THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 597 



I 



THE IOWAYS IMPRESSION OP LONDON. 



An Lour or so in the streets, in a pleasant day, enabled them to see a great deal 

 that was unlike the green prairies where they lived ; and the old doctor, wrapped in 

 his robe, and ogling the pretty girls, and everything else that he saw that was amus- 

 ing as he passed along, raised a new excitement in the streets, and gave an extensive 

 notification that " the wedding party had actually got back," or that another party 

 of redskins had arrived. They returned to their lodgings in great glee, and amused 

 us at least for an hour with their " first impressions " of London ; the leading, strik- 

 ing feature of which, and the one that seemed to afford them the greatest satisfaction 

 was the quantity of fresh meat that they saw in every street hanging up at the doors 

 and windows — pigs, and calves, and sheep, and deer, and prairie hens, in such profusion 

 that they thought "there would be little doubt of their getting as much fresh meat 

 as they could eat." Besides this, they had seen many things that amused them, and 

 others that excited their pity. They laughed much about the " black fellows with 

 white eyes" who were carrying bags of coal, and " every one of them had got their hats 

 on the wroDg side before." They had seen many people who seemed to be very poor, 

 and looked as if they were hungry ; for they held out their hands to people passing by 

 as if they were asking for something to eat. "They had passed two Indians, with 

 brooms in their hands, sweeping the dirt in the streets ! " 



This occurrence had excited their greatest anxieties to know " what Indians they 

 could be that would be willing to take a broom in their hands and sweep the dirt 

 from under white men's feet, and then hold out their hands to white people for money 

 to buy food to eat." They all agreed "that Iowas would not do it, that Sioux would 

 not, that Pawnees would not; " and when they were just deciding that their ene- 

 mies, the Objibbe ways, might be slaves enough to do it, and that these were possibly a 

 part of the Objibbe way party that had been flourishing in London, I explained the 

 mystery to them, by informing them that their conjectures were wrong — that it was 

 true they were Indians, but not from North America. I agreed with them that no 

 North American Indian would use that mode of getting his living, but that there 

 were Indians in different parts of the would, and that these were from the East 

 Indies, a country many thousands of miles from here ; that these people were Indians 

 from that country, and were of a tribe called Lascars ; that many of them were em- 

 ployed by the captains of English ships to help to navigate their vessels from that 

 country to this ; and that in London they often come to want, and are glad to sweep 

 the streets and beg, as the means of living, instead of starving to death. It seemed 

 still a mystery to them but partly solved, and they made many further remarks 

 among themselves about them. The good landlady at this moment announced to Mr. 

 Melody and Jeffrey that the dinner for the Indians was ready, and in a moment all 

 were seated save the doctor; he was missing. "That old fool," said Jeffrey; 

 "there's no doubt but he has found his way to the top of the house." I was con- 

 ducted by one of the servants through several unoccupied rooms and dark passages, 

 and at last through a narrow and almost impassable labyrinth that brought me out 

 upon the roof. The doctor was there ; and wrapped in his buffalo robe, with his red 

 face and his buffalo horns, was standing like a Zealand penguin, and smiling upon 

 the crowds of gazers who were gathering in the streets, and at the windows, and 

 upon the house-tops in the vicinity. * * * 



They had much amusement at this time also about a man they said they had seen 

 with a remarkably big nose, which they said looked like a large potato (or wapsapinna- 

 kari), and one of the women sitting near the door of the omnibus declared " that it was 

 actually a wapsappinnakan, for she could distinctly see the little holes where the sprouts 

 grow out." The bus, they said, had passed on rather too quick for all to have a fair 

 look, Tjut they believed they would at some future tiino meet him again, and takoa geod 

 look at him. 



