Sketches of America. A NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY OF FIVE THOUSAND MILES THROUGH THE EASTERN AND WESTERN STATES BY OF AMERICA; CONTAINED IN EIGHT REPORTS ADDRESSED TO THE THIRTY-NINE ENGLISH FAMILIES WHOM THE AUTHOR WAS DEPUTED, IN JUNE 1817, TO ASCERTAIN WITH REMARKS ON MR. BIRKBECK'S "NOTES" AND "LETTERS." BY HENRY BRADSHAW FEARON. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN, PATERNOSTER-ROW. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. In submitting the following pages to the Public, it is my wish that the reader should be put fairly in possession of the circumstances under which they were written. I was deputed by a circle of friends, whose persons and whose interests are most dear to me, to visit the United States of America, in order to furnish them with materials to regulate their decision on the subject of emigration. Into the motives and the views which led to this proposed measure on their part, it is not requisite that I should enter much in detail; they are, I fear, known and felt too generally to render description necessary. Emigration had, at the time of my appointment, assumed a totally new character: it was no longer merely the poor, the idle, the profligate, or the wildly speculative, who were proposing to quit their native country; but men also of capital, of industry, of sober habits and regular pursuits, men of reflection who apprehended approaching evils; men of upright and conscientious minds, |