What Mr. Welby, an English gentleman, saw when he was in the United States in 1821. A very flattering picture of the West.
A new book of Travels in America has been recently issued in London which rivals the volumes of our old friends Weld, Ashe, Fearon, &c. It is entitled "A Visit to North America and the English Settlements in Illinois, with a winter residence in Philadelphia; solely to ascertain the actual prosperity of the Emigrating Agriculturist, Mechanic, and Commercial Speculator"--by Adlard Welby, _Esquire_, of South Rauceby, Lincolnshire. This esquire has said enough, should he be believed, to settle ultimately the point of the truth or falsehood of Godwin's notable doctrine, that we owe the increase of our numbers chiefly to emigration. No sane European would venture among us after having read Mr. Welby's book. He discovered that, in Philadelphia, living was _very dear_, comfort _very uncommon_, and good manners still more rare. Throughout his journey he found in the taverns "a system of impertinence, rudeness, rascality, and filth, rendered more intolerable by an antipathy to the English, in the brutal manifestation of which most of the Colonel, Doctor, and Squire, keepers of the taverns, were pleased to indulge." When he asked an hostler to call him early in the morning, he was answered that--he might call himself and be d----d. In the Western country he found no symptoms of hospitality--witnessed only idleness and licentiousness, and experienced every where brutal rudeness and unbounded extortion. The western people usually combine in cheating all travellers, and sometimes "_rifle_," that is _shoot_ residents among them who do not choose to descend to their own level. In Illinois "a party proposed to each other _coolly_ to go and shoot neighbour *****, who had behaved ill to them sundry times; it was agreed upon; they went to his field, found the old man at plough, and, with unerring aim, laid him dead." And Mr. Welby adds that the country would be desirable to live in, did not the folks _shoot_ each other thus, and were they not half savages. The _shooting_ case reminds us of a traveller's story which we heard at a dinner table abroad. A gentleman and esquire of strict veracity, like Mr. Welby, related, in order to shew how common was the calamity of the _coup de soleil_, or stroke of the sun, in the Island of JAVA, that sitting once in the house of an opulent merchant of Batavia, drinking a _cool_ glass of Madeira after dinner, with the merchant's wife in the room, the lady was, in the twinkling of an eye, _reduced to a heap of ashes_ by a _coup de soleil_; when the husband observed to his guest, "don't be alarmed--we are accustomed to this;" then rang the bell with great composure, and on the appearance of the servant, _coolly_ said--"Boy--sweep your mistress out, and _bring us clean glasses._"