A Narrative of a Tour of Observation

through Baltimore to the state of Delaware, to the cities of Philadelphia, New York, and the chief towns in Connecticut and Rhode Island, to Boston, and other parts of Massachusetts, to the capital, and other towns in New Hampshire, and through the province of Maine to the town of Portland. Thence he extended his journey westward through Vermont; inspected the works at Plattsburg; and passing through the forests, to the St. Lawrence, he embarked for lake Ontario; visited Sacket's Harbour, and Fort Niagara; and, advancing along the strait to Buffalo, sailed through Lake Erie, and landed at Detroit, the extremity of his tour. He took a direction thence through the woods of the Michigan territory, and through the states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, towards the District of Columbia, where he arrived after an absence of more than three months.

. From this long, laborious, and fatiguing journey, which the President had imposed upon himself as a public duty, many and great advantages will be derived, as well by the general community of the United States, as the particular districts of the country through which it was necessarily made. The persevering manner in which it was performed, and the entire accomplishment of its ulterior objects, are strong and certain indications of its beneficial results. With an alacrity paralleled only by the prompt aid of the citizens to accelerate his movements, the President inspected garrisons; examined fortifications; reviewed infantry regiments at cantonments;

and obtained a knowledge of the condition of the military arsenals and naval depots, along the Atlantic and inland frontiers. To these numerous duties, he added the desire to promote the prosperity of the people; to correct abuses in the public offices; to avert the calamities incident to any future period of hostilities; to ameliorate the condition of the poorer classes of society; and to unite and harmonize, the sentiments and affections, of the citizens of one section with those of another. These desirable and happy consequences could not be achieved, without infinite labour, excessive fatigue, and numberless privations; all which were greatly increased, by his determination to return to the capital, through a succession of forests, wildernesses, and Indian settlements, intervening between Detroit and the settled parts of the state of Ohio. In traversing this district of the union, the President encountered all the difficulties attendant upon bad roads, and the impediments of deep mires and unbridged streams. His fare too was not of the most sumptuous kind, and he frequently slept, with his suite, in Indian huts, his great coat and saddle serving the purposes of bed and pillow, and his person guarded only by the chiefs of the different tribes. He sustained, however, all the inconveniences of comfortless lodgings, and unpleasant and fatiguing travelling, without any abatement of that cheerfulness, and sense of public duty, manifested in the commencement of his tour, the advantageous results of which will long be remembered and acknowledged by the nation.

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