One Man's Travels By Water in 1836-- Part 6: Texas Vagabonds "Drinking Bad Whiskey" and the Alligator Incident

In Galveston, Texas, David Crandall observed a sandbar with "tents and a few shanties and the population consisted of Mexican prisoners taken at the Battle of San Jacinto" overseen by "vagabonds in Texas uniform ... who divided their time between drinking bad whiskey, playing poker and tormenting their Mexican prisoners."  (Well, at least the Mexican prisoners were still alive, which was not an option for the Texan defenders of the Alamo earlier in the year.)

Across from an old Spanish village at the head of Galveston Bay, Crandall saw a wide sandy beach "literally covered with water fowl."  He borrowed a a dugout canoe to go on a "shooting excursion" but didn't have much luck.

Intending to crawl under a nearby log to "get one fair shot," he approached slowly to avoid alarming the game.  However, "the log became alarmed and while I was yet thirty steps away, it started for the water at top speed.  ... What I had supposed to be a log proved to be a huge alligator."

--Cootgator

One Man's Travels By Water in 1836-- Part 4: The Horse Race

In Louisville, Kentucky, "a match horse race came off between the states of Kentucky and Tennessee.  The chivalry of Kentucky staked their bottom dollar on the (bay gelding) Randolph, while the sporting men of Tennessee bet their last nickel on the brown filly Angora."

Randolph won "and the Tennesseeans were stripped to their shoestrings.  Large numbers of them were unable to pay their hotel bills and many were reduced from an easy competence to abject poverty."

After a stop in Cairo, Illinois, "which consisted of one building -- a tavern,"  David Crandall took the Madison, another steamer, to New Orleans, where he had his first glimpse of slavery:  "I found much food for reflection among a people who made slavery in its most brutal aspects the corner stone of their civilization and the chief element of their commercial prosperity."

He Wasn't Much Impressed With Slavery.  --Cooter

One Man's Travels On the Erie Canal (and Beyond) in 1836-- Part 3: Ohio's Canals and Two Presidents

David Sprague Crandall next crossed Lake Erie by steamer, landing in Cleveland.

Ohio's recent work on their canal system allowed him to travel several more days to the Ohio River, where he traveled again by steamer which he described as, "a little squeaking stern-wheeler which was aground half the time and the passengers kept running back and forth across the boat to rock it through through the sand bars."  I take it he was not overly impressed.

It was in Cincinnati that he saw President Jackson as well as William Henry Harrison, two War of 1812 heroes.  Of course, Harrison would himself be elected to the presidency four years later.

--Cooter

One Man's Travels on the Erie Canal in 1836-- Part 2: A Baby Squall?

The canal boat David Sprague Crandall boarded was bound for Buffalo, at the western end of the canal.

"Just as we made the light of S. Pendleton Clark's grocery the ever rolling banks of Townawanda Creek bearing sou'west by south half south & a little southerly we were struck abaft of the main hatch by a squall from the cook's baby.

"The captain was equal to the emergency and immediately gave orders to club-haul the boat, take a double reef in the overboard and pray for daylight.  The squall was short, sharp and uneventful, so that we made with cheerful alacrity," Crandall recorded in his journal.

Not sure what sort of storm they encountered here.

--Cooter

One Man's Travels on the Erie Canal in 1836-- Part 1: A Journal

From the July 23, 2017, Chicago Tribune by Stephanie Reynolds.

As we mark the 200th anniversary of the beginning of construction on the famous Erie Canal, connecting the Hudson River with the Great Lakes, a huge step in American transportation and quite an undertaking without the equipment we have today, here is a look back.

It was 1836, the same year as the Battle of the Alamo in Texas, David Sprague Crandall left his hometown in Lockport, N.Y., to travel on the Erie Canal and the Ohio and Mississippi rivers all the way to Galveston, , Texas.

He took paddle-wheel steamers  and slow-poke line boats pulled by mules on a tow path.  Along the way, he encountered an alligator, a horse race that pitted Tennessee against Kentucky and President Andrew Jackson.

Fortunately for us, he kept a journal of his trip for his 9-year-old grandson, George Lee Thurston II.

Crandall was a journalist and eventually became the owner of the Lockport Courier.  But, on August 8, 1836, he boarded a "shovel-nosed line boat" that was propelled by two mules and a ragged boy."  He was in poor health and going west to seek a change of climate.

he was heading west to Buffalo, NY, at the western end of the canal, at a speed somewhat slower than a person walking.

But, at least he wasn't doing the walking.

--DaCoot