AMERICA – TRAVELS IN NEW YORK AND THE SOUTH Series of 36 closely-written autograph letters from William Earles (1813-1836), signed ("Wm. Earles"), to his family, describing his adventures in America in the 1830's, including: the first four from lodgings in Liverpool whilst attempting to obtain passage to New York ("...plenty of good natured gentlemen in this town on the look-out for strangers. Several attempts have been made upon my purse..."), including a colourful description of the town ("...these extra dirty Lancashire people... The dialect... so hard, rough & grating that it sets my ears on edge..."); arrival in New York and first impressions ("...I like what I have seen very well, although it seems rather uncouth to see young men eating lollipops in the street..."), politics ("...the Eastern and Western states are at Loggerheads about the Tariff... The Indians in Illinois are scalping & tomahawking all the women & children they can catch... all the people are against the re-election of General Jackson... [then]... The Indian war is over, Blackhawk, a prisoner. The white men are victorious once more... Jackson is sure to be elected president by a much larger majority than before..."), an outbreak of cholera ("...killing a great many of the poor people... there has not been a single case in Wall St [where he lodges], which is the great street for business... a heap of neatly varnished Mahogany coffins has within the last three weeks been piled up in the big hole, in 'Pottersfield' the burial place..."), the law ("...the place keeps itself in order..."), the filthy streets ("...pigs run about... feeding in the open air on carrion and all the garbage..."), on American ladies ("...dress in very shewy colours...a peculiar stiffness in their appearance... a peculiar glossiness upon their skin... gives them the appearance of waxwork..."), on New York firemen ("...very smart fellows... they bawl loudly through speaking trumpets, risk their lives freely..."), much on the possibility of civil war, predicting "...If the union be broken up there will most likely be little or no fighting about the matter...", and pouring scorn on Fanny Trollope's new book, etc.; to Columbus via Savannah ("...a very pretty place though the sand in the Streets is loose and deep..."), witnessing the brutality of a steamboat captain ("...he fastened him up by the thumbs with a pulley... was let down by one of his brother blacks...") and cockroaches ("...beds literally crawling alive..."), describing the landscape ("...a swamp covered with a beautiful and very varying forest..."), the population ("...The Creek Indians are queer looking set, are as thick in the streets as Negroes in New York... the white man and Negroes eat, talk and actually shake hands together! All over the South black and white children play together..."), on Virginia ("...combining monied wealth, with civilization and comfort..."), that the South "...hate and despise the Yankees...", on slaves ("...a saucy, lazy, independent set, love their masters as a dog loves his, and their masters are proud of them as a Coachman of his horses... woe unto him who whips or threatens to whip another man's Negro... if it should come to fighting the slaves will turn out in sufficient numbers to beat any Troops the United States may march into the South..."), describing the weather and a wild storm ("...the air was filled with brickbats, boards, boughs, books, newspapers, invoices and Dollar bills... horses and oxen rearing and galloping in every direction..."), opportunities in Texas ("...if I go there, and take a wife with me, I shall on condition of settling it for three years, become entitled to six hundred and forty acres of land gratis... 'Land is better than a goldmine'..."), travelling through the Creek Nation ("...very difficult to learn anything... Americans always calling them savages and evading the subject... many of them read and write the English language quite as well as the Americans, and own Negroes, hardworking Farmers to a man... earthen pots of their own manufacture, beautiful baskets made of split cane... remarkable neatness..."), on their language ("...beautifully soft and musical, though it does not look so upon paper... the consonants which crack the eye of an English reader, represent sounds as soft as an Eolian Harp. Chattahootchee looks crackjaw enough, but it is the beautiful name of a no less beautiful river..."), describing the sound of an Indian Warwhoop with musical notes, travelling out from Columbus with no set itinerary ("...I just follow my own inclination... wherever I go I find work enough to pay all my expenses..."), the Alabama woods and prairies ("...the limbs of the prairie trees are covered with hair like gray moss... gives the landscape a most melancholy and awe inspiring appearance..."), meeting Chang-Eng, the Siamese Twins ("...a couple of shrew saucy fellows... They did not appear to me to have the unity of thought and action which has been attributed to them..."), encouraging his sister Mary to join him ("...you will be as well off as any Lady in Columbus..."), asking the present value of gold as "...almost every shovelful of earth in this country contains some...", on the dress and appearance of Creek Indian women ("...black, very black eyes... their ears are very pretty, they pierce the edges of them with a great many holes. Some of the old Indians have the out rim cut entirely loose so that you may put your four fingers through... the only really black hair I ever saw... plaited in a simple plait... Small feet and small hands... strands upon strands of large white and blue cut glass beads... long full petticoat curiously embroidered..."), witnessing a solar eclipse with an Indian family, November 1834 ("...remarkable change in the atmosphere... I heard the shrill frogs screel louder, as they generally do at night... the last faint ray of sunshine disappeared and left us cold and scared under a black starless sky..."); en route to New Orleans ("...I foolishly injured my right eye looking at the eclipse..."), witnessing Indian clearances along the banks of the river ("...upon which white people now live... What has become of the Creek Indians who but a very little while ago were so numerous, I cannot tell... The inhabitants are all Squatters and have no title to the land... mostly from the Northern States..."), on French Creoles ("...civil cleanly people... good cooks and make a stranger very welcome providing always that he speaks French and his horse is fat. They and the Americans do not like each other..."), on Mississippi ("...the finest country in every respect that I have seen..."), and much much else, c.114 pages, general dust-staining, marks and creasing, some tears and holes, edges frayed, integral address panels, remains of red wax seals, seal tears, 4to (325 x 200mm.) and smaller, Liverpool, New York, Columbus, Alabama, Apalachicola Bay, Plaisance, and elsewhere, 23 February 1832 to 1 May 1835; the final unfinished letter, undated, written from Franklin, Louisiana ("...I have been most of this summer in Texas... amongst the Shawnee Indians... a thrifty money getting set... a much cooler people, both in the heart and head, than their ancient allies, the Creeks... the women wear big leggings and ride astraddle... bold and fearless... great country for speculating in land..."); enclosed in an autograph letter from Mr D. Partridge, jailer of Montgomery, Alabama, to William Earles, Snr., announcing the death of his son in prison ("...About the time that hostilities commenced in the Creek Nation against the Whites, your Son was taken captive with a party of hostiles and committed as a prisoner of war... along with five Indians... he was taken sick with Cholera... ten minutes prior to his death he gave me your address and requested me to write you the melancholy end his imprudence had brought him to..."), 2 pages, dust-staining, marks, tears and holes along folds, 4to, Montgomery County, Alabama, 20 July 1836 (38) 'I JUST FOLLOW MY OWN INCLINATION': AN ENGLISHMAN IN NEW YORK AND AMONG THE CREEK INDIANS, AT THE TIME OF THE INDIAN CLEARANCES. An extraordinary series of closely-written evocative letters giving a first-hand account of a young man's travels in America, on his journey from Liverpool to New York, then south to Alabama, where he would meet his untimely death in a jail cell at the age of twenty-three. When William Earles left his home in London in search of a better life, and had navigated through the hordes of charlatans and chancers at Liverpool docks, he knew he was on the brink of adventure. His lively accounts are full of gossip, news and observations on the people he encounters on arrival in America, the towns and changing landscapes, and the politics of a young nation, and yet are full of the incidental details of every-day life. America, he frequently writes, is a land of opportunity ("...just the place for a man to come to who cannot get a living in England..."), a new country full of possibilities ("...the country in which I live... has hardly settled six years... [Wetumpka] but a year old and contains nothing to eat, nothing to wear and no place to sleep in..."). He gives his first impressions of the bustling and crowded city of New York, a melting pot of nationalities and races ("...Englishmen... never remain here... the Irishman... dirty drunken, ragged as ever and despised... the oppressed and kept down coloured man... possessing more commonsense than many of his superiors!... the liberal... planter from the South... the cheating Yankee trafficker... the vulgar money getting tyrant... his eldest son, wild as a colt..."), and offers an insight to the American psyche as he saw it ("...very sensitive with respect to the good or bad opinion strangers have of them... a deeply rooted belief that the whole world is watching them, but through such a mist as prevents its seeing them clearly..."). Although he admits he hasn't yet read it (and doesn't intend to) Earles, like much of New York society, was scandalised by Fanny Trollope's harshly-critical Domestic Manners of the Americans, newly published in 1832: "...in theatres her name is now the word by which ill behaved persons are called to order, and Trollope! Trollope! Turn em out, turn em out... It is not for the simple lie 'that all Americans chew, spit and loll,' that she deserves punishment, but for her base ingratitude in publishing it...", he comments. From New York, Earles travels south to Columbus ("...the first log of it was laid in 1828...") where he encounters the Creek Indians, once one of the largest and most powerful Indian groups in the Southeastern states, and for whom he held the utmost admiration ("...I find something new in them every day... a romantic minded people, made up of love, laughter and valour!..."). He gives a fascinating account of their appearance, language and customs, including the keeping of slaves, at a time of upheaval when their lands and way of life were under threat. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson had signed the Indian Removal Act, authorising the forced relocation of southeastern Native American tribes to lands west of the Mississippi River and thus, by 1836, most Creeks had been relocated to so-called Indian Territory. In a letter of 27 January 1836, of which only a transcript survives, he reports on skirmishes between the Creek Indians and white settlers at this time, describing blood-shed on both sides ('...A brave, warmhearted and honourable people, though the day of their glory be past and their numbers but small, will rather die to a man than live to be treated as dogs...'). The final, poignant letter of the series comes from the gaoler of Montgomery, Alabama, who sends William Earles Senior the news of his son's death from cholera, together with his final, unfinished letter. Earles, apparently was taken captive whilst with a party of Indians and committed as a prisoner of war. Whether he was fighting with them against the whites or just travelling with them is unknown. His letters also contain a considerable amount of family news, eager for letters from father William, sisters Mary and Kate, brother Charles and his mother. Throughout the correspondence, he reassures them of his good health and prosperity, dispenses advice ("...if ever an Earles aspires to anything it must be to lead and not to follow..."), and comments on news from home, whilst reporting in turn of his uncle, aunt and family with whom he stays in Williamsburg. On his sister Mary, who expressed a wish to travel he comments "...nothing but the rod will cure her... she is too much of a bluestocking for any man on this side of the Atlantic...", but little did he know that she was to get her wish and would settle in Australia in the 1840's. A typescript of extracts from the letters is included in the lot. Provenance: William Earles (1813-1836); his sister Mary Lemann (née Earles, 1814-1901), thence by descent (see lots 137 and 182).