6 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



I should likewise be able to give numerous descriptions 

 (exact as I could make them) of almost all the North 

 American birds that came to my notice, were it not that 

 I must deplore the loss of the manuscripts which, with 

 certain other packages, I had left at Manchester in 

 Virginia in the hands of an obliging fellow-country- 

 man, Mr. Riibsaamen, to be despatched to Charleston 

 but nothing more thus far has been heard of them. 



For the rest, these sheets will not please him who, in 

 books of travel, has been used to expect astonishing 

 adventures or wonderful phenomena splendid palaces, 

 beautiful gardens, great libraries, rich art-collections, 

 collections of natural curiosities, antiquities &c., fab- 

 ricks, and other public institutions worth the seeing, all 

 of which help fill the note-books of travellers in older 

 settled countries, these as yet are not to be found in 

 America, and one might perhaps, not to give the matter 

 a bad turn, tell as much of what America is not as of 

 what it is. But I have been content to put down, aside 

 from the chief objects of my journey, what I saw and 

 learned, and if it is no more, it is not my fault. I relate 

 simple facts and give dry observations, without seek- 

 ing to embellish them by the refinements of speculation 

 or by edifying considerations. I shall therefore hardly 

 be charged with having industriously described the 

 Columbian States, (where I am persuaded also that 

 many people live very happily) merely in their bright- 

 est aspects; as a critic has guessed, not unreasonably, 

 of the author of the famous Lettres d'nn Cultivateur 

 Americain, noticing the latest Paris edition of that 



