Impressions of America During the Years 1833, 1834 and 1835. Volume 2 (of 2)Power, Tyrone
History
Impressions of America During the Years 1833, 1834 and 1835. Volume 2 (of 2)
Power, Tyrone
Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
I arrived at New Orleans, and again passed three weeks amidst attentions
that never wearied, and the most flattering professional success. I will
here, as I have before done, drop my Journal, and put my Impressions
together in a less desultory form.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Since this sheet has been in the course of printing, I have received
an account of the capture of the murderers, from a correspondent at
Mobile. The State had offered a large reward, and taken active measures
for the M'Crews' detection. The retreat of one was traced out in the
Mexican territory; and the details of his surprisal and capture, whilst
resident amongst the Comanche Indians, are absolutely romantic, and
highly creditable to the courage and patience of the captor, a private
individual. I have to regret that these details are too long to be
inserted by way of note. The murderers (or one of them at least) are now
at Mobile awaiting trial.
NEW ORLEANS.
The day of my first arrival at this capital of many waters, this city
_sui generis_, was one to which I had looked forward with much
impatience and highly-roused expectations.
The disastrous affair of 1812 had made New Orleans a name familiar to
Britain, and given to it a celebrity more general amongst all sorts of
men than its vast trade alone would have achieved for it in double the
time.
From the day also of my landing on the continent I had never heard this
city named without accompanying remarks being elicited descriptive of
its rapid increase, its singular position, and motley population,
together with the speculations founded on the promise of its future
greatness derived from its present healthful condition; that is, its
political and commercial sanity; since no term can be worse applied, as
illustrative of the views entertained of it by the North, whether
physically or morally considered; views however that, on both these
points, I have decided are singularly overcharged, even by persons one
would conceive possessed of the information likely to lead to a correct
judgment. This I attribute partly to the habit we are in of taking
reports of places for granted, and repeating them from father to son
without much personal examination, or rather comparison, and partly to
the changes constantly operating upon society here, with a rapidity at
least equal to the growth of building or the increase of produce and
population; changes which come like Duncan's couriers, "thick as hail,"
the last giving the flat lie to the truth just told; to be, in turn,
proved false by a successor.
To a stranger, the point of observance most original and striking, and
which will at once inform and interest him, is the view from the Levee,
with a walk along this artificial embankment, which commencing a hundred
miles above New Orleans, and thence waiting on the stream whose rule it
circumscribes, here bends like a drawn bow about the city, forming a
well-frequented quay of some seven miles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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