Illustrations of the manners, customs, & condition of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 2): With letters and notes, written during eight years of travel and adventure among the wildest and most remarkable tribes now existingCatlin, George
History
Illustrations of the manners, customs, & condition of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 2): With letters and notes, written during eight years of travel and adventure among the wildest and most remarkable tribes now existing
Catlin, George
Indians of North America
In this Tour he had made an immense, and no doubt, very valuable
collection of plants, and at this place had been for some weeks
indefatigably engaged in changing and drying them, and at last, fell
a victim to the disease of the country, which seemed to have made an
easy conquest of him, from the very feeble and enervated state he was
evidently in, that of pulmonary consumption. This fine, gentlemanly and
urbane, excellent man, to whom I became very much attached, was lodged
in a room adjoining to mine, where he died, as he had lived, peaceably
and smiling, and that when nobody knew that his life was in immediate
danger. The surgeon who was attending me, (Dr. Wright,) was sitting on
my bedside in his morning-call at my room, when a negro boy, who alone
had been left in the room with him, came into my apartment and said Mr.
Beyrich was dying—we instantly stepped into his room and found him,
not in the _agonies_ of death, but quietly breathing his last, without
a word or a struggle, as he had laid himself upon his bed with his
clothes and his boots on. In this way perished this worthy man, who had
no one here of kindred friends to drop tears for him; and on the day
previous to his misfortune, died also, and much in the same way, his
devoted and faithful servant, a young man, a native of Germany. Their
bodies were buried by the side of each other, and a general feeling of
deep grief was manifested by the officers and citizens of the post,
in the respect that was paid to their remains in the appropriate and
decent committal of them to the grave.
After leaving the head waters of the Canadian, my illness continually
increased, and losing strength every day, I soon got so reduced that
I was necessarily lifted on to and off from, my horse; and at last,
so that I could not ride at all. I was then put into a baggage-waggon
which was going back empty, except with several soldiers sick, and
in this condition rode eight days, most of the time in a delirious
state, lying on the hard planks of the waggon, and made still harder by
the jarring and jolting, until the skin from my elbows and knees was
literally worn through, and I almost “_worn out_;” when we at length
reached this post, and I was taken to a bed, in comfortable quarters,
where I have had the skilful attendance of my friend and old schoolmate
Dr. Wright, under whose hands, thank God, I have been restored, and am
now daily recovering my flesh and usual strength.
The experiment has thus been made, of sending an army of men from the
North, into this Southern and warm climate, in the hottest months of
the year, of July and August; and from this sad experiment I am sure a
secret will be learned that will be of value on future occasions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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