You are kind enough to suppose that some details of what I have seen, enjoyed, and suffered, in the valley of the Mississippi, during ten years' journeying, and occasional residence in that region, might be of sufficient interest for publication. I have been so much accustomed to deference to your judgment, as to suppose at times, that the capability, which you supposed, must exist. Often I have taken up the task, and as often it has fallen from my hands. There are such showers of journals, and travels, and residences, and geographies, and gazetteers ; and every person, who can in any way fasten the members cf a sentence together, after having travelled through a country, is so sure to begin to scribble about it, that I have felt a kind of awkward consciousness at the thought of starting in the same beaten track. And yet I cannot certainly be classed with those writers of travels, who travel post, or are wafted through a country in a steam boat, and assume, on the ground of having thus traversed it, to know all about it. Nor can this be pronounced an effort of book-making, in which the contents of other books are served up in another form. It will probably be my most obvious fault, to have consulted no others' writings or opinions, and to have relied too much for interest and instruction, on what I

have myself seen and felt. I have, as you know, drunk of every considerable stream that yields tribute to the Mississippi, far from the parent channel ; have traversed the country in all directions ; have resided a considerable time in the northern, middle, and southern divisions, and in the discharge of duties, which necessarily brought me in contact with all classes of the inhabitants ; rso that, as far as long and familiar observation of the country can qualify one to describe it, I am so qualified. I speak not of the vicissitudes of disease and suffering which I have endured ; of the trials and privations which I encountered. The retrospect is too gloomy for myself, and would, probably, be neither of interest nor use to my readers. „ Another discouragement has occurred, in thinking of the task which you propose. Had I originally contemplated such a work as this, I should have kept a regular and detailed journal. The duties which I assumed when I first visited this country, compelled me to keep such a journal for some years. This manuscript, together with many others, was blown away in a hurricane which occurred on the Arkansas, in which every part of the house where we resided was penetrated by the wind and the rain ; and in which the suffering and danger of a sick family precluded anxiety upon any other score. It was a detail, too, of religious duties, and they are necessarily so uniform, that a page or two will serve as a sample of all the rest. I have felt the less regret at the loss of these materials, from reflecting, that a traveller who copies from a daily journal will hardly fail to copy much that is trivial and uninteresting. But the incidents that have remained fresh in my memory for the period of ten years, must have excited a vivid impres-

sion when they occurred, and must have had, in the narrator at least, their share of interest.

On my return to my native country after so many years of absence, you were aware how many acquaintances were importuning me for some information of this sort. And you are aware, how much the feebleness and dejection of a constitution, broken down by so much wandering, toil, and disease, endured in the wilderness, and in those sickly climes, disqualified me for such a task. Nor is this intended to disarm criticism, but simply to account for deficiency either of manner or matter. For the rest, if in the following pages the feelings of the writer occupy too conspicuous a place in the view of that severe ordeal, in which the square and compass are applied to works of this kind, let it be remembered, that these pages were chiefly intended for the eye of friends, to whom, it was well known, such would be the most interesting parts of the work. Let him that objects, too, be constituted in any measure as I am, and let him have been placed in the actual positions in which I have been placed, and I would then hope, that my apology would be furnished.

You are entirely informed of the circumstances, which induced me, after a laborious but secluded ministry of fourteen years, to leave that asylum, and direct my course to the West. You remember the miserable state of my health, and the hopes I entertained,- that in a milder climate and a new order of

things, I might regain my health and cheerfulness. I remember but too faithfully, the bitter spirit of political rancour, that rendered the condition of so many ministers at that time so unhappy. With many prayers on my own part, and that of my friends, that these evils might not follow me, my family left the land of their fathers the fourth of October 1815. Toward the latter part of the month, we began to ascend the Allegany hills. In our slow mode of travelling, we had had them in view several days. With their interminable blue outline, stretching hill beyond hill, and interposing to the imagination of such travellers as we were, a barrier to return almost as impassable as the grave, it may easily be imagined with what interest we contemplated them. It is, I believe, generally conceded to the inhabitants of New England, that, perhaps, with the exception of the Scotch, they have more national feeling than any other people. We had broken all the ties that render the place, where we first drew breath, so dear. Occasional samples of the people and the country beyond these hills, not at all calculated to sooth our feelings, or to throw pleasing associations over our contemplated residence beyond them, had frequently met us. The people on our route constantly designated them by the appellation of u back-woodsmen," and we heard these men themselves uniformly calling their baggage " plunder." The wolf, the bear, and the bald eagle, were the most frequent emblems in the tavern-signs, near the acclivities of these mountains. The bald eagle itself was soaring in the blue of the atmosphere, high above the summits of the first ridge, and its shrill and savage cries were sufficiently loud to reach our ears.

We had, too, many " compagnons de voyage," exact samples of the general character of New England emigrants ; poor, active, parsimonious, inquisitive, and fully impressed that no country, in moral advantages, could equal the country which they had left. They felt, in common with us, their love for the dear homes they had left, increasing as they receded from them. In common with us, too, they calculated to have taken a final farewell of those homes. When we had at last reached the highest point of the first of the three parallel ridges, before we began to descend a declivity, which we expected would forever shield the Atlantic country from our view ; before we went " over the hills and far away," it will readily be conceived, that a family which had been reared in seclusion, such as ours, would be likely to drop " some natural tears," and to take a long and anxious look at the land, which contained all their ties and charities. We tried to comfort each other, as we steadily contemplated the blue summits that wrere just before us, that we had a world in Which " to choose our place of rest, and Providence our guide." But we had already wandered far enough from home, to admit the full truth of the exclamation of Attala : " Happy they, who have not seen the smoke of the stranger's fire."

We passed these hills on the common route from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. The first ridge was not very precipitous, and I should suppose, short of a thousand feet above the level of its base. The grandeur

of these mountains, so impressive when their blue outline just touches the horizon in the distance, diminishes when you reach their summits. They have not the pathless precipices, nor the rushing torrents, of the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont. But whatever they wanted in sublimity, at the time when we passed them, they more than made up in the difficulty and danger of crossing them. I have no wish, however, to fatigue you with the recital of our exertions in lifting the carriage up precipitous ascents, washed by the rains, and the still greater exertions necessary to let it down again. We passed hundreds of Pittsburg waggons, in the crossing. Many of them had broken axles and wheels, and in more than one place it was pointed out to us, that teams had plunged down the precipices and had perished. In descending the ridges, a winding road, just wide enough to admit one carriage, was carried round the verge of the declivity, perhaps for more than a mile. In this case, if two carnages met, there would be no alternative but to retreat to the commencement of the narrow way. To prevent this, it is necessary that the carriage, wThich is commencing the ascent or descent, give notice by blowing a horn, or sending a messenger in advance.

These people, who drive teams between Philadelphia and Pittsburg, were to me, in their manners and way of living, a new species, perfectly unique in their appearance, language, and habits. They devote themselves to this mode of subsistence for years, and spend their time continually on the road. They seemed to me to be more rude, profane, and selfish, than either sailors, boatmen, or hunters, to whose modes of living theirs is the most assimilated. We found them addicted to drunkenness, and very little disposed to assist

each other. Such was the aspect they presented to us.. We were told, there were honourable exceptions, and even associations, who, like the sacred band of Thebes, took a kind of oath to stand by, and befriend each other. I often dropped among them, as by accident, that impressive tract, the " Swearer's Prayer." I was pleased to remark the result of their reflections, as they read the tract, apart on their window-seats. In some it seemed to produce a momentary thoughtfulness ; in others a smile ; and again in others, a deep growl of acquiescence, very like that which every one has heard, who has attended a council of Indians, and heard them express a kind of reluctant assent to terms proposed to them.

In the valley, between the middle and the last of the parallel ridges, we encountered a drove of more than a thousand cattle and swine, from the interior of Ohio ; a name which yet sounded in our ears like the land of savages. The appearance of the swine and cattle, in our eyes, had an unnatural shagginess, and roughness, like wolves ; and such, you know, even yet, are the impressions of multitudes of the Atlantic people, with respect to that beautiful country. The name of the country from which this drove came, added something, no doubt, to these associations. They were from "Mad River." ,We were told that the chief drover, a man as untamed and wild in appearance, as Robinson's man, Friday, was taking them on to Pennsylvania to fatten, previous to their being sold in the Philadelphia market.

There is a considerable tract of table-land, before you descend the last hill, and on this there was a public house. Here we encountered a stage broken down. The passengers had been drenched in rain. They

were a company of tinners, going to establish themselves somewhere in the West, and a printer from Connecticut, with his young and beautiful wife, about to commence a printing-office for a gazette in Kentucky. This fine young woman, who had suffered her share with the rest, gave us an example of natural equanimity and philosophy. She was cheerful and conversable, while the other women were querulous, in tears, and out of temper with every thing about them, and full of all the tedious complaints with which inexperienced travellers meet the incidental disasters of their way.