Portage sentinel. [volume] (Ravenna, Ohio) 1845-1854, 1851-09-08
Descriptive EiOquence.
"Our country, tits of thee!!''

"Ma'am," said a free-spoken, warm
hearted, enthusiastic, and rather quizical
son of old Kentucky, while paying his de-
volrs to one OF the famous lady tourists oi
America, @ma'am, you should have been
born in America, the greatest country in the
known world. Nature has clustered all
her stupendous and dazzling works upon
this land, and you should be among them =!
We have got the greatest men, the finest
women, the broadest lakes. the highest wa
ter-falls, and the biggest hearts in all creatin.
"Ma' Fam, go and see the falls of Niaga-
ra.-My dear MAJ am, il didn't think I'D
walked up in futurity, when | first seed that
big slantendicular puddle (slantendicu-
lars an algebra word, ma 'am-you mayn't
know it.) Why, ma'am could tell you
something about them falls-but you mustn't
put it in your book, 'cos nobody will ever
believe it. The people that live around
about there will lose their speech, and
never hear each other speak for years. with
The noise of the cataract! Fact, true as
that's pencil and notebook you are TAX
ing out of your pocket. Why, there was
man lived there ten years, and he got so
deef he never knew man was speaking to
him till pail of water was poured down
the back of his neck! When you go to see
the falls, ma'am, you must do all the talking
you want to before you get within twenty
five miles of them: for after that not word
Of any kind can be heard!
"Then ma'am, you should go and see the
great cave in Kentucky, where the bats hi
h.. Il :,
not such another hole in the ground to be
found upon the face of the earth. Ma'am
if you go back to England without seeing
our mammoth cave, you'll put your feet in
| it-no, beg your pardon excuse me- that's
quite impossible; but you'll leave big hole
in the-b book you are going to write. There
was no more end ever known to it, ma Fam
and there is salt water lake in the middle
of it, Twenty-Five miles broad. One of the
rooms is called the fantipodean chambe
from the unpronouncable fact that a man
can walk just as easy on the ceiling as upon
the floor; and in this apartment, there's a
natural fountain Of pure brandy! The same
cave, too, is cure for consumptionl
"You haint been south, yet, have you
ma'am? You haint seen the Mississippi
river, and the city of New Orleans? Well
ma'am New Orleans is hundred and
twenty-five feet below the level of the sea-
and the Mississippi runs through cana
brid ge right over the city J. The inhabitants
are chiefly alligators and screech owls, the
last words have been vulgarly perverted in
to Creole. The food is chiefly gum m,produc
ed from trees in the swamp and which they
call gumbo. There is paper called the Pi
caroon, the name being well chosen, signi6
cant of its professed piraces upon Hunts Phi
losophy, Baron Munshausen, the Pilgrim,
Progress, Joe Miller, Washington Irving
and Bills Life in London. 1t is violent
and stupendous political print, and the gov.
ernment of the country has endeavored in
vain to suppress it. One of the peculiai
marks about this extraordinary city. is the
entire absence of those small quadrupeds
of genius most commonly known as rats
One was seen many years ago, by a citizen
who brutalIy murdered the unknown crsa-
ture, but was Immediately tried and SEN
fenced to be hung for the enormity.
"You will hear, ma'am, a great deal
about the floating population Of New Or
leans, phrase which you will understand
when l tell you that the town is half the
year under inundation from the Mississippi
You should have been born in America,
dear ma'am but as you were not you may
possibly die here, and that is some consola-
tion to you"