individuals from his dreaming, as Davy Crockett did, with an oar, and
hear him howl "Halloe stranger, who axed you to crack my lice?"--to
tell him in his own lingo to "shut his mouth or he would get his teeth
sunburnt"--to see him crook his neck and neigh like a stallion--to
answer his challenge in kind with a flapping of arms and a cock's
crow--to go to shore and have a scrimmage such as was never known on
a gridiron--and then to resolve with Crockett, during a period of
recuperation, that you would never "wake up a ringtailed roarer with an
oar again."

The riverman, his art, his language, his traffic, seem to belong to days
as distant as those of which Homer sang.

CHAPTER VI. The Passing Show Of 1800

Foreign travelers who have come to the United States have always proved
of great interest to Americans. From Brissot to Arnold Bennett while in
the country they have been fed and clothed and transported wheresoever
they would go--at the highest prevailing prices. And after they have
left, the records of their sojourn that these travelers have published
have made interesting reading for Americans all over the land. Some
of these trans-Atlantic visitors have been jaundiced, disgruntled, and
contemptuous; others have shown themselves of an open nature, discreet,
conscientious, and fair-minded.

One of the most amiable and clear-headed of such foreign guests was
Francis Baily, later in life president of the Royal Astronomical Society
of Great Britain, but at the time of his American tour a young man of
twenty-two. His journey in 1796-97 gave him a wide experience of
stage, flatboat, and pack-horse travel, and his genial disposition,
his observant eye, and his discriminating criticism, together with his
comments on the commercial features of the towns and regions he visited,
make his record particularly interesting and valuable to the historian.
* Using Baily's journal as a guide, therefore, one can today journey
with him across the country and note the passing show as he saw it in
this transitional period.

* "Journal of a Tour in Unsettled Parts of North America in 1796
and 1797" by the late Francis Baily (London, 1856).

Landing at Norfolk, Virginia, Baily was immediately introduced to an
American tavern. Like most travelers, he was surprised to find that
American taverns were "boarding-places," frequented by crowds of "young,
able-bodied men who seemed to be as perfectly at leisure as the
loungers of