The late travellers
in America have generally gone “starring” thither, taking the grand
route in grand costume. The humble traveller, whom we are about to
introduce to our readers, saw nothing of fashionable hotels or
watering-places, little of the great cities, and nothing at all of
great or noted personages. He visited the Americans “at home,” in
their farms and villages; threw himself upon their hospitality;
lived among them for years; and saw more of their real manners and
character than falls within the ordinary scope of a stranger's
observation. He was a young Scotchman, of respectable education, and
very slender means, who, without apparently any very definite plan
of proceeding, set off, in the first place, for Lover Canada, in
national phrase, “to push his fortune.* He lived for some years as a
schoolmaster about Chaleur Bay, and afterwards in different places
in the United States. His bulky MSS., now before us, contain a long,
minute, and faithful description of his original dreary sojourn
among the fishermen, wood-choppers, and Indian tribes of Lower
Canada. When tired of that Jenality, he formed the design of
visiting the United States, partly from curiosity, and probebly with
some hope of bettering his fortune. For this purpose, he went from
Chaleur Bay by tailing vessel to Quebec, ascended the St Lawrence to
Montreal by steam, and, finally, found his way to New York by the
customary route. In the course of his voyage he picked up a young
Irishman, still poorer than himself; and, on the faith of a reputed
rich uncle at Baltimore, who was to send money to await his nephew's
arrival at New York, the Scot made those pecuniary advance which
confirmed their friendship, and left him almost penniless. We take
them up at New York, exactly as, on an autumn evening, they had left
the steamer which brought them from Albany.
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