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.
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