Part II (1820) of Faux's Memorable Days in America, 1819-1820; and Welby's Visit to North America, 1819-20
In 1814, the London Quarterly began a series of articles aimed at ridiculing all things American in order to discourage English emigration to the United States. William Faux's tour of America played a prominent role in this series. This volume contains Part Two of that tour. Adlard Welby's book was also "employed as a weapon in the reviewers' warfare, and as a whole is unfavorable in its attitude toward American life…Accustomed to the conditions of life encountered by the upper middle class in England, he had formulated for himself a standard of comfort as yet not attainable in the United States; and lacking imagination, he failed to perceive that the crudeness in American life evidenced the lack of opportunity rather than signified deterioration." His journal, regardless of his prejudice, "throws much light on the early West, and the prospects and surroundings which then and there met the emigrant…" His travels began in New York, then Philadelphia. From there he traveled westward to Pittsburg, then Wheeling, on to Zanesville, Chillicothe and Maysville, Kentucky. He traveled to Lexington, Frankfort and Louisville, then on to Paoli, Washington and Vincennes, Indiana. He visited Albion, in English Prairie, before retracing his steps to the East. The value of this volume is the contrast it provides to the volumes featuring the Michauxs, Cuming, Flower, Woods, and Flint, "a drastic corrective to what in the others is sometimes over-praise."
Reuben Gold Thwaites, LL.D.
(1905), 2007, CD-ROM, Graphic Images, Searchable, Adobe v6, PC or Mac, 342 pp.
ISBN: 9780788444234
101-CD4423
