work with it in its fall. The ship now sank deeper than before, and in such a position that the starboard side was perpendicularly above the larboard. Little more than the iron railings of the quarter deck and the mainmast was still visible above the raging breakers. In this helpless condition, all we could do was to lash ourselves fast on the iron railings to which we had been clinging, and there await the worst with resignation. It is easy to comprehend that we looked forward to nothing but a watery grave. To think of rescue was but folly. And yet, how plainly the consoling voice of hope spoke within me! The feeling to which I allude, surpasses all attempt at description! It lasted scarcely for seconds—yet what seconds ! My travelling companions, the drunken sot Murphy, and even most of the sailors, seemed to be completely prostrated under the burthen of our hard fate. I too, was, after all, not in much better plight; yet, when I put every thing together, I can ascribe my greater fortitude only to the idea which would not leave me, that we should be saved. The billows broke continuously over us; and we were expecting, from minute to minute, that we should be torn from our hold and hurled into the raging sea. We had already been clinging to the railings for four mortal hours, when the storm began to subside a little, and we suddenly heard the voice of one of our sailors who had been carried off in the long-boat. An instant afterwards, we heard the voices of the other two. A ray of hope now revived our half lifeless frames. Nothing could seem more certain to us than that the four seamen were returning to rescue us from our dreadful situation; but this, alas! was not the case. The longboat had not held out but a little while against the fury of the breakers. It had sunk, carrying down with it one of the sailors, a negro, who could not swim. The others had saved themselves, partly by swimming and partly by clinging to some protruding ledges of the rocks, until they, at length, succeeded in getting hold of the foremast, and by means of it and the broken cordage, had finally reached a last desperate shelter on our wreck. Eleven men were now clinging to one frail railing, buried under the rushing onset of the billows, and looking forward, from moment to moment, to their doom. At this time there was, indeed, but
OUR RAFT.
129
little further room for hope, and the few minutes we could command from our stunned and breathless condition, were given up to gloomy reflections. Now and then a star gleamed, for an instant, through the masses of black clouds, and how gladly we hailed in it the harbinger of morning.
At length, about seven o'clock, after we had been hanging for almost eight hours to the railings, the storm-clouds parted and we could descry, away at the distance of some nine miles, a narrow black streak on the horizon; this we instantly knew to be land. A nameless feeling of delight ran through every vien, but immediately the thought, how impossible it was to reach the shore, made us again despond. The fierce billows still beat over us, and although the wind moderated, the sea continued in the most vio lent agitation. It may have been about eight o'clock in the morn ing, when we, all at once, detected a sail in the Gulf Stream. It seemed to be approaching us, until we at length recognized it to
be the brig which had left Havana in company with our own vessel. Our sensations, as it came nearer and nearer, then suddenly tacked, and completely withdrew from our sight, may be imagined.
That our schooner had not gone to pieces long ere this, and that the feeble railing still withstood the weight of twelve human beings, was a wonder upon whose prolongation we could not count for any great while to come, so we resolved to renew our attempt to make a raft, and actually succeeded in constructing one in about an hour and a-half. It was composed of nine pieces, viz: the fore-gaff, two spars, and six larger and smaller oars, as represented in the drawing:
Nos. 1, 2, 3, represent the chicken-coop, to which the captain, Mr. Creighton, and I, were lashed.
No. 4, the place where my colored man had fastened himself.
No. 5, the place where the sailor, Jack, stood with his legs stretched apart, for foothold.
Nos. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, the places where the sailors fixed themselves, most of them in a standing posture.
This, as is plainly to be seen, was a miserably frail concern, to bear the weight of twelve men, but we could get no more wooden material, and the beating of the sea prevented us from perfecting even this weak raft. It was loosely put together, and when we got on it, sank instantly, some two feet or more. Most of us fastened ourselves firmly to our seats, for the rocking motion and the violence of the billows that tossed us rudely to and fro, as they rose and fell, would assuredly have thrown us off. It was ten o'clock, when we finally left the wreck upon this raft. The wind, fortunately, blew towards the land, or all hope of reaching the latter would have abandoned us. Our raft did not keep in its horizontal position one single moment. It sank sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left; the mounting sea frequently covered us entirely, and we often enough prepared ourselves with a murmured—" Now ! now!" for our last moment. We could not steer the raft, at all, but went as wind and wave drove us. The sailor who stood at the point No. 5, was the only one who could do anything for us. He had taken a blanket and spread it out between his extended arms, in such a way as to catch the wind, with a remark that made me smile at the time.
" This," said he, " is the first sail that would need no reef!"
The aid this rendered us was scarcely perceptible, and the
reader may judge how slow our progress was, when he learns that at four o'clock in the afternoon, we were only half way between the shore and our wreck, which still held together. About five o'clock we saw three small sail coming towards us from the extreme point of the land. The distance at which they were from us rendered it impossible for us to attract their attention, and, if we shouted to them, it was more from despair than for any reason. It was with the greatest risk that we loosened the oar No. 8, attached the red neckcloth of a sailor to it, and held it aloft; but all this was of no more use than our shouting. We were neither heard nor seen. By this time, our raft was nearly three feet under water. Meanwhile the sea had become less agitated, and, although we were up to our breasts in water, our heads were not so often washed by the billows. By sundown, that is to say about six o'clock, we reckoned that we were yet some three miles and a half from the land. We supposed the latter to be the coast of East Florida, off which lies a small island. The ebb tide was now altogether against us, and the wind, too, suddenly shifted and blew directly from the land. We all expected to be driven out again to sea; and, with heavy hearts took our last look at the setting sun. The small sails which we had seen about five o'clock, seemed to have approached near to our abandoned wreck, then just visible to us by the mast sticking out of the water, and to have cast anchor in its close neighborhood. It was, at this moment, difficult indeed to hold fast to the doctrine of " all is for the best!"
The heavy swell which again began to rise made every attempt to steer our raft with the loosened oar utterly useless, and the outspread blanket was of no farther use to us as the wind was blowing off the land. Night came on; some of our company had cramps in their limbs, and others were completely exhausted by the exertions their perilous position on the raft required. It is truly impossible to form a correct idea of our situation. An hour later, we were about three musket shots distant from the little island, which, as we afterwards learned, was called Tavernier Key, Here, we saw through the twilight, a wreck, and, as we thought, a brigantine and a large sloop both at anchor, but without a
human being on board. The island appeared to be uninhabited. We made several attempts to reach it, but they were all fruitless, for the swell continually drove us back, and at length forced us down along the land, which we had at first taken for the coast of Florida, but which proved to be another island called Large Key. Fortunately, the western point of this larger island turned, the nearer we came to it, almost like a half moon, southward, and received the flood of the sea in a sort of bay, so that about ten o'clock in the evening, we were pretty near to the land. We measured with our steering oar, and found the depth of water not over four feet. Upon this, the sailor Jack, who had stood at No. 5, left his place and leaped into the sea; another, a German by birth, followed him, and these two men, the strongest, and consequently, the least exhausted among us, drew our shattered raft to the shore, which we, God be thanked! at length reached in safety, a little after eleven o'clock. Some of the sailors, and my faithful negro Celestin, were so exhausted that they could not leave the raft, and had to be carried ashore, one after the other. The mate and a couple of sailors scarcely reached it, ere they fell almost lifeless on the beach. My colored man seized my hand, and had just breath enough left to stammer out, as he kissed it: " Oh, master, if I had lost you!" when he dropped to the ground, stiff with cold. I took him up in my arms and strove to warm him, for I had already learned from experience, that the colored race are unfitted to encounter the severities of cold. A sailor had tinder in his pocket, but it had got completely wet, and what we, at this moment, would have preferred to all the splendors of the world, a real good fire, we could not procure. The shore was sandy or rocky, here and there covered with some dry thistles, and formed but a hard, uninviting bed. Yet it was land— firm land —upon which we stood. This thought overcame every other in the minds of both Creighton and myself, and unable to resist the weight of our fatigue and desire to sleep, we sank down, utterly worn out. We all lay in a heap together, and tried to warm each other. I had kept hold of my faithful negro, and succeeded in restoring him to consciousness within a couple of hours, During the night, we were refreshed in another way. Some heavy rain clouds burst
above us, and would have dispensed a most delightful coolness to our prostrate frames, had we needed it. The sun had scarcely risen, when, to our inexpressible delight, we saw three small wrecker boats at anchor between Large Key and Tavernier Key. The distance was great, yet these craft by no means seemed to be beyond our reach. There was yet another trial before us. We were just rising from the beach to try whether we could not get nearer to these boats, when they suddenly weighed anchor and put to sea. Two of them returned about an hour afterwards, and ranged up near the sloop which we had seen on the previous evening. We now resolved to lose no time, but push on until we could get opposite to these boats, at a point from which we thought we could hail them. We commenced our journey, but were so completely exhausted by hunger, but more especially thirst, and the many fatigues we had undergone, that we had to rest every five minutes. Some of us had our legs swollen, and I, like most of the party, was barefooted. We found ourselves without any nourishment, as we had saved only two bottles of wine, as a restorative for eleven persons, and there was not a dry stitch on one of us. Mr. Creighton and I were worse off than the rest, for it was the fourth day since we had taken any food, and our tramp of three miles, along the shore, contributed no little to our greater exhaustion. We had, at length, reached a point opposite to the wrecker-boats. On the strand lay a ten foot pole. To this we fastened a red flannel sailor's shirt, and hoisted it, in the hope that the people on board of the boats would see us and hasten to our relief. We could distinguish them plainly—even see the smoke on their decks!—they, surely, must notice us or hear our shouts! and yet they did not appear to get a glimpse of us nor to pay the least attention to our repeated hallooing. Three of our companions in misfortune had traversed the island in all directions, in search of fresh water and bananas. They found neither one nor the other, and came back utterly dispirited. Hunger was gnawing our vitals, and the fear of dying by starvation increased in proportion as our appetites grew keener; for our complete exhaustion had deadened every other feeling within
us. We all felt that it would be a physical impossibility for us to survive another day in our present condition.
It might have been about two o'clock in the afternoon, when Mr. Creighton and I offered a sailor fifty dollars and a new outfit, if he would swim to one or the other of the two boats, and inform their people of our situation. Jack, the same man, who had on the previous day, held the blanket for ten hours on his outstretched arms, undertook the desperate task. The distance was not full three sea-miles. I need hardly describe the longing anxiety with which our gaze followed him. We despaired more and more of his success, the farther he got from us, for we observed that the swell incessantly beat him back, and that he seemed to be tired out. His head was scarcely any longer visible above the water—only now and then we could just see a little speck on the surface of the billows, for an instant at a time. At length, this too suddenly disappeared. " Poor Jack !" thought we, " he is gone!" But no!—look !—There was Jack on board of the sloop, shouting to the people of the boats. We next saw a couple of men going to him, and taking him on board of their craft in a small skiff. They then rowed towards the spot where we were. What we all felt could not be described by the most experienced pen, and only they could realize it who have been placed in a similar situation. The skiff, small as it was, took us all and conveyed us to one of the two vessels—a craft of about eighteen tons. We there got some nourishment, and learned that we were on board of a wrecker-boat belonging to New Providence, one of the English Bahama Islands, that it was manned by four seamen and was lying off the Florida coast, in this direction to catch sea turtle. They partly lived on this and partly on provisions found in the vessels that stranded there from time to time. These were English West-India mariners. The skipper who owned the craft confessed that he had seen us on shore quite distinctly, the whole morning, but had pretended that he did not, and under the persuasion that we were shipwrecked Spaniards, who, after having been rescued, would lay violent hands on his craft and carry her away to Cuba, as had occurred not long before to some of their comrades, would assuredly have turned a deaf
ear to our cries, had not Jack's arrival given him a different idea of what we were. The rocks on which our vessel had been cast away, formed the Carysfort Beef, on which the English frigate Carysfort was totally lost w r ith all on board, in the year 1774.
The remainder of this narrative is soon told. We distributed ourselves on three small craft, and after we had (owing to contrary winds which detained us) cruised in and out along the Florida coast, and among the islands, catching turtles occasionally, we made for Nassau, the seaport of New Providence, where we arrived on the 6th of February, the eleventh day after our shipwreck. I landed barefooted, and attired in a pair of pantaloons manufactured out of sail-cloth for me by our deliverers. The Solicitor-General, a Mr. Armstrong, who recollected my name from the circumstance, that a ship, bound from New Orleans to Liverpool, on board of which were 30,000 piastres, sent by me to England, had stopped and been examined at New Providence, and who had, moreover, known Creighton's family in England at an earlier period, provided us with money. We had to wait a fortnight for an opportunity to embark for the United States, since the embargo in American ports had broken off the usual frequency of communications with the West Indies. At length, on the 22d of February, we got on board a vessel for Charleston, whither a favorable wind brought us in four days. We took Jack along with us, after giving him the new outfit and the fifty dollars we had promised him. Before we left the Florida coast we had employed the delay occasioned us by contrary winds to look about among the rocks for some of our lost effects, and had found the long boat that was swept away; it still contained the body of the drowned sailor, who, fastened to his seat, had there found his death, and breathed out his last on a sack containing about six hundred dollars. We also got some twenty casks of coffee, forty boxes of sugar, and $1,600 in silver coin, from the wreck of the schooner; my trunk was there too, but everything had been w r ashed out of it excepting a few shirts and my copying-book. My writing-desk, with $2,000 in silver, and all my papers, were irrevocably lost. From Charleston, my companions and I went overland to Philadelphia, where we arrived on the 11th of March.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE EMBARGO OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE YEAR 1808.
Rupture of communications with Mexico; the first and most important cause which influenced the independent position of Parish, and became the source of his first embarrassments—The large purchase of lands on the St. Lawrence river was one of the next—History of this purchase—Gouverneur Morris and Le Ray de Chaumout were the originators of Parish's blindness, and the first to sell property of such diminutive value—Parish obtains permission from Gallatin, the Secretary of State, notwithstanding the embargo, to dispatch ships in ballast, and bring silver dollars from Mexico—The use made of this favor by John Jacob Astor, of New York—His history—Stephen Girard, in Philadelphia—Girard's history and career—Fracture of my right leg at Wilmington—I employ the retirement, rendered necessary by this accident, to strike off the first balance of our great operation.
Upon my arrival I found David Parish in great tribulation. The embargo suddenly imposed, in the beginning of the year, by the Congress of the United States, a measure intended to suspend all intercourse with Great Britain for the time being, until an understanding had been come to with the latter power in relation to many disputed questions, such as the Right of Search, and the taking away of English sailors out of American ships, &c, &c, was exactly calculated to produce considerable embarrassment in the conduct of our business. Very important sums were still lying in Vera Cruz and Mexico, and the departure of the clippers for their transportation to the United States was rendered absolutely impossible by the embargo. Again, large stocks of goods intended to be shipped to Europe, and on which Parish had made very heavy advances, were locked up in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The whole machine was brought to a stand still. Its regular progress was consequently interrupted, and, on the
part of Messrs. Hope & Co., some signs of impatience were beginning to grow visible, on account of certain delayed remittances. This delay had been partly, if not altogether, occasioned by some circumstances which can only be attributed to the deviations Parish had seen fit to make from the regular course of the business intrusted to him, and which led to a cash outlay of more than three quarters of a million dollars. I may perhaps be permitted to mention only one of these circumstances, which had not been foreseen or counted upon in Europe, as it will give my readers a knowledge of the origin of a colossal landed estate, now become the property of the Parish family, and situated on the northwestern frontiers of the State of New York, and watered by the river St. Lawrence.
Among the old friends of the Parish family in the beginning of this century was counted Mr. Gouverneur Morris, so celebrated as the American Ambassador at the Court of Versailles. He was a clear-headed and talented man; he had visited Hamburgh, and spent some time there with Mr. John Parish, then Consul for the United States in that city. He had returned to his own country, and was living on his estate, called Morrisania, on the East river, fifteen miles from New York. From there he visited David Parish, on the latter's invitation, in Philadelphia, during the spring of 1807, and spent a couple of weeks with him. Upon this occasion he succeeded in getting from his host some $30,000 on bond and mortgage on his possessions lying along the St. Lawrence river. Some months later, after his return to Morrisania, Mr. Gouverneur Morris wrote a pamphlet on the present value of landed property on the north-western frontiers of New York, and the gradual prospective increase of the same, and dedicated this effusion of his pen to his friend David Parish. At the same time the latter received an invitation to go on a visit with Mr. Morris to these valuable tracts of land in the autumn of the same year. This was also done. Soon afterwards, Gouverneur Morris again visited his friend Parish in Philadelphia, where the former lifted his mortgage by the sale of the whole property, at the rate of two dollars an acre, Parish paying down an additional sum of $20,000.
In the fall of 1808 Parish once more visited the shores of the
St. Lawrence, and bought about 100,000 acres, at the average price of two dollars an acre, from a Frenchman named Le Ray de Chaumont, who had been settled there for many years, and from one of the branches of the Ogden family, and their representative David B. Ogden, one of the first lawyers in New York, the whole borough of Ogdensburgh, now the seat of Mr. George Parish, the second son of the Mr. Richard Parish at present residing in Nien-steden, for about $9,000. The new owner thereupon commenced operations, by going to work to import three thousand merino sheep from Spain, so as to make use of a large part of the locality, which was pretty well known to consist of soil in the highest degree unproductive, and chiefly covered with stones or rocks, but, as Le Ray de Chaumont and consorts explained to Parish, was an exact repetition of the Spanish district where the merino sheep yield the most perfect wool. Parish was so possessed with this idea, that upon a little excursion we made together, on the way to Baltimore, to purchase a pair of horses, as we passed by a stretch of stony land, and saw some merino sheep skipping about over it, he exclaimed to me, in great glee, " Look! look there, Nolte ! how they jump about! they yield splendid wool!"
I am writing down this narrative chiefly as extracted from my memory, after the lapse of forty-four years, and consequently cannot, so far as the accuracy of numbers is concerned, set down all with the closest precision; but what I can affirm is, that the whole amount expended by Parish for this purpose, up to the spring of 1809, was close upon $363,000. The reader will find the assurance of this in the subsequent pages.
Of the two other causes of Parish's sudden deficiency of funds, in the very middle of the superabundance justly represented by him previously, to the firm in Amsterdam, I shall, in a few words, touch upon that one only which resulted from the failing condition of the house of Guest & Banker, importers, in Philadelphia. Parish had discounted their acceptances to the amount of $70,000, and en-portefeuille: and since the combination that was made, in order to save this capital, would not essentially contribute to the better understanding of the then existing state of affairs, I suppress it in this place, not however without taking occasion to remark, that it
only yields a proof the more of the elastic nature of mercantile consciences in general, and of the resources possessed by a deeply calculating mind, fruitful in expedients, but that before the tribu nal of strict morality, it could hardly receive an unconditional absolution.
Messrs. Hope & Co. were counting upon important remittances, when, all at once, they received drafts from David Parish for a very considerable sum, which had been raised by him for his relief when his own cash box had become exhausted. The protest designated the cause of the refused acceptance in the words, " On account of not having been notified" : the bills, however, were paid.
When, fifteen months later, I was conversing about this circumstance with Mr. P. C. Labouchere, and remarked, with regret, that it had been calculated to damage Parish's position, he replied, " I only wanted to remind Parish that he is not the unconditional master to make use of our funds just as he may see fit, but nothing more than a mere partner, in a certain business, under well understood conditions. We intended to pay the bills any how."
The embargo made itself doubly felt, not only through the impossibility of shipping off the enormous stocks of goods upon which Parish had made advances, and which he held under lock and key, but also through the no less absolute impossibility of dispatching the fast sailing schooners to Vera Cruz, to bring away the ready coin deposited there. Parish, however, understood the means of remedying this evil. He repaired to Washington, had an interview with Albert Gallatin, the Secretary of the Treasury —a man distinguished for his intelligence and experience—and convinced him, that even if the policy of the government required that the exportation of American products should be prevented by an embargo, it still could not possibly be a wise course to take from the United States the means of bringing home, from foreign countries, the sums due to them in silver, and that with this latter view, and for this purpose, it would be an excellent measure to permit the departure of vessels in ballast. The Secretary Df the Treasury saw the force of this reasoning, and at once, upon his own responsibility, gave the collectors of the different
Atlantic ports full authority to allow the departure of such vessels In this way the outstanding sums expected from Mexico at length arrived, and towards the close of the same summer Villanueva, who had also accomplished his mission, left his late residence at Vera Cruz, and came, under his real name, Lestapis, to the States, where he took up his temporary abode, at Germantown, five miles from Philadelphia.
The argument which Parish had made use of with Mr. Gallatin, for the purpose of procuring permission to send out ships in ballast, to bring back sums of money from abroad that were due in the United States, had found favor in the eyes of a man who had distinguished himself from the mass of German immigrants by his important successes, his speculative spirit, and his great wealth, and had won a certain celebrity. This man was John Jacob Astor, the founder of the American colony of Astoria, on the northern coast of the Pacific ocean, which has been so graphically and picturesquely described by the pen of Washington Irving. Astor was born at Heidelberg, where the original name of his family is said to have been Aschthor, and had come to New York as a furrier's apprentice. His first savings, that is to say, the wages he got in the peltry warehouse, for beating out and preparing bear, doe, and other skins, he invested in the purchase of all kinds of peltry, bear, mink, and rabbit skins, which he got from the Indians, who at that time wandered about the streets of New York ; and so soon as he had collected a certain quantity, he sent them to Europe, particularly to the Leipsic fair. There he traded them off for Nuremburg wares, cheap knives, glass beads, and other articles adapted to traffic with the Indians on the Canadian frontiers, and took them himself to the latter points, where he again exchanged them for furs of various kinds. As he has often told me, with his own lips, he carried on this traffic untiringly for twelve long years, going in person, alternately, to the Canadian frontiers, and then to the Leipsic fair, and lived all the while, as he had ever been accustomed to do, humbly and sparingly. At length he had managed to bring together a considera-cle capital, and gradually became a freighter of ships, and fitted out expeditions to the Northwest Coast, to trade with the Indians
of Nootka Sound for furs. Another circumstance contributed to the increase of his means. At the peace concluded in 1783, between England and her revolted provinces, the thirteen United States, many acres of land in the State of New York, some even in the neighborhood of New York city, were voted by Congress to the German soldiers who had fought in the American army. The latter were chiefly Hessians and Darmstadters. Most of them died in the course of the year, without having succeeded in converting this property into money ; but the relatives and heirs they left behind them in Germany did not forget these little inheritances. Upon the occasion of a visit made by Astor to Heidelberg, in later years, most of the parties last referred to, as inheriting the allotments of the deceased German soldiers, and residing in Heidelberg, united and made our friend their legally authorized attorney, In order to realize something, if possible, from their hitherto useless acres. But the hoped for increase of the value of this property was, on the whole, rather slow in coming, and the heirs wanted money, money, quick and ready money. Astor having been applied to on this score, told them that, in order to get ready money, they must reckon up the real present value of the cash itself, and not any imagined value of the land, and that only through pretty considerable sacrifice could they get cash for the same. Thereupon the parties advised with each other, and finally Astor received peremptory orders to sell, without further delay. Unknown speculators were found; the proceeds were small, but the heirs got what they wanted—money. At the present day, many of these pieces of ground are among the most valuable and most important in the city, and have gradually passed through Astor into other hands: the unknown speculators, however, have faded from the memory of everybody.
Astor, at the moment of the embargo, was in the possession of several millions, so that he was able to give his son, William B. Astor, who was educated at Gottingen, the magnificent hotel on Broadway called the "Astor House," which cost the sum of $800,000.
The permission (procured by Parish) to send out ships in bal last, to bring home silver, had given Astor the idea that the same
privilege might be extended to vessels dispatched for the purpose of bringing home the amount of debts due abroad, in goods. With this view he went to Washington, and there, under the pretence that he had an important depot of teas at Canton, obtained the desired permission to send a vessel thither in ballast. This step, however, was only the forerunner of another one. Astor, in reality, owned no depot of teas at Canton, and hence it simply came to this, that he would, according to the usual custom, send money thither to purchase the article.
The exceptional favor of sending schooners in ballast to Vera Cruz, which Parish had up to this time enjoyed, but which was now gradually extended to other vessels, whose destination was not to bring back gold and silver values, but goods on American account, sufficiently showed that, under certain circumstances, there was no indisposition to grant free exit to ships in ballast for a particular object. And now arose another point, namely, whether empty vessels, which, however, had silver on board, could be regarded as in ballast. The precious metals are, in most countries, not looked upon as wares, although in some they are so classified. It was not exactly advisable to bring on a discussion of the question, whether the exportation of silver in otherwise unladen vessels should depend upon it or not. The query was, whether a foreign creditor, who had come to collect the moneys owed him by American merchants, would be permitted to take the funds really thus received back with him. In Washington, there appeared to be every disposition to allow this. Now it was well known, in the northern ports of the United States, that the leading native merchants of Canton had never hesitated to accord their regular correspondents, returning year out and year in, from the United States, certain credits which amounted to considerable sums. Upon this Astor based his plan. He hunted up, among the Chinese sailors, or Lascars, on the ships lately arriving from China, a fellow suited to his purpose, dressed him as a Mandarin, and took him with him to Washington, where he had to play the part of the Chinese creditor, under the name of Hong-Qua, or Kina-Holu. No one dreamed of suspecting the Mandarin's identity, and Astor pushed his scheme safely through. The $200,000
he sent to Canton were expended there in tea and other Chinese articles, and within a year afterwards returned in that shape to Astor's hands, and were used by him to excellent account. A stroke of skill had been achieved, whose morality no one in the United States doubted for a moment.
Astor has left a fortune of about $12,000,000, chiefly to his only son. His mind was incessantly busied with the increase of his resources, and had no other direction. He was compelled, by a physical infirmity, to repair to Paris, where he could avail himself of the skilful assistance of Baron Dupuytren. The latter thoroughly restored him, and advised him to ride out every day. He frequently took occasion himself to accompany his patient on these rides. One day—and this anecdote I have from the Baron's own mouth—when riding, he appeared by no means disposed to converse; not a word could be got out of him: and at length Dupuytren declared, that he must be suffering from some secret pain or trouble, when he would not speak. He pressed him, and worried him, until finally Astor loosed his tongue—" Look ye! Baron!" he said; " How frightful this is! I have here, in the hands of my banker, at Paris, about 2,000,000 francs, and cannot manage, without great effort, to get more than 2J per cent, per annum on it. Now, this very day I have received a letter from my son in New York, informing me that there the best acceptances are at from 1| to 2 per cent, per month. Is it not enough to enrage a man?"
I cannot let this opportunity slip by without saying something about another mercantile celebrity of the United States, viz.: Stephen Girard. This man was born in a village near the banks of the Garonne. He was the son of a peasant, and had left his own country as a common sailor. Having gradually risen to the post of second mate, he came as such to Philadelphia, where he remained, and opened a tavern on the banks of the Delaware for such of his countrymen as were engaged in the West India trade, particularly that with St. Domingo. The revolution in St. Do-mingo caused an emigration which continually brought him fresh customers, and, having built some small vessels to bring his fugitive countrymen away in safety from the island, he bartered
flour and meal for coffee, until his capital, which had been scarcely worth mentioning at first, gradually increased, and enabled him to build larger vessels, and extend his spirit of enterprise in all directions. His frugality bordered on avarice. Sailors' fare was to him the best, and the freighting of vessels his favorite pursuit. The success which attended his exertions at length became unexampled ; for he never had his ships insured, but always chose skilful and experienced Captains, thus saving himself the heavy expense of taking out insurance policies, and continued acting on this principle, gradually increasing his capital, more and more, until it had finally swelled to an enormous amount. Illiterate, as a French common sailor must needs be, and scarcely able to write his own name, he called all his ships after the great authors of his native country, and thus enjoyed the sensation of beholding the American flag waving above a Montesquieu, a Voltaire, a Helvetius, and a Jean Jacques Rousseau. His ships, which he was in the habit of sending successively to the island of Mauritius, at that time the Isle de France, to Calcutta, and Canton, and each of which cost from forty to sixty thousand dollars, brought back cargoes worth from one to two hundred thousand dollars to Philadelphia, and thence to Europe, particularly to Messrs. Hope & Co., at Amsterdam, and were never insured. Remarkable good fortune attended all these enterprises. Until the year 1815, not one of his ships was ever lost or captured. It will be easy to form an idea of the amount of capital accumulated by this saving of insurance premiums, when one reflects that the latter went as high as from ten to fifteen, and even twenty per cent.
Girard's right hand was a countryman of his, named Roberjeot, who, however, had received his mercantile education entirely at Hamburgh, under the tutelage of Professor Busch. This Roberjeot was the only man whom he now and then, but no oftener than now and then, took into his especial confidence, and he had worked in the house of Girard, for a respectable, yet very moderate salary, during the lapse of twenty years; frequently something was said about increasing it, but nothing of the sort was ever done. Roberjeot, who had some desire to be taken care of in his old age, resolved to let his patron know that if he desired
to keep him any longer, he must take that matter into serious consideration, and give him a handsome sum, that he might put aside and turn to good account. Girard, a little nettled by this, replied that he would give him ten thousand dollars, but Rober-jeot demanded sixty. He was told to wait until the next day, when, without hearing another word in relation to the matter, he received what he had asked for—Sixty Thousand Dollars.
Magnanimous as Girard could be in many things, he was, on the other hand, equally petty in many others. Of his numerous relatives in France, who were all poor peasant folks, he would never hear a syllable mentioned. When some of them, upon one occasion, ventured to cross the ocean, and visit him in Philadel phia, he immediately sent them away again, with a trifling present. In one particular instance, he exhibited unusual hard-heartedness. His captains had received the strictest orders not to bring either strange goods, passengers or letters back with them. One of his ships was returning from Bordeaux, and through another, which had hurried on before it, he learned that it was conveying him some relations of his as passengers; he instantly sent to Newcastle, on the Delaware, where the ships coming in from sea usually touch, an order to the Captain, forbidding him to land any passengers, but to remain at that point until another had been procured to take them back to Bordeaux, when he might come up to Philadelphia with his cargo. The Captain was then replaced by another person. He, however, made an exception in favor of two nieces, the orphaned daughters of a brother who had died in poverty. He allowed these girls to come to him, and gave one of them permission, along with some twenty thousand dollars, to marry the brother of General Lallemant, who had emigrated to America upon the restoration of the Bourbons, after the battle of Waterloo. In his will, he bequeathed to the other an equal sum.
He learned a sharp lesson from his favorite correspondents in Europe, Messrs. Hope & Co., of Amsterdam, who possessed ftis entire confidence. Notwithstanding the reliance he placed in them, he had sent a Quaker, by the name of Hutchinson, to Amsterdam, with explicit instructions to watch those gentlemen
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closely, and see that they accounted for the real prices received by them for his consignments, &c, &c. It was a rule, in the house of Messrs. Hope, to compute one-eighth per cent, more than the daily noted rate of exchange, when sending the regular receipts to bank, and this was done to cover a variety of minute office expenses, which could not be brought into a stated account. Thus, for instance: Mr. Hutchinson was informed that they had sold a thousand bags of coffee, from the cargo of the ship Voltaire, at so and so much per cent. Hereupon, that gentleman came, next day, to the counting-room, and interrupted Mr. Labouchere in his meditations, and, running his finger along the printed price-current he held in his hand, pointed out to him that the rate must be put at one-eighth per cent. less. The oft-repeated hints Mr. Labouchere had given the young Quaker, who invariably came in with his hat on his head, and, without permission, marched directly up to the door, and pushed on into the private counting-room— the sanctum sanctorum of Dutch merchants—had all proved of no avail: at last they got to let him stand there, without paying any attention to what he had to say. He then wrote to Philadelphia to his principal, who dictated, for his benefit, the most offensive letters to Messrs. Hope, which finally decided the latter to let him know at once, that there existed so wide a difference between their ways of doing business and his, and all attempts to teach him better had so signally failed, that, for the sake of their own comfort and tranquillity, they should be compelled to decline any further transactions with him. There then came a kind of apology, a promise to manage differently in future, &c., &c. But the house in Amsterdam remained firm in the resolution they had taken, offering, however, to do him the favor of recommending to him, as his future correspondents, Messrs. Daniel Crommelin & Sons, their neighbors. The astonishment of these latter gentlemen themselves, when the first important consignments began to reach them from Girard, and the surprise of the whole Bourse of Amsterdam, that any one could reject such business as his, requiring no advances, may be readily conceived.
The Messrs. Hope had, after the annexation of Holland to the Empire, withdrawn, or rather had in a measure been compelled
to withdraw, from all trade in goods and wares, since the famous Berlin and Milan decrees of Napoleon had thrown great difficulties in the way of trade, and much impaired the security of commercial intercourse. However, when, after the fall of Napoleon, in 1814, Holland again obtained her independence, and the house of Messrs. Hope, having been established on a new basis, resumed its former rank, Girard was anxious to renew the connexion which had been interrupted for several years. Upon this occasion the assurance was once more given, that the style of correspondence to be carried on between the two houses should be altogether changed. But Mr. Labouchere was not accustomed to alter his tone. He took the pen in his own hand, and replied to the desire expressed by Mr. Girard, with the regret that he could not consent, feeling convinced that the latter gentleman might indeed reform his language, but not his principles, and that hence the best course would be to regard the acquaintance as having terminated.
Mr. Jerome Sillem, who had just entered the firm of Messrs. Hope, objected, that this was going too far; he had, personally, nothing against Girard, and so lucrative a business as his was not to be wantonly thrown away. Mr. Labouchere, unhesitatingly replied, that even if he (Mr. Sillem) had nothing to say against Girard, the house of Hope was not, on that account, bound to change its views, or relinquish anything of its dignity, and that he (Sillem) enjoyed the advantage of an admission into the firm only under the condition that he would sustain its well-known principles. In a private conversation that soon afterwards occurred, between Mr. Labouchere and myself, I could not avoid remark ing, that I was inclined to agree with Mr. Sillem, since Girard had, to some extent, apologized, &c, &c. I now give his reply, so as to leave no gap in my characteristic sketch of this remarkable man. He said to me, "You may rest assured, Mr. Nolte, that this refusal will do the house of Hope more honor, and, by its result, eventually, more good, than all it could have gained from these fine transactions with Mr. Girard." Hereupon I turned the subject, and kept my own opinion to myself, with the conviction that the honorable part of this refusal could not be anywhere
denied; but that, in regard to its effects upon the trading community in the United States, Mr. Labouchere was indulging an illusion, if he were really expressing his true opinion, which, by the way, I had no reason to doubt.
Girard also belonged to the list of the best American correspondents of the Barings, in London; and when one of the head partners of that house, Francis Baring, the second son of Lord Ashburton, visited Philadelphia, his birthplace, in the year 1818, he called at the counting-room of Mr. Girard, whom he, however, did not find there at the time. Mr. Roberjeot, the already-mentioned oldest clerk in that establishment, told him, that if he wanted to see Mr. Girard himself, he must visit him early in the morning, at his large farm, in the neighborhood of the city. Baring went to the place indicated, asked for Mr. Girard, and received the reply, " Yonder he stands !" They pointed out to him a small, low-set man, of about sixty, with gray hair, bareheaded, without coat or jacket, and in his shirt-sleeves, rolled up above the elbows, who stood with a hay-fork in his hand, helping to load hay on a farm-wagon. He said, " Is that Mr. Girard V " Yes," they answered; whereupon he stepped up to him, and gave his name. " So, so !" remarked Girard ; " then you are the son of the man that got married here % Well, now, I am very glad to see you, but I have no time to talk with you at present; it is harvest-time, and I have a great deal to do. There, walk around yonder a little, look at my cows, and get some of the folks to give you a glass of milk, for you can't get such milk in all London !" Mr. Girard was perfectly right. The London milk is notoriously the vilest beverage in the world that bears the name. Baring complied with this blunt invitation; and as he himself was an ec centric, and, consequently, liked eccentrics, he was wonderfully tickled with the thought of what a curious reception this was, for one of the heads of the first house in London to meet with, at the hands of one who stood at the head of the first house in America.
I will now return, after making a leap of some ten years, to the summer of 1808, that is to say, to the time when Parish was waiting for his merino sheep, and hoped to gather in the first-fruits of his newly purchased lands.
I had left him in Baltimore, and had returned, by way of Havre de Grace, on the banks of the Susquehanna river, through Wilmington, to Philadelphia. I had there seen a horse excellently suited to drive in tandem with the one that drew my gig. The next day I inspected him, and concluded what I considered a lucky bargain, in purchasing him. The result, however, proved anything but fortunate for me. I had driven to the top of Bran-dywine Hill, when my new horse took fright, and dashed off at a gallop, the second one following him down the hill, rearing and plunging with his fore and hind legs, until, near the bridge that crosses the Delaware, his head-gearings gave way, and he stumbled and fell. At this moment I leaped from the gig and broke my right leg, so that my foot hung to it only by the skin. In this condition I remained prostrate on the road, where my colored man, whom I had caused to alight to bring the leader back into the right road, when he first became unruly, at length ran up to my assistance, and called some people around us. They then made me a litter, and carried me to the nearest public house in Wilmington. The good people of the tavern, in their first alarm, hastily summoned the two best surgeons in the place, namely, a doctor Smith and a doctor James Tilton,* a couple of very unskilful and inexperienced persons, notwithstanding their great reputation. These two men stood at the head of the political parties of their village; Dr. Smith as a thorough-going Federalist, and Dr. Tilton as a great admirer of Jefferson, and consequently a democrat. They had not for a long time exchanged a word with each other, but had mutually cherished a most hearty hatred, and were now, by chance, brought together at the foot of my bed, in a little room of a very miserable tavern. These two men, who had for a long series of years lived in hostility with each other, and had never been able to agree, in regard to matters of civil and local government, were, upon this occasion, of the same mind, in relation to one point, which had particular reference to myself,
* Four years afterwards, when the war with England began, this man was appointed head surgeon of all the field hospitals, but betrayed such incapacity that he had to be dismissed. The American government-organ of that period referred to this dismissal, and gave the reasons for it
and which, consequently, interested me to the last degree. After they had turned my leg over and over, and examined it, they concluded that, as the dog-days were drawing on, and the extreme heat would, in their opinion, produce lockjaw, and place my life in danger, my leg must be amputated. When they informed me of this decision, and immediately began to prepare for the operation, I declared to them that I would not submit to it in any case, and that they must run the risk of resetting my limb, come of it what would. This latter course was adopted as I requested, but the operation was conducted in very unskilful style, and according to the old fashion, with the use of splints and bandages. On the second day after the bandaging, my pain was so excessive, that I looked about me earnestly for some means of procuring alleviation and assistance. All at once a well-known face appeared in my chamber; it was a Hamburgher, the son of a French teacher of languages, called Virchaux, whom I recollected to have often seen in Hamburgh. On his way to Baltimore, where he was engaged to be married to a Miss Proctor, he had stopped at the inn for refreshment, and was told what had happened, by the people in the house. His curiosity, excited by the remark that the gentleman was from Europe, had induced him to make a personal visit to the bedside of the sufferer. He at once declared himself ready to hasten back to Philadelphia, and apply, on my behalf, to Messrs. Willing & Francis, for a few lines from them to Dr. Physic, the most celebrated surgeon in the United States, requesting him to come at once to my aid. But the time of this distinguished man was so constantly occupied that he could not comply. However, he sent me, instead, his experienced and skilful nephew, Dr. Dorsey, whom I saw the same evening. As I had expected, he at once discovered the folly of the two Wilmington surgeons, freed me from my bandages, and went over the operation of setting my limb a second time. My suffering was great. When he had finished the painful task, he said to me, " I promise you the preservation of your limb, and can also warrant that it will be pretty straight and serviceable; but since the inflammation has been so extreme, that it would be out of the question to expect the bones to reunite, I cannot promise you that you
will be altogether free from a limp." He visited me frequently; according to the usual rate of fees, every visit beyond the limits of the city entitled the physicians and surgeons of Philadelphia to one dollar per mile; and. as Wilmington is twenty-eight miles from Philadelphia, every mile cost me that many dollars. I lay upon my solitary bed at Wilmington no less than forty-two days. On the sixth Mr. Parish visited me, as he was returning from Baltimore to Philadelphia. He soon again left the latter city, on a trip to his property near the St. Lawrence, after having made every arrangement for my reception, so soon as I had got through the probationary period at Wilmington, and could be transferred from that place. On the forty-third day, about six o'clock in the morning, I was removed, and carried on my bed to the deck of the so-styled Newcastle packet, on board of which I reached Philadelphia about ten the same evening, and half an hour later was installed in the rooms prepared for me at the boarding-house of a Mr. White, the first establishment of the kind in that city. There I was cheered by the visits of many friends, and by the best society, native and foreign, that Philadelphia could boast. Little by little I became able to move about on crutches, and at length felt completely re-established.
In October Parish returned, accompanied by General Moreau, whom he entertained at his house, and whom I, upon this occasion, had an opportunity of knowing. I found him a mild and affable, but, mentally, taking him all in all, a very ordinary and quite uninteresting man. His manners were simple, and possessed a naturalness which was attractive; but the attention of his hearers was not enchained or fixed by his conversation, or rather his monologue, for it very rarely came to a dialogue of any length, and you could listen to him with interest only when he discoursed about his really very remarkable and distinguished military adventures; you could then listen to him with great pleasure. Napoleon he almost invariably called u Le tyran" —the tyrant.
Parish himself was not in the most agreeable mood ; without being exactly bound to do so, he had usually shown me his correspondence with the Amsterdam house, that is to say, the letters
received from it, but, now he was much more reserved in that respect. Lestapis, who, as I have already stated, lived in German-town, came but seldom to the city to hear whatever news might be afloat; but, as I resided in the immediate neighborhood of Parish, I visited him and his counting-room almost daily. One morning he called me into his room and said, " The gentlemen in Amsterdam appear to be getting somewhat impatient; they would like to see an exhibit of the whole, and to make out one is no easy affair, although the materials are all at hand. Will you look over the papers and tell me what you think of them ]" I very willingly complied, and after I had formed a pretty good idea of the work, I offered my services in making out the provisional balance sheet required. The total amount of the whole transaction ran up to no less than thirty-three millions of Spanish dollars. I at once went to work, took all the books and papers that could be spared home with me, and labored from the middle of October, 1808, until the beginning of March, in the following year. The person whom I procured to copy the manifold accounts, and the papers of my general exhibit was my young friend, Virchaux, who had visited me in Wilmington, and who did not find himself comfortably situated in the clerkship he then held in a quaker house. I advised him not to give up his place then, but to devote to me all the time he could spare. When Parish had carefully examined the exhibit, he found it sufficient and quite satisfactory to his wishes. Directly afterwards he made the proposition to me, to take it myself to Europe, and hand it over to Messrs. Baring and Mr. J. Williams Hope, in London, and then hasten to Amsterdam to Mr. Labouchere, who, he said, appeared to be waiting for me with great impatience. This impatience had partly been occasioned by the business I had concluded at Havana. Owing to my shipwreck, the embargo, and certain delays on the part of Parish, no direct information regarding this business had reached the Messrs. Hope, but they had heard of it indirectly, through a channel of which no one would have dreamed. The reader will remember that at the time of my taking leave of the Intendant at Havana, the latter had especially requested me to let Talleyrand, his protector and friend, hear of the excellent
reception that had been extended to me by him. This could not have been sufficient to set his mind at ease, for he had taken advantage of a Spanish vessel bound for St. Sebastian, to pay his compliments to the Prince, and to write to him what he had done to further the business that had brought him thither, and how it had been concluded; all this, he added, out of a special regard for the interest of the Prince. At a time when the whole coast of Cuba was closely watched by the numerous English cruisers, and the Spanish coasts along the Bay of Biscay, still more sharply observed, the successful departure of a Spanish ship from the harbor of Havana, and its safe arrival in the ports of St. Sebastian or Bilboa, was something bordering almost on impossibility ; but in the case of the vessel which bore the letter of the Intend ant to Prince Talleyrand, every thing went smoothly, and the Prince received the missive. Mr. Labouchere, who happened to be in Paris, just at the time of its arrival, was questioned in regard to it, but knew nothing more about it than that I had taken the bill for 700,000 dollars to Havana to get it cashed. The Prince found himself, under the altered state of things, obliged to communicate the whole history of the affair to Count Mollien, the Minister of the Public Treasury, and the latter could compute the amount that Messrs. Hope & Co. must gain by the exchange of bills, as well as I could. He thereupon laid claim to a portion of this profit, and Mr. Labouchere remained on the defensive until he should have further intelligence from me. Upon my departure from Philadelphia, Parish gave me very particular directions not to lose sight of his desire to keep the lands he had purchased, on his account, and should the opportunity occur during the examination of my statements, to play my cards so well, that no difficulty should occur in this respect. From the disposition he manifested, frequently to make various pretences, I inferred that he began to rue his purchase, and that he was desirous of once more getting rid of the greater part of it. In the sequel it will appear that I was mistaken, and that Parish returned from Europe with the most far-reaching projects in regard to his new possessions.
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CHAPTER IX.
MY TRIP TO EUROPE IN THE MONTH OF APRIL, 1809.
Return to Europe in the mouth of April, 1809, for the purpose of takiug over the first balaDee-sheet—Arrival at Falmouth—Stay there, in consequence of the Alien Act—Visit of Mr. John Parish, at Chelteuham—His outward appearance on the Bathers' promenade—My first visit to the House of the Barings—Visit to Mr. Henry Hope, the oldest head of the Amsterdam House—Sir Francis Baring—The London firm, Baring, Brothers and Co.— First meeting with Mr. Alexander Baring—Journey to Holland, by way of Helgoland—Journey to Paris—Meeting there with Mr. P. C. Labouchere, who makes me personally acquainted with Ouvrard—An anecdote of the latter—The pins—New plans of Ouvrard, which are overthrown by the battle of Wagram and its consequences—Return to Amsterdam, by way of Brussels—My sickness in Amsterdam during the winter—Return to Hamburgh, in the spring of 1810—Family circumstances.
On the 5th of April, 1809, I went from New York, in the English packet ship " Prince Adolphus," bound first to Halifax, in Nova Scotia, and thence to Falmouth. On this return to Europe I could not quote Schiller's words, "And homeward beats the gentle marching time of peace!" for war was then raging, serious and bitter war. We had strong evidence of this, as we were approaching the English coasts. Once, in the night-time, and once, just as we had seated ourselves at table, we heard the captain's voice above us ring out the thrilling order, "All hands on deck!" Upon both occasions it was supposed that we were in the immediate neighborhood of a small French sloop-of-war, and resistance to the last extreme was Captain Boulderson's determination ; but fortunately these had been false alarms, and no danger was encountered. The voyage from Halifax to the offings of Falmouth
was accomplished in nine days; but just in sight of the harbor a contrary wind arose, and we were compelled, to our great annoyance, to beat about nine days longer. At length, on the nineteenth day after our departure from Halifax, we disembarked, in excellent health and spirits, notwithstanding the tears of a sentimental American lady, who began to repeat, and kept repeating, the words, "Oh, the land of my forefathers !"
At the time of my arrival in England the "Alien Act" was in full force, and no stranger was permitted to pass into the interior of the country, unless he could obtain a permit from the Alien Office; and at that period nine days were required for the receipt of the reply to an application for such a permit from London, and the application itself had to be made by a responsible householder. So soon as I had received my passport I set out for London, by way of Bath, in order to fulfil the promise I had made to my friend David, that I would, immediately after my arrival, call upon his father, and give him the latest verbal intelligence of his son. I, however, did not find Mr, John Parish in Bath; he had gone to Cheltenham, whither I immediately followed him, and there met him on the Bathers' promenade. I immediately recognized him; for his habit of attracting the attention of every one around him, by something or other singular, had not been laid aside in England, and hence his appearance at once marked him out amid the throng. He wore a little velvet cap, trimmed with fur, cocked over one ear, a velvet coat, in Polish style, with long wide sleeves and gold-worked braid, and a long Turkish pipe in his right hand; and in his left a silken leash, in which he held two little skittish poodle dogs, completed the costume of this old Scotchman, who had for several years been a resident of Hamburgh. After I had satisfied his curiosity in regard to his son, and had replied to his questions, I hastened away to London, with the promise of speedily repeating my visit, and, on the morning after my arrival in the great city, I repaired to the Messrs. Barings', whose firm was at that time styled Sir Francis Baring, Bart. & Co. I found in their counting-room only the eldest son-in-law of the chief, a Mr. Charles Wall, the brother-in-law of Mr. P. C. Labouchere, and there temporarily deposited my papers, ac-
counts, and documents. My second visit was to the two Messrs. Hope, namely, to the eldest, the already named chief of the Amsterdam firm, Mr. Henry Hope, and the husband of his niece, John Williams Hope, who both lived together in Cavendish Square. I finally called upon my father's early friend, Sir Francis Baring, who received me with great cordiality, was prepared for my arrival, and asked me a host of questions, in regard to my operations in Mexico. Having already been applied to on the subject by the Messrs. Hope, he told me that I might hold my papers at the disposition of his son Alexander, and then, after careful consultation and examination of the same, they would decide what further was to be done, and keep me advised of the result.
I will take this opportunity of saying something about the Baring family, particularly its most distinguished members, Sir Francis, and his second son, Alexander, as well as the honorable chief of the Amsterdam house, Mr. Henry Hope, whom I have already named. The last of these, when I first made his acquaintance, had reached his seventieth year, and was somewhat deaf. He had never been married. It was he who opened the way for the autocratic power of Russia, under the Empress Catharine II., to the confidence of the then wealthiest capitalists in Europe, the Dutch, and thereby laid the foundation of Russian credit. Always treated by the Empress with great distinction, he had been honored with the gift, from her own hand, of her portrait, the full size of life. This picture occupied the place of honor in the superb gallery of paintings fitted up by him in his palace " t' Huys ten Bosch" (now a royal pleasure-palace), which he had built in the wood of Harlem. Upon his emigration to England, he had taken this splendid gallery, entirely composed of cabinet-pieces, with him, and I had the pleasure of seeing it frequently, at his residence in Cavendish Square. To the'tone of a refined gentleman and man of the world he united a certain amiable affability which spoke to and won every heart. The whole-souled cordiality with which he always met me, when I came to his dwelling in the city, or to his country-seat, East Sheen, in the neighborhood of Richmond, has always remained fresh in my memory. Yet a
secret trouble seemed to be weighing on his mind. This annoyance arose from the notorious relations of his niece, Madam Williams Hope, with a Dutch officer of dragoons, by the name of Dopff. I had attracted his confidence, and he one day seized me suddenly by the hand, led me to the window, and could not restrain his tears, as he told me that he must close the door of his house against her, if she ventured to bring this man with her to England. The larger part of his considerable fortune, which he had bequeathed to Henry, the eldest son of this niece, and who died unmarried, passed, at the decease of the latter, to Adrian, the second son, who left no male heirs, but from whom it descended to Francis, the third son, born several years afterwards. This third inheritor is the rich and well known Mr. Hope, now settled in Paris, and the only surviving member of that branch of the whole family.
* A close examination into the origin of the Baring family traces it back to a certain Peter Baring, who lived in the years from 1660 to 1670, at Groningen, in the Dutch province of Overyssel. One of his ancestors, under the name of Francis Baring, was pastor of the Lutheran church at Bremen, and in that capacity was called to London, where, among others, he had a son named John. The latter, well acquainted with cloth-making, settled at Lark-beer, in Devonshire, and there put up an establishment for the manufacture of that article. He had five children—four sons, John, Thomas, Francis, Charles, and a daughter, called Elizabeth. Two of these sons, John and Francis, established themselves, under the firm of John & Francis Baring, at London, originally with a view of facilitating their father's trade in disposing of his goods, and so as to be in a position to import the raw material to be required, such as wool, dye-stuffs, &c, themselves directly from abroad. Thus was established the house which—after the with-
* I have communicated a portion of the following particulars, in an article entitled "Alexander Baring, the first Lord Ashburton, and the Baring House," in the "Deutschen Freihafen," of the year 1848, in No. 24, issued June 11th. In a number of the Hamburgh " Freischiitzen," which came out a few days later, the editor of that sheet did not hesitate to make use of the greater part of that article, without crediting the paper in which it was originally pub lished.
drawal of the elder brother John, who retired to Exeter—gradually, under the firm-name of Francis Baring & Co., and eventually, under the firm-name of Baring, Brothers & Co., rose to the highest rank of mercantile eminence in the commerce of the world.
Sir Francis, who, under the Ministry of the Lord Shelburne, father of the present Marquis of Lansdowne, had become his intimate friend and adviser in financial matters, having, in the year 1793, received the title of Baronet, was already styled by the latter the Prince of Merchants. He had become somewhat feeble, and very deaf, when I first got personally acquainted with him. On the occasion of one of my visits to him, he told me that he had kept at his business for thirty years before he considered himself entitled to keep an equipage. Upon another occasion, when I spoke to him of my project in establishing myself in New Orleans, after the termination of my mission, he remarked, "Usually, my young friend, that commission business is the best in which the commissions take this direction"—here he made a motion with his hands, as if throwing something towards him—"but where the business goes thus!"—motioning as if he was throwing something from him—" it wants a sharp eye." This amounted to saying, in other words, that receiving consignments was a better business than executing commissions.
Three of his sons, Thomas, Alexander, and Henry, entered the London establishment; but the first, who was intended to have carried on the father's name, after the death of the latter, on the 12th of September, 1810, assumed the name of Sir Thomas, and withdrew from the house, as the third also found occasion to do at a later period. The latter was passionately fond of play, and indulged in it with so much success, that he several times broke " L'entreprise Generate Des Jeux," of Paris. But the sight of one of the heads of such a house, one night after another, in the great gambling establishments, produced a bad effect; and even if it did not impair his credit, it in no slight degree damaged his respectability. This was felt at head-quarters, and an understanding was come to for his withdrawal from the firm.
Alexander Baring, the second son of Sir Francis, had received a portion of his education in Hanau, had then completed it in Eng land, and commenced his mercantile career in the house of Messrs.
Hope, where a friendship sprung up between him and Mr. P. C. Labouchere, which led to the latter's marriage, at a later period, with his sister, Maria Baring. When the Messrs. Hope retired to England, in consequence of the occupation of Holland by the revolutionary French army, under Pichegrue, and after Alexander Baring had left the House, he determined to visit the United States of North America. At his departure, his father confined his advice to two especial recommendations, one of which was to purchase no uncultivated land, and the other not to marry a wife there: "Because," said he, "uncultivated lands can be more readily bought than sold again ; and a wife is best suited to the home in which she was raised, and cannot be formed or trained a second time." However, Alexander had not passed one year in the United States before he forgot both branches of his father's advice. Not only did he purchase large tracts of land, in the western part of the State of Pennsylvania, and lay out a not inconsiderable capital ($100,000 at least) in the then District and now State of Maine, and that too under the annexed condition of bringing a number of settlers thither within a certain term of years, but also, in 1798, when just twenty-four years of age, he married Anna, the eldest daughter of Mr. William Bingham, in Philadelphia, who was at that time considered the richest man in the United States, and was then a member of the Senate. The inheritance he had to thank her for, at the death of her father, amounted to $900,000. She bore him nine children, of which seven are still living. The eldest of these, called William Bingham, after his grandfather, is the present Lord Ashburton, and has reached the age of fifty-three. His wife is a Lady Sandwich, and their marriage has remained childless. After his death, his title, along with the greater part of his fortune, will pass to the second son, Francis, who is married to a daughter of the Duke Bassano, a former State Secretary of Napoleon. This gentleman usually resides at Paris, and is the eldest head of the London house, in the management of whose business, however, he seldom takes any active part. He has two sons. The favorite from the first, of his father and mother, both title and fortune will pass entirely, according to their wishes, into the hands of him who in their eyes deserved the preference.
About a week after I had handed in my papers, at the Barings' counting-house, I received a very friendly invitation from Mr. Alexander Baring, to meet him at a certain hour, on an appointed day, in his office in Bishopsgate-street. There it was that I for the first time saw this merchant, who had already become so distinguished, and where I had the good fortune to completely win his confidence, in a few brief interviews. The repeated proofs which he has given me, since this commencement of our acquaintance, during a long lifetime, the hearty cordiality with which he has always received me, and his special preference, with which he clung to me, belong to the most agreeable recollections of my career, and in my days of trial I have never looked back upon them without a sense of supreme gratification, that refreshed and steeled my courage for new struggles. The first hour and a half of our conversation was devoted to a verbal review and analysis of the whole Mexican business, of whose details Messrs. Baring knew just as little as did the Messrs. Hope, and of whose results those gentlemen, collectively and undeniably, could judge only by the sums returned and accounted for to them. After I had served as his pioneer through this labyrinth of calculations, he folded up the papers together, for the purpose of studying them over, and promised that within a few days he would again have an interview with me concerning them, and undertake an examination of the present posture of the affair. In the course of our conversation he suddenly asked, "What do you think of David Parish V This made me stammer, and I hesitated in my reply. He then said, " You may speak out without hesitation; whatever you may think fit to say shall go no farther, but I want to have your opinion." I replied, " My opinion is of little value, but since you wish me to speak, I shall say that Mr. Parish shows more ability in getting out of scrapes than in avoiding them." " Ah !" said he, " I see; you allude to the affair of Guest & Bancker. Let me tell you that I did not like it at all; and, to tell the truth, it has had a most unfavorable and painful effect upon my mind. Here let the matter rest!"
Upon our next interview, after he had made himself fully acquainted with the subject, I brought forward the question of the
laud purchases made by Parish. The moneys paid out for them, up to the middle of March, amounted, according to the calculations I had brought along, to the sum of $363,000. "Why," he remarked, " Parish must have been very sanguine about the matter, to have laid out so much money upon an experiment." My reply was, that Parish considered it such a splendid operation, that he did not wish to give up any of it, but desired to keep it all on his own account. " He is welcome to it!" he rejoined ; " he may keep them all ! As to ourselves, we have more lands than we know what to do with; and I do not think Labouchere would wish to meddle with them; it is not in his way." It was upon this occasion that he related to me the anecdote of his father's advice, at the time of his departure for the United States. Thus all that Parish had desired was as good as accomplished.
From the hands of Alexander Baring my papers passed into the hands of his father, Sir Francis Baring, who also invited me to see him, for the purpose of explaining to him some points which he had not fully understood at first. These related to the capital arising from the assumption, by Parish, of the guaranty respecting the duties at twenty per cent. This amounted to more than $2,000,000, and, in the settlement of accounts between him and Oliver and other houses, was always deducted and retained by him. A short explanation sufficed to render this quite clear, and thereupon he sent the papers to Mr. Williams Hope, with the declaration, that thus far all had been plain enough to him to let him " see land," as he expressed it. Mr. Williams Hope, whose head could not stand any further strain, took—as he should have done, at any rate—Sir Francis at his word, and expressed the wish that I would hasten to Mr. Labouchere with all due speed. As the Messrs. Baring kept up a communication with Amsterdam, through Vliessingen, by means of fishing boats, in order to arrive there sooner, I was going to take one of these ; but Mr. Williams Hope thought that all kinds of difficulties might spring up in my path when I landed in Holland, and that, owing to the fact of my not being familiar with the Dutch language, they would be more than I could manage, my papers would be taken away from me, &c, &c, so I must go to Helgoland, at that time the centre of
the contraband trade with the north of Germany. He was of the opinion that I should be able to make through, and reach Amsterdam more easily, in that direction. " It matters little," he would very coolly remark, " about your personal safety ; the papers are the thing, they must be safe. The rest is not worth one minute's consideration !" He was not altogether wrong in the main, but I cannot say that I felt greatly flattered at the egotistic carelessness with which he very unhesitatingly spoke of my person. He had a repulsive exterior, and pure egotism was visible in every line and feature of his countenance.
At last, upon these recommendations, I set out, by way of Harwich, for Helgoland, where I met with a number of Hamburgh-ers of my former acquaintance; for instance, Mr. Charles Parish, David's younger brother, who there, in the rendezvous of all the smugglers to the main land, exhibited his especial fitness for the part of a mercantile matado, among his companions and participants in this not very reputable trade—a real hors tfceuvre for a regular merchant—and displayed his inborn tendency, "a trancher du grand Seigneur," by carrying on even this commerce on the most extensive scale. I also met Nicholas, the fugitive English Consul from Hamburgh, in Helgoland, where he went about as he had done at Hamburgh, with his oblique, that is to say, strongly squinting glance, treading on everybody's toes, and then excusing himself with the words, "No offence!" Yet not alone from Hamburgh, but from every part of the surrounding coasts, and from the banks of the Elbe and Weser, smugglers had assembled on the island.
A bark laden with coffee, conveyed me to the Weser, and landed me there before daybreak, close to a little village situated near the shore. I there procured a horse and wagon, and proceeded on my way to Amsterdam. I reached the latter city on the fourth day after my disembarkation, but found no manager in the counting-house, excepting an elderly Englishman named Dixon, who informed me that Mr. Labouehere was waiting for me in Paris, and that I must at once repair thither to him. On the same day I received my regular passport, and leaving Amsterdam at ten on that same evening, reached Paris on the fourth day,
almost in a dream, for I had been kept away for seven nights without lying down upon a bed. Mr. Labouchere was still at Nantes, but they were expecting him within three days, at the Hotel de 1'Empire, where I also alighted. This establishment, at that time the best house of the kind in Paris, stood at the corner of the Rue Cerutti and the Rue de Provence, and was the very same building which Mr. James Laffitte purchased and lived in a few years later. Three days afterwards, Mr. Labouchere arrived, was heartily glad to see me, and was by no means sparing in his praise. But he could not conceal a great deal of irritation against Parish. The affair that seemed to affect him the most unpleasantly was, the lawsuit Parish had carried on in Philadelphia, with a certain Sarmiento, a Teneriffe man by birth, who had settled there, and who, through intrigues at Madrid, had found the means of coming out against Parish, with an appearance of right, in the name of the Spanish Government, and undertaking to make him responsible for duties withheld on the sale of cargoes sent to Vera Cruz. When Sarmiento came forward with this demand, the sole and most natural defence of Parish was, that he, as the agent of Messrs. Hope & Co. in Amsterdam, could not be held personally responsible; and that, in case Sarmiento or the Spanish Government really were entitled to ask for anything, they had only to look to Messrs. Hope, and not to any one who was conducting business merely in their name. That Parish was but an agent, and had acted under instructions, was evident from his contract; and not the American, but the Dutch courts were the forum in which the question could be discussed. But the inborn vanity of Parish would not allow him to confine himself to this simple course. At the head of so many millions, throwing money about in all directions, wherever he was applied to to relieve a mercantile necessity, he seemed to have become a much more important personage in the United States than the President himself. He was gratified at feeling himself the omnipotent Jupiter of the American money-market, and it would have gone hard with him to relinquish even a grade of this position. This it undoubtedly was that caused him to adopt the wrong course, and go through with a suit, which led to public scandal, and the farcical procedure
of citing King Charles IV. to appear as a witness against David Parish.
The question of the lands promised to terminate without any difficulty. Mr. Labouchere, upon his part, also regarded this colossal purchase as a thing apart, which did not at all helong to the range of business undertaken by the firm, and which bore upon its face the character of a private speculation of Mr. Parish.
After Mr. Labouchere had propounded several questions, touching the negotiation conducted at Havana, he informed me that he had to bring the business to a conclusion with Count Mollien, and would introduce me to the latter. This he did. The Count, who wore spectacles, eyed me over them while Mr. Labouchere was talking to him, and at length addressed me with some flattering words upon my success. A few days later, Mr. Labouchere informed me that he had concluded the affair with the Minister. " I have been obliged to make a bungling job of it," were his words, "and share the profits; but you have not been forgotten, you shall get your portion." Sure enough, I some weeks afterwards received a notification from the Minister, that, in accordance with the Imperial order, the sum of 45,817 francs was at my disposal, as an acknowledgment of the service I had rendered the Public Treasury.
My American mission could now be regarded as at an end ; at least so long as Parish had not returned from the United States. I wanted to visit my parents and relatives in Hamburgh, but Mr. Labouchere held me back. He had some fresh business for me, he said, and I should hear all about it in a few days. As we were lodging at the same hotel, we met daily, usually in the morning, but also often in the evening, after his return from parties, or from the opera, or theatres.
One morning Mr. Labouchere sent for me to come to him, and when I appeared, presented me to Mr. Ouvrard, whose personal acquaintance I had long wished to form, as he very well knew. The refined tone, the affability and winning manners of this gentleman, pleased me extremely. He expressed himself with rare fluency, and in the choicest language, upon every subject that was brought forward, and at the same time exhibited the clearness of
his views in striking sentences, and words full of meaning, when the topic called for them. He never remained at fault for an answer, and, where the truth denied him the elements of a direct reply, his inventive mind always opened for him a middle road between fiction and reality. He gave me a convincing proof of his especial capacity for treading this middle road, when I met him, a few days later, at a dinner-party given by Mr. Labouchere. In the spring of 1809, in one of Napoleon's fits of ill humor, he had been shut up for several weeks at Vincennes, and denied the use of pen, paper and ink, and even of books, during the whole of that time. At the dinner-table, upon the occasion I am now alluding to, Mr. Labouchere asked him how, with such a restless disposition as his, he had managed to pass the time, under such circumstances. Without stopping to think long about his reply, he answered, that what had really puzzled him was to find something to occupy his mind, and, at the same time, some exercise for his body, between four bare walls. " At length I hit upon the right plan," said he; " happening to thrust my hand into one of my coat pockets, I there found a packet of pins. I at once took them out, and, counting them carefully, discovered, like Leporello, in Don Juan, the number to be 1,003. I thereupon took the whole quantity in my hand, and, flinging them around, scattered them into all quarters of the room. I then began the task of picking them up again, until I could produce exactly the same number I held at first. Each time, three, four, five, or even more were missing. These I searched for untiringly until they were found; and many a time have I spent a whole hour in conjecturing where they could have fallen; and then I would pry into every cranny, chink, and hole in the walls, or on the paved floor, and in this way I procured a healthful and uninterrupted course of bodily and mental exercise."
Ouvrard, tired of his long protracted inactivity, and once more in the full possession of his liberty, had, in company with his friend the Duke of Otranto, the Minister of Police, and with the participation of Murat, the King of Naples, struck off a plan which was extremely advantageous to the latter The negotiation that was opened could proceed only very slowly, since Murat was with
the army, which had an opportunity of resting a little during the armistice intervening between the battle of Essling and the battle of Wagram. The plan was, to procure Murat's signature of a hundred permits, which, drawn up after the model of the Spanish ones, from Don Miguel Cayetano Soler, mentioned neither the tonnage nor the cargo of vessels that were to sail with them from Malta to Naples and Palermo, and there barter for all kinds of Neapolitan commodities, which they were to bring back with them. Mr. Labouchere w r anted to send me to Malta with these permits, so soon as the conditions had been complied with which he had laid down for the prosecution of this enterprise. These conditions embraced the deposit of 2,000,000 Neapolitan ducats in the hands of Hope & Co., as guaranty and security for the cargoes of English manufactured goods and other articles that were to be sold, or traded off, in the ports of Naples, for the products of that kingdom. The Duke of Otranto had undertaken to get this sum together. After I had devoted the whole day to amusement, or any occupation that pleased me the most, I was not unfrequently called, at midnight, to Mr. Labouchere, to aid him in all kinds of work relating to the projected enterprise, the Spanish loan, &c.
Meanwhile the battle of Wagram was fought. Napoleon's speedy return was at hand. Murat hesitated to sign the permits, and the Duke of Otranto, of whom, it was well known, that he had ceased to take any important part in the Emperor's confidence, had to recede from his offer to raise the money that was to have guarantied the action of Mr. Labouchere. The latter hereupon made preparations for his return to Amsterdam, and requested me to follow him thither within a few weeks. I complied with his wishes, and arrived in Amsterdam at the time when the King of Holland had begun to entertain the lively hope, that, through the secret negotiations which had for some time been carried on, the basis of a general peace with England would be laid. He had learned to know and appreciate Mr. Labouchere, and had applied to him to open the negotiations. Mr. Labouchere at once informed me of his intended visit to England, without saying a word about its purpose, and gave me a couple of lines to the
Minister of Marine, to be handed him whenever he should summon me to an interview, and communicate his wishes. These lines contained nothing further than that he could place full reliance on me, in every respect, and that I was at the Minister's disposal. A fortnight passed by ; Mr. Labouchere returned suddenly from London, and I then learned, for the first time, that his peace mission had failed. The whole business had been a project, got up by the Duke of Otranto, in order to restore himself in the declining favor of Napoleon, by a striking and unexpected success in England. But when Napoleon, who was just then visiting Antwerp with the young Empress Marie Louise, heard the posture of the negotiation, from his brother Louis, the two names of Ouv-rard and Fouche, the first already hateful to his ears, and the latter rapidly becoming so, again brought up before him, he dismissed the latter, and gave the Duke of Rovigo, his successor in the Ministry of Police, directions to have the former arrested, and confined at Vincennes. It was long after this imprisonment that \)uvrard related to me the anecdote I have given above.
About this^time a violent catarrhal fever seized me at Amsterdam, and confined me during several weeks to my bed, compelling me to keep my room until the middle of March, 1810. I exchanged frequent letters with my family, who were very impatient to see me again. One letter from my father informed me, that the hard times had greatly impaired his business, and that much money was lying out in goods he was expecting from the Mediterranean Sea, and that the supplies were, to use a mercantile phrase, somewhat tight. He closed with the request, that as he had heard of my great good fortune in America, to send him about 15,000 marks. I replied that I could not, positively, say how large a profit I had made in America, as that would depend upon the yet unconcluded general winding-up of the whole business, to which I had only partially contributed; but that he could have the 15,000 marks without difficulty, and might look for them within eight or ten days. A month had scarcely passed, after he had received this sum from me, ere I was asked afresh for a second loan of 12,500 marks, and that was likewise sent. At length, having entirely recovered, I received permission from Labouchere
to visit my family at Hamburgh, and was speedily in their midst. My good mother had lost all her vivacity, and my father was a good deal bent, and evidently enfeebled. He was, at that time, something more than sixty-nine years of age. After a short time had elapsed, I inquired into the circumstances of the family, and my father, in a tete-a-tete, congratulated me on my great success. After he had almost looked upon me as lost, when I left Hamburgh, I had been skilful enough to make so considerable a capital, in a few years, that the American Consul, Forbes, had assured him my accumulation must be at least 600,000 marks. " And could you believe it, father V I asked him ; " Really, could you give yourself up to such an idea, and not reflect that you would have received earlier proofs of my wealth, had it been true that I possessed so much V To this he could make no reply. I had already remarked that there was a considerable admixture of credulity in his character, but that it could go so far, as it did in this instance, I had never supposed. Having returned to my mother, she too spoke of the wealth I had amassed ; and just at the same moment a mirror betrayed a certain motion of the head, expressive of denial, which my father, who stood behind me, was making to her, yet she ended her days in the same delusion.
I may here spare my readers the recapitulation of further details, and confine myself to the consequences resulting from this visit to Hamburgh. It was not without some trouble that I made my father comprehend, that he could not live by a failing business, and that such was the only kind he could, in those times, hope to have within reach. When he, however, at length, understood this, he finally made up his mind to retire. I advanced the amount of capital that was lacking, for the complete settlement of his business, so as to extinguish all claims. When I had ascertained how much would be required to support a family like his comfortably, in some cheaper place, in Schwerin, or Ratzeburg, for instance, I prevailed upon my father to give up his expensive residence in Hamburgh, and to choose one of these places for his future abode, binding myself, if he would do so, to pay in a regular stipend of 6,000 marks. This plan was carried into execution, and my parents went to Schwerin, and then to Ratzeburg, where I
had the pleasure of embracing them both, upon two occasions, once in 1816, and again in 1822, and where they died before fortune had begun to turn her back on me. Heaven be thanked! they never knew of my reverses, or of the long period of suffering through which I had to struggle!
8
CHAPTER X.
THE RETURN TO ENGLAND.
Return to England, to await the arrival of Parish, for the final liquidation ot the great operation—This takes place much later than was expected, and the liquidation is not made until June, 1811—Parish is accompanied by me to Antwerp, where I await the result—Unusual profit by the operation— Meetiug, in Paris, with Labouchere, Parish, and Le Ray Chaumont; the last busied with new projects for the sale of his lands, never lets Parish out of his sight—Rapid glance at the value of the lands purchased by Parish—Redoubled propositions to houses in Europe—I refuse them—Resolution to return to New Orleans—Preliminary consultations with Mr. Labouchere, and then with Mr. Alexander Baring, at London, in relation to my future establishment at New Orleans—The selection of a companion and future partner in business—My departure from Liverpool for New York, in September, 1811—Arrival there—Continuation of my journe} 7 to New Orleans overland, and by means of the western navigation—The flat-boats I build and fit up at Pittsburgh—I follow my companion, who had preceded me, and cross the Alleghany mountains on horseback—My first acquaintance, near the Falls of the Juniata, with Audubon, who afterwards became so celebrated as an ornithologist—My stay at Lexington—Henry Clay—First traces of the earthquake, on the way to Louisville, and then in that city— The earthquake comes on, in the night of February 6, 1812, near New Madrid, beside the Mississippi—Description of my situation—Consequences of the earthquake—Arrival in New Orleans, in March, 1812.
Soon afterwards I returned to England, there to await the arrival of Parish, for the liquidation and settlement of the whole business. Lestapis had already left the United States, a year previously, and had gone with his family to Bordeaux. Parish returned to Europe a good deal later; landed, like myself, at Falmouth, and at once repaired to his father in Cheltenham. Before lie set out for London, he invited me to visit him at that place. He wished for information regarding the whole state of
things, and especially with reference to the feeling of Messrs. Hope and Baring. I had already let him know, while he was yet in the United States, that in regard to his lands he would encounter no difficulty. In August, he made up his mind to go, by way of Os-tend and Antwerp, to Amsterdam, to wind up affairs with his principals. He expressed the desire that I should accompany him, at least to Antwerp, and there await his return from Amsterdam. I agreed to do this, the more readily as I too wished to bring my plans for the future into some clear light, and place them on a secure basis. Mr. Labouchere had proposed to me to enter the houserof his brother at Nantes, in the place of Mr. Tro-treau, and to marry the only daughter of that wealthy and upright man, since her father, as he told me, would be content with that arrangement, and had meanwhile promised to give her a dower of 150,000 francs, if I were inclined to agree. But Mademoiselle was exactly the reverse of a pretty and agreeable young French lady ; vivacity, grace, and cultivation were lacking in an equal degree; and if she would not precisely pass for a simpleton, still one thing was certain, namely, that sensible persons must be very different indeed. I consequently declined the offer. David Parish, who was anxious to return to the United States, now desired to place me at the head of an establishment, that was to be opened in Liverpool, with a capital of £20,000 sterling, and in company with his brother-in-law, Hamilton, from Glasgow, who had married his sister, the widow Charnock. This capital was to be contributed by him, his brothers in Hamburgh, the Messrs. Baring, and myself, in equal sums of £5,000 sterling.
I was desirous of first becoming familiarly acquainted with Mr. Hamilton, before agreeing and pledging myself to this arrangement. After I had learned to know that gentleman, T quickly made up my mind to decline the proposed partnership. The good man possessed no mercantile experience whatever. He had simply been the agent of a London Fire Insurance Company, at Glasgow, had married a widow eight years older than himself, but for all that very attractive and agreeable, and seemed to be a man of weak and undecided character, quite happy and contented under the petticoat government to which he was subjected. Moreover,
I learned, from Mr. Alexander Baring, that he had only promised his participation in the whole plan, because he had been led into the belief, that I had been fully consulted in regard to it, and had approved of the matter. Hence I made my excuses, and declined, so soon as I had learned, from Mr. Baring, that he was quite willing to aid me in the execution of my own project, namely, the establishment of a concern at New Orleans. I had, he thought, made an excellent selection, and such a house, in possession of the confidence of good European houses, must be successful. My refusal displeased Parish, as much as my preceding one had annoyed Mr. Labouchere; but I felt myself sufficiently \pell sustained in Mr. Alexander Baring's approbation of my project to return to the United States ; for he was also of the opinion, that, in either of the cases referred to, it- would have been rather a hazardous undertaking to unite with a partner in whom I could feel no confidence. Parish returned, within fourteen days, from the settlement of his business in Amsterdam. Of the details, I have learned more from him than I knew from personal observation. The lands remained, as he had desired, on his own account. Mr. Labouchere declined his proposal, to divide the half commission, guarantied by Echeverria and Septien, which, as the reader may remember, amounted to $260,000, between my friend Lestapis and myself, as he thought it dangerous to place young men in possession of so much capital all at once, and because Ouvrard, whom Napoleon's measures had prostrated, had been the originator of the whole business, to which they were indebted for such advantages, and that he had now reappeared on the scene, and consequently was the best entitled to the money. Hereupon the whole sum was presented to him. After the sum of £83,500 had been put aside, with a view to meeting the lawsuit carried on by Sarmiento, and other similar eventualities, the amount of profit remaining in this business was not less than the heavy sum of £778,750 sterling. Mr. Henry Hope, of London, to whom the settlement that had taken place in Amsterdam was communicated, was of the opinion, that the above £83,500 sterling might also be divided, as it was not probable that, particularly after such enormous profits, they should ever, by an unlucky chance, be left without the means
of replacing this sum. The opinion of Mr. Hope met with general approbation, and the whole profit to be divided was set down at £862,250 sterling. In connection with this business there existed, in the hands of Messrs. Hope, a separate book account, which the uninitiated of the office had never been permitted to see. In computing this profit, no reference is made to the gain which flowed in to the Messrs. Hope and Baring alone, without the participation of Parish upon the millions of Spanish dollars which were shipped at Vera Cruz, in English frigates, and brought by them direct to London. Nor must we leave out of sight the great advantages secured by commissions on the sale of the numerous cargoes sent on American account to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, and Hamburgh (later Toenningen). According to the instructions given to Parish, the cargoes destined for Hamburgh were to have been sent to the Messrs. Matthieson & Sillem, Hope's own correspondent, but he dispatched them to the house of his brother. Mr. Le Ray de Chaumont, who had sold Parish the greater portion of his newly-acquired lands, and who had been brooding for years over the unproductive portion of them, was now, according to the French proverb, " L'Appetit vient en mangeant"— keenly urged by a desire to make further sales. He had followed close at the heels of Parish, and when the latter repaired to Paris, after completing his business at Amsterdam, he also hastened to that capitol. Mr. Labouchere and I were also there at the time. Business had brought the former gentlemen thither, but I had come for no other purpose, than to bid a brief farewell to this my favorite place of sojourn. Soon afterwards Le Ray arrived, to present himself once more with his maps, calculations, and plans. Parish had appointed a dinner, at the then celebrated restaurant of Robert, at which the American land speculator, Mr. Labouchere, his friend Moritz Von Bethmann, from Frankfort, and I. were present. Mr. Le Ray de Chaumont expatiated to such a degree, in relation to the immense prospective advantages connected with these lands, that Mr. Labouchere, who could not fail to see through the whole business, suddenly turned to Parish, and remarked, that he would sooner or later have to rue his heavy purchases of lands. " I think, on the contrary," replied Parish,
" that it will be yourself who will, at least, inevitably regret that you did not sdso purchase a portion of them." Labouchere was always ready for a repartee, so replied, " I will never regret your success ; and the greatest pleasure you would occasion me would be, to prove one day that I have been mistaken. But I am afraid, for your sake, that I will have to adjourn that gratification for some time to come." Mr. Le Ray at once comprehended that his fine projects did not take in this direction, and became silent. When taking my coffee, after dinner, I remarked to Mr. Labouchere, that the whole tenor of his conversation had not been of a nature calculated to gratify or encourage Parish. Has reply was, that he always wished to cut short the talk of Mr. Le Ray, and other similar speculators, and to keep his house clear of foolish projects; and, as far as Parish was concerned, he added, " he will only too soon find out that he has committed a piece of folly."
Some people in Europe, particularly in Hamburgh, are inclined to ascribe very great value to these lands, on which such enormous sums of money had been expended, and to regard them as mines of wealth. But if any one will only reckon up the capital laid out, and that too at a very moderate estimate—say $700,000, and the real sum was much more—and then add three per cent, interest, remembering all the while that, during a space of thirty-five years, the property has returned no interest whatever, and scarcely even covered the expenses of keeping it, they will discover that these lands must now be worth, at the least, $2,000,000. Since the discovery of some veins of iron ore it has, under good management, at least returned some interest; whether the latter amounts to the nett sum of $60,000, can be known only to the Parish family, into whose hands it fell after David's death; but I cannot suppress the doubt, that it does not reach that sum.
Having at length come to an understanding with Mr. Labouchere, in regard to what his house was disposed to do for me, and in common with the Barings, in case I carried out my design of opening an establishment at New Orleans, I once more went to London. My first visit, of course, was to Mr. Alexander Baring, who, having been already informed by Mr. Labouchere, invited me to visit him in the country, on the ensuing Saturday. He
had a very pleasant villa at Carshalton, where he received me at the appointed time, and where I remained until the next Monday. The hours passed there were spent in a very pleasant manner, but not a moment could be found for an interview respecting the object of my visit—for even in his solitude he was overwhelmed with a thousand matters of importance. At length, before breakfast, on Monday morning, he told me that he would drive into the city in his curricle; and we had scarcely started before he began, in the carriage, and without any opening of the conversation on my part, to express a clear and well-arranged proposition, in relation to the intended support of my plans. This consisted in a capital of £6,000 sterling, advanced for five years, at five per cent., and a blank credit in favor of my business for £10,000 more. It was, at the same time, to be understood, that the two houses of Hope and Baring should be named in my circular, as leading friends and references. In examining an extract from my account with the London house, I found, in addition to the considerable sums due to me on my agency, a round balance of £1,000 sterling, whose source I could not conjecture, placed to my credit. Upon inquiry I learned, that when the final settlement was made in Amsterdam, it had been determined to allow me this bonus, on account of the numerous items of outlay which I might have had in the course of my agency, without making any note of the same. In fact, they had discovered a marked difference between the statement I had made out, of my travelling and sundry expenses, and those of the other gentlemen, which were, one and all, charged against the general enterprise.
I looked about me in London for a capable and active young man, calculated to inspire and retain confidence, and found such a one in a young Livonian, named Edward Hollander, from Riga. My good friend, Frederick W. Brederlow, from the formerly well-known house of Messrs. Joachim Ebel Schmidt & Co., of that city, had specially recommended him to me. In Liverpool I found the same Captain Stirling who had brought me, in the month of July, 1805, in the good ship Flora, from Amsterdam to New York, for the first time. Of course I willingly gave him and his new vessel, which he called the Aristomenes, the preference
over all the rest then lading for New York, and embarked with my travelling companion, in September, 1811. It was exactly the season of the equinoctial storms, and also the famous year of the great comet, which remained visible for such a length of time, and whose influence, as was afterwards affirmed, beneficially affected the vintage on the Rhine, and the banks of the Garonne. We lost but two masts on that perilous voyage, but safely reached New York after a passage of forty-eight days. I was anxious to acquire some knowledge of the far western regions, whose rich and manifold productions, of all kinds, were carried down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, destined to be the sources of the prosperity of New Orleans, although their banks were then but thinly populated, and were almost entirely wild and unreclaimed. In pursuance of this desire, I resolved to cross the Alleghany mountains to Pittsburgh, in the State of Pennsylvania, and there purchase a couple of flat-boats, in which I and my companion would quietly float down the rapid stream to New Orleans, about 2,000 miles. The only other means usual at that time, for passage or transportation on the two rivers, was by keel-boats, as they are called. These were long narrow barks, which would contain at the farthest about two hundred barrels of flour, and which could complete the journey, by the use of oars, in from thirty to thirty-five days; while the flat-boats, which were only steered, consumed forty or fifty days in making the same distance. The latter, however, were more convenient for the transportation of passengers, since there was space enough on them to put up quite a snug sleeping-room, with beds, &c., and a convenient kitchen and dining-room. I sent my friend Hollander a fortnight in advance of me, to Pittsburgh, to purchase two such flat-boats, one for our own use, and the other to accommodate my horse with a stall. Moreover, we could thus take along with us some four hundred barrels of flour, which could always be disposed of to advantage at New Orleans, and would suffice to pay the expenses of our journey. I managed to procure an excellent horse in Philadelphia, and, with my saddle-bags strapped to his back, I started in December alone, on my way to Pittsburgh. It was very cold. I rode, early one morning, entirely alone, over the loftiest summit
of the Alleghany ridge, called Laurel Hill, and about ten o'clock arrived at a small inn, close by the Falls of the Juniata river. Here I ordered a substantial breakfast. The landlady showed me into a room, and said, I perhaps would not object to taking my meal at the same table with a strange gentleman, who was already there. As I entered I found the latter personage, who at once struck me as being, what, in common parlance, is called an odd fish. He was sitting at a table, before the fire, with a Madras handkerchief wound around his head, exactly in the style of the French mariners, or laborers, in a seaport town. I stepped up to him, and accosted him politely, with the words, " I hope I don't incommode you, by coming to take my breakfast with you." " Oh no, sir," he replied, with a strong French accent, that made it sound like "No, sare." "Ah," I continued, " you are a Frenchman, sir 1 ?" " No, sare," he answered, " hi emm an Heenglishman." " Why," I asked, in return, " how do you make that out? You look like a Frenchman, and you speak like one." " Hi emm an Eenglish-man, becas hi got a Heenglish wife," he answered. Without investigating the matter further, we made up our minds, at breakfast, to remain in company, and to ride together to Pittsburgh. He showed himself to be an original throughout, but at last admitted that he was a Frenchman by birth, and a native of La Ro-chelle. However, he had come in his early youth to Louisiana, had grown up in the sea-service, and had gradually become a thorough American. " Now," I asked, " ho# does that accord with your quality of Englishman V Upon this he found it convenient to reply, in the French language, " When all is said and done, I am somewhat cosmopolitan ; I belong to every country." This man, who afterwards won for himself so great a name in natural history, particularly in ornithology, was Audubon, who, however, was by no means thinking, at that time, of occupying himself with the study of natural history.*
* In a third volume of Audubon's great, costly, and now very rare work on " American Ornithology," there is a circumstantial account of our meeting near the Falls of Juniata, and a flattering acknowledgment of the little service I was so fortunate as to have the opportunity of rendering my companion at that time, and afterwards upon the oocasioK of his journey to England.
He wanted to be a merchant, and had married the daughter of an Englishman, named Bakewell, formerly of Philadelphia, but then residing and owning mills at Shippingport, at the Falls of the Ohio, and in the neighborhood of Louisville. It was also his intention to travel down the Ohio into Kentucky. At Pittsburgh, he found no other opportunity of doing so than the one offered by my flat-boats, and, as he was a good companionable man, and, moreover, an accomplished sketcher, I invited him to take a birth in our cabin gratis. He thankfully accepted the invitation, and we left Pittsburgh, in very cold weather, with the Monongahela and Ohio rivers full of drifting ice, in the beginning of January, 1812. I learned nothing further of his travelling plans until we reached Limestone, a little place at the northwestern corner of the State of Ohio. There we had both our horses taken ashore, and I resolved to go with him overland, at first to visit the capital, Lexington, and from there to Louisville, where he expected to find his wife and his parents-in-law. My two boats, which I had left under the charge of Hollander, were to meet me at the same place. We had scarcely finished our breakfast, at Limestone, when Audubon, all at once, sprang to his feet, and exclaimed, in French, " Now I am going to lay the foundation of my establishment." So saying, he took a small packet of address cards and a hammer from his coat pocket, some nails from his vest, and began to nail up one of the cards to the door of the tavern, where we were taking our meal. The address ran as follows : "Audubon & Bakewell, Commission Merchants (Pork, Lard, and Flour), New Orleans" Oh, oh! thought I, there you have competition before you have got to the place yourself. Yet, as this commission house could not refer to the influential name of the Messrs. Hope, or of Messrs. Baring, and as pork and lard, moreover, were not articles which had any very great attraction for me, in the way of trade, I consoled myself with the thought, that competition of this nature could not amount to much.
From Limestone, Audubon and I rode on together as far as Lexington, the capital of Kentucky. It was then a flourishing little town, where I heard a great deal of talk about a highly-gifted lawyer, who during the elections for members of Congress, had
distinguished himself in the taverns and streets, by all sorts of brawls and fisticuff battles. This man was no other than Henry Clay, whose reputation soon after began to rise so rapidly. He was then a member of Congress ; but his external appearance was by no means calculated to convey any very high idea of his intellectual capacity, although he had, as early as the period of which I speak, already acquired great celebrity as an orator.
A frightfully cruel practice prevailed at that time among the greater part of the rude inhabitants of the western states. It consisted in allowing the finger-nails to grow so long, that, by cutting them, you could give them the form of a small sickle, and this strange weapon was used, in the broils that constantly occurred, to cut out the eyes of the hostile party. This barbarous action was called gouging. Upon this excursion through Kentucky I saw several persons who lacked an eye, and others, both of whose eyes were disfigured. The exasperation then reigning throughout the United States, in relation to the difficulties with England, was much greater in the western provinces than along the sea coast, and the feeling was very intense. As I passed through Frankfort, on my way from Lexington to Louisville, I was told that the legislature of Kentucky was just then in session. I resolved to go thither, so that I might compare that body with the sessions of the territorial legislature of Louisiana, which I had had the opportunity of observing in New Orleans, and which was made up of the most singular mixture of native born Americans, and men of "French and Spanish extraction. I had scarcely entered the legislative hall, when I heard a very enthusiastic orator dealing forth a violent diatribe against England, with the following words: " We must have war with Great Britain—war will ruin her commerce—commerce is the apple in Britain's eye—there we must gouge her !" This flower of oratory was received with great applause ; and, it must be confessed, that for such a population as most of the inhabitants of Kentucky formed at that period, it was extremely well timed, and betrayed a certain poetic sweep of thought. The North Americans in general possess often an un mistakable keenness of perception, which quickly enables them to catch a certain similarity between two altogether different
things. Among them one frequently hears comparisons of the most striking description, from the lips of the most uneducated men. To the happiest of these, which have reached us from the other side of the ocean, perhaps belongs one that was made by the American poet Barlow, the author of the Columbiad. Every one who, during his time, understood and spoke the English language, was full of the splendid phraseology of the English orator Burke, who, in his enthusiasm, so often rose to an almost immeasurable height. Barlow, who had heard him, and who had either been unable to follow him in his logical conclusions, or had, as he thought, found no sound argument in what he said, broke out into the exclamation, " He rises like a rocket, spreads a glaring light, and comes down like a stick!"
I was riding alone through the vast forest which separates Frankfort from Louisville, when, all at once, my horse, as if struck by lightning, suddenly stood still—the trees around us had for some seconds exhibited a strange heaving and waving motion. The animal I bestrode obeyed the spur, when I attempted to force him onward, with a sort of terror, again stood suddenly still for an instant, and then finally advanced in a tremor. It was some time before he fell into his usual pace. Upon my arrival in Louisville I was at once surrounded at the tavern door, and pertinaciously asked if I had noticed anything of the earthquake, and I felt authorized to say that I had. The Ohio had been frozen over for several days, and for more than a week past no boat had descended the stream; hence my boats and my friend Hollander were frozen up on the way between Limestone and Louisville. Three days afterwards, just as we had all sat down to dinner, the whole house was violently shaken; glasses, plates, and bottles jingled, and fell from the board; most of the guests leaped to their feet, exclaiming, " There's the earthquake, by jingo! there is no humbug about it!" as they rushed into the street. But all was still again, and every one gradually returned to his house. Early the next morning I learned that the earthquake had loosened the ice from the Ohio, and had again opened the current of the stream, and that several boats, among others two flats, fastened together, had been carried down over the Falls lying between Louisville and the little town
of Shippingport, situated at the distance of a few miles from the former place. I at once rode over to Shippingport, and there found my boats and my companion in safety. So soon as we had replenished and increased our stock of provisions I returned to my boats, and, having recommenced our journey, we in a few days left the dear transparent waters of the Ohio, and passed by its junction with the mighty Mississippi into the thick and turbid flood of the latter stream. We floated on quietly for several days, arresting our course, as was usual, at night, and securing our boats in any way we could to the river bank. In flat-boat journeys like ours it is a rule never to trust your craft in the night to the force of the current, for the surface of the water is so frequently broken by trees (which have been swept away from the shore, and then become fast imbedded in the bottom of the river, where they remain immovable, and are designated by the name of planters, as well as by those which are, likewise, fast imbedded, but have a constant up and down motion, whence they are known by the title of sawyers), that it is almost an impossibility to avoid them at night, and, in fact, to do so is difficult in broad daylight. In this way we reached the small town of New Madrid, on the 6th of Feb* u-ary. Some twenty boats, which had left Shippingport at the same time with us, kept us company. It was a clear moonlight night: my friend Hollander had retired to rest, and I was sitting, about twelve o'clock, at a little table, sketching a caricature of Madison,* then President of the United States, and of whom it was said, that he was under petticoat government. Madison had shortly before issued a proclamation, in which he called upon the American people "to put on armor, and assume a warlike attitude." My caricature represented him in a general's uniform, in an attitude as if he were calling out troops; his wife stood beside him, with a military chapeau on her head, a musket on her shoulder, and arrayed in the red breeches which her predecessor JefFer-
* I sent this caricature to David Parish, who hung ituj. for years in his bedchamber, at Ogdensburgh. From his hands it passed into the possession of Dennis A. Smith, the well known Cashier of the Mechanics' Bank, in Baltimore, and thence, several years later, it came back to me, after tljat bank broke.
son was known to have brought from France, after the revolu tionary period, when he resided at Paris as Ambassador, and was generally asserted to have worn. I had just given the last touches to the somewhat dilapidated red hose, when there came a frightful crash, like a sudden explosion of artillery, and instantly followed by countless flashes of lightning ; the Mississippi foamed up like the water in a boiling cauldron, and the stream flowed rushing back, while the forest trees, near which we lay, came cracking and thundering down. This fearful spectacle lasted for several minutes ; and the fierce flashes of lightning, the rush of the receding waters, and the crash of the falling trees, seemed as if they would never end. Hollander, starting half-way up from his bed, hurriedly exclaimed, " What is that, Nolte 1" What other answer could I give him but that I myself did not know, yet supposed it to be the effect of an earthquake. I clambered up to the roof of our boat. What a spectacle ! Our flats were indeed still floating, but far away from the shore where we had moored them at nightfall. The agitated water all around us, full of trees and branches, which the stream, now flowing in its proper current, was rapidly sweeping away, and a light only here and there visible from the town—in short, a real chaos. The feeble crew, which I had brought along with me from Pittsburgh, to man my flat-boats, consisted of three sailors, whom want of employment at the seaports, while the embargo lasted, had driven to that inland city, and a river pilot, acquainted with those streams. They told me that the boats around us had let go the tackle which secured them to the shore, and were now floating down the stream, and asking whether we had not better do the same thing. I at once reflected that if, under the usual circumstances, it was dangerous, and therefore by no means advisable, to trust to the stream in the night, it must now be much more so, when the danger was greatly increased by the trees which the earthquake had loosened and driven away, and that consequently it would be a better plan to remain where we were until daylight had returned, and we could see our way. At sunrise the whole terrible scene was disclosed to our gaze, and the little town of New Madrid, sunken, destroyed, and overflowed to three-fourths of its extent, lay more than five hundred paces
from us, with some of its scattered inhabitants here and there visible among the ruins. Our boats were fixed in the middle of an island formed by fallen trees, and several hours passed before the crew could cut a passage for them, and get them out. At length we were again floating on the stream, and continued our course, by day's journeys, until we arrived, on the thirty-second day after our departure from Pittsburgh, in Natchez, in the State of Mississippi. Here, where we heard all kinds of details concerning the earthquake, as it had been noticed in that place, we remained a week, during which time not a single one of the boats arrived that had surrounded us on the evening of the 6th of February. When we reached New Orleans, we learned that the earthquake had not been any farther perceptible there, than that the chandeliers in the ball-room had all at once been observed to rock from side to side, and that a number of ladies had felt quite ill, while others instantly fainted. This remarkable earthquake, which was so disastrous in its consequences, commenced in the northwestern part of the State of Missouri, shook the whole extent of Louisiana more or less, and stretched throughout the whole region lying around the Gulf of Mexico as far as Caraccas, where it finally raged with terrible fury, almost entirely destroying that town itself, and reducing to poverty, or swallowing up, 40,000 inhabitants there, and in several other places in the neighborhood. Of the boats which surrounded us on the evening of February 6th nothing was ever afterwards heard, and we should probably have shared the same fate, had it not been for the plan we adopted of remaining by the shore.
I have always regarded it as a great gift of heaven, that amid the many serious dangers in which I have been frequently exposed during the course of my life, I was ever able to retain a certain tranquillity, and iry entire presence of mind.
CHAPTER XI.
NEW ORLEANS
New Orleans—My first arrangements—Congress declares war agiainst England June 18th, 1812—David Parish assumes one of the Government loans on his own responsibility, and thus gives rise to embarrassment in his affairs—The Peace confirmed at Ghent, in December, 1814, happily extricates him—Tropical hurricane at New Orleans, in the fall of 1812—Fracture of my right arm, in the year 1814—Needless suspension of specie payments by the New Orleans banks—Appointed, by the Exchange, a member of the Committee to examine into the condition of things, and report thereupon, as framer of the report—I get into personal difficulty—The origin of my first duel, with an opponent never known to me or seen by me before— A business operation in Pensacola, by way of the two lakes—Borgne and Pontchartrain, adjacent to New Orleans—The fleet of small craft I take across them, laden with cotton—I arrive with them in Mobile bay, there await the result of the first bombardment of the fort, and take advantage of the moment when the English fleet are hauling off, after their repulse, to run into Pensacola during the night—I am saddled with fresh difficulties bv the Clique of the Bank Cashier, Saul in New Orleans; for iustance, in an affair with the Marine Paymaster, Shields—Interruption of my quarrel, by the arrival of the English fleet in the Gulf of Florida.
New Orleans, which I had left more than four and a half years previously, had in that time made no inconsiderable progress— there had been a great deal of new building, and it was much improved. The character of its population, however, had gained nothing. Its old original inhabitants, of French and Spani h ori gin, had always shown a certain openness, good faith and sir cerity, in their mercantile intercourse ; but the lawyers who came thither from the northern states, and whose interest it was to stir up litigation to keep themselves from starving, had, by a certain acquaintance with the technicalities of American jurisprudence, and by a spirit of low cunning and adroitness which they introduced,
and even managed to communicate to some of the old inhabitants, been the real cause of this moral retrogression. Governor Claiborne it was who brought election intrigue into fashion, and thereby succeeded in undermining the honorable and amiable character of the original Creoles. Social life had rather been impaired than improved in its relations.
I had just procured a dwelling-house, and furnished it, when the news reached us, from Washington, that war had been declared against England on the 18th of June. This brought all the projects which I had been erecting upon my business relations with Europe to the ground, and all the advantages 1 was entitled to expect from them vanished out of my hands. Let any one, who can, form an idea of the situation in which I suddenly found myself placed.
David Parish, as I have already stated, had returned from Europe, during the fall of 1811, with great schemes in his head. It had been his intention to withdraw altogether from European business, and to give up his interest in the Antwerp house. But his partner, Mr. G. Agie. one of the most upright and shrewd merchants I ever knew, would not spare his name from the firm, and the latter accordingly remained David Parish, Agie & Co. However, Parish had left no money in the concern. The h^avy consignments it had received, by means of the advances made by him with the capital gathered from Mexico, and which it still continued to receive, were, as a matter of course, favorable likewise to Agie, and had indeed helped him to acquire a much larger fortune than he had ever expected to make. Upon his return to the United States, Parish had brought along with him the French architect Ramee, who was the builder of the first Borsenkalle or Bourse of Hamburgh, which he put up for Mr. Von Hostrup: in addition to this individual he also brought, either through charity or as a companion, a French painter of miniatures, a man already far advanced in years—a bon enfant, bon mangeur, bon faiseur, de calembourgs —in short, a farceur, who, like Shakespeare's FalstafF, was not only witty himself, but furnished ample material for the wit of others: this party of useful people in a household was completed by an excellent French cook. Ramee was to put up for
him, at Ogdensburgh, a suitable residence, a church, and other buildings, and to carry out several more or less considerable structures in a smaller place, to which Parish had already given the name of Parishville. Ouvrard mentions the origin of this still embryo town in his memoirs, as follows: " I had seen Mr. David Parish at Antwerp, whither he hacflust established a house, which was then of too little importance to let slip the opportunity of forming some connexion with- my business. Summoned for the purpose by the Messrs. Hope, he consented to take up his abode in the United States, where, although but the simple agent of an operation scarcely yet alive, his own fortune soon ascended to the level of the first houses existing, and even permitted him to give his name to a town in America."
The war with England necessarily involved an immense outlay of funds, and gave rise to great financial embarrassment on the part of the United States government, which kept offering loans at constantly increasing rates of interest, but found few who were willing to lend the money. Parish, without any preliminary consultation with the European capitalists, least of all with the Barings, as will presently be seen, and without any particular understanding with the capitalists of the United States with whom he had formed connexions, or the banks, assumed one of these loans at high rates of interest, purchasing on a low quotation in the money market; but he soon found that he was out of his calculation, as the loan found few takers, and they only for small sums; it consequently fell below the stipulated rate of exchange, and left most of the obligations incurred resting upon his shoulders. His own active capital was speedily absorbed, and Parish thought there could be no easier way of extricating himself from this em-bai rassment, than to send the greater portion of the stock certificates to the Messrs. Barings in London, and in return place large sums to his own account. The result of this bold measure is easily foreseen. The London house sent back his certificates, and refused his drafts—England was at open war with the United States! Parish seemed to have forgotten, that at a lord mayor's dinger, given in London, in 1808, the old Sir Francis Baring had, amid the frowns of the company, to defend himself from the re-
proach that his house, by the use of its capital and the sale of American state paper, was furthering the views of the hostile American government.
In New Orleans I was too remote from the scene of these difficulties, in which Parish had become involved, to have a fair and thorough knowledge of them ; but the simple fact that he attempted to have his paper discounted in all the banks, with unimportant names for indorsers, was enough to show that he no longer retained that elevated place he had asserted in the American money market only two years before ; and his friends, with deep regret, saw financial difficulty surrounding the man who had so long been accustomed to relieving others from it. Parish was naturally good-hearted, and it had become a proverb that he could not say nay to any applicant. Let the reader now imagine this man, who had never made others feel unpleasantly the importance and weight of his position, placed in such a situation as compelled hirn to depend upon the good will of those around him. The Olivers', Craig, and others, who had to thank him for the origin of their wealth, did not feel inclined to risk, once more, the money they had accumulated ; and the shyness with which they met his combinations at this time may be conceived. Parish's position had become extremely critical, when the peace, concluded at Ghent, on December 24th, 1814, between the United States and Great Britain, at once restored American paper to its full value, and raised it to quotations in the market which were profitable instead of disastrous. Parish was saved.
Now, to return to my own situation when, within a few months after the foundation of my establishment, I was suddenly cut off from all resources. The absence of business thence resulting, the difficulty bordering almost upon impossibility, of tracing out under these circumstances, any business combinations at all corresponding to the enterprising mercantile spirit, and yet not calculated to place one's reputation for commercial foresight in jeopardy, made life wearisome among a population such as New Orleans at that time contained. It could, indeed, be borne, but it made the joyless void of existence, when the object of that existence has departed, most keenly felt. It was like a dead calm
to the mariner, but with this difference, that the latter continues only for days or weeks, while the termination of my stagnant inactivity could not be calculated, but might extend for years.
The Mississippi was blockaded and narrowly watched by two English vessels of war. After this sad beginning of the war, the whole city and district of country was so additionally unfortunate as to be devastated by a hurricane of the kind which so frequently occurs in tropical climates, at the time of the solstice. Eighteen of the vessels lying in the harbor were thrown on the left bank of the Mississippi, where they remained completely wrecked; many houses, and half-finished buildings were blown down, and most of the roofs in the city were torn away to the last shingle. Such were the reminiscences of the first year of the war!
Its second year, 1813, brought me fresh proofs of the frail tenure by which human life and comfort are held. In the month of May, as I was taking a pleasure ride on horseback, with a friend, he remarked that some one had told him what a fine racer my horse was, and that he would like to see him running. I assented to the proposed test, adding that he would have to rein up his horse, since so long as mine could hear another galloping close by him, it was impossible to hold him back. This he agreed to do, but did not keep his word, for the moment I had put spurs to my animal, he whipped his horse into full speed, and shouted after me:—" Hallo ! I think I can beat you !" The affair turned out just as I had told him ; I could no longer check my horse, and away he went like the wind, until a sudden stumble precipitated him to the ground, and I was thrown on my side on the highway, where I lay for some time quite lifeless, at the distance of two miles from the city. My head was severely wounded, and my arm was broken at the elbow, in such a way that it has remained crooked and bent ever since, so that I cannoc extend it to its full length.
Party spirit was embittered by the languishing state of things in the city, and day by day increased to such an extent as to cause the greatest division and irreconcilable enmities where social intercourse had just begun. People would gather at the
corners of the streets, to hear or circulate all sorts of private scandal. Ready money became scarce. The whole adjacent coast was disquieted and kept in terror by pirates ; among the latter, the most conspicuous were the brothers Laffitte, from Bayonne, Sauvelet, Beluche, Dominique, Gamba and others, who were time and again, seen walking about, publicly, in the streets of New Orleans. They had their friends and acquaintances, their depots of goods, &c., in the city, and sold, almost openly, the wares they had obtained by piracy, particularly English manufactured goods. The slave trade, too, was especially flourishing under their auspices. These pirates captured Spanish and other slave ships on the high seas, and established their main depot and rendezvous on the little island of Barataria, lying near the coast adjacent to New Orleans. This place was visited by the sugar planters, chiefly of French origin, who bought up the stolen slaves at from 150 to 200 dollars per head, when they could not have procured as good stock in the city for less than 600 or 700 dollars. These were then conveyed to the different plantations, through the innumerable creeks called bayous, that communicate by manifold little branches, with each other. This clandestine traffic was one of the causes to which the scarcity of ready money was to be attributed. The planters, instead of taking bank notes with them, invariably provided themselves with coin to pay for their purchases. This money, however, did not leave the country, but was hoarded away in the private coffers of those who performed the part of secret agents for the pirates, and was thus withdrawn from general circulation. The French and Catalonian population of the city had never been able tq persuade themselves that bank-notes are just as good as cash in representing value when based upon the security of a well-managed banking capital, and just when the prejudice against them was passing away, the jealous manoeuvring of two cashiers, one T, L. Harman, in the Planter's Bank, the other Joseph Saul, in the Bank of Orleans, both Englishmen by birth, again revived it. The latter cashier aimed at destroying the credit of the Planter's Bank, and attracting its customers to his own, as they were mostly planters who allowed their deposits to lie longer than the merchants were accustomed to do. The
m cashier, who could wind the whole Board of Directors belonging to the Bank, around his little finger, had contracted its discounting operations, and thus brought about a much smaller issue of paper than the Planter's Bank had made; he then, carefully, collected the notes of the rival bank as they were coming in, and after getting unfavorable reports into circulation concerning the Planter's Bank, he suddenly presented the accumulated mass of notes, requiring payment of the same in silver, on a day when he knew that his neighbor's supply of that metal was very much reduced. The amount demanded by the notes went far beyond the quantity of silver in the possession of the Planter's Bank, and the clerk of the Bank of Orleans who presented them, instantly returned with word that they would have further consultation on the subject. This was enough. The whole population was thrown into excitement; there was an immediate run upon the Planter's Bank ; but there was no distinction drawn by the excited public, between it and the Bank of Orleans, which like its rival and anticipated victim, was likewise brought to a stand still, in the payment of its notes. The inhabitants hurried to the exchange, and named a committee of five members, viz : Messrs. Nott, H. Landreaux, and P. F. Dubourg, merchants, Mr. Mazureau a lawyer, and myself, for the purpose of examining into the actual condition of the banks, and reporting thereupon. My colleague, Nott, was the only one of these who possessed any insight into the matter, while the other two merchants had but little knowledge of the subject, and the lawyer, Mazureau, was totally destitute of an idea respecting the system of money-circulation, yet ipso motu, held himself solely authorized to draw up the report which had been intrusted to Mr. Nott and myself, as well as to him. The very first charge of Mr. Mazureau, full of hollow words and declamation, at once convinced me that he had formed no correct conception of the real state of things ; and therefore, did not know what he was talking about. I asked leave to present another statement; and when I had communicated it to the other members, when the latter came to decide between mine and the one handed in by the attorney, they accepted mine with four votes, while Mr. Mazure&u's had only his own voice in its
favor. The report drawn up by me, after setting forth the actual position of the Banks, as we found them, and expressing assurances in relation to their solvency, that were calculated to quiet all apprehension in every quarter, went on to regret that such an unnecessary excitement should have been produced by the petty jealousies ofrtwo cashiers, whose manoeuvres had created a general business distrust, which should not, and could not have arisen had they really taken the interests of the city to heart. The cashier of the Planter's Bank, who was my personal friend, viewed this in the proper light; but the cashier of the Orleans Bank, a very irritable and petulant man, was thrown into a perfect fury, and vented his rage, at every public resort, in the most contemptuous and injurious language. He soon learned from our colleague Mazureau, that I had penned the obnoxious document, with the addition, however, that it was an affair arranged between Mr. Nott and Mr. Nolte; and that the other two members of the committee had merely surrendered their judgment, at discretion. It was now reported, throughout the city, that Mr. Saul had threatened to punish us both, and not to rest until he had taken ample satisfaction out of us. His first attack was directed against my friend Mr. Nott, who happened to be one of the directors of the Bank of Orleans, of which Saul was the cashier. He managed at once, but very quietly, to collect the Bank powers-of-attorney of most of the stockholders, so as to be enabled to cast votes in their name, at the approaching yearly election of new bank directors; he then had several shares bought up by his creatures, and in this way managed to get the majority of votes into his hands, determined to use them for the purpose of defeating the re-election of the directors who were disagreeable to him : these were six in number, with Nott at their head. Young and inexperienced merchants of no weight or importance were elected in their stead. Inflated by this success, he daily went about boasting, on both Bourses—there were then two in New Orleans, the American and French—and threatening that, sooner or later, he would richly chastise us both, for what we had done. I was unwilling to take any notice of this contemptible proceeding, but Nott desired to put Saul's courage to the test, and requested me to hand that per.