(Pierson, p. 224)

This last lake is the prettiest of the three; perhaps even above all those I have seen to date, not excepting Lake Oneida. You see here and there on its banks country houses placed on the most picturesque sites, and three mountain ranges at varying distances forming a fine background for the rest of the picture. Cananda[i]gua is on the road from Auburn to Buffalo, whither we wish to go in order then to betake ourselves to Niagara, whose famous falls must necessarily have our visit.

Now you must know why we have stopped here on our way. There is at Cananda[i]gua a Mr. Spencer, member of the New York legislature, who wanted us to come spend some days with him and to whose wishes we have yielded. He is the most distinguished whom I have yet met in America. He is well versed in all the political questions which interest his country and possesses the most precise understanding of the judiciary institutions of the United States. He is one of the three commissioners to whom the New York legislature has confided the trust of revising the laws of the state.

We spend all our time with him in conversations from which we have everything to gain; as soon as we are alone we write down what he has said. I have not yet seen a single person from whom we have drawn as much as from him. There are at his house two charming women, his daughters Mary and Catherine, who would give us terrible distractions if once and for all we hadn't made up our minds to have none. Mary is the prettier of the two; she has that white and rose complexion, occasionally to be found with Englishwomen but almost unknown in France. I have not yet seen in the United States such pretty eyes as hers, they have a velvet softness it is impossible to describe. But why talk so long about her? Were I to continue you would think me in love, and the truth is that I am not. A long sojourn with her might be unhealthy, but in three or four days I shall quit Cananda[i]gua never to come back. After all, a woman, perfectly beautiful and possessing that bonte which is almost banal with American women, is a thing so rare that it is altogether natural to speak of it.

Mr. Spencer puts himself out (se met en quatre) to render our stay in Cananda[i]gua agreeable. Tomorrow we are to make an excursion by boat on the lake. ...

(Pierson, p. 216)

Note: Pierson marks this date with a question mark, and it may be incorrect, because they did not travel by boat on the 23rd. Also, with regard to the lakes, the first lake they would have encountered would have been Cayuga, the second lake, Seneca, and the third lake, Canandaigua.

Population brutalized by our wines and spirits. More horrible than the equally brutalized populations of Europe. Besides, something of the wild beast. Contrast with the moral and civilized population in the midst of which they are found.

(Tocqueville, p. 129)

Judge my amazement at seeing the picture that follows. The Indians whom I saw that evening were small in stature, their limbs, as far as one could tell under their clothes, were thin and not wiry, their skin instead of being red as is generally thought, was dark bronze and such as at first sight seemed very like that of Negroes. Their black hair fell with singular stiffness on their neck and sometimes on their shoulders. Generally their mouths were disproportionately large, and the expression on their faces ignoble and mischievous.

There was however a great deal of European in their features, but one would have said that they came from the lowest mob of our great European cities. Their physiognomy told of that profound degradation which only long abuse of the benefits of civilization can give, but yet they were still savages. Mixed with the vices which they got from us was something barbarous and uncivilized which made them a hundred times more repulsive still.

These Indians were covered in European clothes, but they did not use them in the same way we do. (Some dressed themselves in blankets; the women with breeches and hats; the men in women's clothes.) One could see that they were not yet at all accustomed to wearing them and felt themselves imprisoned in their folds. To European ornaments they added the products of barbarian luxury, feathers, necklaces, enormous earrings. Their movements were quick and jerky, their voices shrill and discordant, their glances restless and savage. At first sight one might have been tempted to mistake each of them for some wild beast of the forest to whom education had been able to give some slight look of a human being, but who nonetheless remained an animal.

Having wandered some distance from the town, we ran into a crowd of Indians who were returning to their village. Most of them were more or less drunk. An Indian woman was rolling in the dust of the road, uttering savage cries. Close to the last houses we saw an Indian lying at the edge of the road. It was a young man. He was motionless and, we thought, dead. Some stifled groans that painfully broke from his breast showed that he was still alive and struggling against one of those dangerous fits of drunkenness brought on by brandy. The sun had already sunk, and the ground was damp. Everything indicated that the wretched man would breathe his last sigh there, if he was not helped.

From time to time a group of Indians came past. They came up, roughly turned their compatriot's body over, felt his heart to see if he was still alive, and then continued on their way without condescending even to answer our questions. All my life I shall remember a young Indian woman who seemed at first to come up to him with interest; I thought it was the wife or sister of the dying man. She looked at him attentively, called his name aloud, felt his heart and being assured that he was alive, tried to shake him out of his lethargy. But seeing that her efforts were useless, she burst out in fury against the inanimate body lying in front of her; she struck his head against the ground, twisted his face in her hands, and kicked him with her feet.

As she gave herself over to these acts of ferocity, she uttered inarticulate and savage cries which I think I can still hear echoing in my ears at the moment I am writing these lines. Finally we thought we must intervene, and peremptorily ordered her to be off. We heard her as she went away uttering bursts of barbarous laughter. When we got back to the town, we told several people about the young Indian whose body was stretched on the road. We spoke of the imminent danger to which he was exposed; we even offered to pay the expense of an inn. All that was useless. We could not persuade anyone to budge.

Some said to us: "Those men are used to drink to excess and sleep on the ground; they never die from accidents like that."

Others recognized that the Indian would probably die, but one could read on their lips this half-expressed thought: "What is the life of an Indian?"

The fact is that that was the basis of the general feeling. In the midst of this American society, so well policed, so sententious, so charitable, a cold selfishness and complete insensibility prevails when it is a question of the natives of the country.

The Americans of the United States do not let their dogs hunt the Indians as do the Spaniards in Mexico, but at bottom it is the same pitiless feeling which here, as everywhere else, animates the European race. This world here belongs to us, they tell themselves every day: the Indian race is destined for final destruction which one cannot prevent and which it is not desirable to delay. Heaven has not made them to become civilized; it is necessary that they die. Besides I do not want to get mixed up in it. I will not do anything against them: I will limit myself to providing everything that will hasten their ruin. In time I will have their lands and will be innocent of their death.

Satisfied with his reasoning, the American goes to church where he hears the minister of the gospel repeat every day that all men are brothers, and that the Eternal Being who has made them all in like image, has given them all the duty to help one another.

- [written] July 20

(Tocqueville, p. 203-206)

(Tocqueville, p. 130)

When we were on the steamboat, I was driven to many maneuvers to escape the charms of her conversation. Now it was verses that I had to hear her declaim; sometimes a charming point of view that she wanted to admire with me. Usually I got rid of her on pretexts good or bad. But there was no easy way to escape her on leaving Buffalo.

"I shall go," said she, "show you my favorite location (sejour), and do you the honors of the place."

It is certain that she spends half her life near the cataract; one might call her la folle de Niagara. Why doesn't she place herself under the Falls? Perhaps the douche would cure her.

However that may be, we thus embarked with our elderly traveling companion, and in three hours we arrived at the place nearest to the Falls. ... We explored the two banks successively, in order to judge all the views. I made a sketch which I hope will give you an idea of them. Miss clemens bothered us a great deal during our sojourn in her domain. She was always proposing walks, boat rides, etc., etc., etc., ... One day she was so impatient to go with us, that at the moment when Mr. Vi[g]ne, Tocqueville and I were leaving, gun on shoulder, to go see a very picturesque site called the Whirlpull [sic], she attached herself to our steps in spite of all our efforts to make her remain behind. Seeing that reason could do nothing with her spirit, we thought that it was necessary to convince her by the aid of arguments of another nature.

Consequently we began to walk with extreme speed. It was perhaps the hottest day of the year. It was noon. We were dying of the heat., The need of avoiding a sentimental old woman gave us spur. [?] I, especially, kept at the head of the company, because I had suffered more than the others from strokes of boredom. We really had the appearance of a band of deer pursued by a fierce hound. We were all breathless. We leapt barriers like stags. I believe that in like case I should have jumped the reservoir of Beaumont-la-Chartre twenty times in succession. But more tireless than we, like unto a pack of hounds who have been promised their part (la curee), our beautiful Englishwoman cleared all obstacles with unbelievable legerity and, in spite of all our efforts, after a good hour's run, we hadn't gained fifty yards on her. In despair, we halted.

At length, having seen what we wished to see, we returned with our intrepid Dulcinee. We began a flight of the same kind. This time we were more happy, and we maneuvered so well that she lost sight of us and we fled like convicts who have broken the prison gate. On our return we were nearly all ashamed of our rudeness. But while, to console ourselves, we were eating a good dinner, we received a small note in which she begged for our pardon for having separated from us. We were much tempted not to pardon her. However we thought she would profit by the lesson. If I had known how much she would annoy us the next day, I should certainly not have forgiven her.

The poor woman has overwhelmed me with benefits, and I blush to think how ungrateful I am. She has given me a very good work on the art of perspective, a charming book containing a poem of Thomas Moore, various biographical sketches of the great men of England, and finally a few verses of her own composition, some of which are remarkably well made. I should reproach myself for having received all that, if it had been in my power to refuse. But I declare that no power on earth could resist the will of Miss Clemens, and I suffered veritable violence. ...

We passed the eighteenth and nineteenth of August at Niagara, the twentieth we embarked on Lake Ontario on the steamboat Great Britain. ...

[written] Aug. 21, 1831