A view of the soil and climate of the United States of America ... Translated, with occasional remarks, by C. B. Brown. With maps and plates

Front matter

A VIEW or THE SOIL AND CLIMATE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. A VIEW or THE SOIL AND CLIMATE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: WITH SUPPLEMENTARY REMARKS UPON FLORIDA ; ON THE FRENCH COLONIES ON THE MISSISSIPPI ■ AND OHIO, AND IN CANADA; AND ON THE ABORIGINAL TRIBES OF AMERICA. BY C. F. VOLNEY, MEMBER OF THE CONSERVATIVE SENATE, tSsC. i_fe. TRANSLATED, WITH OCCASIONAL REMARKS, BY C. B. BROWN. WITH MAPS AJVD PLATES. PHILADELPHIA, PUBLISHED BY J. CONRAD & CO PHILADELPHIA; M. & J. CONRAD & CO. BALTIMORE; RAPIN, CONRAD, & CO. WASHINGTON CITY; SOMERVELL & CONRAD, PETERSBURG; AND BONSAL, CONRAD, & CO. NORFOLK. PRINTED BY T. l_f G. PALMER, 116, HIGH STREET. 1804.

Preface

. THE following work is the fruit of a residence of three years in the United States, which took place in circumstances widely different from those of my residence, twenty years ago, in Turkey. In the year 1783, I embarked at Marseilles, with all the gaiety of heart, all the cheerful and aspiring hopes natural to youth. I exchanged, without regret, a land of plenty and peace for a region of anarchy and desola tion, actuated merely by a thirst of useful know ledge, and a desire to employ the restless and inquisitive period of youth, in making provision for the consolation and embellishment of age. In the year 1795, I embarked at Havre for America, with all the dreary feelings that flow from the observation and experience of perse cution and injustice. Saddened by the past, VI anxious for the future, I set out for a land of freedom, to discover whether liberty, which was banished from Europe, had really found a place of refuge in any other part of the world.

In this frame of mind, I visited almost every part of the United States, studying the climate, the laws, the people, and their manners, chiefly in the relations of social and domestic life; and such was the contrast which the scene before me bore to that which I had left, that I resolved to make it my suture residence. France, and indeed Europe in general, presented to my view nothing but a gloomy and tempestuous pros pect ; a series of endless and obstinate wars, between expiring prejudices and new-born know ledge, between antiquated privileges and popular claims. Here I beheld nothing but a splendid prospect of future peace and happiness, flowing from the wide extent of improveable territory ; from the facility of procuring property in land ; from the necessity and the profits of labour; from the liberty of action and industry ; and from the equity of the government, a virtue which it owes to its very weakness.

Here, therefore, I resolved to remain, when, in the spring of 1798, there broke out so violent an animosity against France, and a war seemed so inevitable, that I was obliged to withdraw from the scene. I might here complain of the violent and pub lic attacks made upon my character, with the connivance, or at the instigation of a certain emi nent personage, during the last days of my residence in America ; but the election of 1801 has reversed the scene that took place in 1797, and is to me an ample atonement for all that I have suffered. I cannot, however, forbear dwelling on the folly of the suspicions with which I was loaded. I wr.s stigmatized as the emissary of a government, whose axe was continually falling on the necks of those whose conduct and opi nions resembled mine. They fancied that I was engaged in a conspiracy (me, a single solitary Frenchman) to throw Louisiana into the hands ofthe directory, which, at that time, had scarcely an existence, in defiance of the testimony of a thousand witnesses, the most respectable in Ken tucky, as well as in Pennsylvania and Virginia, who knew my sentiments to be entirely hostile to such a transfer of territory.

They knew that I regarded the scheme as visionary and delusive, and dreaded it as tending to embroil us with the United States, and to strengthen their bias towards England. It was well known to be my opinion, that its settlement would be expensive and precarious, its defence difficult, on account of our languishing marine, and the instability of our government ; and that it could not fail, sooner or later, of blending itself with the nation contiguous to it, and which alone possesses the adequate means of governing, peopling, and de fending it. These notions, so contrary to those of most of our ministers and statesmen, exposed me to their hatred, and almost to their persecu tion. Nevertheless I continued to maintain them when there was no small danger in doing so ; for which I may now take some credit to myself, since these principles have since been sanctioned and adopted by the highest authority.

My readers will doubtless be surprised when they are informed that the ill-will of the first magistrate, at a time when the great Washing ton gave me many public proofs of his esteem and confidence, arose entirely from the vanity of authorship, made sore by my objections to his book on the constitutions of America. As a man of reading and a stranger, often questioned on the subject in a land of perfect liberty, I had occasion to speak my sentiments before the au thor had been elevated to the highest office in the government. Unluckily I concurred with one of the best English critics, who condemned the book as a crude and inaccurate compilation, and insinuated that it was written with some secret purpose, which the course of future events only could unfold. I ventured to sus pect that this purpose was the gaining, by this national flattery, the popular favour and suf frages: when the prophecy was fulfilled, the prophet was not forgotten.

On my return to France, I conceived the de sign of a work as advantageous to my country men, as it would be useful to myself; which was that of comparing my own observations and reflections with those already scattered through various publications, in order to detect and re move some errors adopted in moments of enthu siasm. After laying a suitable foundation in an examination of the climate and soil, I proposed, agreeably to the most natural and instructive method, to consider the numbers of the people, their diffusion over the surface of their territory, their distribution into classes and professions, their manners as influenced by their actual situb X ation, and by the habits and prejudices derived from their ancestors. By simply tracing their history, laws, and language, I proposed to detect the error of those who represent, as a sort of new-born race, as an infant nation, a mere med ley of adventurers from all parts of Europe, but more especially from the three British kingdoms.

The composition of these worn out and motley elements, intu one political body, would have led me to explain briefly the formation of each colo ny, to pourtray their founders, to analize those early principles, which have run through all their institutions, and which exemplify the com mon observation, that early habits and impressions modify the whole existence of collective bodies, as well as of individuals. We should thus have discovered the sources of that diversity, which grows daily more conspicuous in the character and conduct of the different parts of the union. In a brief review of the circumstances attend ing the claim of independence, many new remarks would have been suggested as to its real nature and consequences. Many striking resemblances would have presented themselves between the American and French revolutions, which have hitherto escaped superficial observers.

In the motives and conduct of parties, and the means they used, we discover a manifest resemblance. There will appear the same fluctuation of views and interests, the same ultimate decline of pub lic spirit. ' Even in the character of the three successive national assemblies, both nations present the same picture ; the first of these having outstripped, and the last having fallen short of the knowledge and improvements of a whole ge neration. We shall one day learn that the great national commotions called revolutions, are not so much the creatures of prudence and design, as mechanical effects produced by the impulse and collision of the passions. In discussing the events, so little known, of the period that elapsed from the revolution to the establishment of the federal government, I should have shown in what manner the national character was influenced by that season of dis order; the changes in public opinion, wrought by an inundation of returning royalists, and of mercantile adventurers from Europe ; the depra vity of manners and corruption of principles, flowing from the creation of paper-money; the weakness of the laws ; and from the transient wealth and permanent luxury which the wars m Europe poured into a neutral country.

I should have explained the influence of European wars on the prosperity of these states ; the benefits they have visibly acquired, in spite of their feeble and disjointed government, from the last war; the obvious advancement of their power and am bition towards the West Indian isles and the neighbouring continent ; and their probable aggrandizement in future, notwithstanding their internal factions and divisions. I should have explained that disjunction of interests and views, and contrariety of habits, which already separate the eastern from the southern, the Atlantic from the Mississippi states; the preponderance ofthe mercantile interest in the one, and the agricultu ral in the other; the weakness of the soutb, from the prevalence of slavery ; and the strength of the east, the fruit of private freedom and industry.

I should have dwelt upon the grand source of their divisions, in their jarring political systems, which have split the nation into fede ralists and republicans; the former maintaining the superiority of monarchical, or rather of des potic principles of government, over all others; the necessity, in all governments, of an absolute and irresistible power, created by the headstrong passions and incurable ignorance of the multitude, and sanctioned by the example or experience of all nations ; a power raised upon a poli tico-religious foundation, like that claimed by the Stuarts of England : the latter asserting that absolute power is the primary source of national vice and misery ; that those who exercise it are exempt from none of the errors and passions of their fellow* mortals, but, on the contrary, that it manifestly tends to produce, diffuse, and perpe tuate ihese errors and these passions, both in the master and the slave.

Unlimited authority always runs into tyranny and frenzy, and is the parent of that popular corruption for which it is the boasted antidote. If men are by nature de generate and vicious, these evils can only be corrected by reason and justice, and create a stronger necessity for a wise and equitable go vernment, and this is attainable only by ardent and general discussion and enquiry, by the utmost freedom of consultation and opinion among all who partake the same common nature. In short, the doctrines of this party are contained in the declaration of rights, on which the consti tution of the United States is built. to decree that their nation is tbe wisest and most enlightened upon eartb*; but as censure does not always flow from envy or malice, as undeserved blame is less hurtful than unmerited praise, and since I cannot now be suspected of resentful or sinister motives, I might have ventured to utter truths, which, though harsh, would not have been denied by impartial readers ; particularly as, in thus performing the office of a monitor, I should have given my warmest applause to that by which the United States is most gloriously distinguished, tbe liberty of opinions and of tbe press.

In viewing this country, as a refuge for French men, I should have delivered the dictates of my own experience and that of many of my country men, as to the resources and amusements which our merchants and our wealthy idlers would meet with in the cities, and what enjoyments the country would afford them. It might appear absurd, but I should not hesitate, to dissuade my countrymen from following my own example. The truth is, that, in this country, as many faci lities and benefits attend the settlement of the * Where is the record of this motion to be found?— Trass. English, Scots, Germans, and even Hollanders, from the resemblance that prevails between their manners and habits and those of America, as there are disadvantages and obstacles, flowing from a contrariety in these respects, attending natives of France.

I have observed, with much regret, none of that friendly and brotherly good will, in this people, towards us, with which some writers have flattered us. On the contrary, they appear to me to be strongly tinctured with the old English prejudice and animosity against us \. a spirit exasperated by the ancient wars of Cana da; impel fectly suspended by their alliance with us, during their rebellion ; and revived, of late years, with uncommon force, by the declamations of their orators, by the addresses of their towns and corporations to president Adams, on occa sion of the pillage suffered by their commerce from our privateers, and even by public exer cises and oratorical invectives in their 'colleges. There is nothing in the social forms and habits of the two nations that can make them coalesce.

They tax us with levity, loquacity, and folly ; while we reproach them with coldness, reserve, and haughty taciturnity ; with despising those engaging and sedulous civilities, which we so c highly value, and the want of which are con strued by us into proofs of impoliteness in the individual, or of barbarism in the whole society. Yet the latter charges must have some foundation, since they are often made by German and English travellers, as well as by ourselves. I, who had been already, by my residence among the Turks, in a great measure delivered from slavery to forms, was more disposed to scrutinize the cause, than to repine at the effect, and to me this national incivility appears to flow, less from a proud or unsocial temper, than from the mu tual independence of each other, and the general equality, as to fortune and condition, in which in dividuals in America are, for the most part, placed.

Such was my plan : some branches of which I have been able to accomplish, but my recent engagements, both of a public and private na ture, will not permit me to complete the whole. I have therefore resolved to publish at present only that part of my work which may be de tached, without injury or mutilation, from the entire performance. In sending this work abroad, I am far from indulging those sanguine hopes, which many readers may ascribe to me. The splendid suc cess of my Travels in Egypt, so far from inspir ing me with confidence, in the issue of similar undertakings, contributes rather to a contrary effect ; my present theme being much less diver sified and entertaining ; more grave, abstruse, and scientific ; and there always being an abun dance of readers who feel and act like the Athenian, whose voice was for punishment, merely because he was tired of hearing Aristides called tbe just.

I have sometimes even thought it most pru dent to write no more ; but I likewise reflected, that to have once done well, affords no excuse for doing nothing the rest of our lives; that I owe all the consolations I possessed in adversity to books and study, and all the benefits of my present situation to literature and the good opi nion of the liberal and ingenious. I offer them, therefore, this last tribute of my gratitude, this final testimony of my zeal for the advancement of knowledge. I have prepared myself, in what I have written and published, to meet a great deal of obloquy from the Americans themselves, whom their own cause will inspire with zeal, and who make it XX their favourUe business to combat European writers. They act as if they were the advocates and avengers of their predecessors, the Indians.

Their zeal likewise is inflamed, by all those anti gallican prejudices, which are industrious in de crying every thing that comes from a nation of atheists and jacobins : but time, which changes every thing, will do justice to detraction as well as flattery; and since I never pretended to be infallible, I shall content myself with having directed some attention, and cast some new light, upon many subjects that have been hitherto wholly overlooked. TRANSLATOR'S

PREFACE.

. THE author of the following work first acquired distinction, in the reading world, by publishing Travels in Syria and Egypt. In many respects this work far exceeded, in accuracy and comprehensive ness, every former work on the same subject. It was, however, secretly pervaded by a bias against the natives of these countries, by a disposition to view them in the worst light, and by a general persuasion that these countries ought to be possessed by France. With this view he was led to dwell more upon the misery of the people, whom a revolution might benefit, and more particularly on the folly and depravity of their government, which would render them an easy prey to invasion, than former travellers, who had none of these prepossessions, had done. With all the science and method, therefore, which that work displays, are combined a great deal of error and mistake, and they that Wish to be acquainted with these celebrated provinces, ought indeed by no means to overlook, but still less ought they wholly to confine their attention to Volney's account of them.

After a lapse of ten or fifteen years, Volney conceived the design of visiting another hemisphere. The rising states of America offered him not only an object worthy of his curiosity, but a place of secure asylum in a time of danger and distress. America was, to him, pretty much in the same situation as Syria and Egypt had been. Former French travellers had brought back the most flattering pictures of the people, their climate, and their government, and the splendid success (as he himself styles it) of his former work inspired him with new zeal to apply the test of his wonderful sagacity to their fond delu sions, and reduce their exaggerated dreams and glow ing fancies to the standard of truth and good sense. Fortunately for Volney, circumstances have prevented him from publishing his observations on the government and manners of the people.

These are topics, on which his prejudices as a Frenchman, and as a vain and captious mortal, would have abundant opportunity to show themselves, and in which he would have been in perpetual danger of shocking the prejudices of the people he described. He has merely confined himself to a review of the physical condition, as to surface and climate, of the United States, and to some remarks on the character and situation of the aboriginal tribes. Considered as a picture of the physical condition of the country, as far as respects its surface and cli mate, it w-ould by sto means be its due praise to say that it is the best and most complete that has hitherto appeared, because there has hitherto been no general description of the country in these points of view : particular provinces have been described with a philosophical accuracy, which is highly honourable to the genius of our country, but the whole, and espe cially that portion of it which lies upon the Missis sippi and the lakes, had not been before subjected to the same analysis.

There is, perhaps, no part of this work which will be thought to be more inaccurately and superficially executed, than that which relates to yellow fever and the other diseases of America. By stepping into a circle foreign to his own, and in which his education and experience, notwithstanding his own opinion to the contrary, by no means qualified him to walk, he has exposed himself to much critical censure from professional men. On this subject, indeed, he would, for obvious reasons, have found it impossible to please all : but, as it is, it is much to be suspected that he has failed to please any. The merit of a work ought to be estimated, not only by comparison with what has been already done, but by considering the means and situation of the author ; and surely uncommon praise is due to Volney, for having produced a work so accurate and scientifical, almost wholly from the funds of his own observation, with so little assistance from former publications, in relation to a country of such vast extent, and so much in the state of wilderness, and during so short a residence.

Instead of reproaching him for the mistakes committed, we should grant him liberal applause for the truths he has attained. But, while we pardon his errors, and deem them amply atoned for by his merits, it is a duty which we owe to the enlightened world, to our country, and even to the writer himself, to point out his mistakes. The present translator has not only done this, as far as his limited knowledge would permit, but he has obtained, from one or two learned and ingenious friends, some additional remarks upon the text. On this head he is particularly indebted to Dr. B. S. Barton, who has made the natural history of this part of America, and the manners and dialects of the abo rigines, the objects of great and successful study. This gentleman's remarks are given in the form of additional notes.

He has taken the libertv of somewhat extending the quotations of his author from the work of Bernard Romans upon Florida, because this writer may be deemed almost unknown to the present age, because his remarks are extremely judicious, and because the country he speaks of is rapidly growing into an object of extraordinary interest and curiosity to the peo ple of the United States. As to the manner in which this translation has been conducted, the writer has endeavoured to give the meaning ofhis author, in the clearest, most faith ful, and most distinct manner. For this purpose he has not thought it necessary to transfer the remarka ble verbosities of his original into his own performance. In two instances only he has more materially deviated from the text of his original. In detailing the history of Swedish and Norwegian winds, he has omitted the parade and incumbrance of a private let ter, with which M. Volney thought proper to con nect his observations on that subject, and in all ther mometrical statements, he has turned the calculations of Reaumur into the corresponding ones of Fahren heit, the latter being the only current and intelligible system in Great Britain and America. d CONTENTS.

TAGS Chap. I. Extent and divisions of the United States 1 II. Face of the country - - 6 1 . General form - - 11 1. The Atlantic country - 15 2. The western country - - 17 3. The mountainous district - 25 2. Interior structure - 35 1. Granitic region - ib. 2. Sand stone region - - 43 3. Calcareous region - 46 4. Region of sea sand - - 55 5. Alluvial region - 58 3. Lakes that have disappeared - 61 III. Niagara and other falls - 80 IV. Earthquakes and volcanoes - -97 V. Of the climate - - 102 VI. Of the winds - - - 132 1. Winds between north and east - 134 1. North-east wind - - 135 2. South-east and south winds - 142 1. South wind - - 145 3. South-west wind - - 147 4. Of the gulfih stream - - 171 VII. Of the north-west wind - 198 201 223 ibid. 226 229 237 265 269 317 ibid. 320 322 331 352 429 441 xxviu Chap. VIII.

United States compared with Europe, as to winds, ruin, CStc. 1. Quantity of rain in the United States 2. Evafioration and dryness ofthe air 3. Electricity ofthe atmosphere IX. Lunar and solar influence on the winds and change of Weather X. Prevailing diseases in the United States 1. Catarrhs and consumptions 2. Tooth-ache and loss of teeth 3. Intermittent severs 4. The yellow fever SUPPLEMENT. No. I. On the winds of Norway and Sweden II. On Florida and the work of Bernard Romans III. On Belknafi's History of New Hampshire, and Williams's History of Vermont 1. Belknap's History 2. Williams's History IV. On Gallipolis, or the Scioto colony V. On the French colonies on the Wabash, istc. VI. On the Indians of North America VII. Vocabulary ofthe Miami language Additional notes i ERRATUM. Page 236, line 4, for gas read acid. A VIEW OT THK SOIL AND CLIMATE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Chapter I

Extent and Geographical Divisions of the United States. WE may, in loose terms, describe the United States as the region which occupies that part of North America, which is bounded on the east by the Atlan tic Ocean, on the south by the Caribbean Sea and Mexican Gulph, on the west by the great river of Louisiana, and on the north by the river of Canada, and the five great lakes which supply its stream. At a time, when the advantages of natural barriers and definite boundaries are so justly prized, we cannot doubt that the above outline, so strong and distinct, A will, sooner or later, be filled up*. At present, how ever, this outline is encroached upon, southward, by the peninsula of East, and the maritime district of West Florida, and on the north-east by the English provinces of Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, which take off a large portion of the country contained between the river and the sea.

Its extent, from north to south, is equal to sixteen degrees, it lying between the 31st and 47th degrees of north latitude. It stretches, east and west, up wards of twenty-five degrees of longitude. The im mense square which these dimensions exhibit is con siderably curtailed, by the direction of the sea coast, which moves diagonally from north-east to south west, and by the five lakes, which clip seven or eight degrees within these limits to the north. The real surface is thus diminished by more than a third. Hutchins is the first geographer who, after the peace of 1783, attempted to calculate the area of this territory. He makes it amount to about a million of English square miles. Agreeably to this statement, its extent is nearly fourfold that of France, before the The recent addition of Louisiana has carried the western limit far beyond the Mississippi, and embroiled it in a world of unexplored deserts and thickets.

This circumstance has aided the imagination in its excursions into futurity ; and instead of anticipating the extension of this empire merelv to the sea on the south, and to the great river on the north, we may be sure that, in no long time, it will stretch east and west from sea to sea, and from the north pole to the Isthmus of Panama— Travs. revolution, or that of the great peninsula comprising Spain and Portugal, and nearly seven times greater than that of Great Britain and Ireland. The Americans delight in comparisons of this na ture ; and their vanity, suggesting golden dreams of the future, is very apt to measure the importance of foreign nations by this scale : but if we recollect that this space contains scarcely five millions of inhabitants, of which number eight hundred thousand, or one sixth, are black slaves, and that even this number is, for the most part, very widely and thinly scattered, we shall discover, in this extent of territory, nothing but a prolific source of present weakness and future dis union.

Besides, Hutchins, who was unacquainted with the sources of the Mississippi, and knew little of the regions north of the Ohio, appears to have computed too largely, and his estimate, though suffi ciently correct for my purpose, does not deserve that implicit credit with which it has since been generally received*. If we compare the United States with the countries of the eastern hemisphere, under parallel latitudes, we shall find that the southern districts of the former, Georgia and the Carolinas, correspond with the king dom of Morocco, and the whole northern coast of Africa : and it is somewhat remarkable, that the Mis- * I have seen, in Mr. Jefferson's hands, a letter from Hutchins, dated February 11th, 1784, which acknowledges considerable errors in his calculations respecting the North-west territory, sissippi and the Nile enter the sea under nearly the same parallel of latitude, one at 29 and the other at 3 1 degrees ; the one flowing from the north, and the other from the south, and bearing a striking resemblance to each other, in the riches and abundance produced by their periodical inundations.

The same lines traverse Syria, the central provinces of Persia, Thibet, and the heart of China ; and nearly the same parallel strikes Savannah, Tripoli, Alexandria, Gazaj Bosra, Ispahan, Lahor, and Nankin. The northern states, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, correspond with southern France, middle Italy, European Turkey, the Euxine and Caspian Seas, and the plains of Tartary. The same line very nearly touches Bos ton, Barcelona, Ajaccio, Rome, Constantinople, and Derbend. Such extensive limits indicate a great variety of climate, and, in truth, the United States displays all the extremes of the countries just enume rated. We observe a gradation corresponding with the latitude, and proportioned particularly to the ele vation of the surface. In this view, the four following distinguishing characters may be clearly traced : In the first place, the coldest climate extends over the eastern states, or New England.