What do you think?
Rate this book
Diary of a Trip from New York to the Falls of St. Anthony in 1845
On July 31, 1845, the cultured and dignified president of Columbia College, New York, set out upon a six weeks' trip into the rough and booming West. As he journeyed by boat on three rivers and two lakes, and overland by train, stage and horseback, touching Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago, and Galena, to the Falls of St. Anthony and back to New York by St. Louis, Wheeling on the Ohio, and Cumberland, Nathaniel Fish Moore kept a journal. The fame of this particular tour had been spreading throughout the thirties and forties. Journalists had written of it, foreign travelers looked their fill and then described glowingly the sights to be seen, and at least a handful of fashionable easterners were lured to the West to make the trip.
Perhaps others among them kept journals, but Nathaniel Fish Moore's is probably the first written by one of these native American tourists to be published. In simple, straightforward style, with no thought on his part of publication, and, consequently, with none of the embellishments thought necessary by writers of that day, he describes the frontier towns--Chicago, with the prairie at its back, and St. Louis-- the stagecoach stops, and the river ports. He tells about lead-smelting in Galena and the Indian dances of the Upper Mississippi. He relates his scornful answer when invited to look, for a fee, at the mummies in the Mormon town of Nauvoo, in Illinois--he had seen mummies in Egypt.
Nathaniel Fish Moore was "an eastern sight-seer, pure and simple, an unalloyed tourist concerned with no other profit than his own pleasure and ease of mind." He was an amateur mineralogist, collecting specimens as he traveled, and a lover of boats. He describes the latter here with affection and curiosity. His diary is not history, but it is a picture of the incidents and scenes of the moment which, after all, make history.
Nathaniel Fish Moore's Diary is the first in a series of works to be published under the auspices of the Newberry Library.
Perhaps others among them kept journals, but Nathaniel Fish Moore's is probably the first written by one of these native American tourists to be published. In simple, straightforward style, with no thought on his part of publication, and, consequently, with none of the embellishments thought necessary by writers of that day, he describes the frontier towns--Chicago, with the prairie at its back, and St. Louis-- the stagecoach stops, and the river ports. He tells about lead-smelting in Galena and the Indian dances of the Upper Mississippi. He relates his scornful answer when invited to look, for a fee, at the mummies in the Mormon town of Nauvoo, in Illinois--he had seen mummies in Egypt.
Nathaniel Fish Moore was "an eastern sight-seer, pure and simple, an unalloyed tourist concerned with no other profit than his own pleasure and ease of mind." He was an amateur mineralogist, collecting specimens as he traveled, and a lover of boats. He describes the latter here with affection and curiosity. His diary is not history, but it is a picture of the incidents and scenes of the moment which, after all, make history.
Nathaniel Fish Moore's Diary is the first in a series of works to be published under the auspices of the Newberry Library.
102 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1946
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
No one has reviewed this book yet.