SULLIVAN'S RAMBLES AND SCRAMBLES. * A NEW purpose a peculiar mode

of locomotion during part of the journey, the characteristics of the class to which the traveller belongs, conjoined with his own intellectual spirit and ability, im- part more variety, interest, and information to this account of a rambling and scrambling tour in North America, the West Indies, and a part of South America, than might have been expected. It is true that Guiana and Venezuela are not regions hackined by tour- ists, and the West Indies afford ample room for a calm observer at once practical and philosophical—to neither of which qualities has Mr. Sullivan much pretension ; but the 'United States have been described often enough. By keeping his eyes open, however, Mr. Sullivan throws up fresh remarks upon social life and opinions in New York, Boston, and some of the older places in America, and . sketches with vigour, if without much artistical refinement, the peculiarities of the Western and Southern States.

Of the Prairies and the Indians he presents a new view ; in part, perhaps, from disregarding convention, in part from circum-

. • Rambles and Scrambles in North and South America. By Edward Sullivan, Esq. Published by Bentley. stances. Mr. Sullivan and some friends crossed the Atlantic and travelled through the settled districts from the seaboard to Lake Superior in order to go sporting on the plains. They lost so much time in looking at cities and sights, that the autumn was well ad- vanced before they reached the Prairies ; winter was coming on, the buffaloes were going off, and the party of gentlemen saw those far-famed plains in by no means an attractive reality ; though hardship, hunger, cold, and pluck, render the narrative interesting to read.

The first object of the tourists was ended when they reached St. Louis and the steam-boats of the Mississippi • but at New Or- leans they determined to pay Cuba a visit. Air. Sullivan gives a favourable picture of Havana for its society and other agremens, and even for its climate ; indeed, he recommends it as a better spot for invalids than Madeira, Nice, or other places where the dying assemble to frighten each other. The advantage of Havana, how- ever, in the absence of living corpses, would cease if it became a general resort for the consumptive.

At Havana the trio of Mends separated; and Mr. Sullivan ac- cepted the invitation of another friend who was making a yacht voyage to take a cruise through the West Indies and to the Spa- nish Main. In this luxurious mode of progressing, our traveller visited several of the islands, together with British and Dutch Guiana ; ascending the interior to see the Victoria Regia in its native waters. He subsequently made an exploring tour through Venezuela,—a land that Mr. Sullivan prefers to any country upon earth for natural richness and beauty, and even for travel or resi- dence when once you have left the stifling low lands behind you.

The novelty of object or of the mode of locomotion gives con- siderable freshness to Mr. Sullivan's tour ; but external advantages are of little moment -when there is no mind to take advantage of them. Our author is not a man of science, but he is a man of society and travel, with the quick attention, the ready adaptability, and the varied objects that characterize the best of his class. He has also political opinions,—and in theory, we should imagine, of rather a " slow " kind, almost verging upon the right divine of Legitimacy; but he looks upon facts as they are with a rational eye, and when practical objects are in question, lets his theories go. He has also a native quickness of observation, and a vigour of style which gives force to his remarks and descriptions. The sportsmen reached the Prairies from Lake Superior' crossing that slightly elevated track of country which separates the head waters of the Mississippi and the other streams that reach the Gulf of Mexico from those which finally fall into the Atlantic. The elevation is so slight that water sometimes flows two different ways in the same channel, and the country consequently has none of the wild and mountain grandeur which generally characterizes the sources of great rivers, but rather reminds one of the "dismal swamp."

"The forests between Lake Superior and the Mississippi, where the country is very fiat and wet, are composed almost entirely of black cy- press: they grow so thick that the tops get intermixed and interlaced, and form almost a matting over-head, through which the sun scarcely ever penetrates. The trees are covered with unwholesome-looking mosses, which exhale a damp earthy smell, like a cellar. The ground is so covered with a rank growth of elder and other shrubs, many of them with thorns an inch long, and with fallen and decayed trunks of trees, that it is impossible to take a step without breaking one's shins; not a bird or animal of any kind is to be seen, and a deathlike silence reigns through the forest, which is only now and then interrupted by the rattle of the rattlesnake, (like a clock going down,) and the chirrup of the chitnunck or squirrel. The som- bre colour of the foliage, the absence of all sun even at mid-day, and the vault-like chilliness one feels when entering a cypress swamp, is far from cheering ; and I don't know any position so likely to give one the horrors as being lost in one, or where one could so well realize what a desolate loneli- ness is. The wasps, whose nests like great gourds hang from the trees about the level of one's face, the mosquitos in millions, the little black flies, and venomous snakes, all add their 'little possible' to render a tramp through a cypress swamp agreeable."

At home the exposure, fatigue, and cold, incident upon wild- fowl shooting, i g, would seem to more than counterbalance the plea- sure, at least to the uninitiated. In addition to all that has to be undergone in Great Britain, the too late sportsman on the Prairies has hunger with the prospect of starvation a possible chance of losing his scalp to some unscrupulous Indian, and a shelter very much worse than the worst hovel at home. After being beaten back by snow-storms and short-commons, the travellers determined, against advice, to try their luck again, and reached an Indian en- campment,—as great a novelty as shooting buffalo.

"We continued our route to the banks of the Shiam ; where we came to the village of Indians, consisting of about twenty lodges, we were in cearch of. Meat was plentiful, and every available pole and stick was adorned with flakes of meat hung up to dry. Here our guides, who had for some days been very restive and impertinent on account of our abusing them for their beastly laziness and the slowness of our progress, thought fit to leave us and to take up their abode in some one of the Indian lodges. It was a bitter cold night, snow falling thick, with a piercing wind ; and we had to remain in great misery, without fire or food, watching our traps, whilst within a quarter of a mile were the Indian lodges, and our rascally guides gorging themselves on fat cow. There were two or three score of sneaking, thieving-looking wretches, loping about our little camp and laughing at us, and I have no doubt insulting us grossly, only., luckily, we did not understand them. At that time I would as soon have shot an Indian as I would a dog that wanted to bite me. I could perfectly understand the feeling of Buxton's men, Kill Buck and La Bonte, who would as soon shoot an Indian as any other var- mint.'

"Next morning, on turning out, stiff and cold, we found our guides were missing. We entered several lodges to try and discover them : we were most hospitably treated at all of them, masses of half-boiled meat being invariably offered. Our researches proving unavailing, we got hold of an old chief, and taking him to our camp, we gave him some tobacco and sugar, and tried to impress upon him that we wanted to go to his lodge : I don't think he clearly understood what we

meant, but, to prevent mistakes, we shifted our baggage there, and took up our residence with him. We remained in his lodge six or seven days ; and during the whole of that time, though continually mobbed by Indians, we did not lose the value of a sixpence. Of course our intercourse was entirely by signs, and those of an obscure description ; but as it snowed hard during the whole of that time, and we had some tea and coffee and the small remains of the flour, we managed tolerably well. We held a continual levee, and there were never less than twenty or thirty Indians looking at us most intently, particularly during our meals. The coffee and tea were great treats to them; the latter we made twice, and then boiled, and the former we kept continu- ally boiling from morning till night. The chief, in whose lodge we had taken up our residence, was the finest specimen of an Indian I ever saw, both in appearance and nature : he was calledWah-ton-she ' which signifies the good man,' in consequence of his amiable qualities : his affection for his wife and children was very remarkable, especially for the latter ; and there was one little boy, about two years old, whom he used to nurse and cram with fat cow till it could hardly breathe, and when it arrived at that state of re- pletion that one expected it to explode every moment, he used to get a lump of fat, and grease it well about the digestive organs, which seemed to give it great relief, and then lay it down before the fire till it subsided into something like its natural shape."

After all, killing a buffalo is, in Mr. Sullivan's opinion, no great sport.

"Running buffalo for the first time, and the sensation of galloping along- side a brute that appears as large as a haystack, is novel and exciting; but after running them a few times the sport loses its excitement, and for My part I would rather have ten minutes with a pack of hounds across the worst country in England than kill all the buffalo on the prairie. The bulls gene- rally allow you to approach within five hundred yards before they start off a la course. A good horse will catch them in half a mile, and once up and along- side the pleasure is over, as you keep on loading and firing as fast as you can at a distance of five or six yards, till the animal drops or stops, when you dis- mount and finish him at your leisure. The death-struggles of such an enor- mous brute (and they die very hard) are most painful to witness. The sport is just dangerous enough to keep up a wholesome excitement, and to origin- ate tales of hair-breadth escapes without number. It is not nearly so dan- gerous as shooting in cover with five or six exciteable sportsmen. There is the chance of your horse putting his foot into a fox or badger earth; there is the chance of the bull stepping suddenly and turning round, in which case most probably he receives the horse on his horns, and you make a voyage of discovery over his head ; and there is the chance, if you are fortunate, of his running at you when he is wounded. I only speak of these dangers from hearsay, as all the bulls I saw were in far too great a hurry to get away to have any idea of turning upon their pursuers."

Mr. Sullivan's experience of wigwam life by no means inclines him to agree with John Dryden, and those who follow the poet's opinion, as to the freedom of the "noble savage." On the contrary, he looks upon the "stoic of the woods" as little better than a thrall.

"The cant about the trammels of civilization, and the perfect liberty and independence of the savage in his native state, roaming where he listeth, is i all humbug; nobody n reality has less liberty than the savage In- dian. He cannot say, This country and manner of life does not suit me; I will go and live elsewhere.' The instant he pets his foot out of his own country, he knows he will be scalped. His position realizes to the letter 'In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.' His every moment is taken up by his exertions to procure food. The laws even of the society he exists in render him anything but a free agent. Witness the young warrior whose lodge was slit up on a cold winter's night, and his gun broken, because he had hunted without• leave—game-laws, with a vengeance ! The more civilized and enlightened a country becomes, the greater liberty of thought and action its inhabitants enjoy. The honest labourer or sweeper of cross- ings in London has more real freedom than the proudest chief that ever hunted buffalo on the prairie."

In the course of their winter journey along the Western frontier, the travellers fell in with posts of the -United States army, and were hospitably entertained by their officers. Here are the results of some conversation touching arms, and some observations about the army.

"We had long discussions with the soldiers, about the comparative merits of revolvers and double-barrelled pistols. All the dragoons, when first sent to Mexico, were armed with revolvers, or rather Colt's repeaters,—viz. with one barrel and six chambers ; but it was found that from any inaccuracy or carelessness in the hurry of loading, the chambers were very at to explode together. Whether this is an imperfection that can be remedied or not, I cannot say ; but repeaters are not served out to the army at present. The Texan Rangers, who, during the Mexican war, in the name of liberty, and for the honour of their country, committed more atrocities than were ever heard of in civilized warfare before, were all armed with a Colt's repeating- rifle and a brace of pistols. So they went into action with eighteen shots ready ! and, as most of them were supplied with spare chambers, their eighteen shots could very quickly be replaced by other eighteen !—rather serious odds for an equal number of men with single-barrel muskets to con- tend against. "There is a strong aristocratic feeling in the United States army, and a great jealousy exists between the civil and military authorities, which dis- plays itself whenever they come in contact. The civilians perceive the aris- tocratic tendency of the army, and affect to consider that a large army is dangerous to the liberties of the sovereign people. The military, on the other hand, from the superiority of their education, and from their more en- lightened views, arising from foreign travel, and from more time and leisure devoted to the 'ingenues artes,' have a great contempt for the vulgarity and would-be military swagger of most of the civilians, and the superiority they arrogate to themselves over the regulars, more especially with regard to the Mexican war, where in reality all the real fighting was done by the regular troops, the Volunteers doing little else than break into convents and pillage churches. The regular army are also disgusted at the assumption of military titles, such as General, Colonel, Major, by every tailor or grocer that chooses to join a Militia corps. The military have hard work: only seven thousand men to garrison all the forts in the Union, and to maintain the offensive on an Indian frontier of nearly three thousand miles, scarcely appears sufficient, or at least is not a large force, especially since the discovery of Oregon and California and the annexation of New Mexico and Texas. I met one officer of artillery who had returned on sick leave from New Mexico, where he had been under can- vass for eighteen months continuously. "From all accounts, I imagine there is a great deal of jobbing and favour- itism in the United States army, far more so than in the British. The pri- vates are all foreigners—Germans, English, Irish, and Scotch deserters, Poles, Hungarians, but not a single native-born American. I met numbers of United States officers in different parts of the Union, and I always found them the same—gentlemanlike and agreeable, and more resembling English-

men (though perhaps they will not consider that much praise) than any other class I met in America."

We go back to New York, for a limit which strikes us as being new—nationalities in the Militia.

" Glorious 4th of July, seventy-sixth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and of the expulsion of the British. Kept awake all night by the explosion of crackers and pistols, announcing the advent of the day— dear to every truebom American, (that is, about one in every thousand of the population of the Union.) As Sam Slick says, it is a glorious sight to see twenty millions of freemen, and five millions of slaves, a-celebrating the anniversary of their freedom, their enlightenment, and their contempt of the British ! All the Militia of the State of New York, in all about 8000 men, all volunteers, marched up Broadway. Most of them were foreigners, retaining as much as possible their national costumes. The Irish (Mitchell's Brigade) in green ; the Scotch in kilts; the Austrian in the white uniform of their Guards and so on. Some very fine horses amongst the cavalry. Three companies in the old Revolutionary uniforms (three-cornered hats, yellow knee-breeches, and top-boots) were immensely cheered. Every boy from five to twenty years of age thinks it his duty to supply himself with a gun, pistol, or crackers, on this day, -,:vhich he discharges in the face or over the shoulders of passers-by. It is considered a capital joke to tap a man on the shoulder, and when he turns round to discharge a pistol in his face, fire a gun over his shoulder, or pin a bunch of crackers to his coat-tail."

The following traits of the far West must be read with this caution in mind. The Western States are as regards society what our penal settlements would be if they could be reached by land and had not the Imperial rule over them. Life in the older States East of the Alleghenies no more resembles the quarrelling and shooting of the far West, than London life does life at the Dig- gings. We sleighed on to Plattville ; where we arrived in thus for a murder. An Irishman of course had killed a Scotehman. We did not actually see

the murder, 'but the body directly afterwards. It appeared that the Scotch-

man was an old Waterloo man; the quarrel had arisen respecting the merits of the Duke in particular, and European politics in general. The Fool joking way in which the people in the bar-room, where the murder had just been committed, were talking over the matter, was highly disgusting. The murderer not being arrested at once, had been hustled away by his com- patriots, who in this country stick to each other in crime just as stanchly as they do in the old country. The hotel-keeper told us a story which gives one some idea of the state of morals in this portion of the Union. He said that he met a friend of his one day walking with a loaded pui, and on ask- ing him what he was going to do, Oh ! ' he said,'Fm going to shoot Mr. C. (also a friend of the hotel-keeper's.) Well, led,' said our friend, have you told Mr. C. you are going to shoot him ? because it is not gentlemanly to do it without giving him notice—it isn't, really.' 'Well, certainly,' said the other, hesitating, I have not told him; but if you think it the correct thing, why I'll do so.' 'Oh! ! yes,' said the innkeeper, do so by all means. I assure you it would not be correct to take him unawares.' Our friend chuckled when he told us, and said that by that means he had had time to nut the threatened man on his guard, and he had no doubt saved his fife. • • "The Western States are ultra-democratic in their politics. All the vio- lent men and violent measures come from the West. The division of parties is just the reverse in America to what it is in England. In England, the stronghold of democracy is in the large towns, and aristocracy has its strongest supporters in the country. In America, the ultra-democrat and leveller is the 'Western farmer, and the aristocratic tendency is most visible amongst the manufacturers and the merchants of the Eastern cities. The Western States are destined to play an important part in the future of the Republic ; already their influence is felt on all important occasions. Ultra- democratic. principles, that in the Eastern States have given way to Whig- gism, and in the South to Protection, in the West exist in the most violent form, and are gaining ground every day: Any idea of a separation of the Union which in the North and South is openly canvassed at the publie meetings, in the West is scouted ; and I have heard the most sanguinary threats held out against anState or individual who should dare to propose such a thing. It is in the Western States also that that restless spirit and total want of local affection which is so essentially a .part of the American character is most conspicuous. The continually changing their place of re- sidence and mode of life has become by constant habit almost second nature ; and it is as unusual in the West to sees man of forty. who has not changed his residence and his profession a dozen times, as it is in England to see one who has. The change seems with them to be almost like a game of chance ; which they seem to enjoy as much for its excitement as for its gain."

This is from St. Louis.

"Duelling and homicide, though for a Western State comparatively rare, still are not so very unfrequent ; nor will they ever be so till that barbarous custom of going continually .armed is discontinued. There is hardly one man out of fifty from St. Louis right down South that does not always carry a bowie-knife or a revolver. A very agreeable man, at whose house we spent more than one evening,thad shot a man dead a short time before in the middle of the day, on the steps of the Planters' House in the main street of St. Louis. He had been steward of a ball, and in that capacity had thought it his duty to refuse admittance to some individual of whose cha- racter he did not approve. The man aware vengeance' and declared he would shoot him the first time he met him. This happeneda few days after, when he met my friend standing on the steps of the hotel : he immediately, drew out a revolver and fired six shots at him, advancing as he fired. My friend received his fire without moving an inch, but directly, the man had finished, he drew his pistol, and walking towards him, gave him two shots, killing him on the spot. It certainly was a case of justifiable homicide.'" The present position of Cuba in reference to the -United States' piratical projects gives an interest to any information respecting that island. The energy which Mr. Sullivan ascribes to the Creole population cuts two ways, according to the side they take: the energy implied in the covert threat of the late Governor, if really carried out, might produce horrors that could only be paralleled by St. Doran' go. A very large part of the slaves in Cuba are im- portations, braver and more brutal than the Creole Negroes— savage animals.

"When Lopez's invasion was first mooted and the Creole population af- fected to sympathize, the Governor-General gave the whole of the slave population within ten miles of the Havana three days' holyday, that the Whites might be able to form some idea of their numbers, strength, and ferocity, and take a wholesome warning against favouring any agitation which might bring about the horrors of a slave-rising. It is said that the sight of these fifty or sixty thousand African warriors swaggering through the streets, and the knowledge that the same struggle which liberated them from the Spanish rule might also liberate the Blacks from theirs, did more to quench the rising feeling in favour of Libertad ' amongst the Creoles than any dread of the soldiers of old Spain. It was a ticklish proceeding on the part of the Governor-General, and would have been scarcely warranted but for the pre- sence of twenty thousand men under arms the whole time, and the possibility of the slaves procuring arms being strictly guarded against.

" The prosperity of the island of Cuba, and the energy of its population, composed chiefly of a race that in all other parts of the world have proved themselves, during the two last centuries at least, the most useless and stand-still of modern nations, is far beyond any comparison with the pros- perity or energy: visible in the other West India islands, although inhabited by races of originally far more plodding and enterprising natures. Of course, a great proportion of this remarkable difference is to be attributed to the maintenance of cheap slave labour in the former case, and the difficulty of procuring any whatsoever in the latter but still the Spanish character in Cuba seems in a great degree to have latter; that retrospective sloth which has latterly been its distinguishing feature, and to have recovered a good deal of that enterprising and speculative spirit which some three hundred years since made its merchants and commerce the envy of the world. In addition to the splendid quays and wharfs which I have before mentioned, and which would do credit to the most wealthy capital in Europe, the Creola of Cuba, scorning the anti-improving spirit of the inhabitants of old Spain, who seem to consider it of more consequence to spend time than to save it, and palm view with horror any of the innovations of this progressive age, seize upon every new adaptation of steam and improved machinery for the manufacture of sugar with the greatest eagerness ; and the introduction of any improve- ment on one estate is speedily followed by its adoption over the whole island; and risk and expense are disregarded in real Yankee style when the objects to be gained are a saving of time and an increased production. Amongst other improvements, railroads are fast spreading over the island ; they are well constructed, and the carriages easy and strongly built, and the speed averages between twenty and thirty miles an hour."

The following particulars about the real Hawn will probably have a wider interest than anything in polities. " Pane-ra et air- °eases "—creature comforts and quiet amusements, for the ancient circus would be too exciting—are growing to be the only ardent wish of many.

"The Havana is, par excellence, the paradise of smokers the climate and the mode of life both induce a desire for the fragrant weed ; and then, such tobacco! I think nobody who has not smoked a cigar just made of the best tobacco can have an idea of what a really perfect cigar is. In England we never see the tobacco that is smoked bK,the luxurious Creoles of the Havana. The retail shops which, which by paying high, get the pick of the market, select a

certain number of the best leaves, they roll up and sell to their regu-

lar customers every day, as they are rolled. They are roughly made, and probably would not sell. in England. A regular smoker will consume per- haps twenty or thirty a day: but they are all fresh ; what we call a fine old cigar, a Cuban would not smoke. He either buys them day by day as they are made, or else he buys a good batch when he gets a chance, and keeps them in air-tight packets of twelve or twenty, or whatever his daily con- sumption may be, so consuming one packet every day. The best cigar I ever smoked before or since was one given me by Baron-Rothschild's agent, at a party at his house : it was a rough pressed one, called a vecquero,' and was

made of one leaf, with no wrapper. •

"The best tobacco is only grown in a very small district, called the Pucka de Abajo, on the North side of the island : it is a very variable crop, and the qualities and flavour of different seasons vary as much as the vintages of Burgundy. The season of 1851 produced the most abundant and finest fla- voured crop that has been known in the island for some time. Though, un- doubtedly, the beet tobacco is grown in the island of Cuba, and the beet cigars made at the Havana, yet such is the demand at present in Europe for the real Havanas, that all the sickly plants and damaged leaves that formerly were thrown aside are now manufactured, and I have bought cigars there quite as bad as any British cabbage that one could buy for a halfpenny in an English pothouse : moreover, a great quantity of tobacco is imported into the Havana from Virginia, and manufactured there ; and as twice the num- ber of cigars are exported that the island produces tobacco enough to manu- facture, it follows, that (omitting the great number smoked in Cuba itself, which are all genuine) at least one-half of the cigars sold in Europe as real Havana; and which do actually come from thence, are made of American tobacco ; which, being packed in cases, goes through the same process as the tobacco of which our connoisseurs profess such a contempt when made into our British cigars. In London or Liverpool there is only one reason why the British-manufactured cigar should not be as good as the same tobacco manufactured where it is grown,—namely, that from being tightly packed in casks, it has to be soaked before it can be rendered soft enough to be rolled into a smokeable shape, and this is supposed to affect its flavour ; but I think there is a great deal of imagination and fancy on the subject. I am not sure that, if I were offered an average Havana and a good British cigar, I should select the former."