MR. BOOLEY’S powers of endurance are wonderful. All climates are alike
to him. Nothing exhausts him; no alternations of heat and cold appear to
have the least effect upon his hardy frame. His capacity of travelling,
day and night, for thousands of miles, has never been approached by any
traveller of whom we have any knowledge through the help of books. An
intelligent Englishman may have occasionally pointed out to him objects
and scenes of interest; but otherwise he has travelled alone, and
unattended. Though remarkable for personal cleanliness, he has carried
no luggage; and his diet has been of the simplest kind. He has often
found a biscuit, or a bun, sufficient for his support over a vast tract
of country. Frequently, he has travelled hundreds of miles, fasting,
without the least abatement of his natural spirits. It says much for the
Total Abstinence cause, that MR. BOOLEY has never had recourse to the
artificial stimulus of alcohol, to sustain him under his fatigues.
His first departure from the sedentary and monotonous life he had
hitherto led, strikingly exemplifies, we think, the energetic character,
long suppressed by that unchanging routine. Without any communication
with any member of his family—MR. BOOLEY has never been married, but has
many relations—without announcing his intention to his solicitor, or
banker, or any person entrusted with the management of his affairs, he
closed the door of his house behind him at one o’clock in the afternoon
of a certain day, and immediately proceeded to New Orleans, in the
United States of America.
His intention was to ascend the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, to the
base of the Rocky Mountains. Taking his passage in a steamboat without
loss of time, he was soon upon the bosom of the Father of Waters, as the
Indians call the mighty stream which, night and day, is always carrying
huge instalments of the vast continent of the New World, down into the
sea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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