Transcriber’s Note

Some compound words appeared both with and without a hyphen. They are given as printed. Where a word is hyphenated on a line break, the hyphen is retained if the preponderance of other appearances indicate it was intended.

The few footnotes are repositioned at the end the text, and have been re-numbered consecutively (1-12).

Please consult the note at the end of this text for details of any corrections made.

CATLIN’S NOTES

OF

EIGHT YEARS’ TRAVELS AND RESIDENCE
IN EUROPE

WITH HIS
NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN COLLECTION.

VOLUME I.

ADVENTURES
OF THE
OJIBBEWAY AND IOWAY INDIANS
IN
ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND BELGIUM;

BEING NOTES OF
EIGHT YEARS’ TRAVELS AND RESIDENCE IN EUROPE
WITH HIS
NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN COLLECTION,

BY GEO. CATLIN.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

With numerous Engravings.

THIRD EDITION.

LONDON:
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR,
AT HIS INDIAN COLLECTION, NO. 6, WATERLOO PLACE.

1852.

PREFACE.

The reader of this book, being supposed to have read my former work, in two volumes, and to have got some account from them, of the eight years of my life spent amongst the wild Indians of the “Far West,” in the forests of America, knows enough of me by this time to begin familiarly upon the subject before us, and to accompany me through a brief summary of the scenes of eight years spent amidst the civilization and refinements of the “Far East.” After having made an exhibition of my Indian Collection for a short time, in the cities of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, in the United States, I crossed the Atlantic with it—not with the fear of losing my scalp, which I sometimes entertained when entering the Indian wilderness—and entirely without the expectation of meeting with excitements or novelties enough to induce me to commit the sin of writing another book; and the thought of doing it would never have entered my head, had not another of those untoward accidents, which have directed nearly all the important moves of my life, placed in my possession the materials for the following pages, which I have thought too curious to be withheld from the world.

After I had been more than four years in England, making an exhibition of my collection, and endeavouring, by my lectures in various parts of the kingdom, to inform the English people of the true character and condition of the North American Indians, and to awaken a proper sympathy for them, three different parties of Indians made their appearance, at different dates, in England, for the purpose of exhibiting themselves and their native modes to the enlightened world, their conductors and themselves stimulated by the hope of gain by their exertions.

These parties successively, on their arrival, (knowing my history and views, which I had made known to most of the American tribes,) repaired to my Indian Collection, in which they felt themselves at home, surrounded as they were by the portraits of their own chiefs and braves, and those of their enemies, whom they easily recognised upon the walls. They at once chose the middle of my Exhibition Hall as the appropriate place for their operations, and myself as the expounder of their mysteries and amusements; and, the public seeming so well pleased with the fitness of these mutual illustrations, I undertook the management of their exhibitions, and conducted the three different parties through the countries and scenes described in the following pages.

In justice to me, it should here be known to the reader, that I did not bring either of these parties to Europe; but, meeting them in the country, where they had come avowedly for the purpose of making money, (an enterprise as lawful and as unobjectionable, for aught that I can see, at least, as that of an actor upon the boards of a foreign stage,) I considered my countenance and aid as calculated to promote their views; and I therefore justified myself in the undertaking, as some return to them for the hospitality and kindness I had received at the hands of the various tribes of Indians I had visited in the wildernesses of America.

In putting forth these notes, I sincerely hope that I may give no offence to any one, by endeavouring to afford amusement to the reader, and to impart useful instruction to those who are curious to learn the true character of the Indians, from a literal description of their interviews with the fashionable world, and their views and opinions of the modes of civilized life.

These scenes have afforded me the most happy opportunity of seeing the rest of Indian character (after a residence of eight years amongst them in their native countries), and of enabling me to give to the world what I was not able to do in my former work, for the want of an opportunity of witnessing the effects which the exhibition of all the ingenious works of civilized art, and the free intercourse and exchange of opinions with the most refined and enlightened society, would have upon their untutored minds. The reader will therefore see, that I am offering this as another Indian book, and intending it mostly for those who have read my former work, and who, I believe, will admit, that in it I have advanced much further towards the completion of a full delineation of their native character.

I shall doubtless be pardoned for the unavoidable want of system and arrangement that sometimes appears in minuting down the incidents of these interviews—for recording many of the most trivial opinions and criticisms of the Indians upon civilized modes, and also the odd and amusing (as well as grave) notions of the civilized world, upon Indian manners and appearance, which have got into my note-book, and which I consider it would be a pity to withhold.

I have occasionally stepped a little out of the way, also, to advance my own opinion upon passing scenes and events; drawing occasional deductions, by contrasting savage with civilized life (the modes of the “Far West” with those of the “Far East”); and, as what I have written, I offer as matter of history, without intending to injure any one, I do not see why I should ask pardon for any possible offence that may be given to the reader, who can only be offended by imagining what never was meant.

During the series of lectures which I had been giving in various parts of England, and in my own country, wherein I had been contending for the moral and religious elevation of the Indian character, many of my hearers have believed that I had probably been led to over-estimate it, from the fact that I had beheld it in the wilderness, where there was nothing better to contrast it with. But I venture to say, that hundreds and thousands who read this book, and who became familiar with these wild people whilst in the enlightened world, and in the centre of fashion, where white man was shaking the poor Indian by the hand, and watching for his embarrassment while he was drawing scintillations from him, as the flint draws fire from the steel, will agree with me that the North American Indian rises highest in the estimation of his fellow-men, when he is by the side of those who have the advantage of him by their education, and nothing else.

Contemplated or seen, roaming in his native wilds, with his rude weapons, lurking after game or his enemy, he is looked upon by most of the world as a sort of wild beast; but when, with all his rudeness and wildness, he stands amongst his fellow-men to be scanned in the brilliant blaze of the Levée into which he has been suddenly thrown, the dignified, the undaunted (and even courteous) gentleman, he there gains his strongest admirers, and the most fastidious are willing to assign him a high place in the scale of human beings.

Into many such positions were these three parties of the denizens of the American forest thrown, during their visits to the capitals and provincial towns of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and Belgium; and as I was by their side, their interpreter, at the hospitable boards, the Soirées and Levées to which they were invited by the gentry, the nobility, and crowned heads of the three kingdoms, I consider it due to them, and no injustice to the world, to record the scenes and anecdotes I have witnessed in those hospitable and friendly efforts of enlightened and religious people, to elicit the true native feelings of, and to commune with, their benighted fellow-men.

The Author.

CONTENTS OF VOL. 1.

CATLIN’S NOTES IN EUROPE,
&c. &c.

CHAPTER I.

The Author embarks at New York, with his Indian Collection, and cage with two grizly Bears, for England, in the fall of 1839—Packet-ship Roscius, Captain Collins—Gale in the middle of the ocean—A ship dismasted and in distress—The Captain and twenty-eight men taken off and saved—The shipwrecked Captain and his faithful dog—“My man Daniel”—Sailor’s nose taken off by grizly bear—Dr. Madden—Terrible gale—Sea-sickness of the grizly bears—Alarm on deck—“Bears out of their cage”—Passengers rush below and close the hatches—A supposed Bear enters the cabin!—Great excitement—The explanation—The gale subsides—Amusing mistake—The Author in the steerage—Two eccentric characters—Arrival in Liverpool.

In the fall of the year 1839 I embarked at New York on board of the packet-ship Roscius, Captain Collins, for Liverpool, with my Indian collection; having received a very friendly letter of advice from the Hon. C. A. Murray, master of Her Majesty’s household, who had formerly been a fellow-traveller with me on the Mississippi and other rivers in America; and who, on his return to London, had kindly made a conditional arrangement for my collection in the Egyptian Hall, in Piccadilly.

Mr. George Adlard, an Englishman, residing in the city of New York, had also exerted a friendly influence for me in procuring an order from the Lords of Her Majesty’s Treasury for passing my collection into the kingdom free from the customary duties; and under these auspices I was launched upon the wide ocean, with eight tons freight, consisting of 600 portraits and other paintings which I had made in my sojourn of eight years in the prairies and Rocky Mountains of America—several thousands of Indian articles, costumes, weapons, &c., with all of which I intended to convey to the English people an accurate account of the appearance and condition of the North American tribes of Indians.[1]

On board also, as a part of my heavy collection, and as a further illustration of the rude inhabitants of the “Far West” I had, in a huge iron cage, two grizly bears, from the Rocky Mountains; forming not only the heaviest and most awkward part of my freight, but altogether the most troublesome, as will be seen hereafter.

The wind was kind to us, and soon drove us across the Atlantic, without more than an incident or two worth recording, which I had minuted down as follows:—About the middle of the ocean, and in the midst of a four or five days’ heavy gale, we came suddenly upon a ship, partly dismasted, with signals of distress flying, and water-logged, rolling about at the mercy of the merciless waves. We rounded-to with great danger to our own craft, and, during the early part of the night, succeeded, with much difficulty, in taking off the captain and crew of twenty-eight men, just before she went down. This was a common occurrence, however, and needs no further notice, other than of a feature or two which struck me as new. When the poor, jaded, and water-soaked fellows were all safely landed on the deck of our vessel, they laid down upon their faces and devoutly thanked God for their deliverance; and last of all that was lifted on board from their jolly-boat was their keg of rum, the only thing which they had brought with them when they deserted the ship. “This,” good Captain Collins said, “you will not want now, my boys,” and he cast it into the sea.

Captain James, a bland and good-natured Scotsman, commander of the Scotia, the unfortunate vessel, was invited by Captain Collins to the cabin of the Roscius, and into his state-room, where he was soon put into a suit of dry and warm clothes, and afterwards seated at the table; where, suddenly, a sullen resistance to food, and contemplative tears rolling over his cheeks, showed his rough shell to contain a heart that was worthy of the fondest affections of a dear wife and sweet little ones—none of which was he blessed with, if I recollect aright. But when his grief found utterance, he exclaimed, “My God! I have left my poor dog tied to the mast of my old craft. There he is, poor fellow! When we took to the jolly-boat I never thought of my poor Pompey!”

The briny tears seemed to burn this veteran’s hardened features as they ran over his cheeks; and hunger and fatigue, and all gave way to them and grief, until sleep had dried them up, and taken the edge from his anguished mind.

The next morning, his recital of the affectionate deeds of the life of his faithful dog, “who had made eighteen voyages across the Atlantic with him, and who would always indicate land a-head by his nose sooner than the sailors could discern it from the mast-head—whom he had, in kindness, lashed to the mast for his safety, and in carelessness abandoned to his unavoidable fate,” brought tears of pity in my own eyes. Poor man! he often wept for his faithful dog—and I as often wept for him, on our way from the middle of the ocean to Liverpool. We were, at this time, still in the midst of the terrible gale, which was increasing in its fury, and had already become quite too much for the tastes and the stomachs of the grizlies—a few words more of whom must go into this chapter.

These two awkward voyageurs from the base of the Rocky Mountains, which I had reared from cubs, and fed for more than four years—for whose roughness in clawing and “chawing” I had paid for half a dozen cages which they had demolished and escaped from, and the prices of as many dogs “used up” in retaking them, had now grown to the enormous size of eight or ten hundred pounds each; requiring a cage of iron so large that it could not be packed amongst the ship’s cargo below, but must needs occupy a considerable space on the deck, in the form and size somewhat of a small house.

The front of this cage was formed of huge iron bars, kindly indulging the bruins to amuse themselves with a peep at what was progressing on deck, whilst it afforded the sailors and steerage passengers the amusement of looking and commenting upon the physiognomy and manœuvres of these rude specimens from the wilderness of America. This huge cage, with its inmates, had ridden into and partly through the gale with us, when the bears became subjects of more violent interest and excitement than we had as yet anticipated or could have wished. What had taken (and was taking) place amongst the sick and frightened group of passengers during this roaring, whistling, thrashing, and dashing gale, was common-place, and has been a thousand times described; but the sea-sickness, and rage, and fury of these two grizly denizens of the deep ravines and rocky crags of the Rocky Mountains, were subjects as fresh as they were frightful and appalling to the terrified crew and passengers who were about them, and therefore deserve a passing comment.

The immediate guardian of these animals was a faithful man by the name of Daniel Kavanagh, who had for several years been in my employment as curator of my collection, and designed to accompany me in my tour through England. This man has occupied a conspicuous place in my affairs in Europe, and much will be said of him in the following pages, and the familiar and brief cognomen of “Daniel” or “Dan” applied to him. On embarking with this man and his troublesome pets at New York, I had fully explained to Captain Collins their ferocious, and deceitful, and intractable nature, who had consequently issued his orders to all of his crew and to the steerage passengers not to venture within their reach, or to trifle with them. Notwithstanding all this precaution, curiosity, that beautiful trait of human nature, which often becomes irresistible in long voyages, and able to turn the claws of the Devil himself into the soft and tapering fingers of a Venus or a Daphne, got the better of the idle hours of the sailors, who were amusing themselves and the passengers, in front of the iron bars, by believing that they were wearing off by a sort of charm the rough asperities of their grizly and grim passengers by shaking their paws, and squaring and fending off the awkward sweeps occasionally made at them by the huge paw of the she bear, which she could effectually make by lying down and running her right arm quite out between the iron bars. On one of these (now grown to be amusing) occasions, one of the sailors was “squared off” before the cage, inviting her grizly majesty to a sort of set-to, when she (seemingly aware of the nature of the challenge) gradually extended her arm and her huge paw a little and a little further out of her cage, with her eyes capriciously closed until it was out to its fullest extent, when she made a side-lick at his head, and an exceedingly awkward one for the sailor to parry. It was lucky for him, poor fellow, that he partly dodged it; though as her paw passed in front of his face, one of her claws carried away entirely his nose, leaving it fallen down and hanging over his mouth, suspended merely by a small piece of skin or gristle, by which alone he could claim it.

Here was a sudden check to the familiarity with the bears; the results of which were, a renewal of the orders of non-intercourse from Captain Collins, and a marked coolness between the sailors and steerage passengers and the grizlies during the remainder of the voyage.

The sailor was committed to the care of Dr. Madden, in the cabin, the distinguished traveller in Africa and the West Indies, and now one of our esteemed fellow-passengers, who skilfully replaced and arranged his nose with stitches and splints, and attended to it during the voyage. The poor fellow continued to swear vengeance on the bears when they should reach the land; but I believe that when they were landed in Liverpool, his nose was not sufficiently secure to favour his design. This unlucky affair had happened some days previous to the gale which I have begun to describe; and with the unsociable and cold reserve with which they were subsequently treated by all on board (visited only at stated periods by their old, but not yet confiding friend Daniel, who brought them their daily allowance), they had, as I have mentioned, become partakers and sufferers with us in the pangs and fears of the hurricane that was sweeping over the vessel and the sea about us.

The third day of the gale became the most alarming, and the night of that day closing in upon us, seemed like the gloomy shroud amidst the hurrying winds and the cracking spars, that was to cover us in death. Until this day, though swinging (and now and then jumping) from mountains to mountains of waves, the ship and the elements mingled our fears with amusement. When, however, this day’s light was gone, curiosity’s feast was finished, and fear was no longer chained under our feet—we had reached the climax of danger, and terror seemed to have seized and reigned through every part of the ship. The bears, in contemplative or other vein, had been mute; but at this gloomy hour, seeming to have lost all patience, added, at first their piteous howlings, and then their horrid growls, to the whistling of the winds; and next, the gnashing of their teeth, and their furious lurches, and bolts, and blows against the sides of their cage, to the cracking of spars and roaring of the tempest! Curiosity again, in desperate minds, was resuscitated, and taking in its insatiable draughts even in the midst of this jarring and discordant medley of darkness—of dashing foam, of cracking masts, and of howlings and growlings and raging of grizly bears; for when the lightnings flashed, men (and even women) were seen crawling and hanging about the deck, as if to see if they could discover the death that was ready with his weapons drawn to destroy them.

The captain had twenty times ordered all below, but to no purpose, until in the indiscriminate confusion of his crew and the passengers, in the jet blackness of the gale, when his ship was in danger, and our lives, his trumpet announced that “the bears were on deck!”

“Good God!” was exclaimed and echoed from one end of the ship’s deck to the other; “the grizly bears are out! down with the hatches—down the hatches!” The scrambling that here took place to reach the cabins below can only be justly known to each actor who performed his part in his own way; and of these there were many. Some descended headlong, some sidewise, and others rolled down; and every one with a ghastly glance back upon the one behind him, as a grizly bear, of course, that was to begin his “chawing” the next moment.

When the scrambling was all over, and the hatches all safe, all in the cabin were obliged to smile for a moment, even in the midst of the alarm, at the queer position and manœuvres of a plump little Irish woman who had slipped down the wrong hatchway by accident, and left her “other half” to spend a night of celibacy, and of awful forebodings, in the steerage, where she would have gone, but to which her own discretion as well as the united voices of the cabin passengers decided her not to attempt to make her way over the deck during the night.

The passengers, both fore and aft, were now all snugly housed for the rest of the night, and the captain’s smothered voice through his trumpet, to his hands aloft, and the stamping of the men on deck, while handling the ropes and shifting the sails, were all caught by our open ears, and at once construed into assaults and dreadful conflicts with the grizly bears on deck.

In the midst of these conjectures some one of the passengers screamed and sprang from near the stairway entering the cabin, when it was discovered, to the thrilling amazement of all, that one of the bears had pawed open the hatchway, and was descending into the cabin! The ladies’ salon, beyond the cabin, was the refuge to which the instant rush was making, when the always good and musical sound of the captain’s voice was recognized. “Why! you don’t think I’m a grizly bear, do you?” The good fellow! he didn’t intend to frighten anybody. He had just raised the hatch and came down to get a little breath and a “drop to drink.” He is as unlike to a grizly bear as any one else in the world, both in looks and in disposition; but he happened to have on for the occasion a black oil-cloth hood or cap, which was tied under the chin; and a jacket covered with long fur on the outside, making his figure (which was of goodly size, and which just filled the gangway), with a little of the lively imagination belonging to such moments, look the counterpart of a grizly bear. “Where’s Catlin?” said he; “damn the bears!” “Are they out?” cried the passengers all together. “Out?—yes; they have eaten one man already, and another was knocked overboard with a handspike; he was mistaken for one of the bears. We are all in a mess on deck—it’s so dark we can’t see each other—the men are all aloft in the rigging. Steward! give me a glass of brandy-and-water—the ship must be managed, and I must go on deck. Keep close below here, and keep the hatches down, for the bruins are sick of the scene, and pawing about for a burrow in the ground, and will have the hatches up in a moment if you don’t look to them. Where’s Catlin?” “We don’t know,” was the reply from many mouths; “he is not in the cabin.”

“Will, here, Misther Captain, yer honour, I’ll till ye,” said a poor fellow, who in the general fright and flight had tumbled himself by accident into the cabin, and observed sullen silence until the present moment; “I’ll jist till ye—I saw Misther Cathlin (I sippose he’s the jintleman that owns the bastes) and his mon Dan (for I’ve known Dan for these many a long year in ould Amiriky, and I now he has chargin o’ the bears on board); I saw the two, God bliss them, when the bastes was about gettin their hinder parts out of the cage, stannin on the side jisth before ’em, Misther Cathlin with his double-barrel gun, and his mon Dan pointin at ’em in the face, with a pistol in each hand; and this was jist whin I heard they were outh, and I jimped down here jist in the wrong place, as I am after observin when it is too late, and I hope there is no offence to your honour.”

“Catlin’s gone then,” said the captain; “he is swallowed!”

The captain was at his post again, the hatches closed, and in the midst of dozing, and praying, and singing (and occasionally the hideous howlings of the grizlies whenever a wave made a breach over the deck of the vessel) was passed away that night of alarm and despair, until the rays of the morning’s sun having chased away the mist and assuaged the fury of the storm, had brought all hands together on the deck, and in the midst of them the cheerful face of our good captain; and in their huge cage, which had been driven from one side of the deck to the other, but now adjusted, sitting upon their haunches, with the most jaded and humiliating looks imaginable, as they gazed between their iron bars, their two grizly majesties, who had hurt nobody during the night, nor in all probability had meditated anything worse or more sinful than an escape, if possible, from the imprisonment and danger they considered themselves unfortunately in.

In the general alarm and scramble on deck in the forepart of the night, the total darkness having been such that it was impossible to tell whether the bears were out of their cage or not, and quite impossible to make one’s way to the quarter-deck, unaccustomed to the shapes of things to be passed over, “Misther Cathlin” had dropped himself into the steerage as the nearest refuge, just before the hatch was fastened down for the night. Any place, and anything under deck at that time, was acceptable; and even at so perilous a moment, and amidst such alarming apprehensions, I drew a fund of amusement from the scenes and conversations around me. The circumstance of sixty passengers, men, women, and children, being stowed into so small a compass, and to so familiar an acquaintance, would have been alone, and under different circumstances, a subject of curious interest for a stranger so suddenly to be introduced to; but to be dropped into the midst of such a group in the middle of the night, in the thickest of a raging tempest, and the hour of danger, when some were in bed—some upon their knees at their prayers—others making the most of the few remaining drops of brandy they had brought with them, and others were playing at cards and enjoying their jokes, and all together just rescued from the jaws and the claws of the bears over their heads, was one of no common occurrence, and worthy at least of a few passing remarks.

The wailings of the poor fellow whose wife had got into the cabin were incessant, and not much inferior to the howlings of the grizlies on deck. She had been put into my berth, and I had had the privilege of “turning in” with her disconsolate husband, if I had seen fit to have done so, or if his writhings and contortions had not taken up full twice the space allotted to him. It was known and told to him by some of his comrades, that they saw his wife go into the cabin, and that she was safe. “Yis,” said he, “but I’m unasy, I’m not asy about her, d’ye see; I don’t fale asy as she’s there, God knows where, along with those jintlemen.”

Amongst the passengers in this part of the vessel I at once found myself alongside of at least two very eccentric characters. The one, I afterwards learned, was familiarly called by the passengers “the little Irishman in black,” and the other “the half-Englishman, or broken-down swell.”

The first of these two eccentrics was a squatty little gentleman of about four feet nine inches elevation, and between two and three feet breadth of beam, with a wrinkled face and excessively sharp features. To be all in black he showed no signs of a shirt, though he was decently clad, but in black from head to foot, being in mourning, as he said, for “his son who had emigratin to Amiriky fifteen years sin, and livin there jist long enough to become a native, had died and leaven of a fortin, which he had been over to sittle up and receivin, with which he was recrossin the ocean to his native country.” He said he wished to be rispectable and dacent, havin received 12,000 dollars; and as he thought the dacent thing was in “payin,” now-a-days, he had paid for a berth in the cabin, but preferred to ride in the steerage. He made and found much amusement in that part of the vessel with his congenial spirits, and seemed peculiarly happy in the close communication with the other oddity of the steerage, whom I have said the passengers called the half-Englishman, or broken-down swell, who, I learned from my man Daniel, had laid in three barrels of old English porter, in bottles, when leaving the city of New York, and the last of which they were now opening and making the whole company merry with, as a sort of thanksgiving on their lucky escape from the grizly bears, who they firmly believed held possession of everything on the vessel outside of the hatchway.

This eccentric and droll, but good-natured gentleman, with the aid of porter made much amusement in the steerage, even in the hour of alarm; and though I did not at that time know his calibre, or exactly what to make of him, I afterwards learned that he was an English cockney who had been on a tour through the States, and was now on his way back to his fatherland. He had many amusing notions and anecdotes to relate of the Yankees, and in his good-natured mellowness told a very good one of himself, much to the amusement of the Yankees on board, and the little Irishman in black, and my man Daniel. He said that “the greatest luxury he found in New York were the hoisters, and much as he liked them he had eaten them for two years before he had learned whether they were spelled with a haitch or a ho.” Much valuable time would be lost to the reader if I were to chain him down to the rest of the incidents that happened between the middle of the ocean and Liverpool; and I meet him there at the beginning of my next chapter.

CHAPTER II.

Howling of the grizly Bears—Alarm and excitement about the docks—Scuffle for luggage—Scene at the Grecian Hotel—Landing the grizly Bears—Author’s journey to London—Ibbotson’s Hotel—First sally into the streets—First impressions of London—Adventure in the fog and mud—Amusing occurrence in the street—Beggars at the crossings of the streets—Ingenious mode of begging—Rich shops—No pigs in the streets—Soot and smoke of London—Author returns to Liverpool—Daniel’s trouble with the Bears—Passing the Indian Collection and grizly Bears through the Customs—Arrival in London with Collection and Bears—Daniel in difficulty—Howling of Bears passing through the Tunnel—The “King of New York,” and “King Jefferson.”

On nearing the docks at Liverpool, not only all the passengers of the ship, but all the inhabitants of the hills and dales about, and the shores, were apprised of our approach to the harbour by the bellowing and howling of the grizlies, who were undoubtedly excited to this sort of Te Deum for their safe deliverance and approach to terra firma, which they had got a sight (and probably a smell) of.

The arrival of the Roscius on that occasion was of course a conspicuous one, and well announced; and we entered the dock amidst an unusual uproar and crowd of spectators. After the usual manner, the passengers were soon ashore, and our luggage examined, leaving freight and grizly bears on board, to be removed the next morning. From the moment of landing on the wharf to the Custom-house, and from that to the hotel where I took lodgings, I was obliged to “fend off,” almost with foot and with fist, the ragamuffins who beset me on every side; and in front, in the rear, and on the right and the left, assailed me with importunities to be allowed to carry my luggage. In the medley of voices and confusion I could scarcely tell myself to which of these poor fellows I had committed my boxes; and no doubt this (to them) delightful confusion and uncertainty encouraged a number of them to keep close company with my luggage until it arrived at the Grecian Hotel. When it was all safely landed in the hall, I asked the lad who stood foremost and had brought my luggage in his cart, how much was to pay for bringing it up? “Ho, Sir, hi leaves it to your generosity, Sir, has you are a gentleman, Sir; hit’s been a werry eavy load, Sir.”

I was somewhat amused with the simple fellow’s careless and easy manner, and handed him eighteen pence, thinking it a reasonable compensation for bringing two small trunks and a carpet-bag; but he instantly assumed a different aspect, and refused to take the money, saying that no gentleman would think of giving him less than half-a-crown for such a load as he had brought. I soon settled with and dismissed him by giving him two shillings; and as he departed, and I was about entering the coffee-room, another of his ragged fraternity touched my elbow, when I asked him what he wanted. “Wo, Sir, your luggage there—” “But I have paid for my luggage—I paid the man you see going out there.” “Yes, Sir; but then you sees, hi elped im put it hon; hand I elped im along with it, hand it’s werry ard, Sir, hif Ise not to be paid has well as im.” I paid the poor fellow a sixpence for his ingenuity; and as he left, a third one stepped up, of whom I inquired, “What do you want?” “Why, Sir, your luggage, you know, there—I am very sorry, Sir, to see you pay that worthless rascal what’s just going out there—I am indeed sorry, Sir—he did nothing, but was hol the time hin our way—hit urts me, Sir, to see a gentleman throw is money away upon sich vagabonds, for it’s hundoubtedly ard earned, like the few shillings we poor fellows get.” “Well, my good fellow, what do you want of me?” “Ho, Sir, hit’s honly for the cart, Sir—you will settle with me for the cart, Sir, hif you please—that first chap you paid ad my cart, hand I’ll be bound you ave paid im twice has much has you hought.” “Well, to make short,” said I, “here, take this sixpence for your cart, and be off.” I was thus brief, for I saw two or three others edging and siding up in the passage towards me, whom I recollected to have seen escorting my luggage, and I retreated into the coffee-room as suddenly as possible, and stated the case to one of the waiters, who promised to manage the rest of the affair.

I was thus very comfortable for the night, having no further annoyance or real excitement until the next morning after breakfast, when it became necessary to disembark the grizly bears. My other heavy freight had gone to Her Majesty’s Custom-house, and all the passengers from the cabin and steerage had gone to comfortable quarters, leaving the two deck passengers, the grizlies, in great impatience, and as yet undisposed of. My man Daniel had been on the move at an early hour, and had fortunately made an arrangement with a simple and unsuspecting old lady in the absence of her “good man,” to allow the cage to be placed in a small yard adjoining her house, and within the same inclosure, which had a substantial pavement of round stones.

This arrangement for a few days promised to be an advantageous one for each party. Daniel was to have free access and egress for the purpose of giving them their food, and the price proposed to the good woman was met as a liberal reward for the reception of any living beings that she could imagine, however large, that could come within her idea of the dimensions of a cage. Daniel had told her that they were two huge bears; and in his reply to inquiries, assured her that they were not harmless by any means, but that the enormous strength of their cage prevented them from doing any mischief.

The kind old lady agreed, for so much per day, to allow the cage to stand in her yard, by the side of her house, at least until her husband returned. With much excitement and some growling about the docks and the wharf, they were swung off from the vessel, and, being placed on a “float,” were conveyed to, and quietly lodged and fed in, the retired yard of the good woman, when the gate was shut, and they fell into a long and profound sleep.

The grizly bears being thus comfortably and safely quartered in the immediate charge of my man Daniel, who had taken an apartment near them, and my collection being lodged in the Custom-house, I started by the railway for London to effect the necessary arrangements for their next move. I had rested in and left Liverpool in the midst of rain, and fog, and mud, and seen little else of it; and on my way to London I saw little or nothing of the beautiful country I was passing through, travelling the whole distance in the night. The luxurious carriage in which I was seated, however, braced up and embraced on all sides by deep cushions; the grandeur of the immense stations I was occasionally passing under; the elegance and comfort of the cafés and restaurants I was stumbling into with half-sealed eyes, with hundreds of others in the middle of the night, with the fat, and rotund, and ruddy appearance of the night-capped fellow-travellers around me, impressed me at once with the conviction that I was in the midst of a world of comforts and luxuries that had been long studied and refined upon.

I opened my eyes at daylight at the terminus in the City of London, but could see little of it, as I was driven to Ibbotson’s Hotel, in Vere-street, through one of the dense fogs peculiar to the metropolis and to the season of the year in which I had entered it. To a foreigner entering London at that season, the first striking impression is the blackness and gloom that everywhere shrouds all that is about him. It is in his hotel—in his bed-chamber—his dining-room, and if he sallies out into the street it is there even worse; and added to it dampness, and fog, and mud, all of which, together, are strong inducements for him to return to his lodgings, and adopt them as comfortable, and as a luxury.

I am speaking now of the elements which the Almighty alone can control, and which only we strangers first see, as the surface of things, when we enter a foreign land, and before our letters of introduction, or the kind invitations of strangers, have led us into the participation of the hospitable and refined comforts prepared and enjoyed by the ingenuity of enlightened man, within. These I soon found were all around me, in the midst of this gloom; and a deep sense of gratitude will often induce me to allude to them again in the future pages of this work.

My breakfast and a clean face were the first necessary things accomplished at my hotel, and next to them was my first sally into the streets of the great metropolis, to inhale the pleasure of first impressions, and in my rambles to get a glance at the outer walls and the position of the famous Egyptian Hall, which I have already said my kind friend the Hon. C. A. Murray had conditionally secured, as the locale of my future operations. It is quite unnecessary, and quite impossible also, for me to describe the route I pursued through the mud and the fog in search of the Hall. Its direction had been pointed out to me at my start, and something like the distance explained, which, to an accustomed woodsman like myself, seemed a better guarantee of success than the names of a dozen streets and turnings, &c.; and I had “leaned off” on the point of compass, as I thought, without any light of the sun to keep me to my bearings, until I thought myself near its vicinity, and at a proper position to make some inquiry for its whereabouts. I ran against a young man at the moment (or, rather, he ran against me, as he darted across the street to the pavement, with a black bag under his arm), whom I felt fully at liberty to accost; and to my inquiry for the Egyptian Hall, he very civilly and kindly directed me in the following manner, with his hand pointing down the street in the opposite direction to the one in which I was travelling:—“Go to the bottom, d’ye see, sir, and you are at the top, of Piccadilly; you then pass the third turning to the left, and you will see the hexibition of the uge hox; that hox is in the Hegyptian All, and ee his a wapper, sure enough!” By this kind fellow’s graphic direction I was soon in the Hall, got a glance of it and “the fat ox,” and then commenced my first peregrination, amidst the mazes of fog and mud, through the Strand, Fleet-street, and Cheapside; the names of which had rung in my ears from my early boyhood, and which the sort of charm they had wrought there had created an impatient desire to see.

I succeeded quite well in wending my way down the Haymarket, the Strand, and Fleet-street, slipping and sliding through the mud, until I was in front or in the rear (I could not tell which) of the noble St. Paul’s, whose black and gloomy walls, at the apparent risk of breaking my neck, I could follow up with my eye, until they were lost in the murky cloud of fog that floated around them. I walked quite round it, by which I became duly impressed with its magnitude below, necessarily leaving my conjectures as to its elevation, for future observations through a clearer atmosphere.

I then commenced to retrace my steps, when a slight tap upon my shoulder brought me around to look upon a droll and quizzical-looking fellow, who very obsequiously proceeded (as he pointed to the collar of my cloak, the lining of which, it seems, had got a little exposed), “The lining of your cloak, sir; hit don’t look very well for a gentleman, sir; hexcuse me, hif you please, sir.” “Certainly,” said I; “I am much obliged to you,” as I adjusted it and passed on. In my jogging along for some distance after this rencontre, and while my eyes were intent upon the mud, where I was selecting the places for my footsteps, I observed a figure that was keeping me close company by my side, and, on taking a fairer look at him, found the same droll character still at my elbow, when I turned around and inquired of him, “What now?” “Ho, sir, your cloak, you know, sir; hit didn’t look well, for a gentleman like you, sir. Your pardon, sir; ha sixpence, hif you please, sir.” I stopped and gave the poor fellow a sixpence for his ingenuity, and jogged on.

The sagacity of this stratager in rags had detected the foreigner or stranger in me at first sight, as I learned in a few moments, in the following amusing way. I had proceeded but a few rods from the place where I had given him his sixpence and parted company with him, when, crossing an intersecting street, I was met by a pitiable object hobbling on one leg, and the other twisted around his hip, in an unnatural way, with a broom in one hand, and the other extended towards me in the most beseeching manner, and his face drawn into a triangular shape, as he was bitterly weeping. I saw the poor fellow’s occupation was that of sweeping the crossing under my feet, and a sixpence that I slipped into his hand so relaxed the muscles of his face, by this time, that I at once recognised in him the adjuster of the lining of my cloak; but I had no remedy, and no other emotion, at the instant, than that of amusement, with some admiration of his adroitness, and again passed on.

Casting my eyes before me I observed another poor fellow, at the crossing of another street, plying his broom to the mud very nimbly (or rather passing it over, just above the top of the mud), whilst his eye was fixed intently upon me, whom he had no doubt seen patronizing the lad whom I had passed. I dodged this poor fellow by crossing the street to the right, and as I approached the opposite pavement I fell into the hands of a young woman in rags, who placed herself before me in the most beseeching attitude, holding on her arm a half-clad and sickly babe, which she was pinching on one of its legs to make it cry, whilst she supplicated me for aid. I listened to her pitiable lamentations a moment, and in reproaching her for her cruelty in exposing the life of her little infant for the purpose of extorting alms, I asked her why she did not make her husband take care of her and her child? “Oh, my kind sir,” said she, “I give you my honour I’ve got no husband; I have no good opinion of those husbands.” “Then I am glad you have informed me,” said I; “you belong to a class of women whom I will not give to.” “Oh, but, kind sir, you mistake me; I am not a bad woman—I am not a bad woman—I assure you! I am a decent woman, and God knows it: the child is not mine; it is only one that I hires, and I’s obliged to pay eighteen pence a day for it; which is as true as God’s holy writ; that’s what it is.” “Then,” said I, “you are a wretch, to keep that innocent little thing here in the cold; and, instead of alms, you deserve to be handed over to the police.” She gave me many hard names as I was stepping into a cab which I had beckoned up and directed to drive me to Ibbotson’s Hotel, in Vere-street.

“Where, sir?” asked the cab-driver as he mounted his seat. “Vy, sir, didn’t you ear the gentleman?” said a man with a large bronze medal hanging on his breast, who had one hand on the door; “drive im to Hibbotson’s Otel, Were-street, Hoxford-street.” “Who are you?” said I, as we were moving off, and he held the door open with one hand and his hat raised with the other; “what do you want?”

“I’m the vaterman, sir; you’ll recollect the vaterman?” “Yes, I’ll not forget you in a long time.” So I shut the door without giving the poor man his ha’penny, not knowing the usual custom yet, and too much pressed for time to learn it at that moment. I observed, in passing several equestrian and other statues in the streets, that they were all black; which seemed curious; and also, in every street, I saw what was new to me, and not to be seen in the streets of the American cities—meat-shops and fishmongers indiscriminately mingled along the same side-walks with dry goods—hosiers, china, and hardware—and fancy shops; and also performed the whole route, outward and homeward, without having seen a solitary pig ploughing the gutters, as we too familiarly meet them in many of the American cities, though the gutters, much of the way, would seem to have offered a tolerably rich field for their geological researches.

I met with evidences enough, however, that I was not out of the land of pigs, though they were not seen promenading or ploughing the streets. I passed several shops, all open in front, where poor piggies were displayed in a much less independent way—hanging by their hind legs at full length, and the blood dripping from their noses upon the sills of the shops and pavements, to amuse the eyes of the silken and dazzling throng that was squeezing and brushing along by them; and whilst I easily decided which was the most cruel to the poor brutes, I was much at a loss to decide which mode was calculated to be the most shocking to the nerves that would be weak enough to be offended by either.

I was thus at the end of my first day’s rambles in London, without at present recollecting any other occurrences worthy of note, excepting a little annoyance I had felt by discovering with my left eye, while walking in the street, something like a small black spot on the side of my nose, which, by endeavouring many times to remove by the brush of my hand across it, I had evidently greatly enlarged, and which, when I returned, I examined and found to have been at first, in all probability, a speck of soot which had alighted there, and by passing my hand over it had, as in other instances, on other parts of my face, mashed it down and given it somewhat the shape and tail of a comet, or the train of a falling star, though differing materially in brilliancy and colour.

I used the rest of this gloomy day in obtaining from the Lords of the Treasury the proper order for passing my collection through the Customs, which has been before mentioned, arranging my letters of credit, &c., and returned by the evening’s train to Liverpool, to join my collection again, and Daniel and the grizly bears.

On my return to that city I found poor Daniel in a sad dilemma with the old lady about the bears, and the whole neighbourhood under a high excitement, and in great alarm for their safety. The bears had been landed in the briefest manner possible; exempted from the usual course that almost everything else takes through the Queen’s warehouse; and, though relieved from the taxes of the customs, I soon found that I had duties of a different character accumulating that required my attention in another quarter. The agreement made by the old lady with Daniel to keep them in her yard for so much per day, and for as long a time as he required, had been based upon the express and very judicious condition that they were to do no harm. From the moment of their landing they had kept up an almost incessant howling, so Rocky-Mountain-ish and so totally unlike any attempts at music ever heard in the country before, that it attracted a crowd night and day about the old lady’s door, that almost defeated all attempts at ingress and egress. A little vanity, however, which she still possessed, enabled her to put up with the inconvenience, which she was turning to good account, and counting good luck, until it was ascertained, to her great amazement as well as alarm, that the bears were passing their huge paws out of the cage, between the iron bars, and lifting up the round stones of her pavement for the pleasure of once more getting their nails into the dirt, their favourite element, and which they had for a long time lost sight of.

In their unceasing pursuit of this amusement, by night and by day, they had made a sad metamorphosis of the old lady’s pavement, as, with the strength of their united paws, they had drawn the cage around to different parts of the yard, totally unpaving as they went along. At the time of the poor old lady’s bitterest and most vehement complaint, they were making their move in the direction of her humble tenement, the walls of which were exceedingly slight; and her alarm became insupportable. The ignorant crowd outside of the inclosure, who could get but a partial view of their operations now and then, had formed the most marvellous ideas of these monsters, from the report current amongst them that they were eating the paving-stones; and had taken the most decided and well-founded alarm from the fact that the bears had actually hurled some of the paving-stones quite over the wall amongst their heads, which were calling back an increased shower of stones and other missiles, adding fresh rage and fears to the growling of the bears, which altogether was threatening results of a more disastrous kind.

In this state of affairs I was very justly appealed to by the old lady for redress and a remedy, for it was quite evident that the condition of her agreement with Daniel had been broken, as the bears were now decidedly doing much harm to her premises; destroying all her rest, and (as she said) “her appetite and her right mind;” and I agreed that it was my duty, as soon as possible, to comply with her urgent request that they should be removed. She insisted on its being done that day, as “it was quite impossible to pass another night in her own bed, when there was such howling and groaning and grunting in her yard, by the side of her house.” Daniel took my directions and immediately went through the town in search of other quarters for them, and was to attend to their moving whilst I was to spend the day in the Custom-house, attending to the examination of my collection of 600 paintings and many thousand Indian costumes, weapons and other curiosities, which were to be closely inspected and inventoried, for duties.

Immersed in this mystery of difficulties and vexations at the customs during the day, I had lost sight of Daniel and his pets until I was free at night, when I was assailed with a more doleful tale than ever about the bears. Troubles were gathering on all sides. Poor Daniel had positively arranged in several places for them, but when “their characters were asked from their last places,” he met defeat in every case, and was obliged to meet, at last, the increased plaints of his old landlady, whose rage and ranting were now quite beyond control. She had made complaint to the police, of whom a posse had been sent to see to their removal. Daniel in the mean time had dodged them, and was smiling amidst the crowd at the amusing idea of their laying hold of them, or of even going into the yard to them. The police reported on the utter impossibility of removing them to any other part of the town, their “character” having been so thoroughly published already to all parts; and it was advised, to the utter discomfiture of the old lady, that it would be best for them to remain there until they should be removed to London, and that I should pay for all damages. The poor old lady afterwards had a final interview with Daniel in the crowd, when she very judiciously resolved that if the bears did not move, she must—which she did that night, and placed Daniel in her bed, as the guardian of her property and of his pets, until the third or fourth day afterwards, when they were moved to the railway, and by it (night and day, catching what glimpses they could of the country they were serenading with their howls and growls as they passed through it under their tarpaulin) they were conveyed to the great metropolis.

Owing to the multiplicity of articles to be examined and inventoried in the customs, and the great embarrassment of the clerics in writing down their Indian names, my labours were protracted there to much tediousness; but when all was brought to a close by their proposing, most judiciously, to count the number of curiosities instead of wasting paper and time and paralysing my jaws by pronouncing half a dozen times over, and syllable by syllable, their Indian names, my collection of eight tons weight was all on the road and soon at the Euston station in London, where we again recognised the mournful cries of the grizlies, who had arrived the night before.

On arriving at the station, I found Daniel at a small inn in the vicinity, where he seemed highly excited by some unpleasant altercation he had had with the landlord and inmates of the house, growing out of national and political prejudices, which had most probably been too strongly advanced on both sides. Daniel had suddenly raised a great excitement in the neighbourhood by his arrival with the grizly bears, whose occasional howlings had attracted crowds of people, curious to know the nature of the strange arrival; and all inquirers about the station being referred to their keeper, who was at the inn, brought Daniel and his patience into notoriety at once.

Daniel ([Plate No. 2]) is an Irishman, who emigrated to the United States some twenty years since, and, by dint of his industry and hard labour, had met with success in acquiring an humble independence, and had formed the most undoubted attachment to the Government and its institutions; and, from his reading, and conversation with the world, had informed himself tolerably well in political matters, which he was always ready to discuss; and being rather of a hasty and irascible temperament, he often got into debates of that nature, that led him into danger of unpleasant results. It was in the midst of one of these that I found him at the inn, surrounded by at least a hundred labouring men and idlers from the streets, who had been drawn around him at first, as I have said, to get some information of the bears, but who had changed their theme, and were now besieging him on all sides, to combat him on some political dogma he had advanced relative to his favourite and adopted country, the United States; or to taunt him with slaunts at his native country, all of which, with his native wit, he was ready to meet with ability, until, as he afterwards told me, “they were showered upon him so rapidly, and from so many quarters at once, that it became quite impossible to answer them, and that the stupid ignorance and impertinence of some of them had worn out all his patience, and irritated him to that degree, that I must excuse him for the excitement I had found him under when I arrived.” With much difficulty I rescued him from the crowd that had enclosed him, and, retiring to a private room, after matters of business had been arranged, he gave me the following account of the difficulties he had just been in, and of the incidents of his journey from Liverpool to London with the bears.

N^o. 2.

At Liverpool he had had great difficulty in getting permission to travel by the luggage train, to keep company with the bears, the necessity of which he urged in vain, until he represented that, unless he was with them to feed them, their howlings and other terrific noises and ravings would frighten their hands all out of the stations, and even add probabilities to their breaking loose from the cage in which they were confined, to feed upon the human flesh around them, and of which they were peculiarly fond. Upon these representations, he was allowed the privilege of a narrow space, to stand or to sit, in the corner of one of the luggage-trains, and thus bore the bears company all the way.

When they entered the first tunnel on their way, they raised a hideous howl, which they continued until they were through it, which might have been from a feeling of pleasure, recognizing in it something of the character of the delightful gloominess of their own subterranean abodes; or their outcries might have been from a feeling of dread or fear from those narrow and damp caverns, too much for their delicate tastes and constitutions. This, however, is matter for the bears to decide. At Birmingham, where they rested on the truck for the greater part of a day, their notification to the town had called vast crowds of spectators around them; and though their tarpaulin prevented them from being seen, many, very many, drew marvellous accounts of them from one another, and from the flying reports which had reached them several days before from Liverpool, of “two huge monsters imported from the Rocky Mountains, that had scales like alligators, with long spears of real flint at the ends of their tails; that they made nothing of eating paving-stones when they were hungry, and that in Liverpool they had escaped, and were travelling to the north, and demolishing all the inhabitants of Lancashire as they went along,” &c. Their occasional howls and growls, with, once in a while, a momentary display of one of their huge paws, exhibited from under the tarpaulin, riveted the conviction of the gaping multitude as to the terror and danger of these animals, while it put at rest all apprehensions as to their being at large and overrunning the country. Poor Daniel had to stand between the crowd and his pets, to save them from the peltings and insults of the crowd, and at the same time, to muster every talent he had at natural history, to answer the strange queries and theories that were raised about them. He was assailed on every side with questions as to the appearance and habits of the animals, and at last, about “the other animals,” as they called them, “running on two legs, in America;” for many of them, from his representations, had come fresh from the coal-pits and factories, with ideas that Americans were a sort of savages, and that savages, they had understood, were “a sort of wild beastises, and living on raw meat.” These conjectures and queries were answered amusingly for them, by Daniel; and, after he had a little enlightened them by the information he gave them, their conversation took a sort of political turn, which, I have before said, he was prone to run into; and thus, luckily, the time was whiled away, without any set-to to bother the bears and himself, which he had seen evidently preparing, until the whistle announced them and him on their way again for the metropolis.

The next morning he found himself and the bears safe landed at the terminus in London, where I have already said that I found him and released him from a medley of difficulties he had worked himself into.

The keeper of the inn had himself been the first to provoke poor Daniel, but when he found it for his interest, and advised a different course, he endeavoured to turn his criticisms into good nature, and had taken sides with him. Daniel, very amusingly however, describes his remarks as so excessively ignorant, that they excited his mirth more than anger, and he repeated several of them in the following manner:—He first provoked Daniel by inquiring “who his master was, and where he was at that time.” Daniel replied to him, somewhat to his surprise, “I have no master, Sir; I live in a country, thank God, where we are our own masters. My ‘boss’ (if you will have it that way) is a Mr. Catlin, who I expect here in a few hours.” Finding that Daniel and the bears were from America, of which country he had heard some vague accounts, he very innocently enquired who was the King in America at that time, apologizing, that by the treacherousness of his memory he had lost the run of them. Daniel told him that they had no king in America. He then said “he well recollected when the old fellow died, but he had equally forgotten the name of the Queen; he recollected to have read of the King of New York.” Daniel soon put his recollection right, and in doing so had given umbrage to the poor man, which led to the long and excited political debate with which I found Daniel so much exasperated when I arrived.

Daniel had, in the beginning of this affair, explained to the bystanders around him the difference between a King and a President, and then had provoked his landlord by amusingly and pleasantly repeating the anecdote of “King Jefferson” (which is current in America) in reply to his questions about the “King of New York;” and in the following manner:—

“During the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, who lived in the city of Washington, two poor emigrants from the county of Cork, in my own country, made their way to America in a vessel which landed them in Philadelphia; they got ashore, and as they were taking their first stroll through the streets in the ‘land of liberty and equality,’ without a shilling in their pockets, they began to ‘sing out’ ‘Huzza for King George!’ This of course excited too much opposition to last long in the streets of a republican city, and a gentleman very kindly stopped the poor fellows, and to their great surprise informed them that he feared they would get into difficulty if they continued to huzza for the king, as King George was not the king of the country they were now in. He informed them that Mr. Jefferson was the great man in America—that he was President of the United States, and that it would not do for them to huzza for King George. They thanked him, and as they proceeded on they increased the volume of their voices in huzzas for ‘King Jefferson!—huzza for King Jefferson!’ This soon excited the attention of the police, who silenced their bawling by ‘putting them in the jug!’”

CHAPTER III.

Letters of introduction—Driving a friend’s horse and chaise—Amusing accidents—English driving—“Turn to the right, as the law directs”—A turn to the left—A fresh difficulty—Egyptian Hall—Lease for three years—Arrangement of collection—Bears sold and removed to Regent’s Park Zoological Gardens—Their fates.

Having landed all my effects safely at the terminus in London, the next thing was the final locale; and to decide on this, my letters of introduction, or a part of them at least, should be delivered; and for this and other dodgings about through the city for a few days, the first gentleman to whom I delivered a letter had the kindness to insist on my using his horse and chaise during certain portions of the day, when he did not use them himself. This was the kindest thing that he could have done for me, and I shall never forget the obligation he laid me under by doing so. His footman, who accompanied me, relieved me from all anxiety about the horse, which was a noble animal; and my long errands through the mud were most delightfully abridged.

As the fatalities of life seem to bring us more or less trouble in every step we take in it, I had mine, even in this new and independent arrangement. In my first dash through the streets with all the confidence and tact I had acquired from my boyhood in driving a similar vehicle in my own country, I was suddenly in the midst of fresh misfortune by “turning to the right, as the law directs” (the regulation and custom of the United States), which brought my horse into the most frightful collision with a pair that were driven by a gentleman, and who had reined in the same direction under the English custom of “turn to the left.”

This affair was not only one of imminent danger of harm, which we had all luckily escaped, but one of exceeding mortification to me from the circumstances which immediately followed.

The extreme care and skill in driving, with the fine training of horses in England (of which we have little idea in the United States), render accidents in the streets of London so exceedingly rare, that when they do occur they immediately attract an immense crowd, and into the midst of such an one was I thrown by the unfortunate accident which my ignorance rather than carelessness had just been the cause of.

By the violence of the concussion I had been landed in the street, and the gentleman, to whose harness I had done some injury, was suddenly in front of me with his whip in his hand; and in the hearing of the crowd that was hovering around, in the most excited manner, demanding of me what I meant by driving against him in that awkward manner, and threatening to hold me responsible for damages done by not turning the right way, whilst I felt every disposition to answer his questions respectfully, as I saw the injury was all on his side. I still felt that a little tenacity was allowable on my side; and I almost as peremptorily demanded of him why he did not rein to the right, as the law requires:—“Rein to the right!” said he, “who the devil ever heard of such a thing as turning to the right? Where are you from, I should like to know?” “I am from a country, sir, where the law directs all vehicles to ‘turn to the right.’” “What country is that, I should like to know?” “North America, sir.” “Ha! just about what I should have thought, sir:—I suppose I shall get pay for my coupling-lines about the time the States pay interest.” “Most likely,” said I, as we were mutually taking our seats, amidst the sullen remarks that I heard in various parts of the crowd as I was driving off—“There’s a Yankee for you!—ee’s a rum-looking fellow, ha?—There’s a Repudiator for you”—“I’ll be bound—” &c., &c., &c.

I drove off from this scene with some satisfaction that I had learned so important a fact at so little expense, and steered my way very safely amidst the thousands of vehicles of various sorts that I was passing and meeting, in which time I was very pleasantly receiving a brief lecture on the subject from my good-natured and very civil footman, who was behind me; in which (having silently learned in the disaster we had just witnessed that I was from a foreign country) he took especial pains to explain to me that “in Hengland it’s holays the abit to turn to the left.” Just at that moment I found myself in a fresh difficulty, and some danger also, by one wheel of my chaise grinding against the curbstone, and a huge omnibus in full press against us, and driving us on to the pavement, where it had at that moment stopped and fastened us, whilst discharging a passenger. I demanded of the driver, a sullen-looking fellow, half covered with an apron or boot which protected him from the weather in front, and something like a feather-bed and bolsters tied around his neck and chin, and half concealing his bloated face, what he meant by reining in upon me in that way, and crowding me upon the pavement? to which he grumly replied as he snapped his whip, “I should like to know what business you have in there?” “Never mind,” said I, “I shall go ahead.” “No you woan’t—ain’t you old enough to know which side of a carriage to pass?” At that moment the conductor of the omnibus cried out “All right!” which was echoed by a policeman who had taken my horse by the bit. I was somewhat relieved, though a little surprised, at the verdict given by the conductor and the policeman at the same instant, that “all” (or both), as I at that moment understood it, “were right.” I sat still of course till the omnibus had left us, nearly crushed, but luckily not damaged, when I said to my footman, “Why, what does this mean?—what do you call the ‘left side’ in this country, I should like to know?” To this he very distinctly as well as amusingly explained, that the invariable custom in England is when meeting a vehicle, to turn to the left, and when passing, to turn to the right. But why did the policeman and the conductor say we were both right or “all right?” “Why, sir, you know wen the homnibus olds up to land a gent or a lady, or to take em hin, it would be wery hawkard to drive off wen the lady ad one leg hin the bus and the other hout; so wen they are both hout or both hin, and all right, the conductor ollows out ‘Holl right!’ and the bus goes hon, d’ye see, sir?“ “Ah, yes, I thank you, Jerry, I understand it now.” I was then growing wiser every moment amongst the incidents that were occasionally taking place in my drives with the goodnatured footman and his fine horse, which I used for several days, much to my satisfaction and amusement, without other accident or incident worth the reader’s valuable time.

I called upon my kind friend the Hon. C. A. Murray, at his office in Buckingham Palace, where I was received with all that frankness and sincerity peculiar to him; and, with his kind aid, and that of Charles D. Archibald, Esq., of York Terrace, to whom I am also much indebted, the arrangements were soon made for my collection in the Egyptian Hall, which I took on a lease, for three years, at a rent of 550l. per annum.

My collection was soon in it, and preparing for its exhibition, while the grizly bears were still howling at the Euston station, impatient for a more congenial place for their future residence. It was quite impossible to give them any portion of the premises I had contracted for in the Egyptian Hall, and the quarters ultimately procured for them being expensive, and the anxieties and responsibilities for them daily increasing upon me as they were growing stronger and more vicious in their dispositions, it was decided that they should be offered for sale, and disposed of as soon as possible. For this purpose I addressed letters to the proprietors of zoological gardens in Liverpool, in Dublin, and Edinburgh, and several other towns, and received, in reply from most of them, the answer that they already had them in their gardens, and that they were so complete a drug in England that they were of little value. One proprietor assured me that he had recently been obliged to shoot two that he had in his gardens, in consequence of mischief they were doing to people visiting the grounds, and to the animals in the gardens.

My reply to several of these gentlemen was, that since the death of the famous old grizly bear, that had died a few months before in Regent’s-park, it was quite certain that there had not been one in the kingdom until the arrival of these, “and that if either of those gentlemen would produce me another living grizly bear, at that time, in the kingdom, I would freely give him my pair.” This seemed, however, to have little weight with the proprietors of wild beasts; but I at length disposed of them for about the same price that I had given for them four years before, when they were not much larger than my foot (for the sum of 125l.); and they went to the Zoological Gardens, Regent’s Park.

A word or two more of them and the reader will have done with the grizlies, who had been much obliged to me, no doubt, for four years’ maintenance, and for a sight of the beauties of the ocean, and as much of the land of comforts and refinements as they were allowed to see through the bars of their cage, while they were travelling from the rude wilds of the Rocky Mountains to the great metropolis, the seat and centre of civilization and refinement. As in their new abode they were allowed more scope and better attendance, it was reasonable to suppose that their lives would have been prolonged, and their comfort promoted; but such did not prove to be the case. From the continual crowds about them, to which they had the greatest repugnance, they seemed daily to pine, until one of them died of exceeding disgust (unless a better cause can be assigned), and the other with similar symptoms, added to loneliness perhaps, and despair, in a few months afterwards.

Thus ended the career of the grizly bears, and I really believe there were no tears shed for them, unless they were tears of joy, for they seemed to extend their acquaintance only to add to the list of their enemies, wherever they went.

CHAPTER IV.

Indian Collection arranged for exhibition—Description of it—The Hon. Charles Augustus Murray—Collection opened to private view—Kindness of the Hon. Mr. Murray—Distinguished visitors—Mr. Murray’s explanations—Kind reception by the Public and the Press—Kind friends—Fatigue of explaining and answering questions—Curious remedy proposed by a friend—Pleasures and pains of a friendly and fashionable dinner.

My business now, and all my energies, were concentrated at the Egyptian Hall, where my collection was arranged upon the walls. The main hall was of immense length, and contained upon its walls 600 portraits and other paintings which I had made during eight years’ travels amongst forty-eight of the remotest and wildest tribes of Indians in America, and also many thousands of articles of their manufacture, consisting of costumes, weapons, &c. &c., forming together a pictorial history of those tribes, which I had been ambitious to preserve as a record of them, to be perpetuated long after their extinction. In the middle of the room I had erected also a wigwam (or lodge) brought from the country of the Crows, at the base of the Rocky Mountains, made of some twenty or more buffalo skins, beautifully dressed and curiously ornamented and embroidered with porcupine quills.

My friend the Honourable C. A. Murray, with several others, had now announced my collection open to their numerous friends and such others as they chose to invite during the three first days when it was submitted to their private view, and by whom it was most of the time filled; and being kindly presented to most of them, my unsentimental and unintellectual life in the atmosphere of railroads and grizly bears was suddenly changed to a cheering flood of soul and intellect which greeted me in every part of my room, and soon showed me the way to the recessed world of luxury, refinements, and comforts of London, which not even the imagination of those who merely stroll through the streets can by any possibility reach.

During this private view I found entered in my book the names of very many of the nobility, and others of the most distinguished people of the kingdom. My friend Mr. Murray was constantly present, and introduced me to very many of them, who had the kindness to leave their addresses and invite me to their noble mansions, where I soon appreciated the elegance, the true hospitality and refinement of English life. Amongst the most conspicuous of those who visited my rooms on this occasion were H. R. H. the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, Duke of Devonshire, Duke of Wellington, the Bishop of London, the Bishop of Norwich, Sir Robert and Lady Peel, Lord Grosvenor, Lord Lennox, Duke of Richmond, Duke of Rutland, Duke of Buckingham, Countess-Dowager of Dunmore, Countess-Dowager of Ashburnham, Earl of Falmouth, Earl of Dunmore, Lord Monteagle, Lord Ashley, Earl of Burlington, Sir James and Lady Clark, Sir Augustus d’Este, Sir Francis Head, and many others of the nobility, with most of the editors of the press, and many private literary and scientific gentlemen, of whose kindness to me while in London I shall have occasion to speak in other parts of this work.

The kindness of my friend Mr. Murray on this occasion can never be forgotten by me. He pointed out to my illustrious visitors the principal chiefs and warriors of the various tribes, with many of whom he was personally acquainted; explaining their costumes, weapons, &c., with all of which his rambles in the Indian countries beyond the Mississippi and Missouri had made him quite familiar. He led Duchesses, Countesses, and Ladies in succession upon his arm, into the wigwam of buffalo-hides, where he descanted, to the great satisfaction and amusement of his friends, upon the curious modes of Indian life into which he had been initiated, and which he had long shared with these simple people, whilst he resided with them under roofs of buffalo-hides (like the one now over their heads) on the vast plains and prairies of the wilds of America.

This was evidently an opportunity affording him great satisfaction, of illustrating to his friends the styles of primitive life which he had witnessed in America, whilst his explanations and descriptions were exceedingly entertaining and amusing to them, and at the same time the strongest corroboration of the fidelity with which I had made them, and therefore the best recommendation of them and me to the consideration of the English community.

He was fully employed, as he led alternately the Duchess of Sutherland (with her lovely daughters by her side), and the Duchess of Buccleuch on his arm, and a numerous group around him, while he commented upon the features and disposition of his old friend Wee-ta-ra-sha-ro, who had taken him under his immediate protection and saved his life from the designs of some young men who had laid their plans to destroy him when in the country of the Pawnees.

He explained to them and the Bishops of London and Norwich, who were following in the wake of the ladies and giving ear, the religious ceremony of the Indians, their modes of warfare, of hunting, and throwing the lasso in catching the wild horse. He showed them the Indian cradles in which the squaws carry their pappooses, slung on their backs. He took in his hands the lasso, and illustrated the mode of throwing it, with which he was familiar. He took also in his hands their war-clubs, their tomahawks and scalping knives, and then the scalps from the heads of enemies slain in battle, and ably explained them all. With these he made lasting and thrilling impressions; but with more satisfaction to himself, and to the fair and tender Graces, whose sylph-like gracefulness formed a halo of loveliness around him, he pointed to my paintings of the ever verdant and enamelled prairies—to the very copses and lawns through which, with his unerring rifle, he had stalked the timid antelope or the stately elk and shaggy bison, and, after quieting his raving stomach with their broiled delicacies, he had straightened his wearied limbs upon his spread buffalo robe, and, with the long, waving grass and bowing lilies stooping over his head, he had reflected upon London, upon Palaces and friends, as he had glided into that sweet forgetfulness that belongs peculiarly to the wearied huntsman, whose rifle has catered for his stomach, and whose quiet conscience starts him not at the rustling of the sweetened winds that are gently breezing over him.

I was also constantly engaged with surrounding groups, who were anxious to know the meaning and moral of this strange and unintelligible collection, while my man Daniel, with his rod in his hand, was enlightening another party at the end of the room, by pointing out the leading personages of the various tribes, explaining their costumes, weapons, &c., and answering the thousand questions which were put to him, and which several years of familiarity with the subject had abundantly qualified him to do.

Thus passed my first interview with the English aristocracy. I was in the midst and the best of it; and by it, on all sides, was met with the kindliest feelings and condescension, while I received compliments from all (in the most undoubted sincerity) for the successful efforts I had thus made to perpetuate the records of an abused and dying race of human beings.

The reception that myself and my works met on these days, amongst the highest critics, the most refined and elevated of the world, was beyond description pleasurable to me, as I had arrived a stranger in a foreign land, where I had risked everything upon the value that should be set upon my labours; and that, where I had been told that national prejudices would labour to defeat me. My life had been a tissue of risks and chances, and I resolved to hazard again; and I am now pleased (and bound) to acknowledge that I was frankly met with the most unprejudiced and congenial feelings; and, even more than that, with a settled and genuine sympathy for the benighted people whom my works were representing, and a disposition to reward my labours by kind and unexpected invitations to the hospitable boards of those who fill the highest and most enviable stations in life.

To this general feeling it affords me pleasure to respond in general terms, in this place; and I shall have occasion, in other parts of this work, to return my personal thanks for such spontaneous kindness, which my lasting gratitude will make it my duty to allude to.

The editors of the leading literary and scientific journals of London, and of the daily newspapers, were chiefly there, and with their very friendly and complimentary notices of my collection, with the usual announcements by advertisements, I opened it for the inspection of the public on the first day of February, 1840.[2]

Its commencement was flattering, from the numbers and high respectability of my visitors, and I was pleased, from day to day, to meet the faces and friendly greetings of those whom I had seen there at the private view.

I was pleased also with the freedom which is granted to exhibitions in London, leaving them entirely independent of tithing or taxation, as well as of licences to be obtained from the police, as is the case in France and some other countries. Under such auspices I very pleasantly commenced, with a rent of 550l. per annum, and continued it with reasonable success for the space of four years. The vicissitudes and incidents of that time it is not the object of this work to detail; but I shall connect the links of my narrative better, and, I trust, do no injustice to my readers, by reciting a few of the incidents that transpired in that time: and, while I am doing so, endeavouring to do the justice which gratitude prompts, to those persons whose kindness has laid me under peculiar obligations.

Amongst those kind friends I must be allowed at present to mention the names of the Hon. C. A. Murray, Sir Augustus d’Este, Charles D. Archibald, Esq., Sir James Clark, Sir Thomas Phillips, Mr. Petty Vaughan, Dr. Hodgkin, Capt. Shippard, Sir Francis Head, Lord Monteagle, John Murray, A. M. Perkins, and Sir David Wilkie; and there were many others with these who were very frequently at my rooms; and for their friendly and constant efforts to promote my interest they have my sincerest thanks.

Several of these gentlemen, and others, whose visits were so frequent to my rooms, having formed an acquaintance with the Indians in their own country, or, from feelings of sympathy for them, taken so deep an interest in the subject, relieved me much of my time from the fatiguing task which I had adopted of explaining around the rooms such subjects as I considered most curious and instructive, and of answering the thousands of questions which were naturally put in every part of the room for information on so novel and exciting a theme.

I had entered upon this, at first, not as a task but an amusement, from which I drew great pleasure whilst I was entertaining my visitors and cultivating their pleasing acquaintance. From an over desire and effort on my part to explain the peculiar and curious modes of those wild people, and from a determination on the part of my visitors to get these explanations from my own lips (although I had my man Daniel and several others constantly in the rooms for the same purpose), I was held in my exhibition rooms almost daily from morning until night.

My men were able to explain the meaning of everything in the collection, but this did not satisfy the public whilst I was present. All inquired for me: “Where’s Mr. Catlin? he’s the Lion; his collection is wonderful; but I would give more to see him than all the rest.” “He is yonder, Madam, at the farther end of the room, where you see a crowd of people around him.”

I was generally in the midst of a crowd, who were densely packed around me; moving about the rooms whilst, with a rod in my hand to point with, I was lecturing or answering the numerous questions which were naturally put relative to these strange people and their modes. To lecture or to explain all day, following the current of one’s thoughts, would have been a thing feasible, though fatiguing; but to stand upon one’s feet and all day long to answer to interrogations, and many of those fifty times over, to different parties who were successively taking me in tow, I soon found was far more fatiguing than my travels and labours in the Indian wilderness; and I at length (at a much later period than my friends and my physician advised) gradually withdrew from the scene and this suicidal course, just before it might have been too late to have saved anything useful of me.

I followed the advice of my physician by going to my rooms at stated hours, but soon departed from it by failing to leave them with punctuality, and take recreation in the open air. The partial change I had adopted, however, was of advantage to me—talking part of the day and breaking off and leaving my men to do the talking for the other half.

Like most adventurers in wilderness life I was fond of describing what I had seen; and, having the works of several years around me, in their crude and unfinished condition, spread before the criticising world, and difficult to be appreciated, I was doubly stimulated to be in the collection, and with all the breath I could spare, to add to the information which the visitors to my rooms were seeking for. Under these conflicting feelings I struggled to keep away from my rooms, and did so for a part of the day, and that, as I soon found, only to meet a more numerous and impatient group when I re-entered.

All of the above-mentioned kind friends, and many others, repeatedly called to impress upon me the necessity of leaving my exhibition to my men, “to save my lungs—to save my life,” as they said. Some snatched me away from the crowd, and in the purest kindness hurled me through the streets in their carriages, still yelling answers to their numerous questions as we were passing over the noisy pavements; and then at their kind and festive boards, to which I had been brought as places of refuge and repose, I was, for an instance, presented as—“My dear, this is Mr. Catlin! ([Plate No. 3], next page.)—Mother, you have heard of Mr. Catlin?—Cousins Lucy and Fanny, here’s the celebrated Mr. Catlin you have heard me speak of so often. Poor fellow! I have dragged him away from his exhibition, where they are talking him to death—he must have repose—and here we can entertain and amuse him. Here, my little chicks—come here all of you—here’s Mr. Catlin!—here’s the man who has been so long among the wild Indians! he will tell you a great many curious stories about them. Where’s sister Ellen, and Betty?” “Oh, they are in the garden with Mr. S. and his son, who has just returned from New Zealand.“ “Good, good; run for them, run for them, quick! Send the carriage for aunt W——n as swift as possible, and don’t let her fail to stop on the way and bring Lady R——e: you know how fond she is of the Indian character—she was three years, you know, in Canada—and the poem she is now writing on the Indians! What a treat this will be to her! Won’t it be delightful to see her and Mr. Catlin come together? She told me the other day she had a thousand questions she wished to put to Mr. Catlin—how interesting! Have the dinner up at six—no, say at seven; it will give us the more time for conversation, and for Professor D., the phrenologist, to get here, and whom I have invited—he’s always behind the time—and this treat will be so rich to him—I would not miss him for anything in the world.”

My lecturing lungs and stomach being under a running engagement for dinner at three o’clock, the sound of “six”—then, “no, seven,” with the words “Indian poem,” “phrenologist,” &c., produced a most rebellious and faltering sensation in my chest; the one entirely exhausted from its customary exertions until three o’clock, and the other, at that moment, completely in a state of collapse. The difficult trials I had lived through with the latter, however, in my wild adventures in the Indian wilderness, and the more recent proofs in the Egyptian Hall, of the elasticity of the other, inspired me with courage to enter upon the ordeal that was before me, and (even in distress) justly to appreciate what was so kindly preparing for me.

I here instantly forgot my troubles as the party entered from the gardens, when I was thus presented by my good friend:—“Ellen, my dear, and Betty, here’s Mr. Catlin; and, Mr. S——n, I have the extreme pleasure of presenting to your acquaintance the famous Mr. Catlin, whose name and whose works are familiar to you: and now, Catlin, my dear fellow, I introduce you to Mr. J. S., the son of the gentleman with whom I have just made you acquainted. Mr. J. S. has just returned from amongst the natives of New Zealand, where he has spent three or four years; and your descriptions of all the modes and customs of the North American Indians, compared with his accounts of the New Zealanders, will be so rich a treat to us!——But, Catlin, you look pale! Are you not well? You look so fagged!” “Yes, yes; I am well.” “Oh, that plagued exhibition of yours—it will be the death of you! You must keep away from it, or you will talk yourself to death there! My good friends, come, take seats! Catlin, my dear fellow, come, join us in a glass of good old sherry—it will give you an appetite for your dinner—Is it to your liking?” “I thank you, it is very fine.” “Will you take another?” “No, I am much obliged to you.” “My dear, look at the clock—what time is it?” “Quarter past five.” “Ah, well, I didn’t think it was so late—be sure to have the dinner up at seven—do you hear?”

N^o. 3.

Oh, Time and Paper! I will not tax you with the pains of kindness I was at that moment entering upon—I, who had been for eight years eating at the simple Indians’ hospitable boards, where eating and talking are seldom done together; or taking my solitary meals, cooked by my own hand; where I had no one to talk with—but will leave it to Imagination’s exhaustless colours, which, for a harmless pastime, will paint the pleasures, perhaps, of the dragging hours of my lifetime that I sighed through from that until twelve o’clock at night (the last half-hour of which I had stood upon my feet, with my hat in my hand, taking affectionate leave, with, “My dear, charming Sir, you can’t tell how happy we have all been—your accounts have been so interesting! You must come another evening and dine with us, and we will have Mr. G. and Mr. and Mrs. L——n; they will be so impatient to hear you tell all you have told us. Good night!—good night!—we shall all be in a party at your exhibition to-morrow at an early hour, at ten o’clock—mind, don’t forget the hour—and it will be so delightful to hear you explain everything in your collection, which my dear husband has seen so often, and says are so curious and interesting. Poor fellow! he is quite knocked up—he has been up all day, and constantly talking, and was so completely worn out that he went off to bed an hour ago—you will know how to excuse him. We ladies can often entertain our friends long after his powers of conversation are fagged out. Good night—good night, my dear Sir—farewell!”

Thus and at that hour I took leave, when the busses and cabs were all still, and I had, from necessity, a solitary walk of three miles to my lodgings; and before I laid my head on my pillow, from an equal necessity, to feed my poor stomach with some substitute for dinner, which had been in abundance before my eyes, but which the constant exercise of my lungs had prevented me from eating. Such a rendezvous as had been appointed for ten o’clock the next day, and by so fair and so kind a lady, even the rough politeness of a savage would have held sacred.

At twelve o’clock on the following morning, and when I had nearly finished my descriptions of Indian modes to the ladies, my kind friend who had taken me to his house the day before, and having a little overslept himself on that morning had taken a late breakfast at eleven, entered the rooms with three or four of his friends, and quite rapidly addressed his wife in the following manner:—“Come now, my dear, you and your party have kept poor Catlin talking and answering questions quite long enough; you will kill him if you don’t let him rest once in a while. See how pale the poor man is. Go off and get home as quick as possible. See all this crowd waiting around to talk him to death when you are done with him. I have brought Mr. C., the famous mineralogist, and the two Mr. N.’s, the geologists, to whom I want him to explain the mineralogy and geology of those boundless regions, of the Missouri and Rocky Mountains, and I was to have had the famous botanist, Mr. D. S—, but he may come by and by; and after we have done here, I am going to take him, that he may have a little relaxation and repose, to the British Museum, which he has not seen yet, and to the Geological Society’s rooms; and after that, I have got for him an invitation to dine with the Reverend Mr. O., who will have several reverend gentlemen, and the famous Miss E. and Mrs. W., who you know are all so anxious to learn about the Indians’ religion and modes of worship.” I was then introduced to my friend’s three or four companions, but a few moments after was reminded, by one of my men, of an engagement which took me off for the remainder of that day.

CHAPTER V.

Author’s illness from overtalking in his collection—Daniel’s illness from the same cause—Character of Daniel—His labour-saving plan for answering one hundred questions—His disappointment—Daniel travels to Ireland for his health—Author prepares to publish his Notes of Travel amongst the Indians—John Murray (publisher)—His reasons for not publishing the Author’s work—His friendly advice—Author’s book published by himself at the Egyptian Hall—Illustrious subscribers—Thomas Moore—Critical notices in London papers.

In this manner passed the time from day to day, from week to week, and from month to month; and as I was daily growing richer, I was daily growing poorer—i. e. I was day by day losing my flesh, not from the usual cause, the want of enough to eat, but from derangement of the lungs and the stomach, both often overworked, with a constant excitement and anxiety of the mind, the seat of which was not far distant.

I endeavoured, however, and gradually succeeded in dividing my time and my thoughts, giving a proper proportion to the public in my rooms, a portion to my friends, and (as it was then becoming a matter of necessity for the preparation of my notes of eight years’ travel, which were soon to be published) decidedly the greater part to myself, leaving my exhibition mostly to the management of my men, of whom I had several, and all familiar enough with the meaning of everything in the collection to give a lucid description of its contents.

As I was gradually receding from the exhibition, the arduous duties began to thicken more strongly upon my man Daniel, of whom I have before often spoken. He had been longest associated with me and my collection, and having it more by heart than the rest, was the foremost man in illustrating it, of which he had been curator for seven or eight years. I have before mentioned that he was of a quick and irascible disposition, exceedingly tenacious of national feelings, and those national prejudices mostly in favour of the country I said he had some twenty years since adopted—the United States. Though he was quick-tempered and violent in his prejudices, there was always the redeeming trait at the end, that his anger was soon over, and there was good nature and civility at the bottom.

Though I had often complaints made to me of the want of politeness or of the rudeness of my man Daniel, I generally found that they were instances where he had been provoked to it by some unnecessary allusions to the vices of his own country, or by some objections to his political opinions relative to the institutions of the United States, upon which subjects he holds himself exceedingly punctilious and very well prepared for debate. With whatever foibles he has, I have found him invariably and strictly an honest man; and many of his highest offences alleged to have been given to the public in my rooms, were given strictly in obedience to my orders for the support of the regulations of my exhibition, or for the protection of my property and the advancement of my interest. To those who entered my rooms respectfully for information, he was civil and communicative, and all such drew valuable information from him, and many became attached to him. His lungs were now labouring for me, while mine were getting a little rest; and from morning to night of every day he was conducting individuals and parties around the rooms, pointing out and explaining the leading peculiarities of the museum, and answering the thousand questions that were asked by all classes of society relative to the looks, the modes, and habits of the Indians—the countries they lived in—and also of Mr. Catlin, the proprietor and collector of the museum, whom all were anxious to see, and many of whom had been led to believe was himself an Indian.

In my own answering of these questions, many of which were natural to be raised on so new and exciting a subject, I was often amused, and as often surprised at the novelty and ignorance of many of them, even amongst a polite and well-clad and apparently well-educated class of people. Many of the questions, which only excited a smile with me, elicited broad laughter from Daniel, which he could not help, and having laughed, could not well avoid expressing his surprise at, and his detection of, which gave umbrage, and sometimes was another cause of difficulties that he occasionally though seldom got into.

I observed, after a while, that the same causes which had affected me were emaciating him, and he finally told me that he was talking his lungs out—and that he could not bear it much longer at the rate he was going on. The questions which were constantly put to him in the room were so much of a sort, or class, that there was little variety or novelty in them to please or excite him; almost every person putting the same; much the greater part of them being general, and therefore irksome to him, as they were often asked a hundred or more times in the day and as often answered. He came to me one evening, seemingly much relieved from the painful prospect he had been suffering under, and which was still before him, by the hope that I would adopt a plan he had hit upon for obviating much of the difficulty, and of saving his lungs for the explanations of questions which might be casual, and not exactly reduced to rule. He said he had ascertained that there were about 100 questions which were commonplace—were put (and in the same way precisely) by the greater part of people who came in, and had time to ask them; and that 50 of those, at least, were asked 100 times per day, the answering of which took the greater part of his time and the best part of his strength, which he thought might be reserved for giving more useful information, while these 100 questions, the most of which were extremely simple or silly, and of little importance to be known, might be disposed of by a printed table of answers placed around the rooms for every one to read as they walked, without the loss of time and fatigue consequent upon the usual mode of asking and answering questions. Though I could not consent to adopt his mode, yet I was amused at its ingenuity; and I give here but a small part of his list, which commenced and ran thus:—

“The Indians have no beards at all, only may be one in twenty or so.”

“The Indians don’t shave—they pull it out, when they have any beard.”

“Virtuous?—Yes. I should say they are quite as much so as the whites, if the whites would keep away from them and let them alone.”

“Ah, as amorous?—No. Mr. Catlin says they have not the spices of life and the imaginations to set them on, or I’ll venture they would be quite as bad as the whites.”

“The Indians in America are not cannibals. Mr. Catlin says there is no such thing.”

“No, there are no tribes that go entirely naked; they are all very decent.”

“The Indians don’t eat raw meat, they cook it more than the whites do.”

“Mr. Catlin was amongst the Indians eight years, and was never killed during that time.”

“The scalp is a patch of the skin and hair taken from the top of the head by a warrior when he kills his enemy in battle.”

“No, they don’t scalp the living—it is not a scalp to count if the man is alive.”

“They sometimes eat a great deal, to be sure, but generally not so much as white people.”

“They do get drunk sometimes, but white people sell them rum and make them so, therefore I don’t think we ought to call them drunkards exactly.”

“The Indians all get married—some have a number of wives.”

“Yes, they seem as fond of their wives as any people I ever saw.”

“The Indians never injured Mr. Catlin in any way.”

“Mr. Catlin didn’t live on ‘raw meat;’ he was one time eighteen months with nothing but meat to eat, but it was well cooked.”

“The Indians know nothing about salt—they don’t use it at all.”

“Reason! yes; why, do you think they are wild beasts? to be sure they reason as well as we do.”

“They are thieves, sometimes; but I don’t think they thieve so often as white people do.”

“The Indians do lend their wives sometimes to white men, but it is only their old superannuated ones, who are put aside to hard labour, so it is a sort of kindness all around, and I don’t see that there is much harm in it.”

“The Indians all have their religion, they all worship the Great Spirit.”

“They are treacherous, to be sure, towards their enemies only, and I’ll be whipped if the white people an’t just as bad.”

“The Indians are cruel, there’s no mistake about that; but it is only to their enemies.”

“Sale? there won’t be any sale; Mr. Catlin don’t intend to sell his collection in this country.”

“Mr. Catlin is not an Indian.”

“No, he has no Indian blood in him.”

“Mr. Catlin speaks the English language very well.”

“The Indians don’t raise tea.”

“They never eat the scalps.”

“The Indians that Mr. Catlin saw are not near Chusan, they are 3,000 miles from there, they are in America.”

“You can’t come overland from America.”

“A scalping-knife is any large knife that an Indian takes a scalp with.”

“A prairie is a meadow.”

“The Indians speak their own language.”

“A pappoose is an Indian baby while it is carried in the cradle.”

“A prairie bluff is a hill that is covered with grass.”

“The Rocky Mountains are in America, between New York and the Pacific Ocean, and not in the Indies at all.”

“A snag is a large tree that is lying in the river, its roots fast in the mud at the bottom, and its trunk at the top, pointing down the stream.”

“Sawyers are not alligators.”

“An alligator is a sort of crocodile.”

“The Chesapeake didn’t take the Shannon, it was the Shannon that took the Chesapeake.”

“The Americans are white, the same colour exactly as the English, and speak the same language, only they speak it a great deal better, in general.”

“A stump is the but-end and roots of a tree standing in the ground after the tree is chopped down.”

“It is true that all Indian women stay away from their husbands the seven days of their illness, and I think they are the decentest people of the two for doing it.”

“A squaw is an Indian woman who is married.”

“The Calumet is a pipe of peace.”

“Horns on a chief’s head-dress have no bad meaning.”

“Mr. Catlin is not a repudiator,” &c., &c.

And thus went on poor Daniel’s list to the number of about 100 commonplace questions which he had hoped to have disposed of by a sort of steam operation; but finding that they must all continue to be “done by hand,” as before, he returned to his post, which, from his disappointment in his unrealized hopes, seemed to drag more heavily than ever upon him, and so rapidly to wear him down that he was obliged to plan a tour to his own native land of Erin, where he went for some weeks, to restore his lungs and his strength. His labour-saving suggestion might have been a very convenient one for me in his absence, but it was dispensed with, and he was soon back at his post, recruited and assuming the command again, whilst I was busy in advancing the material for my forthcoming work.

The Notes of my Eight Years’ Travels amongst Forty-eight different Tribes of Indians in America, to be illustrated with more than 300 steel plate illustrations, were nearly ready to be put to press; and I called on my good friend John Murray, in Albemarle Street, believing that he would be glad to publish them for me. To my surprise he objected to them (but without seeing my manuscript), for two reasons which he at once alleged: first, because he was afraid of the great number of illustrations to be embodied in the work, and secondly for (certainly) the most unfashionable reason, that “he loved me too much!” I had brought a letter of introduction to him from his old friend Washington Irving; and from the deep interest Mr. Murray had taken in my collection and the history and prospects of the poor Indians, my rooms (which were near his dwelling-house) were his almost daily resort, and I a weekly guest at his hospitable board, where I always met gentlemen of eminence connected with literature and art. Good and generous old man! he therefore “loved me too much” to share with me the profits of a work which he said should all belong to me for my hard labour and the risks of my life I had run in procuring it; and as the means of enlarging those profits he advised me to publish it myself. “I would advise you,” said he, “as one of your best friends, to publish your own book; and I am sure you will make a handsome profit by it. Being an artist yourself, and able to make the drawings for your 300 illustrations, which for me would require a very great outlay to artists to produce them, and having in your exhibition-room the opportunity of receiving subscriptions for your work, which I could not do, it will be quite an easy thing for you to take names enough to cover all the expenses of getting it up, which at once will place you on safe ground; and if the work should be well received by Mr. Dilke and others of the critical world, it will insure you a handsome reward for your labours, and exceedingly please your sincere friend, John Murray.”

This disinterested frankness endeared me to that good man to his last days, and his advice, which I followed, resulted, as he had predicted, to my benefit. My subscription list my kind friend the Hon. C. A. Murray had in a few days commenced, with the subscriptions of

Her most gracious MAJESTY the QUEEN,
H. R. H. Prince Albert,
Her Majesty the Queen Dowager,
H. R. H. the Duchess of Kent,
His Majesty the King of the Belgians,
H. M. the Queen of the Belgians,
His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex,
H. R. H. Leopold Duc de Brabant.

After which soon followed a complimentary list of the nobility and gentry, together with the leading institutions of the kingdom.

My work was published by myself, at the Egyptian Hall, and the only fears which my good friend John Murray had expressed for me were all dispersed by the favourable announcements by Mr. Dilke, of the Athenæum, and the editors of other literary journals, from which it will be seen that the subjoined notices are but very brief extracts.

It may not be improper also here to remark, that for all the Royal copies subscribed for above, the Hon. C. A. Murray was ordered to remit me double the amount of the price of the work; and that, on a subsequent occasion, when my dear wife and myself were guests at the dinner table of John Murray, he said to his old friend Thomas Moore, who was by our side, “That wild man by the side of you there, Mr. Catlin, who has spent enough of his life amongst the wild Indians (sleeping on the ground and eating raw buffalo meat) to make you and I as grey as badgers, and who has not yet a grey hair in his head, applied to me about a year ago to publish his Notes. I was then—for the first time in my life—too honest for my own interest, as well as that of an author; and I advised him to publish it himself, as the surest way of making something out of it. My wife here will tell you that I have read every word of it through, heavy as it is, and she knows it is the only book that I have read quite through in the last five years. And I tell Mr. Catlin now, in your presence, that I shall regret as long as I live that I did not publish that work for him; for as sincerely as I advised him, I could have promoted his interest by so doing, and would have done so, had I known what was in the work when he proposed it to me.”

The reader will pardon me for inserting here the critical notices which follow:—

Edinburgh Review. Fifteen pages.

“Living with them as one of themselves; having no trading purposes to serve; exciting no enmity by the well-meant but suspicious preaching of a new religion, Mr. Catlin went on with his rifle and his pencil, sketching and noting whatever he saw worthy of record; and wisely abandoning all search for the ancient history of a people who knew no writing, he confined his labours to the depicting exactly what he saw, and that only. Notes and sketches were transmitted, as occasion served, to New York, and the collected results now appear, partly in a gallery which has been for some time exhibited in London, containing some five hundred pictures of Indian personages and scenes, drawn upon the spot, with specimens of their dress and manufactures, their arts and arms; and partly, as just stated, of the volumes under our hands, which display engravings of most of those specimens and pictures, accompanied by a narrative, written in a very pleasant, homely style, of his walks and wanderings in the ‘Far West.’

“The reader will find a compensation in the vigour of the narrative, which, like a diary, conveys the vivid impressions of the moment, instead of being chilled and tamed down into a more studied composition. Such as the work is, we strongly recommend it to the perusal of all who wish to make themselves acquainted with a singular race of men and system of manners, fast disappearing from the face of the earth; and which have nowhere else been so fully, curiously, and graphically described.”

Westminster Review. Twelve pages.

“This is a remarkable book, written by an extraordinary man. A work valuable in the highest degree for its novel and curious information about one of the most neglected and least understood branches of the human family. Mr. Catlin, without any pretension to talent in authorship, has yet produced a book which will live as a record when the efforts of men of much higher genius have been forgotten. Every one in London has seen Mr. Catlin’s unique gallery, and his attractive exhibition of living models at the Egyptian Hall; we cannot too strongly recommend them to our country friends. And here we take our leave of a work over which we have lingered with much pleasure, strongly recommending it to the reader, and hoping its extensive sale will amply repay Mr. Catlin for the great outlay he must have incurred.”

Dublin University Magazine. Fifteen pages.

“Mr. Catlin’s book is one of the most interesting which we have perused on the subject of the Indians. His pencil has preserved the features of races which in a few years will have disappeared; and his faithful and accurate observations may be considered as the storehouse from whence future writers on such topics will extract their most authentic statements.”

Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine. Two Notices, Twenty-two pages.

“This is altogether an unique work. It may be considered as a Catalogue Raisonnée of the numerous objects of art and curiosity which Mr. Catlin has collected in the course of his wanderings, and arranged in his Indian Gallery. The narrative of Mr. Catlin’s personal adventures during the wandering years in which he was thus engaged, forms a work as unique in literature, as his collection of original portraits and curiosities is rare in art.

“Many curious traits of character and pictures of manners are exhibited in these large and closely-printed volumes, which will remain an interesting record of the Homeric age and race of North America, when, save a few wild traditions and scattered relics, and a few of the musical and sonorous Indian names of lakes, rivers, and hunting grounds, every other trace of the red man will have perished on that vast continent.”

Literary Gazette, London. Three Notices, Twenty-five Columns.

“Catlin’s Book on the North American Indians.—An unique work! A work of extraordinary interest and value. Mr. Catlin is the Historian of the Red Races of mankind; of a past world, or at least of a world fast passing away, and leaving hardly a trace or wreck behind. We need not recommend it to the world, for it recommends itself, beyond our praise.”

Athenæum, London. Four Notices, Thirty-one Columns.

“The public have fully confirmed the opinion we formerly pronounced on Catlin’s Indian gallery, as the most interesting exhibition which, in our recollection, had been opened in London. The production of the work will, therefore, be most acceptable to those who have seen the exhibition, as serving to refresh their memories; to those who have not, as helping to explain that of which they have heard so much; to all as a pleasant narrative of adventure, and a circumstantial and detailed history of the manners and customs of an interesting people, whose fate is sealed, whose days are numbered, whose extinction is certain. The Americans should make much of Mr. Catlin for the sake of by-gone days, which his books, portraits, and collections will present to their grandchildren.”

Art Union, London.

“We have rarely examined a work at once so interesting and so useful as this; the publication of which is, in truth, a benefit conferred upon the world; for it is a record of things rapidly passing away, and the accurate traces of which are likely to be lost within a brief time after they have been discovered. As a contribution to the history of mankind, these volumes will be of rare value long after the last of the persecuted races are with ‘the Great Spirit,’ and they may even have some present effect; for they cannot fail to enlist the best sympathies of humanity on the side of a most singular people. The book is exceedingly simple in its style; it is the production of a man of benevolent mind, kindly affections, and sensitive heart, as well as of keen perceptions and sound judgment. If we attempted to do justice to its merits, we should fill a number of our work instead of a column of it; we must content ourselves with recommending its perusal to all who covet knowledge or desire amusement;—no library in the kingdom should be without a copy.”

Times, London. One Notice, Three Columns.

“The reflection is almost insupportable to a humane mind, that the indigenous races of America, comprising numerous distinct nations, the original proprietors of that vast continent, are probably doomed to entire extermination—a fate which has already befallen a large portion of the red tribes. It is still more painful to think that this should be the effect of the spread of the civilized races, who thus become the agents of a wholesale destruction of their fellow-men. If these melancholy truths were capable of aggravation, it may be found in the dreadful fact that the process of destruction is not left to the slow operation of invisible and insensible causes, but is hastened by expedients devised for that express end by civilized men, the tribes being stimulated or compelled to the destruction of each other, or provided with the means of destroying themselves.

“Mr. Catlin, the author of the work which has suggested these observations, has had better opportunities for studying the character of the North American Indians than most travellers since the early French writers.

“Mr. Catlin is an American, a native of Wyoming, and the publisher of his own work, at the Egyptian Hall.”

Morning Chronicle, London.

“As a work intended merely for general amusement, and independently of the higher object to which it is devoted, Mr. Catlin’s book will be found exceedingly interesting. The salient or rugged points of its style have not been smoothed down by any literary journeyman. Mr. Catlin ventures alone and unaided before the public. What he has seen in the prairie, and noted down in its solitude, he sends forth, with all the wildness and freshness of nature about it. This, together with his free and easy conversational style, plentifully sprinkled with Americanisms, gives a peculiar charm to his descriptions, which are not merely animated or life-like, but life itself. The reader is made to believe himself in the desert, or lying among friendly Indians in the wigwam, or hurried along in the excitement of the chase. He is constantly surrounded by the figures of the red man, and hears the rustle of their feathers, or the dash of their half-tamed steeds as they bound by him.

“The work is ornamented with hundreds of engravings, taken from original pictures drawn by Mr. Catlin, of the persons, manners, customs, and scenes that he met with in his wanderings. They give an additional value to those volumes which are published, as the title-page informs us, by Mr. Catlin himself, at the Egyptian Hall. We wish him all the success to which his candour no less than his talents fully entitle him.”

Morning Herald, London.

“In the two ample volumes just published, and illustrated with more than 300 plates, Mr. Catlin has given to the world a lasting and invaluable memorial of the doomed race of the Red Man, which, after having from immemorial time held the unmolested tenancy of an entire continent, is now but too obviously hurried on to utter extinction. Mr. Catlin’s literary matter resembles his drawings; it has all the freshness of the sketch from nature. Through both he brings us into companionship with the red man, as if careering with him over the boundless plains, the primeval forests of his hunting grounds in the far West, or in the vicinity of his temporary village settlements, witnessing his athletic games, his strange, fantastic dances, and his spontaneous endurance of those revolting tortures by which he evinces his unflinching stoicism.”

Morning Post, London.

“Upwards of three hundred very well executed etchings from the paintings, drawn by Mr. Catlin, adorn these volumes, and offer to the eye one of the most complete museums of an almost unknown people that ever was given to the public. The style of the narrative is diffuse, inartificial, and abounding in Yankeeisms; but it is earnest, honest, and unpretending; and contains most undoubted and varied information relative to the red savage of America, fresh from the wilds, and unembittered by border hostility or unfounded prejudice. These volumes are handsomely printed, and ‘brought out,’ in all respects, with much care and taste.”

Spectator, London. Five Columns.

“The illustrative plates of these volumes are numbering upwards of three hundred subjects—landscapes, hunting scenes, Indian ceremonies, and portraits form a remarkable feature, and possess a permanent interest as graphic records. They are outline etchings from the author’s paintings, and are admirable for the distinct and lively manner in which the characteristics of the scenes and persons are portrayed: what is called a style of art would have been impertinent, and might have tended to falsify. Mr. Catlin, in his homely, but spirited manner, seizes upon the most distinguishing points of his subjects by dint of understanding their value, and every touch has significance and force: hence the number of details and the extent of view embraced in these small and slight sketches, hence their animation and reality.”

Atlas, London. Three Notices, Twelve Columns.

“This publication may be regarded as the most valuable accession to the history of the fast perishing races of the aboriginal world that has ever been collected by a single individual. The descriptions it contains are minute and full, and possess the advantage of being wonderfully tested by the long experience of the writer, and verified by the concurrent testimonials of many individuals intimately acquainted with the scenes and races delineated. The engravings, which are liberal to an unprecedented extent, cannot be too highly praised for their utility as illustrations. To the readers who have never had an opportunity of visiting Mr. Catlin’s gallery, these engravings will form for them quite a museum of Indian curiosities in themselves; while to those already familiar with the actual specimens, they will serve as useful and agreeable souvenirs. But we chiefly approve and recommend this work to universal circulation for the sake of the pure and noble philanthropy by which it is everywhere inspired. As the advocate of the oppressed Indian, now vanishing before the white man on the soil of his fathers, Mr. Catlin deserves the unmixed thanks of the Christian world. His volumes are full of stimulants to benevolent exertion, and bear the strongest testimony to the character of the races for whose preservation he pleads.”

United Service Gazette, London.

“Mr. Catlin is one of the most remarkable men of the age. Every one who has visited his singularly interesting gallery at the Egyptian Hall, must have been struck by his remarkable intelligence on every subject connected with the North American Indians; but of its extent, as well as of his extraordinary enthusiasm and thirst for adventure, we had formed no idea until we had perused these volumes. In the present blazé condition of English literature, in which hardly any work is published that is not founded more or less on other volumes which have preceded it, until authorship has dwindled to little more than the art of emptying one vessel into another, it is refreshing to come across a book which, like the one before us, is equally novel in subject, manner, and execution, and which may be pronounced, without hyperbole, one of the most original productions which have issued from the press for many years. It is wholly impossible, in the compass of a newspaper notice, either to analyze or afford even a tolerable idea of the contents of such a book; and for the present, at least, we must limit ourselves altogether to the first volume.”

Caledonian Mercury, Edinburgh.

“Mr. Catlin’s Lectures on the North-American Indians.—We have much pleasure in publishing the following testimonial from a gentleman well qualified to pronounce an opinion, on the remarkable fidelity and effect of Mr. Catlin’s interesting and instructive exhibition:—

‘Cottage, Haddington, 15th April, 1843.

‘Dear Sir,—I have enjoyed much pleasure in attending your lectures at the Waterloo-rooms in Edinburgh. Your delineations of the Indian character, the display of beautiful costumes, and the native Indian manners, true to the life, realised to my mind and view scenes I had so often witnessed in the parts of the Indian countries where I had been; and for twenty years’ peregrinations in those parts, from Montreal to the Great Slave River, north, and from the shores of the Atlantic, crossing the Rocky Mountains, to the mouth of the Columbia River, on the Pacific Ocean, west, I had opportunities of seeing much. Your lectures and exhibition have afforded me great pleasure and satisfaction, and I shall wish you all that success which you so eminently deserve, for the rich treat which you have afforded in our enlightened, literary, and scientific metropolis.

‘I remain, dear Sir, yours very truly,
‘John Haldane.

‘To George Catlin, Esq.’

“The following is an extract of a letter received some days since by a gentleman in Edinburgh, from Mr. James Hargrave, of the Hudson’s Bay Company, dated York Factory, Hudson’s Bay, 10th December, 1842:—

‘Should you happen to fall in with Catlin’s Letters on the North American Indians, I would strongly recommend a perusal of them for the purpose of acquiring a knowledge of the habits and customs of those tribes among whom he was placed. Catlin’s sketches are true to life, and are powerfully descriptive of their appearance and character.’”

The World of Fashion, London.

“We venture to affirm of Mr. Catlin’s book, which can be said of very few others, that it is impossible to open it at any page, and not continue its perusal with unmingled satisfaction. It has too the rare quality of being written by a man who says nothing but that which he knows, who describes nothing but that which he has seen. We feel while reading the book as in the society of a man of extraordinary observation, of great talent, of wonderful accomplishments; and most cordially and earnestly do we recommend this invaluable book to the patronage of the public generally, and to the perusal of our readers in particular.”

Weekly Dispatch, London.

“A person might well be startled and frightened at the appearance of two such large volumes as these on only the manners, customs, and condition of the North American Indians, a race of savages now almost extinct. With all this complaint against the immense bulk of a book, moreover, on such a subject, we are bound to confess that not only is it the least wearisome of large books that we have for a long time seen, but that it is at least one of the most amusing and animating amongst even the condensed publications that for a considerable period have been submitted to our perusal and judgment, and we can confidently recommend it to our readers.”

Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal. Two Notices, Four Columns.

“Of all the works yet published on the subject of the aboriginal inhabitants of North America, no one, it seems to us, can be compared in point of accuracy and extent of research with that of Mr. Catlin. In the course of eight years he traversed North America almost from end to end, saw and mixed with forty-eight Indian tribes, composing a large portion of the two millions of red people yet in existence, examined personally into all their peculiarities, and, finally, accumulated a noble gallery of portraits, and a rich museum of curiosities, calculated to form at once a lasting monument to himself and an invaluable record of Indian persons, manners, and habiliments.

“Mr. Catlin, combining all the qualities of the traveller, artist, and historian, merits no sparing notice. His two volumes, large octavo, and closely printed, are full of most interesting matter, and contain, besides, upwards of three hundred beautiful illustrations, engraved from the original paintings.”

“Légation des Etats-Unis, Paris, Dec. 8th, 1841.

“Dear Sir,—No man can appreciate better than myself the admirable fidelity of your drawings and book, which I have lately received. They are equally spirited and accurate; they are true to nature. Things that are, are not sacrificed, as they too often are by the painter, to things as in his judgment they should be.

“During eighteen years of my life I was superintendent of Indian affairs in the north-western territory of the United States; and during more than five I was Secretary of War, to which department belongs the general control of Indian concerns. I know the Indians thoroughly; I have spent many a month in their camps, council-houses, villages, and hunting grounds; I have fought with them and against them; and I have negotiated seventeen treaties of peace or of cession with them. I mention these circumstances to show you that I have a good right to speak confidently upon the subject of your drawings; among them I recognize many of my old acquaintances, and everywhere I am struck with the vivid representations of them and their customs, of their peculiar features and of their costumes. Unfortunately they are receding before the advancing tide of our population, and are probably destined, at no distant day, wholly to disappear; but your collection will preserve them, as far as human art can do, and will form the most perfect monument of an extinguished race that the world has ever seen.

“Lewis Cass.

“To Geo. Catlin.”

CHAPTER VI.

The Author’s wife and two children arrive in the British Queen, from New York—First appreciation of London—Sight-seeing—Author lectures in the Royal Institution—Suggests a Museum of Mankind—Great applause—Vote of thanks by members of the Royal Institution—The “Museum of History”—Author lectures in the other literary and scientific institutions of London—Author dines with the Royal Geographical Society, and with the Royal Geological Society—Mrs. Catlin’s travels in the “Far West”—Her welcome, and kind friends in London.