Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/115

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and contemplating their erect statures, both of which here lose every thing negro-like but their colour, and acquire all the majesty of man.

5th.—Yesterday, being Sunday, the grand anniversary of Independence is necessarily celebrated on this day, which is brother Jonathan's immortal universal festival. Roaring cannon and merrily ringing bells salute the morn, and, until midnight, all is frolic and hilarity, from one end of this mighty empire to the other. At night, in Vaux-*hall Gardens, I saw a representation or effigy of the late General Washington, and heard an oration, in which that illustrious man was compared to Cincinnatus, and highly eulogized. I talked with citizen Fleming and Jerry Wardour, jun. Esq., {96} both rich, and the latter particularly intelligent and communicative, having great experience in all matters touching emigrants and emigration, as many thousands of persons and pounds are constantly passing through his office and hands to this country. He says that no body, who is living comfortably in England, should think of emigrating. But to those who resolve to do so, he recommends British settlement in Pennsylvania and the eastern states, in preference to Illinois and the western country; because the latter is sickly, being exposed, in a high degree, to bilious fever; is supplied with only bad water; and is so far from, or rather altogether without a market for produce. He had never heard of any persons, excepting visitors, returning; but of many, the most unfit, settling down comfortably there, from Bond-street and Holborn, London. Mr. Birkbeck still lives in a log cabin, doing little or no business. The Flowers and he are irreconcileable enemies.[15] Grand-children will