The Conclusions Which I Have Stated In The Foregoing Pages Are
Derived From A Careful Comparison And Study Of Facts Which I Have Learned
From Eminent Speakers And Writers Both In Favour Of And Against The Slave-
System.
CHAPTER VIII.
The hickory stick - Chawing up ruins - A forest scene - A curious questioner
- Hard and soft shells - Dangers of a ferry - The western prairies -
Nocturnal detention - The Wild West and the Father of Rivers - Breakfast in
a shed - What is an alligator? - Physiognomy, and its uses - The ladies'
parlour - A Chicago hotel, its inmates and its horrors - A water-drinking
people - The Prairie City - Progress of the West.
A bright September sun glittered upon the spires of Cincinnati as I
reluctantly bade it adieu, and set out in the early morning by the cars to
join my travelling companions, meaning to make as long a détour as
possible, or, as a "down-east" lady might say, to "make a pretty
considerable circumlocution." Fortunately I had met with some friends,
well acquainted with the country, who offered to take me round a much
larger circle than I had contemplated; and with a feeling of excitement
such as I had not before experienced, we started for the Mississippi and
the western prairies en route to Detroit.
Bishop M'Ilvaine, anxious that a very valued friend of his in England
should possess something from Ohio, had cut down a small sapling, which,
when divested of its branches and otherwise trimmed, made a very
formidable-looking bludgeon or cudgel, nearly four feet long. This being
too lengthy for my trunks was tied to my umbrella, and on this day in the
cars excited no little curiosity, several persons eyeing it, then me, as
if wondering in what relation we stood to each other. Finally they took it
up, minutely examining it, and tapping it as if to see whether anything
were therein concealed. It caused me much amusement, and, from its size,
some annoyance, till at length, wishing to leave it in my room at a
Toronto hotel while I went for a visit of a few days, the waiter brought
it down to the door, asking me "if I wished to take the cudgel?" After
this I had it shortened, and it travelled in my trunk to New York, where
it was given to a carver to be fashioned into a walking-stick; and, unless
the tradesman played a Yankee trick, and substituted another, it is now,
after surviving many dangers by sea and land, in the possession of the
gentleman for whom it was intended.
Some amusing remarks were made upon England by some of the "Buckeyes," as
the inhabitants of Ohio are called. On trying to persuade a lady to go
with me to St. Louis, I observed that it was only five hundred miles.
"Five hundred miles!" she replied; "why, you'd tumble off your paltry
island into the sea before you got so far!" Another lady, who got into the
cars at some distance from Cincinnati, could not understand the value
which we set upon ruins.
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