Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 9).djvu/15



Had all the travellers from Great Britain who visited America during the early decades of the nineteenth century been of so discriminating a temperament as the Scotchman whose work we republish as volume ix of our series, Americans might have lacked that sensitiveness that arose from unjust and flippant portrayal and criticism of American manners.

James Flint was of a good family, had been carefully educated, and possessed a sound and just judgment, with capacity for philosophic insight. Coming to the United States to observe conditions, he depicts them with candor and good will. While confessing favorable preconceptions, due to a personal liking for democratic institutions, our author does not omit the shadows in his pictures; but he presents them with such dispassionate fairness that the sting of criticism is removed.

Flint was particularly interested in the Middle West. Therefore, after a brief sojourn in New York and Philadelphia, where he commented judiciously on all that made for the higher life of these two young cities, he followed the great Western thoroughfare which crossed Pennsylvania to Pittsburg, then the gateway of trans-Allegheny America. Here he purchased a skiff and floated down the Ohio, occasionally landing to make visits and observations; from Portsmouth he proceeded on a circuit through Ohio and Kentucky, settling at length at the falls of Ohio, in the Indiana town of Jeffersonville.

A resident at this place for several months, his investi