should do it awkwardly; but we cannot with patience endure the sight of one, who labours the part of the poet, the painter, or the performer in music: these should not be attempted, except by those who have acquired ease, and grace, and finished execution. We will now insert in full the arguments of the several cantos, and setting the verse entirely aside, proceed to make such selections from the notes, as we think will most benefit our readers. CANTO I. Argument. A New-England wife proposes a removal to a better country, to the pleasant land of Ohio, where are no north east winds, and no winter; where spring and autumn are for ever blended, and summer and winter for ever banished. Note 1.--Where are no parish taxes. Note 2.-and no turnpike gates. Note 3.-Where corn grows 100 bushels to the acre, if hoed, 50 if not hoed, and 25 if not planted. Note 4.-Where whiskey is cheap, Note 5.--and deer as plenty as lambs in yankee pastures.-Note 6.--Where pigs grow fat without feeding, and wild fowl are plenty as can be. Note 7.-The husband, careless of his wife's fine speeches, is dubbed numbskull, Note 8.— and now resolves to go, and threatens not to re-resolve. Note 9. CANTO II. Argument." Our children there shall learn to climb trees, and shoot a rifle." Note 10.--The patrimony is sold and a wagon and horses bought-the journey commences and proceeds prosperously; so long as turnpikes are walked on. Note 11.-In their first essay to pass the blue ridges of the Alleghanies, Note 12.-the wagon is upset with a crash; husband frets. Notes 13 and 14.--One horse is dead; and the bed, saved from the ruin, is thrown over the other horse: the wife sighs for the broken crockery, and cries for the dead horse, but mounts his mate. Note 15.-People on the road described. Note 16. The wife by funeral step pursues her route, bewailing her sad fate. Note 17. CANTO III. Argument. The husband trudges on foot after his mounted wifethey crawl over mountain after mountain :-first the Three Brothers, then comes Sideling Hill. Note 18.-then Dry ridge, and Scrub ridge, and a dozen more almost impassable ridges; and now the true blue Alleghany, king of all mountains, and Laurel Hill, his queen. Note 19. -In train appear courtiers, and maids of honour, such as additional ridges, and rivers, and rocks, and rattlesnakes, and ravines, and glades, and glens.-Arrive at last in Ohio. Note 20.-A great wooden wilderness. Note 21.--Conclusion. NOTES. North east winds.-Note I. Canto i. The folly of expecting to find a better climate "over the mountains," may be seen in the following night-scene, extracted verbatim et literatim from a traveller's journal. "After a wearisome day, at night we discovered the first rate Tavern, before pointed out to us. My fellow traveller was a Bostonian. The house had two ends; that is, it was a double log hut, with a cover ed interspace hung with the skins of wild animals, as is common in that country. The spare bed we engaged without ceremony, and the second sheet was added in compliment to us yankees. Our lodging room was the farther end of the cabin, partitioned from out-a-doors by logs and mud, and from heaven by birch bark, save the lesser half, left for a smoke hole. In the corner of this great room stood the aforesaid bed, well sheltered from storms, which fell right down-and now my companion and myself were waiting the approach of "Nature's soft nurse,"-to 'Steep our senses in forgetfulness." Sleep liest thou in smoky cribs ?" Then here is thy very home and pallet; with all thy buzzing, hushing night-flies. Yet the dull god we saw not. His old mother Doze however appeared with seals and plasters to make all close-when, O gentle sleep "How they frighted thee," with gee! whoa cum! whoa haw! whoa!!-A child screamsHolloa, the house!-turn out! ho landlord?" Who's there? some d-d Connecticut teams, clean from Clam-Town."-Soon the Connecticut teams were disburdened of their cargoes of live stock, which consisted of grandfathers, grandmothers, husbands, wives, children, old maids, and uncles, with all the filling such family warp required, to complete the full complement of three full households. No sooner bad the grate received the stroke of the poker, and the dim light of a coal fire half diluted total darkness, than our new guests were seen to be yankees. The little ones ran up to the fire to warm their wet, cold fingers, for the fall rains had now set in, and fell in torrents; the mothers were selecting from their several wardrobes a change of clothes, while the grand-dams held their frying pans over the stinking coal fire, which added to our sulphureous atmosphere the steams of bacon. The teams turned out, the men came in bowed down with bed and bedding--the floor of slabs receives the beds the fuming, steaming atmosphere the down-and our ears the following conversation. HUSBAND. "I wonder if it rains eternally here! I'd give more for an acre of clear sky over my head, than for the best acre of land on God's earth." WIFE. "This is Ohio-the pleasant land of Ohio!-where storms never come; where sunshine and harvest last all the year round, day and night and all. This is the land of promise-paradise-clear paradise; and so it is, but 'tis PARADISE LOST." A LAD OF THE COMPANY. "Is this Ohio? I shouldn't thought o' that -they said Ohio was all a plain; but old Mount Tom himself is a fool and an ant to these hills." OLD WOMAN. "I knew and told you 'twas all a pack of plaguy lies." How long we should have been edified with the repinings of the pilgrims I cannot say, but now a new arrival from the west of three horse wagons came thundering up: each wagon afforded a man and wife, VOL. I. 26 who spread their beds and combed their hair, and questioned the yankees; so we had another dialogue. OHIO WOMAN. how far ?" Stranger-you seem to've come a great way; pray NEW-ENGLAND WOMAN. "From Belfast-Kennebeck, ma'am. Pray whence came you?" OHIO WOMAN. "O from Sciotha, ma'am." NEW-ENGLAND WOMAN, "From Sciota-Sciota; Sciotha?" OHIO WOMAN. "Ay, ma'am; the New-England people speak it Sciota, but we, who live there, Sciotha." NEW-ENGLAND WOMAN. "Why, that's where we are going to ; pray are you journeying to visit your friends?" OHIO WOMAN. "Going to visit? Ay, better as that; we are going to live with them; to spend, as we hope, our days at Konnemaugh.” NEW-ENGLAND WOMAN. "Konnemaw ! where is that, maʼam ?” OHIO WOMAN. "Up the Alleghany mountains, ma'am." NEW-ENGLAND WOMAN. 66 Why choose that awful rough country?" OHIO WOMAN. 66 Why ma'am, seven years ago we three neighbour. ing families passed here, to the westward, as you do now, with our little ones and our parents; we hoped to plant a little colony on the Sciotha; we paid all we were worth for wild lands, and settled on them—we had hard work of it surely. Wild lands are not a house and garden; good highland breezes come not to swamps and bottoms. Our parents sickened of that country fever; we could not send to Konnemaugh for our family physician, and they lingered and died;-and so they might at home, but then 'twould been at home; the pure mountain would have revived them--ay, in the first 'twould never brought them such a fever, and had they been sick at home there would have been no lack of any thing while they were alive, nor after they were dead-but that's not all; our children, poor. things, grew pimping, pined away -'twas all so damp and sickly; and there they lie beside their grand parents. But we are spared, yet hardly half alive, and so far back." NEW-ENGLAND MAN. "A sad tale for us to hear." OHIO WOMAN. "And for us to tell--but we have left all behind to go to Konnemaugh, for we had rather have health up the Alleghany, than wealth down the Sciotha." The conversation ceased, and all was still as any room could be where twenty weary travellers were labouring hard to rest.-A little urchin half waked up by inward dreams or outward squeeze, now squealed out something which I cannot spell, and kept his tune a-going; the mother fondly tries to still the child with coos and whispers-the father aloud finds fault with the child and mother-when my companion with proud cockney tone vociferates, Damnation!! It was silent now as the house of death for twenty minutes, when breaks out another child; the mother whispers, the father frets-and the Bostonian roars! This thrice went round; as for me, I pitied every slabful of this group from the bottom of my soul, and vented not a single mouthful of spleen, nor felt it in my throat. October 20th-Thirty miles from Zanesville. Parish taxes.-Note 2. Canto i. No one is compelled to pay parish rates even in Connecticut; yet if I had a lamb I set store by, I would take some pains to keep her in the flock, rather than see her wallow with swine and as man is acknowledged to be gregarious, for the benefit of my children I would help maintain society, if from no higher motive. Turnpike gates.-Note 3. Canto i. Avoid them go through swamps and woods; they are no worse here than in Ohio. Say, New-England man, will you see your wives and daughters exchange the elegant and safe gig-ride, for walking in the pack horse path, where bullies grope, in rifle frock and webbing belt, one shoulder supporting a musket, and the other covering a powder-horn? without shame, and without religion, which alone teaches the stronger to respect and protect the weaker sex. Where corn grows.-Note 4. Canto i. One would think, by the stories of the corn fields over the mountains, that New-England would soon be deprived of all the benefit of Squanto's legacy; (Squanto, the Indian, who first taught the English to cultivate maize, Indian corn, in Old Massachusetts ;) but 'tis not so. In consequence of the unusual and universal failure of crops in 1816, the whole world came as near a state of starvation as the world's people could well endure. This was foreseen by the eagle-eyed speculators of seaports, and great quantities of corn were engaged on the Muskingum and other tributaries of Ohio, to be delivered so soon as the ripening should allow. But what with the delay of running down a 2000 mile river, through rapids, and falls, and shallows, and snaggs, and sawyers, and 'gainsters, and musquitoes, and agues, and fevers, and drunken boatman; together with delay at New-Orleans, and wharfage, and sinkage, and then running through pirates, and patriots; this boasted supply arrives at last into the world's highway and thoroughfare, the blue Atlantic. But long ere this can be accomplished, the world has found a belly full, and laughs at this outlandish gourd seed; and 'tis left to rot and ruin the concern. So by a fair experiment, 'tis fully proved Ohio corn will never come in time to make a yankee hasty-pudding; nor will it ever sell where yankee flint-corn comes to market. And whiskey is cheap.-Note 5. Canto i. We will leave it to our readers to guess what is the state of society, where a man may get dead drunk for two thirds of a groat. Deer plenty as lambs.-Note 6. 'Canto i. The writer of these notes, during a stop at Marietta, was disturbed one morning by the lamentations of the family over their favourite house dog, which had been shot in the night. The circumstances were as follows :-The night previous, a great number of sheep had been slaughtered by dogs, as was supposed. The owners of dogs refused to pay damage. The shepherds next night doubled their watch; armed, not with humble crooks, but well charged rifles, and killed sixteen dogs, beside my landlady's. The night after the day of lamenta. tions for the dead dogs, the sheep were left alone to graze and lick the dew; but morning's dawn discovered a score and a half more of fresh slain ewes and lambs. And now was heard from every quarter, the wolves! the wolves! and not a single dog to bark at 'em; and so I left this boasted yankee colony, made up of French, Irish, Dutch, Virgipians, backwoodsmen, and wolves and lest my readers should suppose this took place a long time since, some twenty years ago, I declare it happened as above related, long since M'Donough's cock crowed on Lake Champlain. : The pigs grow fat without feeding.-Note 7. Canto i. This is literally true of Ohio; four fifths of the country consisting of hills thickly wooded with white oak: 'tis a fine place for shack, which is alike good for pigs and water-fowl. But when wild hogs grow fat on acorns, where is the food for the minds, and polish for the manners of your children? Numbskull.-Note 8. Canto i. I would leave this stanza without a comment : did it not contain all the wife's argument, which had any weight with her husband. The fine things before enumerated made no impression. In a woman's plea, time and plan, and even expediency, are of little moment; but provocation is a potent engine. "Husband resolves to go."--Note 9. Canto i. I would not by any means be thought to countenance our hero's conduct here; although our heroine seems to have been a shrew of the first water. I think, with my old aunt Bathsheba, "that to get on in this world in peace, we must all conform, reform, and uniform," and not because we are teazed, adopt resolutions that will most assuredly bring misery sooner or later. Why, I know forty wives who scold, and fret, and chafe, as bad as Petruchio's Kate, and all for nothing; yet these women, under real adversity, are "calm as a summer's sea, when not a breath of wind flies o'er its surface." "O woman! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please; By the light quivering aspin made; Yet when pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!" "Our children."--Note 10. Canto ii. At Zanesville, a distinguished emigrant lodged a night in the same room with me. He had been long a resident of the State of Ohio, though not of that town or county. The following is a faithful epitome of his narrative. "I left New-England young, yet I had married, being a disciple of Franklin in matrimonial affairs. I stopped on the North River, till my children were so old as to bring with them to this State the remembrance of their home. Attracted by the reports of this famed Elysium, we came here. My wife was delicate in every respect; formed for society, she had tasted its sweets: she loved her friends and her home. O how much unfitted for the change which brought her from the scenes of her youth to these wild woods, to become the companion of exiled foreigners, who were for ever chanting |