Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium; Vol. 2 (of 2): being Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe with his North American Indian CollectionCatlin, George
History
Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians in England, France, and Belgium; Vol. 2 (of 2): being Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe with his North American Indian Collection
Catlin, George
England -- Description and travel; France -- Description and travel; Indians of North America
We were then conducted by the governor's request to the apartments
of his family, where he and his kind lady and daughters received the
Indians and ourselves with much kindness, having his table prepared
with refreshments, and, much to the satisfaction of the Indians (after
their fatigue of body as well as of mind), with plenty of the _Queen's
chickabobboo_.
The sight-seeing of this day and the exhibition at night finished our
labours in the interesting town of York, where I have often regretted
we did not remain a little longer to avail ourselves of the numerous
and kind invitations which were extended to us before we left. After
our labours were all done, and the Indians had enjoyed their suppers
and their _chickabobboo_, we had a pipe together, and a sort of
recapitulation of what we had seen and heard since we arrived. The two
most striking subjects of the gossip of this evening were the cathedral
and the prison; the one seemed to have filled their minds with
astonishment and admiration at the ingenuity and power of civilized
man, and the other with surprise and horror at his degradation and
wickedness; and evidently with some alarm for the safety of their
persons in such a vicinity of vice as they had reason to believe they
were in from the evidences they had seen during the day. The poor old
Doctor was so anxious for the next morning to dawn, that we might be on
our way, that he had become quite nervous and entirely contemplative
and unsociable. They had heard such a catalogue of murders and
executions explained, though they knew that we had but begun with the
list, and saw so many incarcerated in the prison, some awaiting their
trial, others who had been convicted and were under sentence of death
or transportation, and others again pining in their cells, and weeping
for their wives and children (merely because they could not pay the
money that they owed), that they became horrified and alarmed; and as
it was the first place where they had seen an exhibition of this kind,
there was some reason for the poor fellows' opinions that they were in
the midst of the wickedest place in the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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