University of Virginia Library

23. CHAPTER XXIII.

Mr. Glenville was about my age, or rather I was about
his age; or to be as definite as a down east school book, we
were both about the same age, and were born in A. D. 179—;
—and hence have already lived part of two centuries,
being as old as the current century added to the fraction of
the other.

He was born, and educated for some years, in Philadelphia.
His principal teacher was Mr. Moulder, who superintended
an old-fashioned orthodox quaker school; in
which morals were far better and more successfully cultivated
than in modern quackery schools, where morals is
made a separate matter. And in this primitive school John
imbibed much of the Yea and Nay in his character, or his
right-up-and-downedness; a compound conducing greatly
to his safety and happiness in the strifes, dangers and perplexities
of the wilderness. He had been destined to the

counting house, but the removal of his friends to the west,
changed his destiny; and hence, being a good elementary
mathematician and well acquainted with theoretical surveying,
he was invited by Gen. Duff Green, then of Kentucky,
to accompany a party to the Upper Missouri as assistant
surveyor; which invitation was accepted.

This suited our hero's love of adventure and gave an opportunity
of seeing—the world. Not the world as seen by
a trip to Paris or London, but the world natural and proper;
the world in its native convexity, its own ravines and mountains,
its virgin soil, its primitive wilds, its unworn prairies!
To float in birch-bark canoes on the swelling bosom of
free waters!—waters never degraded with bearing loads of
merchandise, or prostituted in a part diverted to turn mills,
or fill canals, or in any way to be a slave, and then to be let
go discoloured with coal, or saw dust, or flour, or dyestuffs,
marks of bondage—that they may hurry away, sullen and
indignant to hide their dishonoured waves in the ocean!

He went to see the world as the Omnipotent made it and
the deluge left it! He went to hear the thunder-tramp of
the wild congregations—the horse and the buffalo,—shaking
the prairie-plains that heaved up proud to bear on their
free heart the untamed, free, bounding, glorious herds! He
went to look at the sun rising and setting on opposite sides
of one and the same field; and where the rain-bow spans
half a continent and curves round the terrestrial semicircle!
He went to see the smoke of a wigwam! where death flies
on the wing of a stone headed arrow, and the Indian is in
the drapery of untouched forests and midst the fragrance of
the ungardened, many coloured, ever-varied flowers!

What change from the smokes and smells of a city!—the
outcry, war, confusion of its anxious, crowded, jostled, envious,
jealous, rivalous population!—its contrasts of moneyed
consequence and povertysmitten dependence!—its rolling
vehicles of travelling ennui, and hobbling crutch of rheumatic

beggary!—and its saloons of boisterous mirth adjoining the
sad enclosure of silent tombstones! Oh! the change
from dark, damp, stifling pent holes of alleys and courts,
where filth exhales its stench without the sun!—to walk
abroad, run, leap, ride, hunt and shout, amid the unwrought,
unsubdued, boundless world of primitive forest, flood, and
prairie!

After a few weeks, Glenville was detached from the
General's party, and sent with the principal surveyor and
one hunter to complete a survey, with directions to rejoin
the main body some two hundred miles down the Missouri,
after the accomplishment of the work. The trio, therefore,
proceeded to the scene of their labour, which was more
than fifty miles beyond the white settlements, and bordering
on the hunting grounds of the Indians.

One morning, when preparing breakfast on the bank of a
river tributary to the Missouri, a large party of Indians appeared
on the opposite bank, who, on espying our surveyors,
came over to visit their camp, warriors and warriors'
squaws, all wading with red and bare legs; and then,
pleased with their reception and some small presents, they
insisted that our friends should now go and take breakfast
on the other side; a request that could not be declined
without engendering distrust. Accordingly, our trio mounted
their horses and followed their wading friends across the
river.

Happy that the appetite is often strong! and yet strong
as it was, it was almost too weak for the occasion. The
breakfast began with a drink of whiskey and complimentary
smoking, after which came the principal viand, to wit:
a soup, or hash, or swill, made of river water and deer-meat
and deer-entrails all poured from a large iron kettle
and smoking hot into—“an earthen dish?” No. “A calabash?”
No: but into a sugar trough!—a wooden trough!!
and about as large as piggy uses in his early days, when

fattening for a roast. Had the thing been as clean, our
surveyors would never have flinched; but the trough was
coated with oleaginous matter both within and without;
and a portion of the interior coat, now melted by the absorption
of free caloric, was contributing a yellow oily
richness and flavour to the savoury mess! And on the
crust more remote from heat frolicked larvae[5] with nice
white bodies and uncouth dark heads, careless of comrades
floating lifeless in the boiling gulf below! Had Uncle
Tommy been now narrating, he would have improved the
occasion to animadvert on the beastliness of a drunken
riot, where some are torpid under the table, and others
flourishing glasses above it; nay, he would have gone on
to insist that grubs and such like are to be found even in
the most fashionable places: but we content ourselves
with furnishing the text.

From this aboriginal mess both red and white men fished
up pieces of venison, with sharp sticks, and with tin cups
and greasy gourds they ladled out broth till all was exhausted,
except some lifeless things in a little puddle of liquid
matter at the bottom, and a portion of entrail lodged on
the side of the trough. Our folks, who had, indeed, seen
“a thing or two” in cabin cookery, were nearly sickened
now; for spite of clenching the teeth in sucking broth,
they were confident more than once, that articles designed
to be excluded, had wormed through the enclosure. It required
a pint of whiskey extra during the day, quids innumerable,
and countless cigars to do away the odor and the
taste: and Glenville used to say the memory of that Indian
breakfast would serve him for ever! And yet why not apply
de gustibus non, to this breakfast? The classic Romans
delighted in snails; the sacred Jews in grasshoppers. The
Celestials eat rats and dogs, and the elastic Parisians devour

frogs, and sometimes cats. And may not American
Indians eat, without disparagement, entrails, brown and
yellow grease, and fly-blows? Depend on it, reader, this
eating, is, after all, a mere matter of taste.

Not many days after this breakfast, our people met in a
prairie a party of Osages, and mostly mounted on small,
but very active horses. The chief ordered his troop to
halt, and all dismounting, he made signs for the whites to
advance; upon which he stepped up to Glenville—the
Mercury of the three, and began an unintelligible gabble of
English and Osage. At length he felt about Glenville's
person, with his hands, and even into his bosom and pockets,
till our friends became a little alarmed: when Glenville,
remembering what he had heard, that nothing so quickly
disarms and even makes a friend of a hostile Indian, as the
show of courage, began to look angry, uttered words of indignation
and even jerked away the chiefs hand. Upon
this the warrior stepping back, laughed long and loud, and
with manifest contempt looked at the dwarf dimensions of
the white but with approbation at his spunk; both natural
feelings, when he beheld a little white man, five feet
seven, and weighing nearly nearly 120lbs avoirdupois, boldly
resisting and repelling a big red one, more than six feet
three, and weighing about 235lbs! In a few moments, however,
the Indian again advanced, but with the greatest
good-nature; and while he now patted Glenville with one
hand on the back, with the other he felt in our hero's side
pocket, whence he soon abstracted a small knife and immediately
transferred the same to his own pouch. After that,
going to his pony, he returned with a magnificent buffalo
robe wrought with rude outlines of beasts and Indians;
which, throwing down before Glenville as a fair exchange
of presents, he once more went to his horse, and then leaping
on the animal's back, the chieftain gave the sign, and

away the free spirits of the brave were again galloping to
wards the hazy line of the horizon!

The robe, during my sojourn in Glenville, was in the
winter the outer cover of our bed. And to that was owing,
one of my curious dreams:—a vast buffalo bull stripped of
his skin and charging with his horns upon a gigantic Indian
in an open prairie, while the Indian kept the bull at
bay with a sugar trough in one hand, and a great dirk knife
in the other. Indeed, if, when in a young gentleman's debating
society at the discussion of the original and novel
question, whether the savage life be preferable to the civilized,
if then, I am irresistibly impelled to vote in the affirmative,
it is owing to my constitutional tendencies, having
been strengthened by sleeping two entire winters under
that buffalo robe. Only think! reader,—to sleep two
winters, in a log cabin, in a bran New Purchase, near a
chieftain and a warrior's grave enclosed with logs and
marked by a stake painted red; and under the hairy hide of
an enormous prairie bull!—a bull killed by a gigantic Osage
chief!—a hide dressed by his squaw, the queen, or his papooses,
the princesses! a robe bestowed as a king's reward
for my brother-in-law's courage!! Take care. I
feel the effect even now—hurra—waw-aw for the savage life.
It is carried in the affirmative by acclamation—let me go.
I must go, and at least draw a bead on something with my
rifle! flash! bang!

The surveyor's party, having in a few weeks finished
their work, commenced descending the Missouri in a canoe,
intending to reach the place where they had left their horses;
after which they would proceed by land to the rendezvous.

One night as they were borne down rapidly by a very
strong current, after having by the dim starlight barely escaped
many real snags, planters, drifts and the like, and
after having imagined in the obscurity a hundred others,
they were at length driving towards a dark mass; but

whether real or not could at first be only conjectured. Alas!
it was no fancy; but before the direction of the canoe could
be altered, it was driven violently against a drift-island, and
upsetting, was carried directly under it, and so effectually
hid or destroyed as never to be seen again. One man at the
instant of collision, leaped upon the island: the others
were thrown into the water; but they succeeded, although
torn and bruised in the attempt, and with much difficulty, in
gaining the floating mass and getting on it. All their property,
provisions, clothes, surveying instruments, guns, &c.
were lost, except the rifle which the hunter alway kept in
his hand, the clothes on their persons, and the notes and
records of the surveys which Mr. Glenville had accidentally
put early that evening into his hat and pockets!

This, reader, was what is termed out there—“a nasty
fix;” and yet our friends were still moving, not indeed very
fast, for extemporaneous islands move at all times sullenly,
and often come to an anchor suddenly, and there remain for
a week, a year, and sometimes they never float again. Still,
it deserves to be called—a fix; for first they were fixed absolutely
on the drift, and relatively as to the banks; again,
it was now late in the fall, and a very cold night was fixing
their clothes into ice or ice upon them; and lastly, they
were fixed by their sudden unfix from the canoe, and by being
hungry, wet, and cold, and yet destitute of all affixes,
suffixes and—“fixins.” And so this curious fixation of our
heroes may aid Webster in his subsequent attempts to fix
the American-English by unfixing the English-English.

The comrades now made a survey of their territory, and
found they owned an island of logs, tree-tops and brush,
matted and laced every way, with an alluvion of earth, sand
and weeds; the whole running, at present, due north and
south, one hundred yards, with easting and westing of
nearly fifty yards. No sign of human habitation was visible
nor trace of living animal; and it soon became morally

certain the island was desert: and hence our friends began
to devise means of abandoning the involuntary ownership.
But the sole means appeared to be by swimming: and in that
was great hazard, yet it must be done, unless they should
wait for accidental deliverance; or till the party below disappointed
at their non-arrival, should ascend the river to
search for them. After a gloomy council it was unanimously
decided to swim away from their island.

The hunter immediately and voluntarily offered to adventure
the first, promising, on reaching the shore, to stand
at the best landing point, and there shout at intervals as a
guide to the others. Contrary to all entreaties and dehortations,
he was resolved to swim with his rifle—that weapon
being, in fact, always in his hands like an integral part of
his body. His only reply was—“She's—(rifles in natural
grammar are she's; to a true woodsman a rifle is like a beloved
sister; and he no more thinks of he-ing and him-ing,
or even it-ing the one than the other)—“she's bin too long
in the family, boys, to be desarted without no attempt to
save her; no, no, it's not the fust time she's been swimm'd
over a river; uncle Bill, arter that bloody fight with the
Injins, jumped down the cliff with her and swimm'd her
clean over the Ohio in his hand, and I kin outrassel and
outswim uncle Bill any day—no no—we sink or swim together:
so good bye, boys, here goes, I'll holler as soon as
I git foothold.” The splashing of the water drowned the
rest; and away with his heavy rifle in one hand, and striking
out with the other, swam the bold hunter, till borne down
by the fierce current he had soon passed out of sight and
hearing.

With intense anxiety the remaining two waited for their
comrade's promised shout; but no noise came save the
rushing of the boiling and angry water past and under the
drift-wood. Twenty long minutes had elapsed, and yet no
voice—ten more—and all silence, except the waters!

Could it be, as they had all along dreaded, that the hunter
was indeed sunk with his favourite gun!—or had he been
carried one or more miles down before he could land? The
force of the current rendered this probable; and, therefore,
they would wait an hour, to give him time to walk up the
bank opposite the island and shout. But when that long
and dreadful hour had elapsed, and no voice of the living
comrade yet came across the dark and tumultuous waves,
the agony of the hunter's only brother (for such was the
surveyor on the drift with Glenville,)—became irrepressible,
and he said, “I must see what's become of poor Isaac—I
can't stand it any longer, here's my hand, Glenville, my
poor boy—farewell!—if I reach the shore I'll holler, if not,
why we must all die—farewell.” The next instant the
surveyor was borne away; and the noise of his swimming
becoming fainter and fainter was soon imperceptible, and
John Glenville stood alone!

Reader, my brother-in-law was then, compared with
men, only a boy; and yet he stood there alone and without
fear! And was there nothing of the morally sublime
in that?—a very young man thus alone in the middle of the
Missouri, on a dark and cold night; beyond the outskirts of
civilized life; far enough away from his mother's home,
and affectionate sisters; and listening for the shouts of
that second swimmer—and without fear? Could any body
old or young be in such circumstances, and not be alarmed?
Where was that noble hunter? was he drowned? Would
the second swimmer reach the shore? And if hardy and
strong woodsmen escaped not, could he, a boy, expect to
reach the shore? True, thoughts of his mother now rushed
in uncalled; but these only nerved his purpose, and he
resolved, with God's aid, to use his art and skill for their
sakes; or, if he must perish in the tumultuating flood of
the wilderness, to die putting forth his best exertions to live
—hark! what comes like a dying echo?—can it be!—yes,

hark! it comes again, the voice of the second swimmer—
there it is again! Thank God—one is safe, but where is
the other?

Thus encouraged, Glenville prepared for his conflct with
the waves. He was an expert swimmer, and often in early
boyhood had swum from Philadelphia to the opposite island
in the Delaware. Could he, therefore, now preserve his
self-possession, why might he not accomplish a less distance
in the Missouri; for the shore he knew could not be
more than a quarter of a mile from the drift. Accordingly
he divested himself of all clothes, except shirt and pantaloons,
made up the garments taken off into a small bundle,
in the midst of which, securing the papers of the survey,
he fastened it together with his hat between his shoulders:
and then, wading out to the end of a projecting tree, he
earnestly implored God for help, and cast himself boldly into
the turbid waters of the dark and eddying flood. And
never did he seem to float more buoyant or swim with greater
ease, without any perturbation permitting the river to
bear him downward on its bosom: and yet directing his
efforts as much as possible, towards the point whence at
intervals was borne to his ears the shouting of his comrade;
till, in some fifteen minutes he landed unhurt and not greatly
wearied about one hundred yards below the voice, whither
he instantly hastened, and to his heartfelt joy, was soon
shaking hands not only with the surveyor, but also with the
hunter. Yes! poor fellow—he had found his favourite too
heavy, and one arm, powerful as it was, too weak for his
long battle with a king of floods. Long, long, very long
had he held to his gun; but half-suffocated, his strength
failing, and he whirling away at times from the shore almost
reached, to safe his life he had at last slowly relaxed
his grasp, and his rifle sank. Yet even then repenting,
he had twice gone down to the bottom to recover the
weapon: and happily, failed in finding it—his strength

never would have sufficed incumbered again with a gun to
reach the land.

Indeed, when he gained the bank he was barely able to
clamber up, and could scarcely speak or even walk, when
discovered by his brother: who had easily reached the
shore himself, and, after shouting once or twice to Glenville,
had gone down on the bank a full quarter of a mile
before finding the hunter. By the aid of the surveyor, the
hunter then had walked up till they had reached the spot
where they were both now met by Glenville; and thus by
the goodness of Providence, our three friends were delivered
from their peril.

Upon reconnoitering, it was conjectured that they must
be near the squatter's hut, with whom had been left their
horses; and hence taking a course, partly by accident and
partly by observation, not long after they were cheered by
the distant bark of his dogs, and next by the gleam of fire
through the chinks of his cabin. Here, of course, the party
was welcomed, and supplied with whatever was in the
squatter's power to afford for their refreshment; principally,
however, a hearty dram of whiskey, some corn bread and
jerked venison, but above all, a bed of dry skins, and a
heap of blazing logs.

In the morning they obtained supplies of skins and blankets,
agreeing to pay their host if he would go with them to
the rendezvous; which he did, and was suitably and cordially
rewarded. It was now perceived that if the poor
hunter had left his rifle on the drift-island, she could have
been regained by means of a raft: but to tell where she had
been abandoned in the river was impossible. Otherwise
our hunter would have made many a dive for the rescue
of his “deer slayer;” as it was, he came away disconsolate,
and, indeed, as from the grave of a comrade—almost
in tears!