This led us to speak of Mr. Catlin’s gallery, which he praised
highly: observing that his own portrait was among the collection,
and that all the likenesses were ‘elegant.’ Mr. Cooper, he said,
had painted the Red Man well; and so would I, he knew, if I would
go home with him and hunt buffaloes, which he was quite anxious I
should do. When I told him that supposing I went, I should not be
very likely to damage the buffaloes much, he took it as a great
joke and laughed heartily.
He was a remarkably handsome man; some years past forty, I should
judge; with long black hair, an aquiline nose, broad cheek-bones, a
sunburnt complexion, and a very bright, keen, dark, and piercing
eye. There were but twenty thousand of the Choctaws left, he said,
and their number was decreasing every day. A few of his brother
chiefs had been obliged to become civilised, and to make themselves
acquainted with what the whites knew, for it was their only chance
of existence. But they were not many; and the rest were as they
always had been. He dwelt on this: and said several times that
unless they tried to assimilate themselves to their conquerors,
they must be swept away before the strides of civilised society.
When we shook hands at parting, I told him he must come to England,
as he longed to see the land so much: that I should hope to see
him there, one day: and that I could promise him he would be well
received and kindly treated. He was evidently pleased by this
assurance, though he rejoined with a good-humoured smile and an
arch shake of his head, that the English used to be very fond of
the Red Men when they wanted their help, but had not cared much for
them, since.
He took his leave; as stately and complete a gentleman of Nature’s
making, as ever I beheld; and moved among the people in the boat,
another kind of being. He sent me a lithographed portrait of
himself soon afterwards; very like, though scarcely handsome
enough; which I have carefully preserved in memory of our brief
acquaintance.
There was nothing very interesting in the scenery of this day’s
journey, which brought us at midnight to Louisville. We slept at
the Galt House; a splendid hotel; and were as handsomely lodged as
though we had been in Paris, rather than hundreds of miles beyond
the Alleghanies.
The city presenting no objects of sufficient interest to detain us
on our way, we resolved to proceed next day by another steamboat,
the Fulton, and to join it, about noon, at a suburb called
Page 113
Dickens, Charles – American Notes for General Circulation
Portland, where it would be delayed some time in passing through a
canal.
The interval, after breakfast, we devoted to riding through the
town, which is regular and cheerful: the streets being laid out at
right angles, and planted with young trees. The buildings are
smoky and blackened, from the use of bituminous coal, but an
Englishman is well used to that appearance, and indisposed to
quarrel with it. There did not appear to be much business
stirring; and some unfinished buildings and improvements seemed to
intimate that the city had been overbuilt in the ardour of ‘goinga-
head,’ and was suffering under the re-action consequent upon such
feverish forcing of its powers.
On our way to Portland, we passed a ‘Magistrate’s office,’ which
amused me, as looking far more like a dame school than any police
establishment: for this awful Institution was nothing but a little
lazy, good-for-nothing front parlour, open to the street; wherein
two or three figures (I presume the magistrate and his myrmidons)
were basking in the sunshine, the very effigies of languor and
repose. It was a perfect picture of justice retired from business
for want of customers; her sword and scales sold off; napping
comfortably with her legs upon the table.
Here, as elsewhere in these parts, the road was perfectly alive
with pigs of all ages; lying about in every direction, fast
asleep.; or grunting along in quest of hidden dainties. I had
always a sneaking kindness for these odd animals, and found a