13.375 miles per hour. 20 Edward's figures indicate that they moved at 12.5454 tulles per hour. 1996] Edward Jarvts's Journal 259

the adventurous spirit of the owner. This merchant of fowls is very attentive to his charge. No mother could watch over a babe with more care .... Vicksburg, 3 o'clock. I have run over this town, seen three of its principal streets, plucked some flowers from the China-tree, viewed the beauties of houses and environs with a spy glass. The Capt. said he should stop only ten minutes here, to put out fifty barrels of pork and some passengers. Then a Mr. [blank] of Phila. and I walked rapidly, for we did not wish to lose the boat, for that would be foolishness as well as inconvenient. Yet we have sufficient time to write. I have but little to say of this place, yet we know it has been one of the gayest and most fashionable, the most boastful and extravagant places in the nation. Now a change has come over, and we are presented about half the stores vacant, and much more than half of those near the water which aimed at doing a heavy business. Here are quite a number of small groceries on the wharf boats, floating and ready to supply food. drink, and cigars to the boat men. Here are a great many men apparently at leisure, who came down to see us, I guess a hundred on the wharfs and wharf boats. Some genteel, some gay, some dull, some--yes, many--shabby and coarse. A few carts are in the streets. Men sit lazily at their doors, looking for customers who do not come, and hoping for profits adequate to their certain expenses. Vicksburg is yet a beautiful place to look at, both without and within. It is on an elegant and commanding acclivity and shown magnificently from the river in the present stage of the water, houses and trees delightfully mingled, white, red, and green. Some very elegant architecture is here .... We came out of Vicksburg at 4 PM with four hundred one miles further to go, and now we are going it briskly, at about 15 miles an hour, perhaps more. Vicksburg is surely a pretty place on the slope and at the crest of the Walnut Hills. Houses and trees, streets and river, all in one view, the fields in the outline. Part of the town is dense, part Is scattered, and in the suburbs are some very elegant mansions, 260 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

wooden, white, piazzas, double with whole and divided columns, some with a pediment projecting from the roof and supported by long columns like Mr Farrar's house in Professors' Row at Cambridge, Mass. One house, I think of brick, was on the crest of the hill, surrounded with trees. All its walls were crowned with battlements, and at each corner of the house were octagonal towers, apparently twelve feet in diameter, battlemented and with windows. These were about fifteen or twenty feet above the house, This is one of the noblest houses I have seen. Altogether Vicksburg does not extend more than half, or perhaps three-quarters, of a mile along the river, How far back I could not say, I counted the stores on the front street that were closed, and there were twenty Of them, unoccupied, and I saw not more than five or six or seven that were open. I had not time to examine the others. Below this city is the old, or perhaps new, race course with its paraphernalia of sheds, and taverns, and grog shops and billiard rooms. The money that should have paid debts has been spent in frolic, dissipation and extravagance, and many that were gay are now sad, heavy with poverty. Their history is inflation of imaginary wealth and real expenditure, of real debt and hopeless payment. Their glory is past. Their friends are gone. We came in sight of the Walnut Hills some time before we reached them. They look most like New England of anything I have seen. They are cleared, cultivated, not fertile, rather sandy, with mixtures of fields, trees and houses. They are apparently almost one hundred feet higher than the river. Yesterday we passed St. Franeisvllle, Ark. which has only six or eight houses, a grocery, and I forget what other sign I read. OK,21 I remember. It was a Coffee House. No other sign of business, not of dry goods, nor shoes, nor of physic--only whiskey, and groceries.

21 "OK" first appeared in the Boston Transcript in April 1840. See Oxford English Dictionary. Compact Edition, Supplement, s.v. "O.K." 1996l Edward Jarvis's Journal 261

The pilot said it was a cut-throat place, and the keeper of the wharf boat had killed a man lately there. Helena is not much better. I think now it was here where the man was killed. Itwas a hamlet in the woods, not more than twenty or thirty houses, groceries, coffee houses, etc. No matter about it. It has a pretty name of some age, hence it may have a better character. All day long we have been passing plantations of low lands, and swamps and islands. These islands are sweetly beautiful. They sleep so quietly on the waters. They are all covered with the wood, and are rich with green foliage. But now, since I left Vicksburg, we have passed, for the first time, some naked islands. They did not look so pretty. They are low and fiat, just above the water, green and lush with their grassy coverings. A few miles above Vicksburg we passed a smooth clearing which extended some miles across a bend of the river, or rather, across a neck of land. In this bend, and like all that we had before observed, it was like the water's surface--fiat, and not much higher. The land here is hardly higher than the water: often not so high. Then you see out of this stateroom door, a pretty plantation in Mississippi with almost a dozen white cottages intermingled with trees. We passed one a few miles back where the white cottages of the servants were on both sides of a street which was set out with trees .... I don't like the looks of those dead trees standing in the fields as they do there. Yet so they have appeared very much of the way today, and these whited trees, dead and spiritless, have occupied the foreground of a large portion of my prospect today. Still, the river and its banks are beautiful today. I enjoy them. I like to be in sight of them, and I feel that all the time spent below is lost. I shall never regret this journey .... Wood yard, Louisiana shore. It is now 6:45. ! have been ashore, wandering half an hour in a Louisiana forest. Vegetation is forward compared with that in Kentucky. The trees are in their full leaf. I found a species of Erl[o]gonum in bloom, and also Erlgeron, [fleabane] a syngenesious plant [anthers growing together forming 262 The Filson Club History Quarterly {July

a tube] unknown to me. I found the gum tree, Liquldambar; and species of hickory, elder, maple, oak, ivy, grape and ash. But what interests me most is this Spanish moss which I never have seen before. It hangs from the higher branches of the tall trees and from the lower ones of some. I found very little within reach but could get it with a pole, and got a-plenty of it by this means. I found it much more on the very bank of the river than in the woods. Yet an old negro said there was a mighty heap of it in the woods, and it covered all the trees. Now 7:00. The bell rings for starting, and the pilot tinkles the engineer's bell to give him warning. Capt. Russel said he should take in eighteen cords here and perhaps would be obliged to wood again in the night. We do not go rapidly. I know not why. Certainly it takes us a great while to wood, and then the progress of the boat in motion is not what it is in some voyages• • . . We passed Carthage about one or two miles back, in Louisiana. It contains six houses. I don't remember any stores. The village is on the very bank. Before and behind it is water, river on one side and swamp on the other, and just at the side of the lowest house was a gully through which the river was rushing, with great violence, to the swamp.... Another gully was a little way below this town of Carthage. I could not see what would prevent the town's being washed away. It was surrounded. The little space on which it stood was not more than ten rods wide and thirty rods long. One house was partially undermined, and yet the people were apparently as unconcerned as if their houses were built on rocks.... We passed much flood wood in the night. The boat often hit heavy logs which jarred heavily. Generally, when the pilot could see, he would stop the engine (or ring his bell for the engineer to stop the engine) while the log passed by. I saw one log in the Ohio, which was indeed a whole tree, about sixty or eighty feet long, and four to five feet diameter. If the wheels should strike such a log it would break off every paddle, for it could not be thrust out of the way by the wheels. 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 263

I awoke sometime before day, hearing the bell ring to warn a woodman of our wants of his wares. I got up. It was dark. I looked out into the cabin and met the Captain who was coming to wake me up to see the Red River which we should soon pass. Bell rings for breakfast. Excuse me, while I eat and talk with the people and then go on deck again. 10:00. I ate. I talked with the ladies, and then I talked a long time with the father of one of them. He belongs to Heywood County, Tenn. We talked of Gen. Jackson, Gen. Harrison, and Mr. Clay. Then I went on deck. It has ceased to rain, the heavens are cloudy, the air is cool and comfortable. In my state room here it is 72°, at sunrise it was 74°, last evening at 8:00 it was 76°. We have had delightful weather for ten days, and this is pleasant. I got up this morn by candle light, before day, washed, shaved and dressed by candle and then wrote to Almira, three pages. This I shall send immediately from New Orleans. I talked with the Capt. half an hour about Massachusetts and home to which he is yet strongly attached even after absence of eleven years, and now his desire to return there grows more and more urgent. I then wrote a while in this journal and went on deck to see the mouth of the Red River which lay like a still bay far up the country on the right, skirted, as is this river, with greenness and vegetation. There was a boat coming down that river, but we could not walt for her and left her far behind. Then we passed the sister islands, one of which is dead, another almost eaten away by the working of the waters, and both shorn of their woody glory. They were green just above the water.... We are now near Bayou Sara and Just come to the sugar plantations. The foliage along here is richer and more varied than it is above, and the trees do not show such a level topped forest. The peccan trees are large, dark green, and more branched than others. Here is the cypress with its awkward piney branches all covered with the Spanish moss. This is longer, darker and heavier than above. Here are farms, more cultivated, more cleared, more rich than above. Here is a levee all grassed over, at least four or five feet high which, the pilot says, extends to New Orleans, Some 264 The Fllson Club History Quarterly [July

magnificent houses, large, with piazzas, pillars and every evidence ofcultivatlon, wealth and comfort. One large, long, brick sugarhouse back twenty or forty rods from the river. On one farm ten white negro cottages in a row, of boards, not clapboarded. Many small log huts I see along here, probably those of woodmen, and laborers. The same level land, the same elevation above the river, as I observed yesterday, are presented today. The river is full here as above. We passed the Sultana at 12:00 night at Rodney, the Bonaparte passed us an hour ago, and we just passed another whose name I did not see. ! cannot help feel an interest in our hen merchant with his thirty-eight dozen--minus eight--hens which he takes much diligent care of. He got sand in Illinois for them, and again yesterday in Louisiana. This he sprinkled over them: he gives them corn, he showers water over them; he lets some out, takes others in when they have walked enough for health. He coaxes them, and by all means, I hope, he will preserve them in agood marketable condition till he reaches New Orleans, when he hopes to get $5 per dozen for them .... And now 11:40, I come down, having been all the time on the upper deck, and passed many sugar plantations, much forest, some bluffs, white cliffs at Port Hudson--whitish, clayey, precipitous, about fifty or sixty feet high, at the town; and then a few houses stand perched just on the top of the bank, and the railroad end, and a puffing steam engine of the railroad waiting leisurely, I suppose, for someone to come along. I asked several gentlemen where this railroad led to but no one could tell me, and I can only guess that it leads back a few miles to the cotton and sugar country. It was a vain hope, to build this railroad to make money. It may be convenient to a few people who wish to sell their produce, or to travel, but those few cannot afford to pay the interest of the cost for the little use they make of it. Port Hudson, on the east bank of the river, one hundred forty-nine miles above New Orleans, contains a steam sawmill, a large warehouse, a store, tavern, half a dozen (and perhaps more) 1996] Edward Jarvls's Journal 265

other houses, the end of a railroad, and one railroad that goes down the cliff to let down cotton and bring up merchandise; a flight of stairs and road that winds up the cliff, one steamboat, the [blank], taking in cotton, four or five fiat-boats with corn and other up-country produce, a wood pile, some loafers and some berry people. We rounded-to here, let out two passengers and one trunk and took in one man. Bayou Sara is ten miles above this, also on the east bank, and presents to the passenger on a boat, a pretty appearance--a tavern, a storage warehouse, some stores, groceries, a Canal Bank, two-story building with an elegant pediment, and piazza, and long divided pillars, By the side of this was a dwelling, plastered or brick, painted of clay colour, with large piazza and large divided pillars. Here was likewise a steam sawmill, a number of fiat-boats selling produce,' the terminus of the St. Franclsville and Clinton Railroad. (I saw no cars or engine as I did at Port Hudson). Back of this town Is St. Franclsville, which looked prettily in the woods. How many houses, how much business, how many people in it, I could not tell. I could see only the houses among the trees, and the gullies washed deep, near those houses, by the rains. But I can guess what have been the anticipations of those who laid out this city in the forest, what were the hopes of those who bought lots in times when all was confidence of present prosperity and future wealth. I can guess also what is the end of all these hopes and how sadly they must come down from their visionary affluence to the soberer and sterner realities of moderation, economy and labour--perhaps of debt, destitution, and elopement to Texas. For such has been the fortune of many a hopeful speculator who, if he had used his energies and patience, might have been in the sure road to future wealth and in present respectability, But let St. Francisville and all other Speculationvilles and all the people of the great city of Gallburgh go, and we will look again at this river and its banks so beautifully skirted with the forests of living green. There the gum tree's large, tall, dark foliage makes a beautiful contrast with the more graceful poplar with its pale green 266 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

leaves. Then the buttonwood, the occasional cypress, the willow, the cottonwood--all of rather light green, save however the cypress--and the plentiful moss hanging from all. Then the hawthorn, bushy, low and dark, is pretty. One tree I saw, covered with white blossoms as large as the largest of apple trees, which appeared to be cultivated, for it was only found near the houses. But how shall I describe the China-tree, with Its fragrant blossom! So fragrant, and so diffusive as to fill the whole atmosphere of the whole country and river with its rich perfume. I never understood the reality of the spicy breezes till now. For the last hundred miles, the air is filled with this beautiful odour, and we live in and breathe the most delectable perfume. The blossoms of this tree are in bunches, something like the lilac, and about the colour. The tree is about the size and shape of a small apple tree. Very probably it grows larger, bat I speak of what I saw. We passed on the west bank, nearly opposite Bayou Sara, an old French church, low, one story, with a huge roof that projected far enough over to form a piazza on the sides. The roof was red, the sides a dingy white. Around this was a poled yard enclosing gravestones, and at the front gate was a cross which told the denomination which worshipped there. In the yard were two large weeping willows and other trees so covering the view of the whole church and its modest tower and little steeple as to make it very picturesque. Let me say here, that except this and two churches in Vicksburg, and some in Bayou Sara and Baton Rouge, I have not seen a church to my knowledge since I left Paducah. There may be hundreds of these on the banks, tho I did not see them, and there may be thousands of hearts that worship God in houses that are not made with hands. I trust there are. Let me also say that I saw no one at work on Sunday, no one at play nor fishing, nor heard any guns fired. 3:00. Now eight miles from DonaIdsonville and about eighty above New Orleans. We shall get there about ten or perhaps earlier. Since I wrote before, we have passed Plaquemlne, a little village of few houses, some stores, and coffee houses, and tavern. The 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 267

Plaquemlne Hotel is apparently about twenty feet square, and probably buildings back. Here is the Bayou Plaquemine thro which the water was running with great force, and the passage was blocked up mostly with driftwood. Baton Rouge is a larger place than l had expected, as big as or bigger than Concord, Mass. Here the U.S. Barracks were pretty, and almost covered and concealed with the China-tree. The Penitentiary is not in sight-----except its tower. There are many stores, low and shaded with piazzas, indeed old; both the one- and the two-storied stores had this convenient protection. The roofs of the stores were large and projecting and steep. This is an old French town and has rather a foreign aspect. The houses and stores are all very closely built together, and give the town a city-like appearance. Indeed, perhaps it is a city with its mayor, council, aldermen, and city lots worth each to its owner an imaginary fortune. Since we left that place, we have passed two more churches, French Catholic, built in singular style, both with piazzas, double, one for each story and with long and large columns. The plantations grow thicker: no, or scarcely any, uncleared land is now seen on the bank of the river. All [is] open and very bare of trees for from one to three miles back, fiat and level as any before seen. These plantations look rich; the young cane, like little corn, but just come up enough to show the green rows to us on the boat. The planters' houses are mostly of one story, with projecting piazzaed roofs, and green blinds, and yards and flowers, and China-trees. Some of these are in style of great magnificence, with large double piazzas on two or more sides, two stories high, and every embellishment of architecture. The negro huts are of all kinds, some few brick, mostly wooden, some white, oftener dark and dingy. Most of them have roofs projecting so as to give a piazza which rests on rock pillars, some not larger than twelve or sixteen feet square (I guess at it) with the chimney outside, others twice as large. They almost all are in single or double rows, and with the shade of the China-tree extending before all. In one place was a street of negro houses on both sides with two double rows of these trees between and the path between 268 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

these. I counted sixteen, the most on one plantation, and these were apparently double. Here the land is lower than the river by probably three or five feet, and the levee above prevents inundation. I now have got most to myjourney's end, and It has been a happy one, full of new views, new feelings, Joy, and Improvement, and I trust gratitude to God for this privilege, I dislike to sit here, even to write this, though I think it will give my wife much pleasure to read it, yet I wish to be all the time on the deck so that I may lose nothing that is to be seen. My friend the hen merchant tells me that he has lost only twelve hens--four died yesterday. The old cock, that I so pitied Monday, fell a sacrifice to the journey. The owner thinks he has got off well to lose only one dozen in thirty-eight dozen, and four dozen of chicks. Truly he is faithful to his trust, and ff he lose any, I am witness that it is not by his negligence.... 5:40. Just wooded about forty-five miles above New Orleans. Mr. Beasley, Mr. [blank] and Mr. [blank] and I attempted to visit a sugar house, but we could not make any one understand our English--they were all French--and when we did find out where the sugar house was, it was so late, and it was so far off, and the Capt. took in so little wood, that we could not visit the sugar establishment. Here the levee is raised about four feet high (steamboat Fulton just going by us, with white chimneys--we both go so rapidly, that we passed each other In a moment) and the water about two feet higher than the land. There is a road just beyond it. At one other place we saw men on horseback along the levee road, and we could only see the horses' bellies, but not their legs. All along here, the river is higher than the vast plains on each side. The water Is still, and has a glassy smoothness, and seems like an Immense bowl, full and raised above the more Immense table below and about it, and the men riding on the top of the bowl. Sometimes we can see across the necks of land to the next bend, perhaps six or seven miles, and the water then looks as If it were raised many feet higher than the Intervening land, so low and level is it. When we stopped to wood, 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 269

there were many French cottages with piazzas, and few trees, but they were neither neat nor elegant. Probably many families owned one plantation, for we saw but one sugar house for all these dwellings. Wade Hampton's plantation is very large, his mansion elegant, and there were at least forty, pretty, white cottages for his servants. This is said to be the richest plantation in the southern states, and he is said to have eight hundred negroes. The plantations grow thicker and thicker. They must be very narrow and extend far back. Often they are not more than forty even not more than thirty rods wide and their mansions with the negro houses, and other buildings belonging to the establishment, give the whole coast for fifty to eighty miles back, the appearance of villages along the bank. Almost all are close by the river. How it is below is yet to be seen. Some of the houses are as grand and as externally rich as any I have ever seen. Some have the roofs extending over, on all four sides, to form a complete piazza all round the house, with long columns. We have had a delightful day. It rained till 8:00 in the morning and then was dry and light, and this afternoon the sun is out and everything is rich, beautiful, and we ride on the top of the boat looking down on the fields, houses, men, and all the affairs of the land. As far as the eye can reach, the same level presents itself, the same richness, the same beauty. The plantations thickened and narrowed till as long as we could see them, for fifty or even eighty miles above New Orleans. They seemed--with their residences, negro houses, sugar houses, and other outbuildings mostly arranged along the bank and parallel with the rlver--to form a continuous village. The land was all cleared, all open as far back as five to eight miles from the river as I guessed by the eye, all this land was level and fiat and smooth as any before seen--mostly in, or for, sugar cane. The levee was unbroken, the land was even lower than the river, the houses were often partly hidden by the embankment, and generally they were larger and richer than those above, more with piazzas, double stories and columns. We passed the Jefferson College, large and elegant 270 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

buildings, white and imposing on the left (east) bank of the river. We passed also the convent. We passed some ships and brigs moored to the banks, probably waiting for sugar. We met one in the tow of the steamboat Mississippi, laden with ice from Boston for Vicksburg, where Ice is sold at three cents a pound. We went by many steamboats going up and down the river. It was dark before we reached the great city. We saw the lights thicken on the banks, and the long row of lighted windows of the frequent boats, the low solitary light of the fiat-boats, and the large light at the many woodpiles inviting us to take their fuel. It was thick darkness and 7 o'clock when we reached Lafayette, two miles above the city, or rather the upper end of the city, and two miles from Canal Street. I left my baggage on board and ran ashore, [and] took the cars of the railroad with Capt. Russel for the town. We went apparently [on] many devious streets, and by many omnibuses, and soon were in Canal St. I went to my brother's store, found only Christian, the drayman, there who took me to Stephen's room on Canal Street, at the house of Mrs. Spencer. There I found Stephen and his wife who both received me with the warmest affection. I staid there till I0:00 and went to the store with Stephen. Soon Nathan came in from the theatre and received me as did Stephen, and my journey was ended. I had come from Louisville to New Orleans, fifteen hundred miles in four days and five hours, between 3:00 Friday PM and 8:00 Tuesday PM being at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, and three hundred sixty miles a day. We were hindered long in wooding, having no deck passengers and few deck hands. At least four hours a day were spent in this business. We had two dark nights, and one violent gale which made us stop an hour or two. We had much driftwood for two or three hundred miles. Taking away the time lost by these interruptions, we made a very short passage, and ffwc had not been so interrupted, we should have gone down in less than four days, or about four hundred miles a day. We ran eighteen miles an hour when we went freely, and at this rate, deducting two hours for wooding, we should have gone three hundred ninety-six miles a day. 1996 ] Edward Jarvis's Journal 271

Nathan Jarvls, 1808-1851 Concord Free Public Library, Concord, Massachusetts

The steamboat Edward Shippen, one of the fastest boats on the river, [is] built of the best model in 1828, with powerful engine, [and] eight boilers. [She] burns about fifty cords of wood a day. She is commanded by Charles James Russel, formerly of Boston. I liked the management of the boat, the energy and promptness of the officers, and the social disposition of the Capt. and Pilots, with whom I spent most of my time. Our fellow passengers were most all business men, many of them fiat-boat owners going down to see about cargoes which they had sent onward in that species of craft. They were civil, quiet, gentlemanly and social. I became acquainted with several I have written in this book. The ladies were Miss Ash of the southeastern part of North Carolina, out here on a visit to her relations, and her cousin Miss Hayes of Heyward County, Tennessee, and her father Mr. Hayes and their cousin Mr. Grove of Louisiana, all originally of North Carolina. Miss Ash seemed highly educated, refined and social, modest and easy in her manner like our best-educated ladies of the country In Massachusetts. These ladies enjoyed the river and the scenery as I did, and we had much sympathy together In this respect. This party •!i,,• j- •!: • ,i '• , ,• i, • •, i • i, • i •j

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all hoped I would go up the river with them and that I would call on them ff I should come near their houses. Taking it all in all, I could hardly have enjoyed a journey, more. All the physical and natural things were far beyond my expectations of beauty and pleasure-giving. The company was very satisfactory. The pilots [were] extremely pleasant, obliging, and Instructive, and seemed to take pleasure in telling me of places. William Davis especially, the apprentice to Mr. Jordan, the pilot, took great sattsfactlon in pointing out to me all the things and places about the river. When I left him, I gave him Cyril Thornton, which 1 had read on the way, and he appeared very grateful so that even by his manner of thankfulness I was repaid for the book. Whether I have a true Impression of the river, and its scenery, and interest, Is to be yet tested by further travel on it. Suffice to say, this is the record of my first impressions which were to me very delightful.... My visit to New Orleans has been to me one of continued pleasure, exhilaration and labour. I found no time for rest, no time for the soul to lie Idle and the body to sit still. Nothing could exceed the cordial reception of my brothers and sister, their tender attention, their affectionate regard for my happiness, their apparent enjoyment of my society. They (S. and N.) were busy, indefatigably engaged in the work of the store, and yet they found time to make me happy. I visited every place of note in New Orleans. I went across the river with both of my brothers and rambled a while on the bank in Algiers where the water is fast washing away the shore. I went to Lake Ponchartrain with Mr. William Auld. He Is a friend of my brothers who had not time to go with me. We went by the railroad four miles, with a great many others who wel:e going for business or pleasure. We passed through the cypress swamp, and saw the myrtle, the cypress, live oak, &c. We wandered on the lake shore. We entered the swamp as far as the dry land would permit. We visited the pier which projected long Into the lake, and saw the Mobile steamboats ready for their departure. We sat In the yard of the public house, drank lemonade, read newspapers in the shade 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 273

of the China-tree. It was very hot. At noon we returned and found the city hotter than the lake. I walked all over the French portion of the city with my sister Lydia and saw the low houses, the projecting roofs, the broad eaves, the open doors, the tried coverings of the French houses. We heard the jabbering in French. We heard the children play in this foreign tongue, the negroes chatter, and the women court and gossip in this language of what, we think of as the language of the learned. It did seem strange to hear even the little negro children use this tongue so openly, to hear their many emotions, ideas, passions, fun, frolic and anger in what was so unintelligible to us. The air of the people here--their words, their intonations, their architecture, the whole appearance of things, man and thing sounds and sights--indicated a foreign people. The women sat more out of doors on the steps, on the side walk, talking to each other from house to house. The children played in the street. They all showed a self possession such as is not ordinarily shown among the Anglo-Americans. We rambled about this part ofthe city a great deal. We went through many streets, going from one to another regardless of what it was or where it would lead us, only caring that it was French. We loved to feel that we were in the French city and that we saw foreign manners and heard a foreign language. We went there several times and never ceased to enjoy it as richly as at first. I walked up to Lafayette and all over the upper part of the city and saw the marked difference between the American and French portions of the town--the cleaner streets, the higher houses, the modern architecture of the one compared with the dirty streets, low houses and ancient structures of the other. I visited both the Protestant and the Catholic burial grounds, those cities of the dead where all the dead sleep in homes built above the ground. These were mostly of brick, about eight feet long and four feet wide, closed at one end and open at the other for the reception of a coffin, and, when this is deposited there, the place is filled with brick and mortar, and then there is over this a marble or slate Slab on which is a written superscription, of the name, age, character, &c., and 274 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

another respecting the deceased placed therein. Some of these death dwellings contain but one, and are from three to eight feet high; others contain two, three, or four, one above another, and are then from six to ten feet high, each story being built alike, and on the door-opening, or mouth of each, is the inscription for the occupant of the place within. Some of them are built of stone, some of marble, mostly of brick. There are, around the grounds, long rows of them in three tiers, one above another and ready for occupation, and as fast as an inhabitant is received, the place is closed forever. The others, open and untenanted, look like so many ovens, the mouth about two feet square, and the whole cavity about the same dimensions of width and height, and about eight feet deep. Some of these are built of elegant, some of magnificent, architecture; some very costly, of all kinds of form, though mostly of the general shape before mentioned; some in form of a temple with roof and pediment; some with miniature towers on them; some with a column. Many are surrounded with iron railings, or fences, and of many kinds and of various cost. Others have enclosures of wood, or of wooden posts and iron chains, and most of these have roses, creepers, honey-suckles, and other flowers in bloom. And beside these there were shade trees scattered about the grounds which gave the whole an air of pleasantness and cheerfulness. The inscriptions are in beautiful taste. In the Catholic ground, very many were in French and had rather poetical than scriptural matters. They were tributes of affection from the living to the dead. Most of them told the place of nativity of the deceased, and it seemed strange to read how few were born in New Orleans and how many were born abroad and had found a resting place, for this lifeless process, so far from the land of their birth. A great many of those were born in Hayti and fled from that island in the time of the negro insurrection. Some singular inscriptions were there. One said that the deceased "had fallen a victim of Honor," that is, he was killed in a duel. One was a kept mistress, and her paramour testified on her tombstone to her amiable virtues, her strong affections and her purity of character. 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 275

Some were called generous, others upright, some popular, others useful, all perhaps had hope of blessed immortality, On the whole, the characters of the deceased had more reference to the past life, to the esteem of men, and to their affecUons than to the prospects of eternity. Some had been soldiers in the wars of France or Spain, and their deeds of valor were recorded in their tombs. We learned how much they had fought, how many they had killed, but not how much they had disciplined themselves in Christianity nor how many they had brought from spiritual death unto life. These tombs above ground were arranged in rows. near together but not in contact and between them was room enough for one to pass, and between the rows were wide paths for the funeral • processions to walk to their destination. One very large tomb was about fifteen or twenty feet square, and about as high, with a cross on the top. On each side was an inscription which told in French, Spanish and English that this was the tomb of the Cazadores which is a Spanish military company, l saw on this no particular inscription, nor any evidence that any one was yet deposited there, though there was no vacant open apartment. Probably all were closed, to be opened as they may be wanted and again closed upon its occupant forever. Some were family tombs with the name of the head of the family on them. Some had the names of the several occupants on one slab. In the Protestant ground, there were more of the long series of conUguous tombs. One covered the whole side of the yard--perhaps three hundred or four hundred feet long, and two or three tiers high. The private tombs are less gorgeous and costly, and the inscriptions more spiritual. Here also the birth place of most was written, and it seemed irregular to me how many of them were born in Massachusetts and other parts of New England. I saw no graves dug, yet I was told that these grounds were filled with the bodies of the dead beneath the green surface, and again I saw them peopled above. The ground is so swampy that water runs into a hole dug more than a foot deep, and in some places it rises to the top of the ground. 276 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

There is a Potter's Field, where the poor and friendless are buried. I did not see this. I was informed that, in time of great mortality as of cholera or yellow fever, they dig long trenches and put the coffmed bodies in these and cover them as fast as the tenants arrive. Here many a nameless one is lost and forgotten while his distant parents and friends imagine him still living until hope deferred, and long silence, brings to them the doubtful suspicion, and then finally the unwilling conviction, that he has died among strangers: I strolled around and through these cities of the dead. I lingered from house to house of the unbreathing and unspirited ones. I felt that I was with those who were gone before me and yet were present here. A holy feeling came over me, such as I never felt before, in any burial ground. The dead were my companions. They were on the earth. Many of them inhabited dwellings of beauty which were shrouded in the loveliness of the brightest vegetation. These superearthly tombs seemed more appropriate abodes of the dead than the cold and forbidding graves beneath the sod. They were less appalling and more cheerful. They were not so far from us. Then they were still with us, and we could then be with them and feel them to be our companions. There were many and beautiful lizards with their "bodies lean and long," of many hues, running noiselessly over these tombs, and [ they] seemed to be as much at home as if they dwelt with the llving.22 I have no suspicion that they are for our corrupting mortality, but then they live undisturbed, for they were as tame as household animals and regarded not our presence. Then I saw the names of some whom I have known in youth buried there far from their early friends. Amos L. Pollard was once my neighbor in Concord, and little did I expect to next see his name and his habitation here in this city of the silent dead. There was the tomb enclosing the body of the child of my cousin, James Potter.

22 Mark Twain also mentlons the "pretty little chameleons•gracefullest of legg6d reptlles--iwho] creep along the marble fronts of the vaults, and catch flies." Twain, Life on the Mississippi (Penguin edition), 305. 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 277

Massachusetts and all the Northern states and indeed every state of this nation has a full representation here. But here is the son of every nation. Men and women from England and Ireland and France and Germany and Spain and the West Indies here repose peacefully together. Here the men who have warred together lay side by side in quietness. Here is the unfulfilled hope, the clouded ambition, the arrested adventure of the daring from every land. Here they lay together, and here they will lay forever. But beautiful and peaceful as is this burying place, I want not my bones nor those of my kindred to be placed there. I prefer the old gravelly burial hill in Concord where my father, and my mother, and sisters and brother lay. There may my body find its resting place, and there may my brethren be gathered when life's labour is over and God shall require them to give up their souls to him. This is their wish and they desire that they be carried thither, if God so orders that their earthly end be in New Orleans. We went up to Carrollton on the railroad-•Stephen, Nathan, Lydia, Clapp, Alfred Munroe and I. We passed rapidly thro open rich level plains, five miles, with country seats, some gardens, some houses, few forests or groves. At Carollton we found a large hotel with a double piazza all around the house. From these piazzas we had a fine view of the river and the passing boats. Here the levee was four or five feet high, and the water considerably above the level of the land. Here is a beautiful garden, with its winding walks most tastefully laid out, and mixtures of trees and shrubs and herbaceous flowers. Here was the India rubber tree, oleander, orange tree, magnolia, willow, fig tree, myrtle, willows weeping and erect, roses without number and extending far along the walks; I never saw them in such profusion. These gardens cover some acres, and one could roam along the walks a great while and not be wearied with the rich and varied beauty new at every turn. The air was filled with the odour of the China-tree and roses. Indeed I never saw so rich a garden, never certainly so liberal a one, for a merely public tavern. There flowers are for sale. We bought large bunches of roses and others, bouquets as large as the hat, for a trifle. 278 The Fllson Club History Quarterly [July

Here are bowling alleys, and it is a favourlte resort for the business men who want relaxation and for men of pleasure. I bowled a few times with my companions but failed most sadly and then deserted them to walk with my sister in the garden. This I found much more agreeable than the other. A great many go to this place in the summer--it is about five miles from the city, about twenty minutes ride on the steam cars, and at cost of 25 cts. I went to the battleground with Lydia in a buggy; started at 9:00 Wednesday morn, rode first thro the French part of the town and then along the levee which partially concealed the shipping and the river from our sight. We went thro dust, fetlock deep for the horse, and it rose in clouds about us, covering our clothes and filling our eyes and lungs with its powder, We passed many beautiful gardens • filled with the dust-clad foliage, with roses, China-trees, magnolias in great profusion and very large; myrtles, fig trees, orange trees, oleander, willows, ash. Here are many gentlemen's residences, many sawmills, some foundries of iron, some cotton presses, one or more immense tobacco warehouses. Ships, sloops, brigs &c. lay along the levee most of the way, at least for three or five miles. Here are large brickyards, and here I saw some negro women working, loading a boat or barge with brick. We went on six miles and came to the Battle Ground Coffee House which was the only mark of the place where the thousands of both nations struggled in bloody conflict for conquest and for liberty. Here is a wide and open plantation-field, a mile or more broad, ample enough for armies to extend themselves and maneuver. There was a tree under which, a man told me, that Gen. Pakenham died. The fields are rich, the land covered with beautiful green. Nought of the work of man nor traces of blood are there seen. Peacefully the land now brings forth its massive fruits, regardless of the blood that was once spilled there and of the whiskey that is now drank on the ground. The nation might have raised some other monument to designate the spot, beside this Battle Ground Coffee House, 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 279

We stood on the levee, we surveyed this field, but we got up no holy associations, no feeling especially patriotic. It was not Bunker Hill, nor Concord nor Lexington, nor was its poor [illegible] kept coffee house as inspiring as the monuments on these battlegrounds at home. We returned at 1 I:00 having been two hours absent. I visited Dr. Stone's private hospital, and he invited me to go with him to the Charity Hospital. I went, and saw about eighty or one hundred surgical patients of every sort of disease or accident which could require surgical aid. This hospital often has about five hundred patients in all the wards, and these are well accommodated. The hospital is large, airy, neat, and well provided with all the paraphernalia for the care and comfort of the sick. The bed frames were some of iron and others of wood. They had good neat bedding, and covering, and mosquito bars. Compared with the Louisville Hospital, this was a palace and its rooms parlours. None of the foul medicine, nor the old plasters used from one patient to another, none of the poor and miserable furniture that we have in the Marine Hospital of the Empress City of the west. This hospital is supported by the state, and the legislature appropriates money liberally to its wants. Thousands are given to it according to its necessities. Another building is now erected, partly furnished for the insane, where they may be confined but not cured, and where their delusions may be made permanent and all hope of restoration to soundness of mind cut off. This ought to have been put up, out of the city, at Carrollton, or anywhere, in the midst of land sufficient for a farm worker, workhouses, and then under the sole care of one physician who should give his undivided attention to the subject of insanity. Then and there, the disease would be as remediable as any fever. I visited the State House, but could not get into the rooms, except the representative chamber. I went to the Old Cathedral in the morning and saw its antique architecture, its time-stained walls, its moss-covered columns, its whole blackened surface, its many pictures within, its many worshippers of all colours mingled 280 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

indiscriminately, kneeling and sitting, according, to the rule of propriety. Here are several confession boxes, and I saw women within them with their faces close to the aperture which opened into the priests' apartment, and his ear was there ready to hear the confessions, l could hear nothing for all was said in low whispers. This is worthwhile for any visitor to New Orleans to see. I went four times thro the great market on the levee, and such a jabber of French, Spanish and English; such a mixture of white, black, mulatto, quadroon, copper color; such a variety of every sort ofvegetables I never perceived before. This market is very large, very wide and admirably arranged. There are several parallel rows of tables and stalls for the sellers, and the alleys between them were crowded with as many sorts of people as there were sellers, and they kept up a roar of talk mostly in French, and negroes and children talked this language. I liked to rove through this market to hear these strange sounds, this strange mixture, thls combination of unintelligible and confusing jargon. Strange and familiar vegetables were there--peas, and artichokes, beans, and peccans, cucumbers, new potatoes, sweet potatoes, cabbages, beets, onions, strawberries, blackberries--all these were ready to eat as early as the 22d of April, and indeed the peas were old and yellowish. There were the crabs, crawling over each other in covered baskets, and the women that sold these handled [them] with a sort of tongs which were probably made for the purpose. Crawfish, mingled, heaps upon heaps, In the same manner and shrimps--small, white, all of these most uninviting and offensive to the unused eye, yet not more so than the lobster, which is delicious. Beside these, I saw, on Sunday, all sorts of trinkets and finery in and about the market. Indians with their baskets; negroes with brooms, fish, oysters, and piles of moss; with men in cravats, collars &c.; and one man with an alligator about three feet long. Another sold a young mocking bird for 50 cts. Canary birds, knives, scissors, grocei'ies. Scarce any thing seemed to be amiss in the purlieus of that market. Sunday morning is the best for the sight; then I went 1996] Edward Jarvts's Journal 281

and met very many who were apparently on the same errand that carried me there. Flower girls, and flower women were abundant in the market, and they sold beautiful bouquets got up in excellent taste for 61/2 cts. These are scattered all over the town. I met them often in the streets, at the corners, and in the public rooms of the great hotels. A law of the 2d Municipality forbids all hawkers and pedlars in the streets except flower girls, cake women and sellers of ice cream. I am not sure, but cigars are also excepted. No, it is fruit. I found these cake women sitting at many corners, and fruit women also. They were often on the steps of banks, &c. I went with my sister to the dance on the top of the St. Charles Hotel, about one hundred feet above the street. There we had a view of the whole city and the neighboring country. Almost as far as the eye could reach did the city extend along the bank of the river above and below, not so far back; but we saw the level plains, and then the dense forest which extends on all sides and bounded the horizon. Then we saw the winding river which at the upper port of New Orleans ran northward and soon turned east and then south. Around this curve the city is built and hence its name of the Crescent City, Along the banks above and below were the thick masts of vessels laying three and four and five abreast and covering a line of, I judged, two miles though perhaps not so many, all the way. Abreast the centre of the city and near Canal Street were the crowds of steamboats, and above there was a fleet of fiat-boats from all the upper rivers of the western states. I boarded a few (three) days with Nathan at the Verandah and two days with him at the St. Charles, and as long with Stephen and Lydia at the Spencer, Canal St. The Verandah is a large and not very good hotel. The St. Charles is the grandest and is conducted on the grandest style I ever was in. It is the largest, highest, and most costly building in the city. It can accommodate about seven hundred people. In the public dining room about one hundred fifty or two hundred fifty ate. The servants are all white, carried to New Orleans from New York. All waiters at table [are] gentlemanly, neatly and 282 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

genteelly dressed with white linen roundabouts on. The whole management of this Hotel is on as exact a system as the business of any merchant or bank. It is said to be very profitable to the lessors. I visited the Orleans French Theatre and saw a French Opera, La Bayadere in which Fanny Elssler danced. 23 She displayed astonishing muscular power and extraordinary grace in the motions of her lower extremities, and could move them more and higher than any female I ever saw, and with as much ease as one does the fingers. Yet I was not in the slightest interested in her dancing. I was disgusted with the exposure of her person, for though she had closely fitting flesh-coloured drawers on, which showed the whole form, yet her coats and skirts only covered the thighs and knees, and in her motions her leg was thrown out at right angles with the body, and she whirled on the other foot in this position. I would not go to see her again. About a dozen other women danced in the same costume. The music of the orchestra was excellent. The singing, especially that of the choruses, was exceedingly fine. Fanny Elssler wore a gold band about the waist, and one around the head, of stars of gold; and jewels on each shoulder. There were presents to her. While she was dancing, a great many bunches of roses and bouquets of flowers were thrown upon the stage by the audience and spectators. The house was full but not crowded, and a considerable proportion of ladies were there to behold this unfeminine display of the female person. I went to one of the public ballrooms where the quadroon balls are held. We were both, and every other spectator, strictly examined to ascertain whether we had any pistol, bowie knife or dagger about us, as sometimes quarrels have arisen, and blood has been spilt at

23 Les Bayad•res by Charles-Simon Catel (1773-1830), Fanny Elssler (1810-1884) was born in Vienna. Brought to America by the entrepreneur James Caldwell, she introduced classical dance to the wild west. Elssler may have shocked Edward, but when she danced in Boston it is alleged that Margaret Fuller remarked to Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Wgaldo. this is poetry.' 'Margaret. it is religlonl" replied the philosopher." See Harnett T. Kane, Queen New Orleans: City by the River (New York: William Morrow aild Company, 1949). 175. 1996) Edward Jarvts's Journal 283

those ballrooms. Music is provided, and every one pays for his entrance and dances ffhe pleases. We staid only a few minutes there. I saw with Lydia the palm tree in a garden in Orleans Street. It is about forty feet high, its trunk appears like a congeries of little roots, and is about sixteen inches in diameter. There is a tuft of pinnated leaves about six or seven feet long growing out of the top, and some large greenish-yellowish flowers. Thls tree is a diaeious plant [unisexual with the two kinds of flowers on separate plants], and only the antherfferous flowers [anther-bearing] grow on this. We found some negroes there who did not seem to know any thing of the tree; found however one old woman who said it had been there and about as large as ever since she had known the place, which was thirty years. There is another palm tree, a styliferous [style-bearing; the style is the usually elongated portion of the pistil connecting the stigma and ovary] one growing below the city but she did not know exactly where. I heard in the street a negro who sang in all varieties of tones and keys and tunes. He had a very flexible and capacious voice and a full power of singing in any style. He sold cornmeal, and, riding on his cart, he sang his advertisement in this way. They told me he was a lion there and worth my searching him out to hear his songs. I went on board the steam ships Natchez and Neptune, the former running to Cuba and the latter to Texas. Also I visited the New York, a Texas and New Orleans steam packet ship. I visited other ships and several boats. I examined the cotton presses and their extensive fields of cotton bales. I saw the acres of sugar hogsheads on the levee where they are sold and where most of the sugar business is done in wholesale trade. No sugar, or almost no sugar, is stored before it is sold, and the purchasers prefer to go and see the whole before they buy. Thus the dealers save the cost of warehouse rent but are obliged to employ watchers to see to it nights and perhaps days and to get tarpaulins to cover it from the rain. 284 The Fllson Club History Quarterly [July

I went to church Sunday at the Clapps'24 and heard an eloquent and long sermon on death, the responsibilities of life, and the security and comfort of the religious principle. A new burial ground is opened two miles out of the city and on the Nashville Railroad, and the firemen have a tomb or tombs of their own in it to whlch they were to carry all the firemen who had been buried in the old burial grounds, Their remains were taken out of their original tombs, enclosed in boxes, put in hearses, and the social companies--some in uniform and caps, red flannel shirts, and white pants, others in citizens' dress--went in a procession from the old burying places with these mortal remains to the Clapps' church, sat in the galleries, heard the sermon, funeral hymn and first that beautiful one of "Unveil thy bosom faithful tomb," The sermon was very long, and pathetic, Mr. C, had no notes but evidently was prepared. I admired his eloquence, but yet he did not reach my heart. I went to no other church Sunday. I dined with Mr Win. H. Fuller and his family and Mr. Minor, recently from Hayti. In the afternoon I walked with Stephen and Nathan up Noyades Street and out of the town, and in the evening I went with N, to Capt. Tufts and to Mr. John B------. We went by many beautiful gardens, and orange trees on which oranges the size of an egg were growing. The trees were about fifteen feet high. We saw the grand magnolia in bloom, and its rich perfume was enough to fill a room. The China-tree and its full blossoms were very frequent, and this odor spread through the whole atmosphere. Roses were in every garden. We intended to have gone out a few miles on the Nashville Railroad but had not time. I had an invitation from the Capt. of one of the tow boats to go with him down to the Ballze25 which would take two days at least,

24 Clapp's church was the First Congregational Church on St. Charles Street. See Benjamin Moore Norman, Norman's Guide to New Orleans and Environs (B.M. Norman, 1845), 101. 25 Literally "buoy," the Ballze indicates the mouth of the Mlsslsslppl. See Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans {London and New York. 1832•, 26. 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 285

but I had not time for this though I wanted very much to go. I had another invitation to go with Mr. Andrews to Madtsonville across the lake twenty-five miles, to be gone two days, and for the same reason declined this, I could have enjoyed a week longer very much but dared not stay from Louisville. I had not time to do all that I could have done, yet I was very busy while there. I walked very much. I visited places, I spent much time with my sister and walked with her. I spent very many hours with Stephen talking with him in the intervals of his engagements. I spent all I could in Nathan's counting room and talked with him and his friends there. ! wrote three letters to Almira, and one long one to my brother Francis26 at Concord. I rose every morning almost as soon as I could see. ! was entirely well all the time. Though l exposed mYself so much in the sun, except however twice I felt an incipient headache from the sun, but this went off immediately by resting in the house. The weather was delightful all the eight days I was there, not a cloud in the sky. The sun was hot but not oppressive. The temperature was much like that of Louisville in June, and of Concord in August. I wore my woolen coat all the time and woolen pants most of the time. Half the people wore linen and cotton clothes, yet I was not oppressed with heat. I carried my umbrella when in the sun, Taking it all in all, I enjoyed the visit exceedingly, the warm and cordial affectionate attentions of my brothers and sister, the new and strange things and people, the foreign language, the different manners of houses--all reminded me perpetually that I was in a foreign land. The extreme activity of the business, the immensity of it and its apparatus of stores, ships and boats--all were sufficient present to pay me for the journey. Yet I saw nothing that surprised me, nothing

26 Francis Jarvls (1794-1876L unlike his brothers, stayed In Concord and farmed with his father Deacon Francis Jarvts. Among other things they rinsed garden seed, notably carrot seed, which Nathan marketed for them in New Orleans. See the letters of Nathan Jarvis, Special Collections, Corcord Free Public Library, Concord, Massachusetts, 286 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

different from what I expected. So faithfully had my brother and sister and wife described the city and its affairs to me that everything except Carrollton appeared exactly as I expected. Carrollton was more beautiful, Its garden more extensive and filled with richer flowers, and the place was less of a town, with fewer houses, than I had thought before. All else confirmed my previous apprehension of New Orleans.

[Return to Louisville, Kentucky, on Board the Steamboat Grey Eagle, Captain Shallcross, Commodore, 28 April to 6 May]

Wednesday, the 28th of April, 1841. I took passage in the Louisville steamboat Grey Eagle, Capt. Shallcross, for Louisville. Henry Clapp of Boston took the stateroom No. 14 with me. Stephen and Nathan went on board with me, and introduced me to Mr. John Henderson, U.S. Senator from Mississippi; to Mr. Zachary, merchant of New Orleans; Mr. J. Thayer, also of N.O.; I found also on board some of those who came down In the Shippen with me and some others that I knew. My brothers and the Miss Biers(?) staid on the boat half an hour, until she started out, at 61/2 o'clock, and then they stood on the top of other boats and waved their hats as the last recognition, the last farewell, and soon we were out of sight. I left New Orleans with some unwillingness, for I had enjoyed eight days of uninterrupted pleasure there, and received much knowledge, and laid the foundation of further happiness in future. Our boat was full of deck passengers below and had many cabin passengers above. The deck travellers are mostly of the Wabash River country, fiat-boat men who have been down with their produce sold their boats and now return. They tell me that they have about one hundred fifty of them on board. They are sensible enough looking fellows, mostly young and mlddle-aged, with now and then an old man among them. They look respectably dressed, coarsely, just as farmers do at home, very cheerful, lively and even frolicsome. They seem to enjoy life as much as any on board and to care as lltfle 1996] Edward Jarvts's Journal 287

for their hard fare as we do for ours. I have been below, saw them stowed thick on the hammocks which are suspended by ropes, one above another, four in one pile. Yet even with this close packing not all can sleep there, but I find many sleeping on the hurricane deck under the projecting roof of the upper deck. I feared they might take cold, but considering that they were as much protected as they are in many flat-boats, and in many log cabins where they dwell in perfect health, I had no further fear for them, and beside, they seemed to enjoy their lodging as well as those in the cabin. Soon as we left the wharf, our deck passengers gave a shout, and others on the shore answered them, and bid them farewell. We passed up by the other boats, the crowd of flats, the long double and treble and even quadruple tiers of ships. It was soon dark. We stood on the hurricane deck as long as we could see. We enjoyed the meeting and passing other boats, the receding lights of the city and the more infrequent lights on the bank. We watched everything with almost as much interest as when we first saw them. But I think the darkness closed utterly upon us, and we lost the sight of some things which we lost in the same way before. The river was full, even fuller than it was when we went down, and we could look down upon the country of the plantations as when we first were on the river. We awoke in the morning of the 29th on the coast among the sugar plantations, and admired as at first the beautiful houses, the comfortable negro cottages, and the rich farms. We passed Baton Rouge which appeared even more beautiful than before. It is 138 miles above New Orleans and the seat of justice of the parish, and my friend Adam Winthrop is here, clerk of courts, with a large salary. This is a densely built town and filled with trees, so as to conceal the homes in many places, and the garrison is almost covered by the forest of the China-tree, which spreads its delicious perfume all over the river and neighboring land. This is a very old French town, once a place of much trade, but now it is said to be losing its trade, which is going to Bayou Sara thirty miles above, for there the bayou and the railroad command that back country which formerlydepended on Baton Rouge. 288 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

Carthage looks more desolate than before. The river has risen at least a foot since we went down, and now the water rushes in with greater violence than it did on the 20th of April. The swamp behind was more full, and the water came nearer the few houses front and behind, and the gully was wider. I saw one or more fiat-boats, which had been drawn in by the force of the current, and the fiat-boat men tell me that this is a most dangerous place to their craft, and even to steamboats, as the rushing water will overcome all the power of men and steam, to resist its direction of the boat. Much of the land is overflowed now. The water is in the woods and over the banks. We saw today four houses partially undermined by the washing of the banks. One house had no door but the front one, and this was over the river, and there a sklff was moored to let the occupants pass in and out. Some houses were (we guessed) a foot or more in the water and deserted. When we wooded on the Louisiana shore, the water was fast working away the bank, and the mooring was within eight or ten rods of the river and filled with water, and here the dry land was only a narrow strip, and this soon to be crumbled away and perhaps to be overflowed by the rise of the river. In some places, they were repairing the levees where the water had washed through them. We reached Vicksburg at about 4:00 PM Capt. Shallcross gave us half an hour's furlough. Then Mr. Clapp and I went to see some friends and customers of his. We went over the town, and it looked as beautiful as when we saw it before (April 18th). Mr. Woodman, a druggist, formerly from Maine, assured me that the business of the place was as good as ever, that people gave and got less credit, economized more, paid less for rent. Mr. Courtenay hires two stores for $800 which in 1837 were let for $1500 each. Yet they said that good stores in the upper part of the town were as much in demand as ever, but that the stores by the river were out of the way of business and therefore not wanted, but there is now a struggle to get the business down there. The long block of large brick stores were built last year, and have never been occupied. 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 289

Those men who swelled and swaggered the most in 1836-37 have failed and gone to Texas and elsewhere. Those who remain are in sound condition, the mercantile community having been thoroughly sifted, and the. chaff is blown away. Although many of those who are left behind are deeply in debt, as for instance he who dwelleth in the great house with the towers, mentioned [previously in] this journal. He is the cashier of the railroad bank, Mr. Collins. Yet the commercial and financial condition of the town (I ask pardon--"city') is far better than it has hitherto been. Mr. Woodman told me that all the doctors were poor--that they charged sufficient yet got no pay. Therein, I give them my hearty sympathy. Vicksburg looked even prettier than before, as we left it yesterday afternoon about 4 or 5 o'clock, so beautifully were the houses and trees mingled among the streets on the hills. 1 gazed at it as long as the direction of the river would permit, and then upon the Walnut Hills, and soon they were out of sight, for we were turning another bend of the river. Last evening we sat on the hurricane deck till about 9:00. It was a moonlight night, the air mild and clear, and the motion of the boat noiseless, for the steam escapes through the wheel-houses, and not above, in the stormy and roaring puff. I loved to sit there and muse upon the river, to see one outline and then another, to watch the forests, as we ran along close under them, and the broad river on the other side. We have, in this ascending the river, kept close by one or the other shore. We found less current there, and we were close by the overhanging trees or the land cleared and open below us. We have had delightful weather now for the three and a half days we have traveled. We have scarcely seen a cloud. Thursday we had a violent wind dead ahead from the Northwest. The waves ran high, and we found it uncomfortable and sometimes difficult to stay on the hurricane deck, and the boat laboured much more to overcome the resistance of this gale. Friday, Saturday and Sunday It has been calm, the sun has shone brightly upon us and is rather hot. I have sat less upon the upper deck. I found the pilots uncommunicative 290 The Fllson Club History Quarterly [July and [they] answer questions as briefly as civility could, and yet convey the undesired information that questions were not acceptable to the pilot. So different from the social and communicative pilots of the Shippen. We have much more social company in the cabin, and about one hundred fifty flat-boat men, who are very cheerful and social, and disposed to talk with me. I have met them on the upper deck and find them intelligent, clear headed, good observers, and like to tell of what they have seen, and their experience has been sure. One has been down the river thirty times in flat-boats. Their life is a hard one, and they earn their money dearly, but their employees and they themselves, if they own the boats, make much money by it. They get 818 a mouth for their service and board, and are allowed twelve days to go back to the Wabash country, and $7 or $9 for their fare. They pay on this boat for deck passage---S3 and wood, or $5 and not wood. A pilot has $70 for taking a boat down. The time of going down varies much. One man said he went down from Pittsburgh to Bayou Sara in thirteen days. He carried ice. Others are four weeks from Louisville to New Orleans. Three weeks from Vincennes to Orleans is a good run. Immense quantities of produce are carried down in these flat-boats. We are now meeting them continually. They are loaded with corn, flour, cattle, oats, pork and horses &c. I should suppose more than half the produce of the upper country is carried down in these boats. Many of the owners go down with them and then get their money, and go back with their money on the deck, and board themselves. Oftentimes a great deal of money is thus carried on the deck. Some of these passengers have several hundred or even some thousand dollars, which they have received for their cargoes. Oftentimes these men are the men of the highest respectability in the counties in which they live, and on their fiat-boats and on the steamboat decks they dress coarsely, and live on coarse fare, and are on equal terms with the meanest. Among them sometimes knaves intrude themselves and pillage from the riches. Last night such a fellow cut open the pantaloons 1996l Edward Jarvis's Journal 291

on the abdomen six inches and the pocket of one of these fortunate fellows, and tried to get his money, but he was detected by the awakening of another who was by his side. Yesterday afternoon, two were detected stealing a coat and the Capt. set them on shore in the wilderness. This is the usual summary judgment and punishment of such fellows. Just above New Madrid now about I0:00, we landed and took in wood at a farm on the Missouri shore. This morning at sunrise it was about twenty miles below New Madrid. I ran into the woods and about the farm. It was a new farm with a pretty frame cabin, and a small log hut. I saw a negro woman who told me that she was hired to her master by her owner who lived some way above, that Mr. Dumos(?), the farmer, employed white hands, except herself, and raised corn and hogs. The woods here were principally gum, poplar and ash--and corn a-plenty. This is the first and only time I ever set'foot in Missouri. We stopped a moment at New Madrid, the seat of the terrible earthquakes in [ 1811 ]. When the ground opened, some of it sank, and many of the houses were shaken, and some I think tumbled down. I saw several houses now warped by the commotion. The land is here much washed and where the town once was the river now runs, and what is left of the town looks as ff it might as well be washed away as to stand, as it now does, a monument of premature decay. I guess there are not more than two dozen houses there, and not one ofthem looks new and comfortable, but old, poor, warped, and as if filled with beggarly inhabitants. The largest, apparently a hotel, with a signpost but no sign, showed very many broken windows and all proof of filth and impossibility of comfort to the traveler. One little church, with an awkward steeple, stood • back. We passed the mouth of the Arkansas River, Saturday (lst) about 3:00 PM. It is not wide, apparently narrower than the Ohio, about as wide as the Connecticut. It came into the Mississippi at right angles, and was hardly visible until we were abreast of it. It 292 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

was skirted with low banks, willows, poplars and ash, as is the Mississippi. Napoleon is the stopping place at the mouth of this river, where passengers and goods get out for change of boats. Napoleon is a bit of a place with a dozen or two houses, two or three larger ware and storage houses shut up, two or three small stores, a hotel or two, and in all a disagreeable-looking place. Montgomery Point, at mouth of White River, we passed at moonlight and saw its half-dozen buildings. We put out a passenger and some freight here. Commerce is in Mississippi--we passed it Sunday forenoon, a large place of two or three dozen houses, huge warehouses, probably for storage of cotton in the winter, some stores, and a steam sawmill. This is the outlet of a good country. Memphis we passed yesterday (2d) noon, and it looked as pretty as before, but it has no landing. I intended to have gone on shore here, but we sat down to dinner just as the boat arrived, and before we finished eating we ran away from the town. Nevertheless Mr. Dana had time to go to the town and ask the latest eastern news, by the eastern mail, which had just arrived. I sat on the boiler deck most of the time yesterday, and admired the beautiful scenery of the river, the islands, and the chutes behind them. These are narrow, and we seemed to be in little canals conformed with the broad river, and the thick woods on both hands made it as lovely as summer and greenness could make it. The long chute behind (east of) Island no. 38 is the prettiest we have passed. I think it must be near three miles long, and very narrow--wider indeed, twice as wide as Concord River and perhaps four times as wide, yet K appeared narrow to us going out of and coming into the Mississippi. The chute behind Island No. [blank] called the Race Ground chute was four years ago very narrow and filled with trees and snags and was very dangerous for navigation. Here the water ran with all its violence and hence it was called by the boatmen Race Ground chute. Now the water has worn itself a channel so wide and deep that the main body of the river runs there and in fact it is now the great channel itself. 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 293

I intended to read in the Dial, but found no time, yet I did read Mr. George Rlpley's letter to his people, and admired his noble views of human nature and the adaptability of Christianity to his soul and powers. Yet I dissent from his conclusion to leave his parish27 because he has not been able to bring his people up to that height of character which Christ and nature has offered them the means of attaining unto. I did not read the Bible, nor the rosary which I have on board, yet I spent the time religiously, admiring and loving and enjoying the works of God. The day was a happy one to me. The scenery was ever fresh and interesting, l never wearied my eye or my heart. Some of the passengers read, some looked silently on, many were in their stateroom. All were" quiet and generally they respected the Sabbath. We wooded on the Arkansas shore, in the great bend called Devils Elbow. I went on shore, into the woods, saw the largest cane brake among the woods I had ever seen. Some cut fish poles at least twelve feet long. The other trees were willow, poplar, ash, gum and sycamore. This farm is three miles from any neighbor, owned by Mr. [blank] I forget the name. We found there a singular looking negro, twenty years old, short, very erect, with his head high, countenance bold, reserved in his manner, and dignified. But his feet were bare, his old pantaloons of tow did not reach more than midway from his knees to the ankle, and they were torn up the leg and thigh, near to the groin, but were tied to the leg by strings. His shirt was torn offthe arm, and his neck and breast were bare, and his vest in as dilapidated condition as his pantaloons. But on his head, he had a nice, long, furred, white hat, not more than half large enough for him, and this was just perched upon the crown. In all, he was a most grotesque-looking fellow. We asked him many questions, and he answered them all in the conclsest and clearest manner and as much in monosyllables as possible. He made no talk, but only responded to us.

27 For a copy of the letter, see Octavius Brooks Frothlngham, George Rlpley (Boston, 1882), 63-91. 294 The Fllson Club History Quarterly [July

In the morning, where we wooded in Arkansas, we saw several negroes, and one boy about eight years old had no covering except a piece of bagging cloth which was thrown over one shoulder and covered partially one side, but his legs, abdomen, thighs, one hip one side of the chest, one shoulder were entirely naked, and this was all the clothing he had away from the houses, and yet the poor fellow seemed to try to wrap this around him. I saw in this place in Louisiana women working in the field. One was ploughing, and the others were hoeing in the great gangs of men. I don't know how many there were, but I suppose ten or twelve women and twice as many men in the gangs. They were all well dressed, so far as I could see from the boat with the spy glass. These, and those negro women whom I saw below New Orleans wheeling brick, were the only instances of women doing what we suppose to be men's work that came within my observation. At all the woodpiles where we stopped negroes came out--men and often women, especially if it were evening. At one which we stopped at, Saturday evening, several of both sexes came out and stood by a great fire which they built on the bank to warn boats of the wood for sale. I was much amused with the Jokes and the fun and bantering of these negroes upon each other, the boys and the girls. One boy we asked to dance, He said he could not dance. He did not think it right, it would do him no good in the next world. Now it is 3:00 PM and we are just at the Islands No, 2, 3 and 4, about ten miles below the mouth of the Ohio. We have passed the Chalk Banks which is a long bluff of white clayey soil, about a quarter of a mile (more or less) long, and twenty to forty feet high, on the Kentucky side of the river, and on the chute behind Wolf Island or No. 5. We also passed the Iron Banks which is a similar bluffof a rusty iron colour, somewhat higher than the chalk banks. I did not see how long they were, for I was on the west side of the boat until just as we passed them. We wooded again this forenoon, on Island No. 8, where we found almost three hundred cords of wood---of ash, hackberry, and poplar--all dry. While there I went into a log house near the wood 1996] Edward Jarvls's Journal 295

pile and saw a man and wife and two children. The hut was about fourteen feet square, with no window, the door open, but the chimney which was out of doors was so low and so large as to admit light enough to cook by, and almost enough to read and sew. This chimney was of logs, and about four feet long and two feet deep. The fire place was stoned up, 2 or 21/2 feel high, and the rest of the chimney presented the bare room to the smoke and cinders. What safety there was against fire, I could not see. The logs of the chimney lay so loosely that I could see through It, and the wind could blow fresh upon the fire and smoke, In the room were two beds that stood end to end, and across the end of the room opposite the fireplace, one table, two or three chairs and a small shelf of books. The room was neat, the woman plainly and tidily dressed, and doubtless a • great deal of happiness is experienced in that little log hut on the island in the Mississippi, The man told me that there were two or three other families on the island, and that the land was worth five or six dollars per acre. Along here, and for fifty miles back, the river is ten or fifteen feet lower than the banks and has evidently fallen lately. The banks are whiter than below, and the land Is of lighter soil. More sand is in its composition and less clay• It is more easily cultivated, and would bear good corn and potatoes. The banks are not so precipitous, but washed down slopingly, not, as in the lower country, washed under and then the upper surface caved down for want of support• We did not get much wood this morning early, for it was ofgreen hackberry and not much ash, and hence we had but little steam till we wooded again at 11 o'clock on the Island. These wood piles are very frequent, almost every two or four miles I think, perhaps not so many; we [are] rarely out of sight of someone. Sometimes they are cut by some squatters who lay thereby a claim to the land, in time of the government sale, or by someone who gives the owner of the land a price for the whole, or pays by the cord. In other places, the owner of the plantations, when they clear the land, haul this wood to the bank of the river ready for the boats, and this Is done by the richest of the planters. In other cases, the wood is fished out 296 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

of the river, and the men keep canoes, and hooks and ropes, to catch the floating drift. This is the most in Louisiana where the wood is all cut from the land near the river. These piles vary from twenty-five to three or four hundred cords along the bank, and the wood sells for $2 along the Ohio and from $2 to $3.50 as we get below on the Mississippi. The boats consume'a vast deal. This boat and the Shippen burn each fifty cords daily. The Sultana burns one hundred cords a day, and the continual boats, probably not less than two hundred or even two hundred fifty, incessantly floating and burning on these rivers, it would seem, must consume soon all the forests within reach. Yet again when we consider that this land bears fifty cords and, in many cases one hundred cords to'the acre, and that these forests line more than ten thousand miles of bank, it must be an almost endless work to clear the whole land within reach of the river by this consumption. At 4 o'clock we came within sight of the Ohio. As we looked from below, it was at first difficult to determine which was the widest, But as we approached I found that the Mississippi was plainly much the broadest stream, Both rivers were muddy, both running rapidly, but there was a line of foam running between the two streams from the point of junction, a mile or more down the great river. The Mississippi waters were on the west and the Ohio waters on the east side of this line. The Ohio waters were rather darker, the mud more loamy. The Mississippi mud was lighter, more clayey. This difference is the more perceptible when only one has recently risen and the other is clear. But I saw no commotion of waters, no one higher than the other, no surging waves where they met together. Now 5 o'clock. We have just left the Mississippi, and the great Bubbleburgh, Cairo, by name, at the point of junction. Here are some large warehouses, for commission and storage and forwarding, one very large brick steam engine factory and iron foundry, one large building, probably for work shops, some fifty or more houses, some pretty, most all white. The town fronting on the Ohio and on a side running northward from this river is enclosed with a high levee, so high that we could only see the roofs of some 1996) Edward Jarvls's Journal 297

low houses beyond it. There is a hope of business in this enclosed swamp, and it is said that some millions of dollars have been expended to raise a city here. But it seems to me a fruitless work, and that a town might be built on better and higher land above on either river or below. Here we passed the Tartar of St. Louis, for New Orleans, and I sent a letter to Nathan by Capt. Sherman on her. We passed the Hall Columbia thirty miles back, and one other ten miles back, and the Edward Shlppen. We passed the Baltic and Great Western yesterday, the Tiber today, which was chiefly loaded with cotton. We met also the Lexington today, at Madrid, and one other above that place, which I now forget. We passed Mills Point about 3 o'clock, and there landed several deck passengers. This is In a hilly place, built just on and below the declivity, and close by the water. However there was a space up a few rods, between the water now and the buildings, which Is sometimes overflowed. Here are several large warehouses, for the storage of produce, tobacco probably for the most part. I counted fifty buildings of every sort, and three or four stores, one tavern (or two, I believe). From this place to the Ohio we occasionally saw high land, on the Kentucky side. The opposite is level. Now 81/2 o'clock. I will quit writing for the night and go to the upper deck. The Ohio River seems to be close at home and we have now but to sleep and glide the rest of the way. I am amused with the singing of the lead heaver. The channels of the bars change much, often with every new freshet, and then the pilot wishes to know the depth. In thls case, he strikes the bell once or twice, once for one side and twice for the other. One man then throws the lead, and sings as he takes it back--"four-half," "quarter less three," or "fine," sometimes, "no bottom"--I suppose, none within the length of his line. Another man stands at the edge of the hurricane deck and repeats in common voice the words of the lead heaver to the pilot, and when he is satisfied, or thinks the suspected shoal is past, be strikes the bell again and then the lead is thrown no more. 298 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

The boat seems to shake more in the Ohio than before. Perhaps it is because the water is not so deep; perhaps we have more steam. The weather has been cold all day. I have on my drawers of flannel, and when l go out I wear my surtout. It has rained some, but hitherto we have had delightful temperatures and a cloudless sky. Awoke this morning at 6:00. It is cold and cloudy; it has rained in the night. I found we were just comingto Shawneetown, and there we landed five passengers from the deck. This was intended to be a place of great trade, and the state of Illinois lald it out on a large scale and sold the lots itself, expecting to make great profits out of the vast city. But it is a failure. The land is low, sometimes overflowed, and the country back is low and not rich. Nevertheless it is a pretty place. I counted fifty homes and stores fronting on the river, and saw another street back on which was certainly one large block of brick stores. There is an elegant bank, and as good a levee or landing as I have seen on the Ohio or Mississippi, except at Cincinnati. Below this town we saw much cleared land, but yet the woods approached the town and river. The vegetation along here is more backward than in the Mississippi, leaves smaller, willows yellow not the full green. Now 12:50, just left Henderson where we took in and put out some deck passengers. This is a pretty town with many houses on the bluff, and some gullies which the water has washed through the land to the river. Now from my state room all the Kentucky shore is high, cleared, • and cultivated with fields and fences like the towns in Massachusetts--houses and barns on the bank and all the appearance of an old country. I have yesterday and today got acquainted with one pilot, Mr. Seymour, who is a quiet, kindly man, willing to talk, but not so communicative as Mr. Jordan. Yet he is very willing to answer my questions. 2:00. We Just came in sight of Evansville and ran on deck to see it. The pilot, Mr. S., said it was a pretty place with good business 1996] Edward Jarvis's Journal 299

and good people, and churches, and few coffee houses, and "Don't you notice," said he, "that there are almost no loafers about the landing?." He said he thought no town could thrive well without churches. He admired the two churches of Evansville and always liked to look at them as he passed. Then we went down. The mate said they "should land much freight and stay an hour." So Mr. Clapp and I went into the town and through many streets and saw the taverns, churches, and bank, and canal. We looked at all the pretty, neat, white and brick houses and cottages, and the beautiful yards in front. The stores are neat, with few loungers about, grog shops few and no loafers in them. We have not seen so pretty a town in the west, certainly not beyond Louisville. There is an air of comfort and neatness in all the houses, an air of elegant refinement in the whole town. We saw very few poor homes, no broken windows, few unpainted, wooden buildings. The bank is of very elegant architecture. There is much business done here, for here all the produce of the Wabash country is landed for reshipment in steamboats. We saw the Lily landing a great quantity of tobacco from Wabash. We landed much freight for the same region. Here is the main road from Vincennes, and all the country above to the Ohio. Here about fifty of our deck passengers, and others from the cabin, landed to go up to the Wabash country. They were a merry set of fellows and I doubt not their hearts were made glad to get so near h9me and land in their own state. They had goods with them, some of them, which they had got in the lower country. This town is on a plain, on the bluff fifty feet (?1 above the river, and secure from inundations, but the town shows but little to us on the river. Back of It, we come to the canal, which extends into the country as far as [blank] and is, or was, intended to extend to the whole Wabash region and to Lake Erie. When it will be done, mortal foresight can not tell. We pass rapidly. We are now wooding not as on the Mississippi from the bank, but on the Ohlo the wood is put into fiat-boats, for the shore is not so steep as to admit the steamboats to come close 300 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

to the banks. These flat-boats with wood are moored ready for use. Going up, they lash this flat to the side of the steamer, and it goes on its journey, while the men throw the wood from the one to the other. This takes but a few minutes. Then they unlash the boat and it floats with its owner back to its home, ready to be filled again for another sale. The banks above Evansville look higher, and the trees are mostly of the buttonwood growing by the water side, and on the slope, as they do near Louisville. The land is very much cleared, and the soil is light and rich. Below Evansville the bottom is low and sometimes overflowed; but rarely above that place. On the Kentucky side the land is higher and more cleared than in Indiana. Yet we have seen many very well-cleared and thrifty farms in Indiana, some fine cottages, and very comfortable barns. Things look prosperous. And also many log houses from which come many children to see us as we passed by them. The pilot, Mr. Hamilton, tells me that it is very unhealthy here in the fall, that they have very heavy fogs there and consequently risk intermittent fever. We passed Owensboro at about 6:00 and saw its pretty town perched up on the top of the high bank, and there we landed several deck passengers. Indeed we have been perpetually landing them at least a dozen times since we came into this river. They are the fiat-boat men who belong along the river and to its vicinity, glad enough to get to their homes after their long and worrisome but profitable Journey. I awoke this morning, when the bell rang, at about 6:00. We were just abreast of the spring mlll and running to Brandenburgh. I looked at the pilot book and found that we were forty-one miles from home, so we shall reach home at about 10 or IOV2 o'clock, and then I shall see Almira.... Dusk, dark, the shade of those pretty trees, so close and so thick, maple and buttonwood, on the Kentucky slde. The morning is cloudy. Now it is 7: I0, the second bell has rung in the cabin, and I hear the plates rattle as ff the breakfast approached. We shall eat in about an hour. I have been up more than an hour, washed in the 1996] Edward Jarvts's Journal 301

wash house and shaved in state room as usual. We are passing a good country, thicker settlements and better farms and orchards. We saw no orchards on the Mississippi nor I think on the Ohio below Shawneeinwn. Here they are rich and beautiful. We have had a delightful trip. The air has been cold, but mostly clear, and I could see all the vicinity of the river. We have had over sixty cabin passengers, beside several that ate at the second table, and upwards of one hundred fifty deck passengers. We have six ladies, some of Baltimore, three of Louisville, and one stranger, a young wife of thirteen, just married and her husband of twenty only. Our passengers are from all quarters. One is a Dr. [blank] formerly of Hartford, Ct., [who] then settled and practiced very successfully in Natchez, and is now a cotton planter. [His] brother is from New Haven, Ct. and is settled in Natchez, a merchant. Another from Dorchester, Mass. and now living in Plaquemine. Another a Dr. from York County, North Carolina, now settled in Miss. Several are from Louisville, many from New Orleans, all cheerful and pleasant. But what to me is the most agreeable of all is my roommate, Mr. Henry Clapp Jr. of Boston with whom I have very much sympathy, who feels a deep interest in the objects of benevolence and public improvement that I do. Highly cultivated, deeply and persuadingly religious, and withal a great tenderness of heart. I love to talk with him as well as with most any of my more long-term friends. I sat last evening with him till after 12:00 talking upon subjects of interest to me and which I find few that are willing to think upon. Now 41/4 o'clock we are within about nine miles of Louisville. The river is rising and the Capt. says we shall be able to go over the Falls, for which I am glad. We are passing Knobbs and hills and some rocky precipices on the north shore. The foliage here is not quite so well developed as we saw yesterday below Shawneetown. The sycamores are brownish, and leaves small, air cold, cloudy, inclined to rain. I feel anxious lest some ill may have happened in Louisville in my absence, yet why should I. I have had a delightful journey, have been blessed by kind Providence with protection, sympathy, knowledge, friendship and enjoyment, and why should I 302 The Filson Club History Quarterly [July

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Louisville Waterfront, 1850 The Filson Club Historical Society

not trust that the same care has been extended to my friend, my dear wife at home? Yet this feeling of anxiety keeps constantly coming over me, and then my better reflections suppress it. I have talked on this journey home mostly with Mr. Clapp, then with Dr. Hubbard of Miss., with Mr. Masters of Louisville, Mr. Plummet of New Albany, Roberts of Portland, Capt. Gay of Louisville, Thomas J. Martin of d[ittlo, Capt. Shallcross, the pilot, Mr. Seymour, Dr. [blank] of North Carolina, Disherman of Natchez. Zachary of New Orleans, J. Thayer formerly of Weymouth, Mass. and now of New Orleans, Mr. Thompson formerly of New York now of New Orleans, Swift formerly of Watertown, Mass. now of Lexington, a gent of Wheeling, Ohio formerly of New York now of Miss., a carpenter formerly of Dorchester now of Plaquemine and with many of the deck passengers of the Wabash country, with Mr. Ficldin(?) of Ky. We have had in all about ninety cabin passengers, and seventy at once. They were constantly changing. We had upwards of one ,_ ,I • ,: , •, i¸ ,, ,i iI i'..,,,, • i i•Ii • i 1 1 • : , : i i i ,

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hundred fifty deck passengers. I had one deck passenger, Claypole of Pike Co., Illinois, with a slight fever. He was sick on the upper deck[?], and got well. I prescribed for one with sore eyes, one for a bowel complaint, another for inflamed throat. I found plenty of medicines in the Boat's chest. I was sent for to see another sick man, but at that moment could not be found. He took calomel and jalap and got well.

Acknowledgments I would llke to thank the director and trustees of the Concord Free Public Library for their permission to publish this manuscript and to acknowledge, with grateful appreciation, the support of Marcia Moss, curator, and Joyce Woodman and Leslie Wilson, staff members of the Concord Library Special Collections. Special thanks to Reed Anthony for editorial assistance.

Editor's Note The Mississippi Journal is written in a small (six-by-eight-inch) notebook with faded blue cardboard covers and a frayed leather binding. Edward wrote in ink on two sides of the page, with page numbers and topic headings in the margins. His dates are not always consistent with the calendar; sometimes he wrote about events of the previous day as if they were the events of the day of entry. He left Louisville on 16 April, arrived in New Orleans on the following Tuesday evening (six days), left New Orleans on Wednesday, 28 April and arrived back in Louisville on 6 May'(eight days). His handwriting, never clear, was made nearly unintelligible by the continual jostling motion of the steamboat, He generally wrote without cross-outs or misspellings, but his punctuation was regularly ambiguous. It has been corrected silently. Words in brackets have been added for clarity. "(?)" indicates an editorial guess, "[blank]" indicates Edward's omission in the manuscript. Ellipses indicate editorial omissions made for reasons of economy and continuity.