Every man in such a crisis, must mentally recoil upon himself. Habits of application, reading, and an early desire to be useful, had sustained me at a prior period of life, through the dangers and fascinations of jovial company. There was in this habit or temper of room-seclusion, a pleasing resource of a conservative character, which had filled up the intervals of my busiest hours; and when business itself came to a stand, it had the effect to aid me in balancing and poising my mind, while I prepared to enter a wider field, and indeed, to change my whole plan of life. If it did not foster a spirit of right thought and self-dependence, it, at least, gave a degree of tranquillity to the intervals of a marked pause, and, perhaps, flattered the ability to act. Luckily I was still young, and with good animal spirits, and a sound constitution I resolved I would not go down so. The result of seven years of strenuous exertions, applied with persevering diligence and success, was cast to the winds, but it was seven years of a young man's life, and I thought it could be repaired by time and industry. What the east withheld, I hoped might be supplied by another quarter. I turned my thoughts to the west, and diligently read all I could find on the subject. The result of the war of 1812, (if this contest had brought no golden showers on American manufacturers, as I could honestly testify in my own case,) had opened to emigration and enterprise the great area west of the Alleghanies. The armies sent out to battle with Indian, and other foes, on the banks of the Wabash, the Illinois, the Detroit, the Raisin and the Miami of the Lakes, had opened to observation attractive scenes for settlement; and the sword was no sooner cast aside, than emigrants seized hold of the axe and the plough. This result was worth the cost of the whole contest, honour and glory included. The total prostration of the moneyed system of the country, the effects of city-lot and other land speculations, while the system was at its full flow, and the very backward seasons of 1816 and 1817, attended with late and early frosts, which extensively destroyed the corn crop in the Atlantic states, all lent their aid in turning attention towards the west and south-west, where seven new states have been peopled and organized, within the brief period to which these reminiscences apply: namely, Indiana, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas and Michigan, besides the flourishing territories of Wisconsin and Iowa, and the more slowly advancing territory of Florida. It appeared to me, that information, geographical and other, of such a wide and varied region, whose boundaries were but ill defined, must be interesting at such a period; and I was not without the hope that the means of my future advancement would be found in connexion with the share I might take in the exploration of it. With such views I resolved to go west. This