CHAPTER XXIX
{359} CHAPTER XXIX
Present State of the Countries visited by the Author—Correction of Mr. Irving’s Statements respecting St. Louis.
The last chapter closes the original French narrative of my travels around and across the continent, as published thirty-three years ago. The translation follows that narrative as exactly as possible, varying from it only in the correction of a few not very important errors of fact. It speaks of places and persons as I spoke of them then. I would not willingly lose the veri-similitude of this natural and unadorned description, in order to indulge in any new turns of style or more philosophical reflections.
But since that period many changes have occurred in the scenes which I so long ago visited and described. Though they are well known, I may be pardoned for alluding to them.
{360} The natives of the Sandwich islands, who were in a state of paganism at that time, have since adopted a form of Christianity, have made considerable progress in imitating the civilization of Europe, and even, at this moment, begin to entertain the idea of annexation to the United States. It appears, however, that the real natives are rapidly dwindling away by the effects of their vices, which an exotic and ill-assimilated civilization has rather increased than diminished, and to which religion has not succeeded in applying a remedy.
At the mouth of the Columbia, whole tribes, and among them, the Clatsops, have been swept away by disease. Here again, licentious habits universally diffused, spread a fatal disorder through the whole nation, and undermining the constitutions of all, left them an easy prey to the first contagion or epidemic sickness. But missionaries of various Christian sects have labored among the Indians of the Columbia also; not to speak of the missions of the Catholic Church, so well known by the narrative of Father De Smet {361} and others;[233] and numbers have been taught to cultivate the soil, and thus to provide against the famines to which they were formerly exposed from their dependence on the precarious resources of the chase; while others have received, in the faith of Christ, the true principle of national permanence, and a living germ of civilization, which may afterward be developed.
Emigration has also carried to the Oregon the axe of the settler, as well as the canoe and pack of the fur-trader. The fertile valleys and prairies of the Willamet—once the resort of the deer, the elk, and the antelope, are now tilled by the industrious husbandman. Oregon City, so near old “Astoria,” whose first log fort I saw and described, is now an Archiepiscopal see, and the capital of a territory, which must soon be a state of the Union.[234]
Of the regions east of the mountains described in my itinerary, little can be said in respect to improvement: they remain in the same wild state. The interest of the Hudson’s Bay Company, as an association of fur-traders, is opposed to agricultural {362} improvements, whose operation would be to drive off and extinguish the wild animals that furnish their commerce with its object. But on Lake Superior steamboats have supplanted the birch-bark canoe of the Indian and the fur-trader, and at Saut Ste. Marie, especially on the American side, there is now every sign of prosperity. How remote and wild was the region beyond, through which I passed, may be estimated by the fact that in thirty-eight years the onward-rolling wave of our population has but just reached its confines.
Canada, although it has not kept pace with the United States, has yet wonderfully advanced in forty years. The valley of the Ottawa, that great artery of the St. Lawrence, where I thought it worth while to notice the residence of an enterprising farmer and lumber merchant, is now a populous district, well cultivated, and sprinkled with villages, towns, and cities.
The reader, in perusing my first chapter, found a description of the city of New York in 1810, and of the neighboring village of Brooklyn. It {363} would be superfluous to establish a comparison at this day. At that time, it will be observed, the mere breaking out of war between America and England was thought to involve the sacrifice of an American commercial establishment on the Pacific, on the ground of its supplies being necessarily cut off (it was supposed), and of the United States government being unable to protect it from hostile attack. At present it suffices to remark that while New York, then so inconsiderable a port, is now perhaps the third city in the world, the United States also, are, undoubtedly, a first-rate power, unassailable at home, and formidable abroad, to the greatest nations.
As in my preface I alluded to Mr. Irving’s “Astoria,” as reflecting, in my opinion, unjustly, upon the young men engaged in the first expedition to the mouth of the Columbia, it may suffice here to observe, without entering into particulars, that my narrative, which I think answers for its own fidelity, clearly shows that some of them, at least did not want courage, activity, zeal for the interests of the company, while it existed, and patient {364} endurance of hardship. And although it forms no part of the narrative or my voyage, yet as subsequent visits to the West and an intimate knowledge of St. Louis, enable me to correct Mr. Irving’s poetical rather than accurate description of that place, I may well do it here. St. Louis now bids fair to rival ere long the “Queen of the West;” Mr. Irving describes her as a small trading place, where trappers, half-breeds, gay, frivolous Canadian boatmen, &c., &c., congregated and revelled, with that lightness and buoyancy of spirit inherited from their French forefathers; the indolent Creole of St. Louis caring for little more than the enjoyment of the present hour; a motley population, half-civilized, half-barbarous, thrown, on his canvas, into one general, confused (I allow highly picturesque) mass, without respect of persons: but it is fair to say, with due homage to the talent of the sketcher, who has verged slighty on caricature in the use of that humor-loving pencil admired by all the world, that St. Louis even then contained its noble, industrious, and I may say, {365} princely merchants; it could boast its Chouteaus, Soulands, Céré, Chéniers, Vallées, and La Croix,[235] with other kindred spirits, whose descendants prove the worth of their sires by their own, and are now among the leading business men, as their fathers were the pioneers, of the flourishing St. Louis.
With these remarks, which I make simply as an act of justice in connection with the general subject of the founding of “Astoria,” but in which I mean to convey no imputation on the intentional fairness of the accomplished author to whom I have alluded, I take a respectful leave of my readers.
[233] For the history of Catholic missions in Oregon, see journals of Father De Smet, which are to be published in volumes xxviii and xxix of our series.—Ed.
[234] Oregon City is situated at the falls of Willamette River. It was laid out in lots in 1842, when the rivalry for the possession of this site between McLaughlin, Hudson’s Bay factor, and Waller, of the Methodist Mission, was at its height. The rapid growth of Portland has prevented Oregon City from becoming the important place it once promised. In 1900 its population was only thirty-five hundred.—Ed.
[235] For these early families of St. Louis, consult Billon, Annals of St. Louis (St. Louis, 1886).—Ed.