I may be asked, was it all good-fellowship and civility during my stay in
the United States? Did no forward person cause offence? Was there no
exhibition of drunkenness or swearing or rudeness? or display of conduct
which disgraces civilised man in other countries? I answer, very few
indeed: scarce any worth remembering, and none worth noticing. These are a
gentle and a civil people. Should a traveller now and then in the long run
witness a few of the scenes alluded to, he ought not, on his return home,
to adduce a solitary instance or two as the custom of the country. In
roving through the wilds of Guiana I have sometimes seen a tree hollow at
heart, shattered and leafless, but I did not on that account condemn its
vigorous neighbours, and put down a memorandum that the woods were bad; on
the contrary, I made allowances: a thunderstorm, the whirlwind, a blight
from heaven might have robbed it of its bloom and caused its present
forbidding appearance. And in leaving the forest I carried away the
impression that, though some few of the trees were defective, the rest were
an ornament to the wilds, full of uses and virtues, and capable of
benefiting the world in a superior degree.
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