Had They Been Surly, Morose
People, Made Silent By The Specialties Of Their Life, It Would Have
Been Explicable; But They Were Delighted To Talk And To Listen.
The Fact, I Take It, Is That The People Are All Harsh To Each
Other.
They do not care to go out of their way to speak to any one
unless something is to be gained.
They say that two Englishmen
meeting in the desert would not speak unless they were introduced.
The farther I travel the less true do I find this of Englishmen,
and the more true of other people.
CHAPTER XI.
CERES AMERICANA.
We stopped at the Julien House, Dubuque. Dubuque is a city in
Iowa, on the western shore of the Mississippi, and as the names
both of the town and of the hotel sounded French in my ears, I
asked for an explanation. I was then told that Julien Dubuque, a
Canadian Frenchman, had been buried on one of the bluffs of the
river within the precincts of the present town; that he had been
the first white settler in Iowa, and had been the only man who had
ever prevailed upon the Indians to work. Among them he had become
a great "Medicine," and seems for awhile to have had absolute power
over them. He died, I think, in 1800, and was buried on one of the
hills over the river. "He was a bold, bad man," my informant told
me, "and committed every sin under heaven. But he made the Indians
work."
Lead mines are the glory of Dubuque, and very large sums of money
have been made from them. I was taken out to see one of them, and
to go down it; but we found, not altogether to my sorrow, that the
works had been stopped on account of the water. No effort has been
made in any of these mines to subdue the water, nor has steam been
applied to the working of them. The lodes have been so rich with
lead that the speculators have been content to take out the metal
that was easily reached, and to go off in search of fresh ground
when disturbed by water. "And are wages here paid pretty
punctually?" I asked. "Well, a man has to be smart, you know."
And then my friend went on to acknowledge that it would be better
for the country if smartness were not so essential.
Iowa has a population of 674,000 souls, and in October, 1861, had
already mustered eighteen regiments of one thousand men each. Such
a population would give probably 170,000 men capable of bearing
arms, and therefore the number of soldiers sent had already
amounted to more than a decimation of the available strength of the
State. When we were at Dubuque, nothing was talked of but the
army. It seemed that mines, coal-pits, and corn-fields were all of
no account in comparison with the war. How many regiments could be
squeezed out of the State, was the one question which filled all
minds; and the general desire was that such regiments should be
sent to the Western army, to swell the triumph which was still
expected for General Fremont, and to assist in sweeping slavery out
into the Gulf of Mexico.
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