610 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1890. 



nearly completed, it began its tour of the civilized world, only to en- 

 counter dangers more imminent than those which threatened it in the 

 wilderness. 



In the years 1837-'39 it made the tour of the then principal cities of 

 the Union. The present is not its first appearance in the national 

 capital. It knew Washington in the days of its dingy youth, long ere 

 it gave promise of becoming the most beautiful capital in the world. 



When in 1839 the collection made its first voyage across the Atlantic 

 it encountered a storm which was weathered with difficulty. During 

 the twelve succeeding years it was exhibited in London and many of 

 the smaller cities of the British Isles, in France, and in Belgium, 



In France it so pleased the king, Louis Philippe, who had traveled 

 as a fugitive in America in earlier days and seen much of the Indians, 

 that he gave it a place in the palace of the Louvre, and began to con- 

 sider the propriety of purchasing it. Here it might be supposed it had 

 at last reached an asylum, but, as subsequent events showed, it never 

 was in greater danger than when established in these princely quar- 

 ters. Soon afterwards the revolution of 1848 broke out; the citizen 

 king, assuming the modest name of Mr. Smith, fled to England, and 

 Oatlin was only too glad to rescue his collection and follow his ro^al 

 patron across the channel. 



Landed in England, perils of another kind awaited it. Mr. Catlin 

 speculated unwisely and the collection was neized for debt in 1852. 



Rescued from the hands of the creditors by a generous citizen of 

 Philadelphia, who happeued to be in England at the time, Mr. Joseph 

 Harrison, it again crossed the ocean to what we might call its native 

 land ; here it lay for years in different lofts and storehouses in Philadel- 

 phia. While in 1 his ignoble seclusion it twice ran the risk of destruc- 

 tion by fire and was, with difficulty, saved. Some of the canvas still 

 shows the defacing marks of smoke and flame and of the waters used 

 to extinguish the fires. 



For more than a quarter of a century it thus lay hidden until, in the 

 year 1879, it was presented to the nation by Mrs. Harrison and brought 

 for the second and, let us hope, the last time to the city of Washington. 



Mr. Thomas Donaldson, through whose instrumentality largely the 

 collection was secured for the people, tells us, " Mr. Catlin first offered 

 his gallery to the Smithsonian Institution in 1816; thirty-five years 

 afterwards it found a permanent lodgment in the same institution after 

 vicissitudes and misfortunes hardly equaled.''* 



And here it rests at last, in an isolated fireproof building, in a city 

 which has no mob element to threaten, in the possession of a sovereign 

 people whose property can not be seized for debt, as nearly safe from 

 danger as anything human can well be. Let us hope that it will long 

 remain to instruct and entertain the multitudes who will in future visit 

 this hall, and to record a stage of human development and an era in 

 the history of our laud which have passed totally and forever. 



*Op. cit., p. 6, 



