REFLECTIONS-PANORAMA. 103 their "bacco-box," or receiving a stiff glass of sling from the bar-keeper. Now what could be the meaning of all the haste and hurry at the supper-table, I thought, and now why so listless? What would Orientals, full of etiquette and ceremony, have said to see men, calling themselves civilized, seizing their food like wild beasts, and bolting it without mastication? But I am in a new country and among a new people-among men descended from Britons, who speak my own language, and for whom I feel a great interest, for I see their rapid strides to greatness as a nation, their country rapidly changing from an unproductive desert to a cultivated garden under their hands; and why should I sneer and cavil because they eat after a strange fashion? I am in company with men of all professions, from the great landed proprietor and wealthy merchant, to the store boy and tailor. Suppose I had supped with the latter class in England, might not their manner of eating have been as rude as what I have just witnessed? Assuredly it might, and assuredly there is great advantage in seeing life in all its phases. Next morning I wandered about the town, and ascending an eminence, on which stood the house of Judge Campbell, I was enabled to see the surrounding country undulating and beautiful. At a short distance was the unbroken forest; but along the banks of the Cumberland river, which 104 INDIAN SKIRMISHES. runs a course of three hundred miles from Nashville to the Ohio, there were numerous cotton plantations. Gardens and fields were round the town, new houses were springing up on all sides, and this delightful capital of a back-wood state, now containing six thousand inhabitants, promised speedily to double its population. It is but a few years since the Indians made incessant and desperate efforts in the neighbourhood of Nashville to drive back the whites. The older inhabitants told stories without end of bloody skirmishes on the banks of the Cumberland; of the pioneers' houses attacked by the savages in the absence of the men, and women and children massacred; of the deadly flight of the tomahawk, the thrust of the scalping-knife, and the firebrand concealing the traces of gore in smouldering ashes. "All died-the wailing babe-the shrieking maid, From their encounters with Indians, the whites when they quarrelled among themselves, acquired a savage manner of settling their disputes. A few years ago, General Jackson, whose countryhouse is within a few miles of Nashville, was engaged in an affray at the principal hotel, when pistols, sword-canes, and knives, were all A SULPHUR SPRING. 105 at work as usual, it was some electioneering quarrel. I visited in the neighbourhood of the town a sulphur-spring in great repute, then walked round to the bridge, which is of wood, roofed over and supported on piers at least one hundred feet above the bed of the river; then I attended the debates of the legislature, and found the members in handsome rooms, the chairman 'elevated above the rest in a curtained rostrum, whilst the members themselves sat on chairs at separate tables, and every man of them, except the orator for the time being, was balancing himself on the hind legs of his chair, with his dusty boots on the table among the writing materials, and the soles of the feet presented at the chairman. "What would they have said to this in Persia?" I thought; "where on all occasions when seated, the feet are to be hidden by the skirt of the robe, and where also to present the sole of the shoe even at a beggar, is a deadly insult." As little attention seemed to be shown to the different orators as we see on many occasions in St. Stephen's. The members spoke to each other, coughed, chewed tobacco, and spat on the floor; some walked about with their hats on, or opened a window and leaned over it with their backs to the company. The subject of debate was, whether or not new slaves should be allowed to be introduced into the State, for the Virginian massacre of seventy whites, which had just taken place, had alarmed the cotton 106 THE PENITENTIARY. planters here, who were fearful that slave-traders would purchase Virginian negroes, (now sold cheap, for no confidence could be placed in them,) and introduce them into Tenessee, and thus corrupt the whole servile body. I afterwards dined at one o'clock with a wealthy and most intelligent gentleman, Mr. Yeatman, from whom and his friends I received every attention, and was particularly pleased with the conversation of the principal of the college, Mr. Lindsay; and I beg to state, for the information of the silver-fork school, that in the houses of the gens comme il faut" at Nashville, there was handsome furniture, a handsome table-service, and, above all, handsome ladies to preside. What more need I say? 66 In the afternoon I visited a new stone penitentiary a short distance from town. This fine building is three stories high, three hundred and ten feet in length, and fifty in width, contains cells for two hundred convicts, though I saw only about twenty in it, and cost about fifty thousand dollars. The plan on which it is built is this: a large roofed building has a broad central wall running its whole interior length; in this wall, on both sides, are the three tiers of cells, to which access is afforded by ladders and galleries. The cells are very narrow, contain a bedstead with bed clothes, and a Bible; the door, as strong as wood and iron can make it, has a grating for the VAUXHALL GARDENS. 107 admission of air, and is ingeniously and most securely fastened on the outside. No visitor is allowed to converse with the prisoners, nor are they permitted to hold communication with each other. Some worked as tailors and shoemakers inside the penitentiary, in the open space between the central and the side wall; while the rest, in their dark grey dresses, were employed in an outer court forging the bolts and bars for the completion of the building, and to prevent their own escape. The good effects of this new house of correction are already apparent, for three gentlemen were confined in it, one for gouging out his neighbour's eye, the second for stabbing, and the third for biting his neighbour's nose off; and since summary punishment now attends these abominable modes of fighting, it is said that within these few months an alteration has taken place for the better among the lawless pioneers of Tenessee. I next walked to a garden dignified with the name of Vauxhall. In the midst was a long room for balls, at the upper end of which were full-length portraits of President Jackson and General Lafayette. Under a shed, some people played at nine-pins, who addressed one another as colonel, major, and squire; whilst a few young men passed round a circular rail-road, on selfmoving carriages of a novel build. I spent the evening with some of my country |