Letters from Alabama: Chiefly Relating to Natural History

Letter I

Letter I Mobile, May 15, 18– Your desire to have some information of the country in which the good providence of God has for the present allotted my residence, shall be gratified so far as myopportunitiesofobservationwilladmit.Ishallcommunicateitmorereadily, because from the very hasty and imperfect notion I have yet formed, I think it probable that scenes, circumstances, and manners, differ widely from those to which you and I have been accustomed. As a preliminary, however, it may not be altogether uninteresting to give a slight sketch of the voyage from Philadelphia. A sea-­ voyage, under the best circumstances , can scarcely be other than tedious. Even when performed in a stately and commodious vessel, with a skilful, gentlemanly, and obliging commander, a disciplined crew, and agreeable fellow-­passengers, the wearied eye wanders from seatosky,andfromskytosea,inavainsearchforsomeobjecttobreakthedreary uniformity: to-­day is like yesterday, and to-­morrow will be as to-­day. If the poor occupationless passenger endeavour to beguile his tedium, and indulge his literary propensities, by “keeping a log,” so few are the facts that occur, that he is of­ ten reduced to debate with himself the propriety of recording such “remarkable events” as that “the cook dropped a pewter spoon overboard,” or that “the pig came upon the quarter-­ deck;” and happy indeed is he when he has an opportunity of announcing, in the words of the north-­ country mate, “Little wind and less weather; caught a dolphin, and—lost him!” If, therefore, you find in my letter a tendency to treat of “small deer,” I trust you will make charitable allowances , and admit the truth of the Irish proverb, which sets forth the difficulty of extracting blood from a turnip. It would be needless to waste many words about Philadelphia. My impressions of it were agreeable; there are not many splendid or imposing edifices, but the general character is that of a genteel and respectable middle-­class. If there is little to astonish or dazzle, there is perhaps less to displease: an air of chaste and sobered elegance pervades the whole. The streets are straight, wide, and clean, and are rendered peculiarly pleasant by rows of trees on each side, among which the stately plane or buttonwood is conspicuous. The people who walk in them 28 Letters from Alabama are remarkably few in number for a large city, and their deportment is generally quiet and orderly. One cannot help feeling that William Penn has left the character of his sect strongly, indelibly, impressed on the city which he founded. Thebroadandbeautifulriveronwhichitstands—thesilveryDelaware,with its gently sloping banks, green and fertile—is a very great ornament and no less an advantage to the city; for though it can scarcely be called a commercial town, a goodly array of shipping finds its way thither, and a rather dense forest of masts shoots up from the fair bosom of the Delaware. The men of science I found, as usual, kind and obliging; the venerable ProfessorNuttallwasprosecutinghislaboursamongthedriedplantsintheherbarium of the Academy of Natural Sciences, and the urbane Peale was as busy in the fine Museum which forms one of the chief attractions of the city. My most prominent idea was that of Wilson the ornithologist. Here was his residence; here he kept school; here I looked upon the birds which he shot and skinned with his The Schuylkill Letters from Alabama 29 own hands; here are the scenes so of­ten mentioned in his delightful volumes; the meadows below Philadelphia, the marshy flats of the Schuylkill, the rushy half-­submergedisletsoftheDelaware,Thompson’sPoint,thequondamresidence of the night-­heron or qua-­bird, and the notorious Pea Patch, the resort of myriads of crows. The recognition of these places gave a charm and an interest to the scenes, which they would not otherwise have possessed, for to me there is always apeculiarpleasureinvisitingthosespotswhichhavebeenhallowed(sotospeak) bytheeminentofbygonedays.OneoldmanImetwithwhohadbeenpersonally acquainted with the ornithologist; though the latter had been a constant visitor at his house, he could not remember many anecdotes of him, but one thing he narratedwassufficientlycharacteristic.“WilsonandI,”saidhe,“werealwaysdisputing about the sparrows; he would have it that the sparrows here were different from those of the old country; I knew well enough they were just the same, but I could not persuade him of it.” It is scarcely necessary to say that the Ameri­ can sparrows are quite distinct from the European species. With a fine breeze right aft, and bright weather, the little schooner, “White Oak,” left the quay of...