Col. Lawrence, Capt. Thompson, and Lieut. Griswold called in the course of the day. I commenced reading Mungo Parke's posthumous volume.
18th. The mind, like the body, will get tired. Quintilian remarks, "Variety refreshes and renovates the mind." Composition and reading by turns, wear away the weariness either may create; and though we have done many things, we in some measure find ourselves fresh and recruited at entering on a new thing. This day has been almost entirely given up to society. Visitors seemed to come in, as if by concert. Col. Lawrence, Capts. Clarke and Beal, Lieuts. Smith and Griswold. Mr. S.B. Griswold, who was one of the American hostage officers at Quebec, Dr. Foot, and Mr. Johnston came in to see me, at different times. I filled up the intervals in reading.
19th, Sabbath. A party of Indians came to my door singing the begging dance. These people do not respect the Sabbath.30 The parties who came in, on New Year's day, still linger about the settlements, and appear to be satisfied to suffer hunger half the time, if their wants can be gratuitously relieved the other half.
20th. I continued to transcribe, from loose papers, into my Indian lexicon. A large proportion of the words are derivatives. All are, more or less, compounded in their oral forms, and they appear to be glued, as it were, to objects of sense. This is not, however, peculiar to this language. The author of "Hermes" says--"The first words of men, like their first ideas, had an immediate reference to sensible objects, and that in after days, when they began to discern with their intellect, they took those words which they found already made, and transferred them, by metaphor, to intellectual conceptions."
On going to dinner, I found a party of officers and their ladies. "Mine host," Mr. Johnston, with his fine and frank Belfast hospitality, does the honors of his table with grace and ease. Nothing appears to give him half so much delight as to see others happy around him. I read, in the evening, the lives of Akenside, Gray, and Littleton. What a perfect crab old Dr. Johnson was! But is there any sound criticism without sternness?
21st. I finished the reading of Mungo Parke, the most enterprising traveler of modern times. He appears to me to have committed two errors in his last expedition, and I think his death is fairly attributable to impatience to reach the mouth of the Niger. He should not have attempted to pass from the Gambia to the Niger during the rainy season. By this, he lost thirty-five out of forty men. He should not have tried to force a passage through the kingdom of Houssa, without making presents to the local petty chiefs. By this, he lost his life. When will geographers cease to talk about the mouth of the Niger? England has been as indefatigable in solving this problem as she has been in finding out the North West Passage, and, at present, as unsuccessful. We see no abatement, however, in her spirit of heroic enterprise. America has sent but one explorer to this field--Ledyard.
29. I found graywacke in sitû at Iron River, in Lake Superior, in 1826, and subsequently at Presque Isle River, where it is slaty, and fine even grained, and apparently suitable for some economical uses.
30. About eighteen months afterwards, I interdicted all visits of Indians on the Sabbath, and adopted it as an invariable rule, that I would not transact any business, or receive visits, from any Indian under the influence of liquor. I directed my interpreter to tell them that the President had sent me to speak to sober men only.
CHAPTER XVI.
Novel reading--Greenough's "Geology"--The cariboo--Spiteful plunder of private property on a large scale--Marshall's Washington--St. Clair's "Narrative of his Campaign"--Etymology of the word totem--A trait of transpositive languages--Polynesian languages--A meteoric explosion at the maximum height of the winter's temperature--Spafford's "Gazetteer"--Holmes on the Prophecies--Foreign politics--Mythology--Gnomes--The Odjibwa based on monosyllables--No auxiliary verbs--Pronouns declined for tense--Esprella's letters--Valerius--Gospel of St. Luke--Chippewayan group of languages--Home politics--Prospect of being appointed superintendent of the lead mines of Missouri.
1823. Jan. 22d. A pinching cold winter wears away slowly. The whole village seems to me like so many prescient beavers, in a vast snow-bank, who cut away the snow and make paths, every morning, from one lodge to another. In this reticulation of snow paths the drum is sounded and the flag raised. Most dignified bipeds we are. Hurrah for progress, and the extension of the Anglo-Saxon people!
I read the "Recluse," translated from D'Arlincourt's popular novel Le Solitaire, and think the commendations bestowed upon it, in the translator's preface, just in the main. It is precisely such a novel as I should suppose would be very popular in the highest circles of France, and consequently, owing to difference of character, would be less relished by the same circles in England. I suspect the author to be a great admirer of Chateaubriand's "Atala," whose death is brought to mind by the catastrophe of Elode's. Here, however, the similitude ends. There is nothing to be said respecting the comparative features of Charles the Bold and Chactas, except that the Indian possessed those qualities of the heart which most ennoble human nature.
To the readers of Scott's novels, however (for he is certainly the "Great Unknown"), this pleasing poetical romance, with all its sparkling passages, will present one glaring defect--it is not sufficiently descriptive. We rise from the perusal of it with no definite ideas of the scenery of the valley of Underlach. We suppose it to be sublime and picturesque, and are frequently told so by the author; but he fails in the description of particular scenes. Scott manages otherwise. When he sends Baillie Nicoll Jarvie into the Highlands, he does not content himself with generalities, but also brings before the mind such groups and scenes as make one fear and tremble. To produce this excitement is literary power.
23d. I devoted the time before breakfast, which, with us, happens at a late hour, to the Edinburgh Review. I read the articles on Greenough's "First Principles of Geology," and a new edition of Demosthenes. When shall we hear the last panegyric of the Grecian orator, who, in the two characteristics of his eloquence which have been most praised, simplicity and nature, is every day equalled, or excelled, by our Indian chiefs?
Greenough's Essays are bold and original, and evince no weak powers of observation and reasoning. But he is rather a leveler than a builder. It seems better that we should have a poor house over our heads than none at all. The facts mentioned on the authority of a traveler in Spain, that the pebbles in the rivers of that country are not carried down streams by the force of the current, are contradicted by all my observations on the rivers of the United States. The very reverse is true. Those streams which originate in, or run through districts of granite, limestone, graywacke, &c., present pebbles of these respective rocks abundantly along their banks, at points below the termination of the fixed strata. These pebbles, and even boulders, are found far below the termination of the rocky districts, and appear to owe their transportation to the force of existing currents. I have found the peculiar pebbles of the sources of the Mississippi as low down as St. Louis and St. Genevieve.
I resumed the perusal of Marshall's "Life of Washington," which I had laid by in the fall. Lieutenants Barnum and Bicker and Mr. Johnston came to visit me.
24th. I made one of a party of sixteen, who dined with Mr. Ermatinger. I here first tasted the flesh of the cariboo, which is a fine flavored venison. I do not recollect any wise or merry remark made during dinner, which is worth recording. As toasts show the temper of the times, and bespeak the sentiments of those who give them, a few of them may be mentioned. After several