Reading The World Ideas That Matter

Michael Austin
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READING
THE
WORLD
o
 READING
THE WORLD
Ideas That Matter
o

THIRD EDITION

MICHAEL AUSTIN

B
W . W . N O R T O N & C O M P A N Y

N E W Y O R K L O N D O N
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reading the world: ideas that matter / edited by Michael Austin.—Third edition
pages cm—(Third edition).
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-393-93630-8 (pbk.)

1. College readers. 2. English language—Rhetoric—Problems, exercises, etc.

3. Critical thinking—Problems, exercises, etc. I. Austin, Michael, 1966 II. Title

PE1417.R396 2015
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 Contents
o

Preface x v
Timeline x x i
Pronunciation Guide x x vi i

PA RT 1 R E A D I N G T H E W O RLD

1 ED U C AT IO N 3

HSÜN TZU Encouraging Learning 5

To pursue [learning] is to be a man, to give it up is to become a beast.

SENECA On Liberal and Vocational Studies 1 3

I have no respect for any study whatsoever if its end is the making of money.

* LAURENTIUS DE VOLTOLINA Liber Ethicorum des Henricus

de Alemania 21
A painting of a class lecture at one of the medieval world’s most famous
universities.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS Learning to Read 2 4

I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing.
It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy.

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN from Knowledge Its Own End 3 1

Knowledge is capable of being its own end. Such is the constitution of the human
mind, that any kind of knowledge, if it be really such, is its own reward.

RABINDRANATH TAGORE To Teachers 4 0

In this critical period, the child’s life is subjected to the education factory, lifeless,
colorless, dissociated from the context of the universe, within bare white walls
staring like eyeballs of the dead.

* Image
v
vi Contents

VIRGINIA WOOLF Shakespeare’s Sister 4 6

It would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have
written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare.

RICHARD FEYNMAN O Americano Outra Vez 5 3

After a lot of investigation, I finally figured out that the students had memorized
everything, but they didn’t know what anything meant.

MARTHA NUSSBAUM Education for Profit, Education for Democracy 61

From early on, leading U.S. educators connected the liberal arts to the preparation
of informed, independent, and sympathetic democratic citizens.

2 H U MA N NATU RE AN D T HE M I N D 71

PLATO The Speech of Aristophanes 7 4

Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature
together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature.

MENCIUS Man’s Nature Is Good 7 8

Human nature is inherently good, just like water flows inherently downhill.

HSÜN TZU Man’s Nature Is Evil 8 4

Man’s nature is evil; goodness is the result of conscious activity.

THOMAS HOBBES from Leviathan 9 4

. . . wherein men live without other security than what their own strength. . . . In
such condition there is no place for industry . . . no arts, no letters, no society, and
which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of
man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

JOHN LOCKE Of Ideas 1 0 0

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters,
without any ideas: How comes it to be furnished? . . . Whence has it all the materi-
als of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.

* Two Pictures of the Brain 1 0 4

A phrenology chart and a PET scan offer two images of the brain.

* CARL JUNG from The Red Book 1 0 8

An illustration from the psychiatrist journal of calligraphy, drawings, and writings.

RUTH BENEDICT The Individual and the Pattern of Culture 1 1 2

No individual can arrive even at the threshold of his potentialities without a
culture in which he participates. Conversely, no civilization has in it any element
which in the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual.

NICHOLAS CARR A Thing Like Me 1 2 3

Every tool imposes limitations even as it opens possibilities.
 Contents vii

DANIEL KAHNEMAN from Thinking, Fast and Slow 1 3 4

Conflict between an automatic reaction and an intention to control it is common
in our lives.

3 L A NGU A GE A ND RH E T O R I C 145

* AESCHYLUS The Eumenides 1 4 8

Accept my argument. Don’t let rash tongues / hurl threats against this land,
condemning it / to sterile fruitlessness. Ease your anger.

PERICLES The Funeral Oration 1 5 8

In sum, I say that our city as a whole is a lesson for Greece, and that each of us
presents himself as a self-sufficient individual, disposed to the widest possible di-
versity of actions, with every grace and great versatility. This is not merely a boast
in words for the occasion, but the truth in fact.

PLATO from Gorgias 166

What is there greater than the word which persuades the judges in the courts, or
the senators in the council, or the citizens in the assembly?

ARISTOTLE from Rhetoric 17 7

And if it be objected that one who uses such power of speech unjustly might do great
harm, that is a charge which may be made in common against all good things.

AUGUSTINE from On Christian Doctrine 1 8 4

I think that there is hardly a single eloquent man who can both speak well and
think of the rules of eloquence while he is speaking.

SOR JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ from La Respuesta 1 8 9

But, lady, as women, what wisdom may be ours if not the philosophies of
the kitchen. . . . had Aristotle prepared victuals, he would have written more.

WAYNE BOOTH The Rhetorical Stance 1 9 8

The common ingredient that I find in all of the writing I admire—excluding
for now novels, plays and poems—is something that I shall reluctantly call the
rhetorical stance.

GLORIA ANZALDÚA How to Tame a Wild Tongue 2 0 5

If you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin
skin to linguistic identity—I am my language.

TONI MORRISON Nobel Lecture 2 1 7

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; it does more
than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.

ZEYNEP TUFEKCI Networked Politics from Tahrir to Taksim: Is There

a Social Media–Fueled Protest Style? 2 2 5
It is [. . .] easier to use social media to communicate a message or an image of
refusal or dissent rather than convey complicated arguments.
viii Contents

4 TH E A RT S 233

MO TZU Against Music 2 3 6

If you ask what it is that has caused the ruler to neglect the affairs of government
and the humble man to neglect his tasks, the answer is music.

BOETHIUS from Of Music 2 4 2

There can be no doubt that the unity of our body and soul seems to be somehow
determined by the same proportions that join together and unite the harmonious
inflections of music.

LADY MURASAKI SHIKIBU On the Art of the Novel 2 4 8

The novel is . . . not, as is usually supposed, a mixture of useful truth with idle
invention, but something which at every stage and at every part has a definite and
serious purpose.

* JOHANNES VERMEER Study of a Young Woman 2 5 3

A painting of a young, unknown model by one of the greatest Dutch masters.

EDMUND BURKE from The Sublime and Beautiful 2 5 6

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers . . . as fear.

* WILLIAM BLAKE The Tyger 2 6 2

What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

LEO TOLSTOY from What Is Art? 2 6 5

Great works of art are only great because they are accessible and comprehensible
to everyone.

ALICE WALKER Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self 2 7 1

I realize I have dashed about the world madly, looking at this, looking at that,
storing up images against the fading of the light. But I might have missed seeing
the desert!

ELAINE SCARRY from On Beauty and Being Just 2 7 9

One day I ran into a friend, and when he asked me what I was doing, I said I was
trying to explain how beauty leads us to justice.

* LISA YUSKAVAGE Babie I 2 8 6

A painting of a woman holding wilted flowers and looking off into the distance.

5 S C IENC E A ND NAT U R E 289

LUCRETIUS from De Rerum Natura 2 9 2

I’d have you know / That while these particles come mostly down / Straight down
of their own weight through the void, at times / No one knows when or where—
they swerve a little.
 Contents ix

MATSUO BASHŌ The Narrow Road to the Interior 3 0 0

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

* JOSEPH WRIGHT OF DERBY An Experiment on a Bird in

the Air Pump 308
A painting of a science experiment in eighteenth-century England depicts various
reactions to the scientific revolution.

WILLIAM PALEY from Natural Theology 3 1 1

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how
the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer, that for any thing I knew to
the contrary it had lain there for ever.

CHARLES DARWIN from Natural Selection; or, the Survival of

the Fittest 314
It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinis-
ing, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad,
preserving and adding up all that are good.

RACHEL CARSON The Obligation to Endure 3 2 8

The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things
and their surroundings. . . . Only within the moment of time represented by the
present century has one species—man—acquired significant power to alter the
nature of his world.

KARL POPPER from Science as Falsification 3 3 6

A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefut-
ability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.

BARRY COMMONER The Four Laws of Ecology 3 4 4

In the woods around Walden Pond or on the reaches of the Mississippi, most of
the information needed to understand the natural world can be gained by personal
experience. In the world of nuclear bombs, smog, and foul water, environmental
understanding needs help from the scientist.

EDWARD O. WILSON The Fitness of Human Nature 3 5 6

What is human nature? It is not the genes, which prescribe it, or culture, its
ultimate product. Rather, human nature is something else for which we have only
begun to find ready expression.

WANGARI MAATHAI Foresters without Diplomas 3 6 3

Education, if it means anything, should not take people away from the land, but
instill in them even more respect for it, because educated people are in a position
to understand what is being lost.

VANDANA SHIVA from Soil, Not Oil 3 7 4

Earth Democracy allows us to break free of the global supermarket of commodifi-
cation and consumerism, which is destroying our food, our farms, our homes, our
towns, and our planet.
x Contents

6 L AW A ND GO VER N M E N T 381

LAO TZU from the Tao Te Ching 3 8 4

The more restrictive the laws, the poorer the people.

CHRISTINE DE PIZAN from The Treasure of the City of Ladies 3 9 7

Although the prince may be lord and master of his subjects, the subjects neverthe-
less make the lord and not the lord the subjects.

NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI from The Prince 4 0 5

Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all of the good quailties I have
enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them.

* ABRAHAM BOSSE Frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan 4 1 4

The frontispiece to Hobbes’s Leviathan by the artist and printmaker Abraham Bosse.

JAMES MADISON Memorial and Remonstrance against

Religious Assessments 417
We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no man’s right is abridged
by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its
cognizance.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. Letter from Birmingham Jail 4 2 5

We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and every-
thing the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.”

AUNG SAN SUU KYI from In Quest of Democracy 4 4 2

The root of a nation’s misfortunes has to be sought in the moral failings
of the government.

DESMOND TUTU Nuremberg or National Amnesia: A Third Way 4 5 0

To forgive is not just to be altruistic. It is the best form of selfinterest.
What dehumanizes you inexorably dehumanizes me. [Forgiveness] gives people
resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to
dehumanize them.

BARACK OBAMA A More Perfect Union 4 6 0

I have asserted a firm conviction—a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my
faith in the American people—that working together we can move beyond some
of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue
on the path of a more perfect union.

7 WA R A ND P EA C E 473

MO TZU Against Offensive Warfare 4 7 6

Now all the gentlemen in the world know enough to condemn such acts and brand
them as unrighteous. And yet, when it comes to the even greater unrighteousness
of offensive warfare against other states, they do not know enough to condemn it.
 Contents xi

SUN TZU from The Art of War 4 7 9

Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in
peril.

ST. THOMAS AQUINAS from Summa Theologica 4 8 3

Those who wage war justly aim at peace.

DESIDERIUS ERASMUS from Against War 4 8 8

War, what other thing else is it than a common manslaughter of many men
together, and a robbery, the which, the farther it sprawleth abroad, the more
mischievous it is?

* EUGÈNE DELACROIX Liberty Leading the People 4 9 4

A nineteenth-century painting celebrates the French Revolution.

* PABLO PICASSO Guernica 4 9 7

A cubist painting portrays the 1937 bombing of a Basque town in northern Spain.

MARGARET MEAD Warfare: An Invention—Not a Biological

Necessity 500
Warfare is just an invention known to the majority of human societies by which
they permit their young men either to accumulate prestige or avenge their honour
or acquire loot or wives or slaves or sago lands or cattle or appease the blood lust of
their gods or the restless souls of the recently dead.

GEORGE ORWELL Pacifism and the War 5 0 8

If Mr. Savage and others imagine that one can somehow “overcome” the German
army by lying on one’s back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder
occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a
simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen.

MAREVASEI KACHERE War Memoir 5 1 4

I was tired of being beaten and so I decided . . . to join the liberation struggle.

* THE WOMEN OF WORLD WAR II MONUMENT 5 2 1

A monument to the women of the British Empire who served at home and abroad
during World War II.

TAWAKKOL KARMAN Nobel Lecture 5 2 4

When women are treated unjustly and are deprived of their natural right . . . all
social deficiencies and cultural illnesses will be unfolded, and in the end the whole
community, men and women, will suffer.

8 W EA LTH , P O VERT Y, A N D SO C I A L C L A SS 533

EPICTETUS To Those Who Fear Want 5 3 6

If your parents were poor, and left their property to others, and if while they live,
they do not help you at all, is this shameful to you?
xii Contents

NEW TESTAMENT Luke, Chapter 16 5 4 1

If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will com-
mit to your trust the true riches?

PO-CHÜ-I The Flower Market 5 4 5

A cluster of deep-red flowers / Would pay the taxes of ten poor houses.

* WILLIAM HOGARTH Gin Lane 5 4 8

An eighteenth-century engraving depicts the evils of gin.

THOMAS MALTHUS from An Essay on the Principle of Population 552

Impelled to the increase of his species by an equally powerful instinct, reason inter-
rupts his career and asks him whether he may not bring beings into the world for
whom he cannot provide the means of subsistence.

MOHANDAS GANDHI Economic and Moral Progress 5 6 0

I venture to think that the scriptures of the world are far safer and sounder treatises
on laws of economics than many of the modern textbooks.

* DOROTHEA LANGE Migrant Mother 5 6 8

A migrant farmworker holds her baby, surrounded by her children, during the
Great Depression.

SIMONE WEIL Equality 5 7 1

Equality is a vital need of the human soul. It consists in the recognition . . . that
the same amount of respect and consideration is due to every human being.

OCTAVIO PAZ from The Day of the Dead 5 7 5

The fiesta’s function, then, is more utilitarian than we think: waste attracts or
promotes wealth, and is an investment like any other, except that the returns
on it cannot be measured or counted. What is sought is potency, life, health. In
this sense the fiesta, like the gift and the offering, is one of the most ancient of
economic forms.

GARRETT HARDIN Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the

Poor 582
We cannot remake the past. We cannot safely divide the wealth equitably among
all peoples so long as people reproduce at different rates. To do so would guarantee
that our grandchildren and everyone else’s grandchildren would have only a ruined
world to inhabit.

JOSEPH STIGLITZ Rent Seeking and the Making of an Unequal

Society 594
American inequality didn’t just happen. It was created.
 Contents xiii

PA RT 2 A G U I D E T O R EADING AND W RITING

9 REA D ING ID EA S 605

Prereading 606 6 Annotating 6 0 9 6 Identifying Patterns 6 1 2
Reading Visual Texts 614 6 Summarizing 6 1 7 6 Reading with a
Critical Eye 618

1 0 GENERAT ING ID EA S 621

Considering Expectations 621 6 Exploring Your Topic 6 2 5
Achieving Subtlety 628

1 1 S TRU C T U RING ID EA S 633

Thesis Statements 634 6 Introductions 6 3 8 6 Transitions 6 4 1
Conclusions 646

1 2 S U P P O RTING ID EA S 649
Supporting Claims with Evidence 6 5 0 6 Logos: Appeals to Logic
and Reason 652 6 Pathos: Appeals to Emotion 6 6 1 6 Ethos: The
Writer’s Appeal 663 6 Anticipating Counterarguments 6 6 6

1 3 S Y NT H ES IZ ING ID EA S 668
Summarizing Multiple Sources 6 6 9 6 Comparing and
Contrasting 670 6 Finding Themes and Patterns 6 7 2 6 Synthesizing
Ideas to Form Your Own Argument 6 7 6

1 4 INC O RP O RATING ID E A S 681

Finding Sources 682 6 Evaluating Sources 6 8 4 6 Quoting,
Paraphrasing, and Summarizing 6 8 5 6 Documenting Sources 6 9 0
Documentation Styles 692 6 Sample Documented Essay (MLA
Format) 698

1 5 REVIS ING A ND ED IT IN G 702

Rethinking 703 6 Rewriting 7 0 4 6 Editing 7 0 5 6 Revising and
Editing Checklist 706

Credits 709
Index 713
 Preface
o

F ROM THE START Reading the World: Ideas That Matter has been based on a
simple premise: that the great-ideas tradition is fully compatible with the objec-
tives of multiculturalism. To me, this has always seemed obvious. Great ideas are
not the exclusive province of any culture, or of any historical epoch. Understanding
diversity—really understanding it—requires us to understand the great ideas that
have formed diverse societies. And overcoming prejudice requires us to see the
essential sameness between our own experiences and those that seem alien to us.
By exploring the most important and influential ideas of a variety of human cultures,
we can accomplish both objectives.
In the world of contemporary writing instruction, however, these two approaches
have come to be seen as, if not quite antithetical, at least incompatible. Multicultural
readers largely confine themselves to twentieth- and twenty-first-century issues and
readings, while great-ideas readers focus almost exclusively on Western traditions.
Those who argue in favor of a multicultural approach to teaching reading and writ-
ing often find themselves—in the textbook debates for which English departments
are justly famous—on the other side of the table from those who value a rigorous
introduction to the great-ideas tradition. Reading the World places itself, squarely
and unapologetically, on both sides of the table.
I have been extremely gratified by the responses to Reading the World: Ideas
That Matter. Since it first appeared, I have heard from many instructors who have
used the book and a number of students who have benefitted from its unique
approach. What has gratified me the most is the number of readers who have “got-
ten it,” who have understood the power of the two approaches that I have tried
to combine in this textbook. I believe now more than ever in both the importance
and the viability of a meaningfully multicultural, intellectually rigorous introduction
to the intellectual traditions of the world’s cultures.
Like earlier editions, the new edition groups its reading into chapters devoted
to universal themes. Several possible chapter groupings are purposely absent. The
book does not have, for example, a chapter called “Religion,” but not because

xv
xvi Preface

religion is unimportant in the world’s intellectual traditions—quite the opposite.

Religion has been so important to the development of ideas that its influence
can be seen across the spectrum of human thought. Reading the World attempts
to show this influence by presenting the ideas of the world’s great religions
and religious leaders in every chapter of the book. Likewise, Reading the World
includes no chapter titled “Women” or “Feminism.” To include such a chapter
would, in my view, suggest that women writers have limited themselves to a nar-
row set of issues. Women have written about all the issues covered by this book;
therefore, women writers appear in all of its sections. Every chapter in Reading
the World has been carefully constructed to incorporate multiple perspectives
on a particular theme.
English translations of many texts in this volume vary greatly. I have tried to main-
tain consistency among the different translations while, at the same time, remain-
ing faithful to the original sources. In some cases, however, fidelity seemed more
important to the goals of this book than consistency. Thus, the translated texts
include some minor variations in spelling, accenting, diacritic marks, and other types
of punctuation. Similarly, all British spellings and punctuation have been retained
in translated and nontranslated texts.

HIGHLIGHT S

The third edition of Reading the World includes a number of new and updated
texts. In deciding which texts to add and which to retire, I have been guided by the
feedback that I have received from both instructors and students who have used
the first two editions. Some of this feedback has been very specific—comments
about the ways that specific texts have worked in a classroom setting. Much of
it, though, fits into several large patterns that I have tried to address in the third
edition. Among the changes that readers will find are the following:

A new chapter, “The Arts,” explores our appreciation of art—and seeks to under-
stand our fascination with it. With selections from Boethius, Murasaki Shikibu, Leo
Tolstoy, Alice Walker, and more, this chapter explores music, painting, poetry, novels,
aesthetics, and other ways that human beings have exercised their desire to create.

An expanded chapter, “Human Nature and the Mind,” highlights the role of the
mind in fashioning human nature. A drawing from Carl Jung’s The Red Book and
an excerpt from Daniel Kahneman’s bestselling book Thinking, Fast and Slow are
two examples of this chapter’s exploration of our attempts to understand the mind
in all its complexity.

More selections by women: Selections by women have always been important to

Reading the World. In the third edition, they have become more important than ever.

xvi
 Preface xvii

New readings from important women across time and culture include selections
from Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Virginia Woolf, Zeynep Tufekci, and Nobel Prize
winners Wangari Maathai and Tawakkol Karman.
More readings from contemporary authors: Along with the classical texts and
influential ideas from across the spectrum of human cultures, the new edition
includes more recent texts from such influential thinkers as Martha Nussbaum,
Joseph Stiglitz, Vandana Shiva, and Elaine Scarry.

I believe that these changes will help students get more out of their experience
with the new ideas that they will encounter in Reading the World. The essential
features of the book remain unchanged and include
Challenging texts made accessible: The detailed editorial apparatus in Reading
the World will guide students through the process of reading and writing about
sophisticated texts and ideas. Chapter introductions begin with a single question
that all of the selections in a chapter are responding to in some way. These intro-
ductions set out the major issues and concerns that each chapter deals with and
situate each reading in a bigger overall scheme. Text headnotes offer necessary
historical contextual information about the authors and texts. Explanatory footnotes
describe unfamiliar terms, concepts, and references in the selections. Study ques-
tions prompt students to think about the major ideas in each selection, consider
the elements of writing, and think about how texts interact. And writing suggestions
prompt creative, analytical, and comparative responses.
A balance of Western and non-Western texts: Nearly half of the selections come
from Eastern, Islamic, African, and South American sources. These texts highlight both
the differences between Western and non-Western thinking and the similarities in the
ways that all human cultures have formulated and approached essential problems.
A substantial yet flexible guide to reading and writing: At the end of Reading
the World you can find Part 2, The Guide to Reading and Writing, which explores
the writing process from reading critically to generating topic ideas to organiza-
tion and support to evaluating and documenting sources. This substantial segment
draws examples largely from the selections in the book.

Readings on language and rhetoric: One full chapter of the reader is devoted to
primary sources on language and rhetoric. Here, students involved in the writing
process can read accessible selections from writers such as Plato, Aristotle, Gloria
Anzaldúa, and Toni Morrison.

Images as texts: Great ideas are not always expressed in words; sometimes, they
are conveyed through visual texts. Included throughout Reading the World, there-
fore, are the kinds of visual texts that contemporary students need to decode on a
daily basis: drawings, paintings, photographs, monuments, and so on. Not merely
illustrations or visual aids, these complex texts make substantial arguments in their
xviii Preface

own right, and they are presented here as texts, with headnotes, study questions,
and writing suggestions.

Mix of longer and shorter readings: To meet a variety of teaching and assign-
ment styles, the selections in Reading the World vary widely in length. Each chap-
ter includes some pieces of only a page or two, which can be read quickly and
incorporated into group discussions and in-class writing assignments. Each chapter
also includes several medium-length selections, and one or two lengthy selections,
which require in-depth reading and extensive discussion.

Cross-textual connections: The readings work together both within and across
chapters. Following each reading, a set of questions titled “Making Connections”
prompts students to explore these threads.

A CKN O WLEDGMENT S

Reading the World: Ideas That Matter truly has many authors. It owes its existence
to the great writers, artists, philosophers, and critics whose works fill its pages.
Those pages, in turn, are the product of the attention, support, and creative energy
of many people.
After the publication of the first edition, the writing programs at both Shepherd
University and the Catholic University of America invited me to speak with instruc-
tors using the book. I thank these instructors and their students for the crucial
feedback that they provided. My colleagues at Newman University have also been
extremely supportive as I have prepared this new edition. I am especially grateful
to President Noreen M. Carrocci for enduring a provost who was occasionally miss-
ing in action as deadlines for the new edition approached.
The staff at W. W. Norton provided more support than I ever imagined possible.
This support began very early in the process, when John Kelly “discovered” the
book during a meeting in my office on other textbook concerns. Marilyn Moller,
who believed in the project from the beginning, was enormously helpful in giving
the book its current shape and configuration—which is far superior to the shape
and configuration that I originally had in mind. Ariella Foss, who edited the third
edition, and Erin Granville, who edited the first two editions, were both outstanding
in every regard. They held me to the same standards of clarity, concision, and logical
consistency that I ask of all students who use Reading the World. Megan Jackson
performed the task of clearing permissions for all the readings. Caitlin Moran did
a superb job project editing the text; and Jillian Burr, Andy Ensor, Sophie Hagen,
Rebecca Homiski, Ben Reynolds, and Claire Wallace were instrumental in managing
the production and editing of this edition. I am also grateful to Carin Berger and
Debra Morton Hoyt for the wonderful cover design.
 Reading the World has also benefited tremendously from the teachers and schol-
ars who took valuable time to review the second edition: Alex Blazer (Georgia
College of State University), Robert Epstein (Fairfield University), Mark A. Graves
(Morehead State University), David Holler (University of San Francisco), Mai Nguyen
(Univerity of Tampa), Jonathan Rovner (American University of Iraq, Sulaimani), and
Kelly A. Shea (Seton Hall University). And I also want to thank the teachers and
scholars who reviewed the second edition, and read new selections for the third:
Jenny Bangsund (University of Sioux Falls), Nancy Enright (Seton Hall University),
Keely McCarthy (Chestnut Hill College), Anthony J. Sams (Ivy Tech Community
College), and Thomas Wilmeth (Concordia University).
Finally, Reading the World is the result of personal debts that can never be
adequately repaid. These include debts to my parents, Roger and Linda Austin,
who taught me how to read and who always made sure that I lived in a house full
of books and ideas; to my wife, Karen Austin, for her emotional and intellectual
nurturing during the entire process of conceiving and executing this book—and
for taking a lead role in writing the instructor’s manual that accompanies it; and to
my children, Porter and Clarissa Austin, who patiently endured more than a year
of seeing their daddy always at the computer. My greatest hope is that they will
someday understand why.

xix
 Timeline
o

ca. 3000–1500 BCE Indus Valley civilization flourishes in present-day northeast

India. Writing present
ca. 3000 BCE Mesopotamia. Cuneiform writing on clay tablets
ca. 2575–2130 BCE Old Kingdom in Egypt (Great Pyramids, Sphinx)
ca. 2130–1540 BCE Middle Kingdom in Egypt
ca. 2070–1600 BCE Xia Dynasty flourishes in present-day China
1600–1046 BCE Shang Dynasty in China. Ideograph writing on oracle bones
ca. 1539–1200 BCE New Kingdom in Egypt
ca. 1200 BCE Moses leads Hebrews out of Egypt to Palestine
1030 BCE Kingdom of Israel founded
776 BCE First recorded Olympics held in Greece
753–510 BCE Roman Kingdom founded
700 BCE Emergence of kingdoms and republics in northern India
648 BCE Rise of first Persian state
600–400 BCE Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
510 BCE Roman Republic founded with the overthrow of the
Roman Kingdom
475–221 BCE Period of Warring States in China. “Hundred Schools of
Thought” flourish
431 BCE Pericles, The Funeral Oration
425 BCE Mo Tzu, Against Music • Mo Tzu, Against Offensive Warfare
400–320 BCE Sun Tzu, The Art of War
399 BCE Socrates, tried for impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens,
sentenced to death by hemlock
380 BCE Plato, Gorgias

Many dates, especially ancient ones, are approximate.

Boldface titles indicate works in the anthology.

xxi
xxii Timeline 350 BCE TO 800

350 BCE Aristotle, Rhetoric

331–330 BCE Alexander the Great conquers Syria, Mesopotamia, and Iran
330–323 BCE Alexander the Great conquers Central Asia and Indus Valley,
but dies in Babylon. His generals divide his empire and found
the Ptolemaic Dynasty in Egypt and Seleucid Empire in Syria,
Mesopotamia, and Iran
300 BCE Mencius, Man’s Nature Is Good • Hsün Tzu, Man’s Nature
Is Evil
250 BCE Hsün Tzu, Encouraging Learning
221–207 BCE Qin Dynasty established in China. Rule guided primarily by
Legalist philosophy
206 BCE–220 CE Han Dynasty founded. Rule guided by a mixture of Legalist and
Confucian philosophies
2nd–1st centuries BCE Buddhism spreads to China
49 BCE Beginning of civil war that ends the Roman Republic and leads
to the Roman Empire
30 BCE Rome conquers Egypt

ca. 6 Birth of Jesus

90 New Testament
ca. 100 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura • Epictetus, To Those Who
Fear Want
131–134 Jewish revolt against Roman rule; Jews expelled from Palestine
200–350 Introduction and spread of Christianity in North Africa
4th–6th centuries Clans ally to form Yamato, precursor of Japanese state
330 Constantine moves capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium
and renames it Constantinople
367 Final canon of the New Testament of the Bible established
395 Roman Empire divided into the Eastern and Western Empires
426 Augustine, On Christian Doctrine
476 Last emperor of the Western Empire deposed
ca. 500 Boethius, Of Music
500–1495 Rise of the West African savanna empires
550–700 Asuka period in Japan develops around the rule of the Yamato clan.
Buddhism introduced to the Japanese archipelago by way of Korea
570 CE Birth of Mohammed
610–1000 Introduction and spread of Islam in East and West Africa
610–632 Period of Mohammed’s prophesy, the growth of his following,
his flight to Medina, and his return to Mecca
800 Po-Chü-I, The Flower Market
 Timeline 819–1005 TO 1785 xxiii

819–1005 The Samanids, the first Persian Muslim dynasty, become

hereditary governors of eastern Iran and central Asia
1000 Lady Murasaki Shikibu, On the Art of the Novel
1096–1290 European Crusades to regain Christian control of
the Holy Lands
1265–1274 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
1281–1924 Ottoman rulers gradually establish the last great Islamic dynasty
to rule in the Middle East. They dominate the region until World
War II
1300–1500 Rise of the Kongo kingdom on the lower Zaire
1338–1453 Hundred Years’ War between France and England
1350 Laurentius de Voltolina, Liber Ethicorum des Henricus de
Alemania
1405 Christine de Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies
1453 Constantinople falls to the Turks, increasing dissemination of
Greek culture in western Europe
1492 Columbus lands in America
1513 Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
1515 Erasmus, Against War
1517 Luther’s Ninety-five Theses denounce abuses of the Roman
Church
1534 Henry VIII breaks with Rome and becomes head of the Church of
England
late 16th–mid 19th
centuries Atlantic slave trade
1620 Colony founded by Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts
1651 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan • Abraham Bosse, Frontispiece of
Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan
ca. 1666 Johannes Vermeer, Study of a Young Woman
1689 Matsuo Bashō, The Narrow Road to the Interior
1690 John Locke, Of Ideas
1691 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, La Respuesta
1751 William Hogarth, Gin Lane
1756–1763 Seven Years’ War, involving nine European powers
1757 Edmund Burke, The Sublime and Beautiful
1768 Joseph Wright of Derby, An Experiment on a Bird in the
Air Pump
1775–1783 American War of Independence; Declaration of Independence
1785 James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious
Assessments
xxiv Timeline 1789 TO ca. 1940

1789 French Revolution begins. French National Assembly adopts the

Declaration of the Rights of Man
1794 William Blake, The Tyger
1798 Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population
1802 William Paley, Natural Theology
1830 Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People
1845 Frederick Douglass, Learning to Read
1852 John Henry Newman, Knowledge Its Own End
1859 Charles Darwin, Natural Selection; or the Survival of the Fittest
1861–1865 American Civil War. Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation,
freeing the slaves in the Confederate States of America
1868 Meiji restoration in Japan overthrows the Tokugawa Shogunate
and results in rapid modernization
1891 Phrenology Chart
1896 Leo Tolstoy, What is Art?
1899–1902 Boxer Rebellion in China in response to the European presence.
The combined response of the European powers and Japan
is something of the world’s first international peacekeeping
mission
1904–1905 Japan becomes the first Asian power to defeat a Western nation,
when it wins the Russo-Japanese War
1911 China is thrown into decades of chaos when the Qing Dynasty is
overthrown and the last emperor is deposed
1914–1918 World War I in Europe and the colonies. The United States
enters in 1917
1916 Mohandas Gandhi, Economics and Moral Progress
1917 Russian Revolution overthrows the Romanov Dynasty
1923 Rabindranath Tagore, To Teachers
1929 American stock market crash heralds beginning of world eco-
nomic crisis; Great Depression lasts until 1939 • Virginia Woolf,
Shakespeare’s Sister
ca. 1930 Carl Jung, The Red Book
1933 Adolf Hitler given dictatorial powers in Germany
1934 Ruth Benedict, The Individual and the Pattern of Culture
1936–1938 Spanish Civil War. After the Nationalist side prevails against
the Republican side, Francisco Franco is installed as dictator
1936 Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother
1937 Pablo Picasso, Guernica • Japan invades China
1939 Germany invades Poland, pulling all of Europe into war
ca. 1940 Simone Weil, Equality
 Timeline 1940 TO 1994 xxv

1940 Margaret Mead, Warfare: An Invention—Not a Biological

Necessity
1941 Japan attacks Pearl Harbor. The United States enters
World War II
1942 George Orwell, Pacifism and the War
1945 World War II ends with the United States dropping atomic
bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. United Nations founded
1946 Cold War begins with Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech
1948 State of Israel founded
1949 Mao Zedong’s Communists push the Nationalist forces off main-
land China and establish the People’s Republic of China •
Apartheid instituted in South Africa
1950 Octavio Paz, The Day of the Dead
1950–1953 Korean War involves North and South Korea, the United Nations,
and China
1952 Revolution in Egypt, which becomes a republic in 1953
1960–1962 Independence for Belgian Congo, Uganda, Tanganyika, Nigeria
1961 Yuri Gagarin becomes first human in space
1962–1973 United States engaged in Vietnam War
1962 Rachel Carson, The Obligation to Endure
1963 Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
Wayne Booth, The Rhetorical Stance
Karl Popper, Science as Falsification
1966–1969 Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution attacks Confucian tradition and
intellectuals in China
1969 Neil Armstrong becomes first human on the moon
1971 Barry Commoner, The Four Laws of Ecology
1973 Arab oil producers cut off shipments to nations supporting Israel.
Ensuing energy crisis reshapes global economy
1974 Garrett Hardin, Lifeboat Ethics: The Case against Helping the
Poor
1983 Alice Walker, Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self
1985 Richard Feynman, O Americano Outra Vez
1987 Gloria Anzaldúa, How to Tame a Wild Tongue
1990 Aung San Suu Kyi, In Quest of Democracy • East and West
Germany united
1991 Soviet Union dissolved
1993 Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture • World Wide Web established
1994 Nelson Mandela becomes president of South Africa after first
multiracial elections there
xxvi Timeline 1997 TO 2013

1997 Desmond Tutu, Nuremberg or National Amnesia: A Third Way

1998 Edward O. Wilson, The Fitness of Human Nature
Marevasei Kachere, War Memoir
1999 Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just
2001 Islamists fly jets into the United States Pentagon and the World
Trade Center
2003 United States invades Iraq
Lisa Yuskavage, Babie I
2005 Women of World War II Monument
2006 Wangari Maathai, Foresters without Diplomas
2007 Brain Scan
2009 Vandana Shiva, Soil, Not Oil
2008 Barack Obama, A More Perfect Union
2010 Martha Nussbaum, Education for Profit, Education for
Democracy
Nicholas Carr, A Thing Like Me
2011 Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
Tawakkol Karman, Nobel Lecture
2012 Joseph Stiglitz, Rent Seeking and the Making of an Unequal
Society
2013 Zeynep Tufekci, Networked Politics from Tahrir to Taksim
 Pronunciation Guide
o

P H ONET IC K EY

a as in cat ee as in street j as in joke or as in bore

ah as in father ehr as in air nh a nasal sound ow as in now
ai as in light er as in bird o as in pot s as in mess
ay as in day eu as in lurk oh as in no u as in put
aw as in raw g as in good oo as in boot uh as in us
e as in pet i as in sit oy as in toy zh as in vision

N A M E S, TE RMS , AND T IT LES

Abraham Bosse ah-brahm’ bahs’-uh

Aeschylus esh’-kuh-luhs
Anzaldúa ahn-zuhl-doo’-uh
Aung San Suu Kyi owng sahn soo chee
Boethius boh-ee’-thee-uhs
Carl Jung kahrl yung
Christine de Pizan kris-teen’ day pee-zanh’
Daniel Kahneman dan’-yel khan’-i-min
Epictetus eh-pic-tay’-tus
Erasmus eh-raz’-muz
Eugène Delacroix eu-zhen’ duh-lah-krwah’
Feynman fain’-mun

xxvii
xxviii Pronunciation Guide

Hsün Tzu shinh tsuh

Johannes Vermeer yoh-hahn’-uhs ver-meer’
Lao Tzu low tsuh
Laurentius de Voltolina lahr-en’-ti-uhs day vohl-tow-leen’-uh
Marevasei Kachere mahr-e-vah-sai’ kuh-cher’-ai
Matsuo Basho- maht-soo-oh bah-shoh
Mencius men’-chee-oos
Mo Tzu mor tsuh
Murasaki Shikibu mu-ruh-saw’-kee shi-kee’-boo
Octavio Paz ohk-tahv-‘ee-oh pahz
Pericles pehr’-uh-klees
Po-Chü-I bo-choo-ee’
Rabindranath Tagore ra-bin’-dra-nahth tah-gor’
Seneca sen’-ah-kah
Simone Weil see-mohn’ vyle
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz sor wahnah een-nez day lah krooz
Sun Tzu shunh tsuh
Tawakkol Karman ta-wah-kohl kahr-mahn’
Vandana Shiva van’-dah-nah shee’-vuh
Wangari Maathai wawn-gah-ree mah-tai
Yuskavage you-skah/-vidge
Zeynep Tufekci zay’-nef too-fetch’-ee
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Illinoisians were called Suckers, the Missourians are Pukes; the
Kentuckians, Corncrackers; Virginians, Tuckahoes; Indianians, Hoosiers;
Michiganians, Wolverines, &c.
While sailing, or rather to use the customary phrase here, riding along
these western rivers, one is struck with the destruction of trees. What
magnificent forests we passed to-day, where the huge and towering
sycamore, the dark green buckeye, the lighter cotton wood, the tall and
graceful shaft of the sugar maple, the white elm, with its beautifully
arranged branches and purple flowers, the silvery white maple, the oak, the
beech, woven together by missletoe and other creepers, on the Ohio shore;
and on the Kentucky bank, the blue ash, the coffee tree, stately tulip, yellow
locust, dark leaved hackberry, basswood, and hundreds of others, make a
mass of glorious forest scenery, such as I am sure earth cannot surpass. But
the great rise and fall, and changes of this river, and its shores, destroy
hundreds of these noble creations in a year. Countless numbers we saw
along the banks, with all their roots exposed, holding but by one slight one,
which any blast of wind might loosen, when it falls and is washed away.
The shores were strewed with them in all stages; many struck down in
youth, with their young foliage about them; others in the sere and yellow
leaf, while others again stripped of leaf and bark, are piled in great ‘wreck
heaps,’ where the current has hurled them, or floating down the stream, in
time to become a snag and lie in wait to impale some unconscious vessel.
While looking upon them in their innocence and beauty, I could not but pity
their vampire fate, so soon to be transformed into malicious snags, to
destroy the passing voyager. The quantity of yellow clay marl which occurs
along the shores, contributes to their destruction, as it easily crumbles away.
This also gives the peculiar rounded form to the Ohio hills, as the marl is
washed down, giving the hills a smooth round shape.
At Sandy river, a stream which runs one hundred and sixty miles through
Virginia, we bade adieu to old Kentuck. The rich and fertile plains of
Kentucky were the favorite hunting grounds of the Aborigines of the
surrounding regions, as there the buffalo, elk, deer, &c. roved in large herds.
Extremely unwilling to surrender it to the white intruders, the Indians
fought long and bravely for it, and so many severe battles took place there,
that Kentucky acquired among the Indians the name of ‘the dark and bloody
ground.’ The inhabitants have long been celebrated for their valor. Some of
the scenery of Kentucky is the most beautiful in the States, and some of the
land the most fertile. It is four hundred miles long, and contains twenty-six
million acres. The wonderful caverns which occur in the limestone
formations, you have heard of. Population, between six and seven hundred
thousand. Virginia, the land of the cavaliers, and of Pocahontas, looked very
inviting, as we sailed past it; her pretty hills lending beauty to every view.
At Guyandot, we landed a party to visit the Sulphur Springs in Virginia,
which are now quite fashionable. Our springs at Saratoga and Ballston, lose
many southern and western visitors, since these, and so many others have
been discovered in those regions.

July 22nd.—Off Gallipolis, a town settled by French people, who came

here to avoid the excesses of the revolution. These persons, brought up in a
delicate, luxurious manner, were obliged to plunge at once into all the
hardships of a woodland life, and suffered much ere their houses were
erected, and all things in order. Upon the opposite shore the Kenawha enters
the Ohio, after coming from the iron mountain in North Carolina, through
Kentucky three hundred miles. It has dug for itself a deep bed in the
limestone rocks, and upon its banks is the most rugged and picturesque
scenery in Kentucky. Coal, and salt springs abound along its shores. The
rapids of the Ohio came in sight after this, and looked cool and pretty, as the
water curled and foamed over the ledges of rocks and pebbles. The water
was very clear and we seemed sailing upon the bottom; but being so
unusually low, our boat, as small as she was, grounded several times. In
these extremities recourse was had to cordelling. A rope was carried ahead
by a small boat, and fastened to a rock, or anchored; and a windlass brought
the boat up to the rock. After passing the rapids, the river becomes
shallower and more narrow; but as our boat only drew twenty inches, we
succeeded in going on, while some larger ones which had accompanied us
thus far, were left in the river, or at some village. The islands are more
frequent, and some of them very lovely, mazes of beautiful forest trees
woven together in natural bowers by pea vines in blossom, scarlet creeper,
and many other pretty and new plants. The island of the unfortunate
Blennarhasset, is the largest and loveliest, containing seven hundred acres.
Through the circle of forest trees which border it, we caught glimpses of the
centre which was level, and once highly cultivated. Here he created a
paradise of lawns and groves, and gardens, surrounding a dwelling, the
residence of his charming family, to which were attached green and hot-
houses, libraries and music rooms. Ambition has rendered this fair spot a
desert; he never rose to the empire which he and his tempter, Burr, had
hoped to create. After all, the saddest part of Herman Blennarhasset’s fate
is, that every tourist who passes the island, must mention his name and utter
an effecting sentimentality about ambition; it seems like dragging him out
of his resting place, to hear our taunts; if you travel this way, let me beg of
you—

“Breathe not his name, let it sleep in the dust,

Where cold and unhonored his ashes are laid.”

Parkersburgh at the mouth of the little Kenawha, is a quaint old

fashioned town in Virginia; embosomed in hills. Here we intended to land
and take the mail stage to Winchester, but it had just departed, and rather
than remain there two days, until another stage, we concluded to go on in
the Agnes to Wheeling. Accordingly we and our trunks were again on
board, and we resumed our rambles. At sunset we stopped, at the town of
Marietta, the first spot settled in Ohio. Its name was very prettily given in
honor of the fair and unfortunate Maria Antoinette of France; in gratitude
for the support she gave our cause. The town was laid out in 1788. The
streets are wide, and adorned with forest trees, and parks. The houses are
solidly built, having each its ornamented court and garden. The exchange,
court-house, college, churches, and other public buildings are handsome
structures. It is principally settled by New Englanders, whose love of good
order and morality has not been left behind, for the motto upon the town
seal pledges their ‘support of religion and learning.’ Marietta is upon the
Muskingum, which is between two and three hundred yards wide, and
navigable for one hundred miles with large boats. It is a remarkably pure,
healthy, bright stream, ‘rolling its limpid waves over a sandy and pebbly
bottom, variegated in summer months with the open valves of thousands of
red and white shells scattered among the sand, rivalling in beauty the richest
tessellated pavement of the Romans.’ Upon its banks stands Zanesville, a
large and handsome town, and in the county through which this river and its
branches flow, are quantities of iron, coal, salt, limestone, and many other
useful productions. There are also ancient mounds and fortifications upon
its shores. Marietta appears beautifully as we approach, seated upon an
elevated bank, at the foot of a range of the picturesque Ohio hills. These are
about three hundred feet high, formed of ‘argillacious earth, based upon
sandstone.’ The scenery this afternoon is of a grander cast than any we had
yet seen upon the Ohio. The hills which have generally risen at some
distance from the shore, now come close down to the water, so that, as we
ride along we can look far up into their recesses. They have the same
gracefully regular appearance, except that now and then a ledge of
sandstone or limestone, breaks the smooth green side.
I have said very little about the cooking and victuals upon these western
boats. The latter are very good, and finer beef, fish, bread, etc., cannot be
found any where; the most fastidious palate might here be satisfied were it
not for one thing—our western brethren are so fond of fat. Almost every
dish of animal food is swiming in a greasy liquor. Doubtless I should be
used to it in time and like it as well as our young southern friend who used
to expatiate upon the delights of hominy and ‘possum fat.’ However, I
cannot expect persons, wherever I may choose to travel, to shape their table
to please me, so I make a point of taking things as quietly as if I had
ordered every thing. I generally succeeded, by declining gravey, to obtain a
piece tolerably dry, and this, with their excellent vegetables, Indian bread,
good butter, and nice stewed dried peaches, the unfailing accompaniment to
every meal, to secure a pleasant and healthful repast. Tea and coffee we
have met, of all shades and varieties, but none so unique as the prairie
coffee, of which I wrote you. The accommodations are comfortable, and in
the ladies apartment, towels, basins, and water enough, and leave to use
your own brushes. The gentlemen were confined to tin washbowls upon
deck, but if any one chose to ask, he might always have a basin and towel in
his cabin. We found nothing to complain of as serious annoyances, but
received every attention and politeness from captains and servants.
 LETTER XI.
Wheeling, Virginia July 23d.
Although weary of the constant jar of these high pressure steamboats, and
glad once more to step upon firm land, yet, when told Wheeling was in
sight, I felt regret that I must now turn my back upon the beautiful Ohio and
the charming western land. I ought not to leave the fair State of Ohio
without saying a few words to give you an idea of its extent and condition
—matters which you may perhaps extract from Gazateers yourself, but this
will save you the trouble. Gazateers and tourists guides, however, are of
little use in a region which so rapidly changes its appearance, and increases
its population. Where you are directed to remark the beauty of a grand
forest, you find a large town, and where, when the book was written, spread
out a fair prairie, you find a country covered with farm houses, cornfields,
fences and orchards. Along the coast of Ohio we have sailed over an
hundred miles on lake Erie, and upon the Ohio river, four hundred miles.
From Cincinnati here, which is all that distance, except twenty or thirty
miles we paid twelve dollars, six each; which, with board for three days, is
not expensive travelling. The State of Ohio is nearly square, being two
hundred and twenty-two miles long by two hundred broad, and with Indiana
and Illinois, are parts of a great plain which inclines to the Mississippi,
through which the rivers have cut their way into their deep beds. The
geology of these States is very much the same, they being based upon that
great secondary limestone formation which reaches from the eastern States
to the Chippewayan mountains, and from the great lakes to the alluvion of
the southern States. This is doubtless the deposite of the primitive ocean, as
it occurs ‘in layers of chrystaline and sedimentary, or in broken pieces
cemented together.’[26] It is of all shades, from the dark brown ferruginous,
to the light grey, the blue fœtid, the yellow silecious, and magnesian, the
argillaceous, earthy, chrystaline oolitic, etc. In this limestone formation is a
variety of fossil shells of many species, as the ammonites, spiriferi, encrini,
producti, corallines, gryphea, madrepores, and various others. Its thickness
is enormous, for it has been penetrated one thousand feet without reaching
the primitive rocks.[27] Above this is the sandstone, and slate, and clay of
the coal measures, and muriatiferous rocks. These sandstones are generally
white ash color, or brown; a very little red has been discovered in this
valley. One of our western friends, who has well studied the geology of that
region, was of opinion that all the groups of fossiliferous secondary strata
recognized and determined by European geologists have not been
discovered here; but that they claim the upper new, red sandstone and
oolites, that have not been subdivided; that above the oolites they have
unconsolidated strata of great extent and thickness, which do not abound in
fossils, and have not been sufficiently observed to justify and attempt to
confer names upon them. Several of the groups of the European secondary
are thought to be wanting here. The chalk group is certainly wanting; nor
have any of the four received divisions of the supercretaceous, or tertiary,
been identified in the western valley. The older pliocene, and it is thought
the newer, have been observed in Alabama. The recent pliocene is here
established; the accumulation of gigantic fossil remains; of mammalia at
Big Bone Lick, Kentucky; at Bucyrus, Ohio; at Pomme de Terre, Missouri;
and at Rocky Spring, near St. Louis, identify this group with certainty. The
recent pliocene is not horizontal, it having been seen fifteen hundred feet or
more above the level of the sea. Its remains of elephants, tetracaulidons, and
other fossils identical with existing genera upon the earth demonstrates its
geological era to be near us. There are several remarkable deposites in Ohio
and the surrounding States—the sileceous, ferruginous, muriatiferous, and
the coal. The sileceous deposite, sometimes called ‘Flint ridge,’ runs nearly
through the State of Ohio, in a south-westerly direction from the
Tuscarawas river, to the Sciota, near the Ohio. Its greatest width is four or
five miles, being strewed over the ground in broken masses; beneath the
soil; or, which is its most common situation, upon the tops of the hills;
doubtless thrown up from the ocean in a fluid and heated state. This
deposite occurs generally white, but is occasionally streaked with various
hues, and is compact, cellular, and vermicular. The aboriginal inhabitants
made great use of it for arrow heads; and the present settlers find it very
valuable as whet-stones, hones, and mill-stones. The latter are thought equal
to the French buhr stone, and are sold to the amount of twenty thousand
dollars a year. Those from the deposite upon Raccoon creek, are very
celebrated. In this silecious material occurs marine shells, beautiful and
limpid quartz chrystals, veins of chalcedony, sulphate of barytes, flint,
hornstone, and various other minerals.
 The ferruginous deposite crosses the State from north-east to south-west,
commencing at the division line between Ohio and Pennsylvania, upon lake
Erie, to the mouth of the Sciota, and thence continues into Kentucky, to the
Cumberland mountains, its average width being from fifteen to twenty
miles. The iron occurs in several varieties, as a brown oxide, an argillaceous
ore, pure, highly carbonated ore, etc. Its forms are also various; the ore
occurring lamellated, disseminated in kidney shaped masses, columnar,
stalactitic, cubic, in rhombic fragments, nodules, etc. It is extensively
worked in many furnaces of Ohio and Kentucky. In this iron are marine
shells and plants of a tropical climate.
I have spoken of the muriatiferous rocks, and I will now pass on to the
coal measures. The quantity of coal found in these western States is
wonderful. The valley of the Ohio, and it now appears the valley of the
Mississippi are underlaid with coal. The Alleghany mountains are filled
with it; at their bases it is heaped up in masses, probably of antediluvial
vegetation, by the eddies of the currents. These mountains seem to divide
the anthracite from the bituminous coal. There is enough of this article in
Ohio to last thousands of years, twelve thousand square miles being
underlaid with it in one grand basin. In Indiana, according to Dr. Owen, the
coal formation occupies seven thousand seven hundred and eighty square
miles; in Pennsylvania, the bituminous coal embraces an area of twenty-one
thousand square miles; while in the States west of these, coal is found in
considerable quantities, but it has not been thoroughly examined. The
richest deposit of coal in the valley of the Ohio, is the basin through which
runs the Monongahela river; it is two hundred miles in length and one
hundred in breadth.[28] It occurs extensively in layers across the hills—that
of Coal hill at Pittsburg, supplies the city, which it uses in its great
manufactories. The coal consumed in this city and its suburbs is estimated
at ‘seven millions six hundred and sixty-five thousand bushels.’ This useful
article is easily procured throughout the west and is consequently very
cheap, being two, four, or eight cents a bushel in different places. The iron
and salt furnaces, and manufactories of the west owe their present
flourishing trade to the abundance of this material. This coal is black
bituminous generally; burns freely, and in some deposits, forms very good
coke which is used in the furnaces. In Licking Co., Ohio is a deposit of
Canal coal, and another in Guernsey Co. Beside these interesting minerals
there are numerous others in the Ohio valley which are very valuable; upon
Wills creek Ohio is a deposit of fine lias limestone—and there are in the
State various other stones suitable for building,—sandstones of fine quality
used for architectural purposes,—gypsum, lead, copper &c. The coal
measures abound in organic remains; some of them belonging to the
tropical palms and ferns are very beautiful and perfect. When we see how
important these articles are to the western land, and how profusely they are
scattered and how easily obtained, one cannot think they are thus arranged
by accidental convulsions of nature. We know that the greatest coal deposits
are above the thirtieth degree of latitude, and is not this because the
inhabitants below this degree do not so much require it, while the colder
countries would be almost deserts without it, so good and beneficient is our
great Father. You will say I am like the old woman who praised the
goodness of God for making rivers flow by the side of cities. I think there is
double enjoyment in every gift when we feel it is from His compassionate
hand. Ohio is one of the finest agricultural countries in the world. Her
productions are justly celebrated for their goodness and quantity. Her
exports in flour last year is said to be seven million five hundred thousand
dollars. The land belonging to the government sells here, as in the other
States for one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre. Around large towns the
owner of the lots asks of course more. We must bid Ohio now adieu and
look around us a little. We were approaching Wheeling when I thus
digressed. It appears very well from the water; you see a circle of swelling
green hills with the bright river encircling a large island in the midst. The
town runs in a long line across the slope of one of the hills, while a group of
steamboats looking wonderfully like a flock of geese were floating upon the
water beneath. People are busy taking out coal from the hills, and trundling
it down a wooden rail-way into the vessels below. The hills are between
two, and three hundred feet high; the coal stretches along their face for
fifteen miles and then dips into the earth. It is a kind valuable for cooking,
and some of it is beautifully irridescent. The manufactories of Wheeling are
supplied with it and it is extensively sold down the river, at the cost of three
cents a bushel when delivered to the boat. One million five hundred
thousand bushels of coal are exported from Wheeling every year. Wheeling
is a second Pittsburg blackened with coal; while the smoke is rising from
forge, and furnace, and chimney, in every direction. Here we found the best
landing of any town upon the river, as the steep bank was walled up, and we
ascended by a long flight of steps. When upon the top of the wharf we
found ourselves before a range of shops and hotels, while before us was the
‘United States,’ where we deposited ourselves and luggage. After tea we set
out for a stroll through the town accompanied by a very agreeable party
who had left the boat with us, the remainder of our passengers going on to
Pittsburg, about ninety miles farther. We had been through so many new
towns that this looked quite antique, it being settled in seventeen hundred
and seventy by Col. Zane and his brothers, who afterwards founded
Zanesville. The streets here run along the face of the hill, and contain many
shops, manufactories, a large court-house, hotels, banks and dwellings.
Among the buildings are seven churches, an academy, iron and brass
founderies, flint glass works, paper and saw mills, steam engine and
machinery works, nail factory, cordage, wire floorcloth factories &c. Eight
stages arrive and depart each day, Sundays excepted, and various
steamboats stop here—so if you know of any mechanics or trades-people
complaining of want of work in your crowded city tell them to wend their
way hitherward. All kind of laborers will find business enough in the west. I
think a society for exporting over the Alleghanies the poor European
emigrants who are suffering in our large cities, would be of great service to
them and to us. The population we were told nearly numbered ten thousand.
Among the houses we observed one quite large and handsome; this we were
told was built by Col. Zane, when the town was first settled and his
descendants have resided there since. He was an active pioneer of the
wilderness, and encountered many difficulties, and fought many battles
with the Indians ere he was permanently settled in his beautiful abode. In
these attacks the females of Wheeling showed much heroism and took an
active part in the affray. The little settlement was once attacked by three
hundred and eighty Indians when Col. Zane had with him but thirty-three
men, but the women shouldered their rifles, joined in the battle and did
much execution. Once, in despair, the garrison inclined to a surrender, but a
young girl named Betsey Wheat, answered them in such an eloquent and
indignant burst of irony that they rallied and defeated the enemy. In a
second attack Elizabeth, the sister of Col. Zane, saved the fort by bringing
into it a quantity of powder, braving, but passing unhurt through the
whizzing balls directed against her by the Indians. Some of the buildings
here are of the light sandstone of the country.
 July 24th.—We were aroused early by the trampling of steeds and upon
looking out beheld several fine stages each having four horses which were
soon to start upon their different roads. Our breakfast over we with the party
mentioned above entered a large convenient coach and just as the clock
struck seven left the hotel. Upon reaching the top of the hill above the town
we looked down upon as fair a scene as any we had seen in our travels. The
town was strewed over the hill below us, while the beautiful Ohio lay like a
circlet of silver around a pretty island covered with waving corn and dotted
with farm-houses, and then glided away in its course winding among the
soft green hills until it disappeared behind one of them. The island is Zane’s
island, containing three hundred and fifty acres. We had now looked our last
upon the lovely valley of the Ohio, and its beautiful river the Belle riviere
of the French, and Ohio Peekhanne of the Indian. This valley is from the
sources of the Ohio to the Mississippi eleven hundred miles in length, and
nearly three hundred miles in breadth. It sweeps down from the Alleghanies
at an elevation of two thousand two hundred and thirty feet to the Ohio and
then ascends gently four hundred feet to the ridge which divides its waters
from those which flow into the gulf of St. Lawrence, a distance of nearly
three hundred miles. Through this valley winds in graceful bends the noble
Ohio eleven hundred miles from its source, and nine hundred and forty-
eight from its junction with the Monongohela at Pittsburg. It divides the
valley in two unequal portions, having one hundred and sixteen thousand
square miles upon the south-east side, and eighty thousand upon the north-
west. This valley enjoys a pleasant temperature not too cold to paralyze
exertion, and not so warm as to enervate. Its soil is capable of yielding
fruits, vegetables, and grains, of the finest quality and in great profusion,
and mineral products of the utmost importance to man; and it is settled by a
free, virtuous, and enlightened people; add to this the scenery is beautiful
and varied, and I think you will look far to find a region of country uniting
so many advantages. The dark clouds of slavery which shadow its borders
is the only spot in its fair horizon. The valley of the Ohio is in the centre of
a great plain, which as the Appalachian chain was elevated raised up that
portion, and consequently the rivers which flow over that division come
with more impetuosity and dig for themselves deep trenches in the earth.
Many who have carefully examined this region are of opinion the regular
hills which border the Ohio and many of its tributaries, are parts of the
primitive plain, which the streams have worn down into their present
shapes. In this valley lies that great coal basin which is so ably described by
Dr. Hildreth in the American Journal of Science. It extends over four or five
degrees of latitude, and as many of longitude. A circle drawn from the head
waters of the Muskingum to the sources of the Alleghany, and from thence
to those of the Monongohela and Kenawha would mark the extent of this
deposit, comprising portions of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky.
Adieu to the fair Ohio! It has carried us for nearly nine hundred miles in
safety upon its bosom, unharmed by snag or sawyer; and I say with Milton,

“May thy brimmed waves for this,

Their full tribute never miss,
From a thousand petty rills,
That rumble down the snowy hills;
Summer drought or singed air,
Never reach thy tresses fair;
Nor wet October’s torrent flood,
Thy molten crystal fill with mud.”

Our day’s journey was very delightful. The country is rolling, and
alternately pretty hill and dale scenery, and winding rivulets. The first part
of our ride was through Virginia, but in a short time at the village of
Alexandria, we entered Pennsylvania. We drove over the national road,
which runs from Cumberland, in Maryland, and passes through the
intervening States to Vandalia, Illinois, from whence it is expected to be
finished to Alton. This is a firm McAdamized road, eighty feet broad,
carried over mountains, vallies and rivers, crossing the latter as well as
every ravine and depression by well built stone bridges. This very useful
and well executed work was done by government, at the suggestion of our
statesman, Henry Clay. We passed a neat farm house, before which stood a
bronze statue of Clay, placed there by a widow lady, owner of the place, in
gratitude for the benefit this road had produced to her property. We of
course were in duty bound to admire the statue, while rolling so rapidly and
smoothly over this excellent road. At Washington, Pa., we dined; a pretty
town, having three churches, hotels, and shops, with a college, a large
building, in the centre of pleasant grounds. A large court-house, of brick,
was in progress. The dinner was good, but plain. The hills which we passed
in the afternoon, were covered with rich pasture land, where sheep and
cattle were making a fine feast. These grassy hills are famous for the ‘glade
butter,’ which is celebrated around the country, and which we found very
sweet and fresh. While descending the side of one of these hills, we were
told Brownsville, Pa., was in sight, and looking down, we beheld a town in
the valley, with the pretty Monongohela glistening in the bright sun, as it
wound its way around the hills. Rattling over a fine, strong, covered bridge,
we stopped to change horses before the principal hotel. This is a large
manufacturing town, containing five thousand inhabitants. Steamboats are
here built, and completely fitted up; and when the river is high, they run to
Pittsburg, sixty miles distant. The hills are high around, abounding in
bituminous coal, and laid with strata of limestone and sandstone. The coal
here is very rich. Dark, heavy masses, after we had left this place, began to
appear in the horizon, and we were rejoiced to hear they were the celebrated
Alleghany mountains. We took tea at Uniontown, Pa., at the foot of the
chesnut ridge, and soon after began to ascend the mountain. Our mountain
ride was delightful, and when near the summit we all descended from the
stage coach, to enjoy the views. What a glorious thing to stand upon the top
of a mountain! How exultingly you gaze upon the world below! You feel so
proud of the great feat you have performed; you breathe freer; the heavens
seem nearer and brighter, and the earth—but do not let me speak against the
earth, for never had it looked more enchanting than when looking upon it
from the summit of the Alleghanies. The fair fields of Pennsylvania, were
spread out below, varied with herbage of every shade; with groves and
villages, and streams, whose waters were tinted with rose from the setting
sun; around in every direction was a green ocean of hill tops, robed in a
vesture of purple haze. You will smile at my heroics upon the summit of so
small a mountain as one of the Alleghanies, scarcely three thousand feet
above the earth, and think it better applied to the Chimborazo, Popocatapetl,
or even Rocky Mountains; but fortunately, I have never been upon higher
ground, and enjoy the view from the Appalachian range, as much as if I
stood upon the Nevados of our southern continent, twenty-five thousand
feet above the sea. Depend upon it, those who have seen every thing, who
have been rowed down the Nile; climbed the rocks of Petra; worshipped at
Jerusalem; toiled up the Himalayas; and frozen in Siberia, are no happier
than we, who have been creeping about the circle of our home. To
everything you call upon them to admire they answer, ‘J’ai vu;’ they have
seen everything. If you praise a song, they turn away with scorn and speak
of the opera at Naples; if you ask them to visit our springs or our cities, they
talk of the spa’s of Europe, of Paris, of London, and Petersburgh. They have
nothing to do but fold their hands, grumble at the present, and live upon the
past. I have not seen, and therefore may be allowed to expatiate upon the
beauties of the Alleghanies. All that night we drove up the hills and down
the hills, shut up in the stage coach. We were glad of our cloaks, for it was
very cold, and at every stopping place we found fires, although at the foot
of the mountains the thermometer stood at eighty. We talked merrily at first
and kept up each others spirits, but towards midnight we grew cold and
weary, and one after another sank into silence. There was much nodding
and dozing, but little sleeping; for as soon as one fell into a doze another
was sure to ask you if you could sleep, or how you came on, a question sure
to put to flight your endeavors. At last, hopeless of sleep, we gave it up by
mutual consent, and tried to amuse each other by stories. One of our party
was a western merchant who had frequently travelled over these mountains,
and met with numerous adventures. He told us of an adventure which befel
him twenty years since, when the mountains were little travelled, and only
accessible on horseback. He was carrying a large sum of money in his
saddle-bags, which he feared had been discovered by two ill looking men
whom he had seen in the tavern where he had stopped just at dusk. He for
some time felt a little fear, but the night had nearly worn away and he had
not seen any one; when, soon after midnight, as he was pacing slowly
along, he fancied he caught a glimpse of a man standing by the road side
just before him. He gazed intently through the darkness and saw distinctly
two men who drew farther out of the moonlight into the shade of the trees
as he approached. He knew not what to do; he was not armed, no house was
near, and if he left the road he must be lost in the pathless woods. Go on he
must, and he determined to put spurs to his horse and dart past them. He
gazed forward to see if his path were clear; a deep silence reigned around,
when ‘Dismount and give up your money!’ resounded like thunder in his
ears, echoing away among the silent aisles of the mountain forest. Two men
were before him; his whip was wrenched from his hands; he was dragged to
the ground; the robbers mounted his steed and rode away. ‘Well, there I was
in a pretty fix, anyhow,’ he said, ‘sitting upon a mound of snow all alone, in
a wild wood at midnight, my two hundred dollars and my horse all gone. I
might have said with Shakspeare’s queen, ‘Here I in sorrow sit,’ etc., but I
was not in a poetical mood anyhow. Besides, I could blame no one but
myself, for I ought to have kept my eye skinned, and not have been so blind
as not to see the danger of travelling in wild parts with so much gold. Still,
if the parts were wild, we had never heard of any robbery committed here,
and did not expect it.’ ‘Did you ever discover the robbers?’ we asked. ‘Oh,
yes! I went back to the village, and every one turned out to help me. There
was snow on the ground and we were thus able to track them. I was forced
to go all the way to Buffalo, however, ere one was caught by the police. He
had lived like a prince all along the road and spent his share of the money.’
‘What became of the other man?’ ‘Why, ma’am, as I was one day walking
through Pratt street, in Baltimore, some months after, whom should I meet
but my man, dressed in the newest style, parading along as proud as a
prairie cock, with a grand lady upon each arm. I knew him, as I had
remarked him at the tavern, and by the bright moonlight. He also
remembered me, and when he saw my eye so eagerly fixed upon him,
without saying good bye to the ladies, or even waiting upon them home, he
scattered at once down the street, and I after him. If you had seen the ladies
stare! Away he went, up street, down street, along the wharves, in the
vessels, out again. At last, thinking he had dodged me, he sprang into an
empty hogshead. But I wasn’t to be did that way anyhow; so I flung a board
over the top, and standing on it, clapped my arms and crowed in such a tone
of triumph, that all the cocks in the neighboring yards crowed in concert. In
short my man was treed and imprisoned, but my money was gone.’

July 25th.—At day-break I lifted the curtain, and by the uncertain light
of dawn, beheld at my side a wide river, whose opposite shores were green
and hilly. ‘Are we over the mountains already? What river can this be?’ I
asked. With a smile, one of the party informed me we were on the summit
of a high mountain, and the deep valley filled with mist, with the opposite
summits for a shore, made my river. A bright sun soon dispersed the mist,
and we were never tired of the variety of views we beheld upon every hand.
That the mountains are not very high adds to the beauty of the scene; their
heads are not lost in the clouds, and we frequently see the whole mass at
once. While descending one Alleghany we beheld another before us, like a
high green wall reaching to the heavens, while a line across the summit
showed the road we were to travel; so high and precipitous it seemed, that
we wondered how we ever should reach the road. Descending again this
ridge, we gazed out over a great extent of country, or down into deep
valleys, brightened by winding streams, while trees, and flowers, and vines
of every tint and form, adorned the path. The laurels were out of bloom, but
their deep green glossy leaves shone out continually from the foliage. The
chesnut was also frequent; these two giving names to the two ridges we had
passed, Laurel and Chesnut ridges. We also remarked the pretty striped
maple, whose green bark is striped with black. This is sometimes called
moose wood, as the moose-deer always seeks with avidity its tender leaves
and bark. The box elder also occurs upon these slopes, with the holly, and
varieties of the magnolia, the turpelo, gum tree, besides noble forests of
many other trees. The road although leading over mountain ridges and
passes, is not a lonely one, as stages loaded with passengers, were continual
passing, and huge Pennsylvanian waggons with the large Normandy horses,
high collar, and jingling a bell to give notice of their approach. The women
of the country we often met upon horseback, sitting upon their gaily
embroidered saddles. The fine broad smooth National road over which we
were passing enabled the drivers to keep their horses upon a very quick trot.
I am fond of rapid driving, but sometimes it made me rather nervous to dash
at the rate of eight miles an hour, within two feet of a precipice down which
we looked upon the tops of trees a thousand feet below. There is, however,
very little danger, as where the descent is steep, the driver can, in a moment,
by putting his foot upon a spring at his side, cramp the wheel, and check our
speed. After ascending a high mountain, we found a tavern, whose sign
bore the hospitable words ‘Welcome from the west.’ We were much pleased
with this kind reception, until upon looking back, perceived upon the other
side of the sign ‘welcome from the east.’ I wish the good lady who erected
a statue to Clay, would place a monument upon the Alleghanies, to
commemorate honest Daniel Boon, who claims to be the first who
discovered the fair western plains. Sir Alexander Spotswood, a governor of
Virginia, penetrated part of the way through the mountains. There was no
National road then, and the hills were almost impassable. To stimulate
discovery, he instituted the order of the golden horse-shoe, for those who
could pass the Blue Ridge. He was anxious to counteract the influence of
the French upon the Mississippi. There should also be a statue to good old
Father Marquette, upon the shore of Lake Michigan, as, before him, no
white man had penetrated farther in the wilderness. He persevered and
discovered the Mississippi. We passed several towns, as Smythfield,
Petersburg, Frostburg, Cumberland, &c. This last town is in Maryland, upon
a branch of the Potomac, one hundred and forty miles from Baltimore. The
scenery around it is beautiful. It lies in a valley, through which glistens the
Potomac river, surrounded by mountains. We reached it this morning, after
descending a slope which seemed to rise one mass of rocks above us. The
town has several large hotels, a college, court-house, and many shops. We
stopped here to change horses. Here commences the transition formations,
the Appalachian range, dividing the transition from the secondary
formations of the western valley. So clear and distinct is this division, that
the celebrated geologist, Dr. Aikin, fixed upon the ground between
Cumberland and Hancock, forty miles distant, as the spot where the
Appalachian chain emerged from beneath, upheaved by igneous action. The
mountain which we descended to Cumberland, is called the Alleghany by
pre-eminence, it being the highest elevation, and is the ridge which divides
the waters which flow into the Ohio, from those which reach the Atlantic.
The rocks which we had observed upon our road, were the usual limestone,
marl, and conglomerates of the west, mixed with much bituminous coal,
while now we remarked with them, grey wacke and transition slates. The
Baltimore and Ohio railroad will pass through Cumberland, and the
Chesapeake and Ohio canal. Here also the National commences, and we
there left it, but found a very good one which continued, with some failures,
during the day. We dined at Pine Grove, a small village. Near the hotel is a
sulphur spring, which we were obliged to taste, to gratify the landlord, and
which was as nauseous as one could desire. This afternoon we passed some
very pretty mountain scenery; none so high as those we had left behind, for
we were only upon the steps which lead down from the ridge to the plains
below. From Sidling Hill we looked down into a large valley surrounded by
a circle of hills, through which a river winding its way formed several
islands. In the centre, was a high rounded knoll covered with fields of
ripened grain, its bright yellow contrasting well with the dark woods which
surround it. They have a curious way here of laying the grain when cut, in
squares or circles, which looks very pretty at a distance. We took tea at
Hancock, a town upon the banks of the Potomac. The Chesapeake and Ohio
canal is finished as far as this place. We were but little over half way to
Baltimore here, having come, we were told, one hundred and sixty miles
from Wheeling. Another night was passed in the stage, only varied by
occasional stoppages to change horses. About day-break we stopped at
Hagarstown, a very large, thriving place, containing churches, academies,
and many handsome private dwellings. The hotel which we entered while
the horses were changed, was large, and seemed very commodious. After
leaving it, we found the valley in which it stands, was very highly
cultivated. It is underlaid with a dark blue limestone; the soil is very rich,
and the wheat which it produces, is sent to Baltimore, and highly esteemed.
We saw some of this limestone which occasionally cropped out; veins of
calcareous spar crossed the blue, in some instances. Quartz pebbles, and
large nodules were spread over the country for miles, between this town and
Frederic, as if a storm of enormous hail had spent its fury over the land.
Rounded pieces, as large as a man’s fist, and white as milk, lay against the
fences, or were piled up by the husbandman. The county to Frederic is very
pretty, undulating, cultivated, and well settled, while dark masses in the
distant horizon told us our pretty mountains were far behind us.

July 26th.—At eleven o’clock, we reached Frederick city, where we

breakfasted. This is a very pretty city, having an air of antiquity; as we now
had arrived in an old settled country, and the newly painted towns were
giving place to what are called old, although not what an European would
deem aged. I was almost too sleepy to see much of it, but as we rattled over
paved streets, and looked upon rows of houses, we seemed quite at home
again.
We bade adieu to the stage-coach, and after a good breakfast, entered the
rail-road car, and were whirled along with a rapidity which was frightful,
after our stage-coach pace. The cars were handsomely finished, having an
apartment appropriated to the ladies, where reclining upon the blue satin
sofas we relieved our cramped limbs. The country, between Frederick and
Baltimore, is very pretty. I think it is about sixty miles from the one place to
the other. We passed many good houses, surrounded with fine farms, having
the shining Monocasy river, winding among them. We crossed this and the
Petapsco, over several bridges. The latter river flows between high banks of
granite. Fifteen miles, from Baltimore, are the celebrated Ellicots mills,
built of the granite of the cliffs, upon which they stand, where is ground the
excellent Baltimore flour, raised from the fertile country around Frederick
and Hagarstown. Some of the deep cuts of the rail-road seem to be through
a mass of debris, of all colours, red, white, and blue, mixed with talcose
slate, and blue limestone, until near Baltimore, when we entered that
granitic belt, which stretched through the Atlantic, border to Georgia, and
which is supposed once to have been the original Atlantic coast, before the
band of alluvion was formed. After passing many fanciful country seats,
and the fine viaduct which leads to Washington, we beheld Baltimore, an
enormous mass of brick and stone lying upon the shore of Petapsco bay.
Our western friends were delighted and surprised at the sight of so large a
city while driving through the street. We arrived at Barnham’s large and
elegant hotel just as they were eating dinner. We had infringed upon our
Sabbath thus far, without intending it, as we were told we should arrive in
Baltimore in time for morning services. In the afternoon and evening,
however, there was opportunity of joining in public worship, which my
husband and some of the party embraced, leaving us, the weaker part, at
home to rest.

July 27th.—As we did not leave Baltimore until half-past nine, we were
enabled to see much of it. Its monuments to Washington, and to the heroes
of the last war, are handsome, and the fountain with its cool canopy of
shadowy elms, pretty; its churches and public buildings very good, but as
you are so well acquainted with it, I will not trouble you with any details.
We entered the rail-road car at half-past nine, and reached New York at
eleven that night, a distance of two hundred miles, for which we paid eight
dollars each. Several long bridges carried us over Bush creek, Gunpowder
river, and the noble Susquehanna. Our western friends, who had been
boasting of their great rivers, seemed surprised at the little use we made of
them in travelling. ‘It seems,’ said our fair Missouri lady, ‘rivers here are of
no consequence—indeed, are in the way, as you make bridges and drive
over them.’
At one o’clock we reached Wilmington, the capitol of Delaware. This
State was a Swedish settlement, named by Gustavus Adolphus, Nova
Suecia, since which time, Dutch, English and Americans, have successively
owned it.
We dined at Wilmington, and then hastening on, passed through Chester,
and a rich level country, to the beautiful city of Philadelphia. Leaving our
railroad at the depot, we drove through the whole length of the city, where,
at five o’clock, we entered the cars again, turned our faces towards New
York, which we reached, as I said, at eleven o’clock, the road being along
the Delaware, and through some rich farms, with elegant mansions and
huge Pennsylvania barns; through Bristol and Trenton, in New Jersey, when
darkness spread over the land and we saw no more. And now farewell to the

“Land of the west! green forest land.”

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] Sunday schools have been maintained; and in pursuance of my
recommendation, the cell of each prisoner is always supplied with a volume of the
School District Library. The measure was followed by a gratifying improvement in
the conduct of the prisoners. Many wearisome hours of solitary time are beguiled,;
resolutions of repentance and reformation are formed, and the minds of the unhappy
convicts, accustomed to the contemplation of virtue, and expanded by knowledge, are
gradually prepared to resist the temptations which await them on their return to
society.—Gov. Seward’s Message, Jan. 1841.
[2] Chapin’s Gazateer.
[3] Tanner.
[4] Antiquities of America.
[5] Gazetteer.
[6] I am glad to see Troy, who is ever forward in the cause of religion and
morality, has abandoned this practice in some instances. There has been more success
in the canal this year. Mr. Eaton, in his report, mentions 150 conversions. A small
number among 25,000, but enough to cheer on the pious missionary.
[7] America to Great Britain.—Allston.
[8] Amount of flour and wheat which entered the canal from Lake Erie at Buffalo:
—
 From Ohio, 505,262 barrels of flour; 72,525 bushels of wheat.
Michigan, 112,215 “ “ 97,249 “ “
Indiana, 13,726 “ “ 48,279 “ “
Illinois, 2,259 “ “ 10,634 “ “
Wisconsin, 1,166 “ “

[9] Darby.
[10] Smith’s Western Tourist.
[11] Among the articles arrived at Cleveland from the Ohio Canal this year were—
504,900 barrels of flour; 167,045 bushels of coal; 932 hhds. tobacco; 2,252,491 lbs.,
of iron and nails; besides numerous other articles of merchandise.
[12] Darby.
[13] Salmonia.
[14] Schoolcraft.
[15] Bibliotheque Universelle, translated by J. Griscom, in the American Journal
of Science.
[16] Chalmers.
[17] Lev. xxvi, 4, 12.
[18] Deut. xxvi, 19.
[19] Deut. xxviii, 16.
[20] Becks Gaz., of Ill.
[21] Hall.
[22] Am. Jour. of Scien. vol. 25.
[23] Dr. Hildreth.
[24] Peck.
[25] Judge Hall.
[26] Dr. Owen.
[27] Hildreth.
[28] Hildreth.