In London as Ambassador--I cross the ocean--François Tulloch--Christopher Columbus--Camoëns--The Azores--The isle of Graciosa--Sports on board ship--The isle of Saint-Pierre--The shores of Virginia--Sunset--Danger and escape--I land in America--Baltimore--The passengers separate--Tulloch--Philadelphia--General Washington--Comparison of Washington and Bonaparte--Journey from Philadelphia to New York and Boston--Mackenzie--The Hudson River--Song of the lady passenger--Mr. Swift--I set out for the Falls of Niagara with a Dutch guide--M. Violet--My savage outfit--Hunting--Wolverine and Canadian Fox--Musk-rat--Fishing dogs--Insects--Montcalm and Wolfe--Encampment on the shore of the Onondaga Lake--Arabs--The Indian woman and her cow--An Iroquois--The Onondaga chief--Velly and the Franks--Ceremonies of hospitality--The ancient Greeks--Journey from the Onondaga Lake to the Genesee River--Clearings--Hospitality--My bed--The enchanted rattle-snake--Niagara Falls--The rattle-snake--I fall to the edge of the abyss--Twelve days in a hut--Change of manners among the savages--Birth and death--Montaigne-Song of the adder--The little Indian girl, the original of Mila--Incidents--Old Canada--True civilisation spread by religion--False civilisation introduced by commerce--Traders--Agents--Hunts--Half-breeds or Burnt-woods--Wars of the companies--The Indian languages dying out--The old French possessions in America--Regrets--A note from Lord François Conyngham--The Canadian lakes--A fleet of Indian canoes--The American rivers--Legends--Muscogulges and Siminoles--Our camp--Two Floridan beauties--Ruins on the Ohio--What the Muscogulge damsels were--Arrest of the King at Varennes--I interrupt my journey to go back to Europe--Dangers for the United States--Return to Europe--Shipwreck LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS VOL. I The Vicomte de Chateaubriand Chateaubriand's Birthplace Combourg Castle Louis XVI Malesherbes Marie Antoinette Mirabeau Washington THE TRANSLATOR'S NOTE Many years ago, M. Pierre Louÿs, who had not then achieved his astonishing successes, and I sat talking literature in a Paris café. The future author of _Aphrodite_ had praise for none save the moderns, of whom he has now become a recognized type and leader. I turned to him suddenly and asked: "Is there any nineteenth-century French writer at all whom you others read nowadays and approve of?" "Yes," said Louÿs, "Chateaubriand." "How do you mean?" said I. "The novels? _Atala?_ The essays?" "Ah no," he answered: "but the _Mémoires d'outre-tombe_, yes. That--that is monumental; that will live for ever." Our talk drifted to other things; I remembered what Louis had said--for two days: had I come across these Memoirs in the course of my rambles along the quays, I should have bought them; I did not, and bought other books instead. *