FLORIAN - The Most Traveled Man on Earth

Letter 11.
Natchez, 4 January, 1809
[From Jean-Baptiste Florian. To Mr. Hy Cheriot, Merchant, of New York]
Monsieur,
<strong>The</strong> little time that I probably shall have here barely permits me to scrawl a letter in haste.
I beg you to be so kind as to pass this on to my wife, after having read it. Maybe you will
find some interest in the details which this contains.
<strong>The</strong> voyage on the Mississippi is much less pleasant than that of the Ohio. It offers little
danger, but the monotony of the scenery and the length of it make it most boring. <strong>The</strong>
banks of this river don’t have the faintest resemblance to the picture which our friend
Chateaubriand drew. 14 Instead of mountains and prairies, you see on each side of the
river, an uninterrupted, indistinguishable succession of lowlands covered with forests and
only diversified by occasional sand banks. Nevertheless, I much prefer this manner of
travel to New Orleans to that by sea.
Here is what I recommend in particular to those who would like to adopt my mode of
travel: Get to Pittsburgh towards the end or even the middle of October. In the spring
the voyage on the rivers is much more pleasant, but the roads in the mountains are a
hundred times worse than at the end of the summer. Buy a flatboat (Kentucky boat)
which one has made at Brownsville for $1.66 or 12 shillings, 6 pence per foot. <strong>The</strong>se
boats are 13 feet wide. Given 40 feet in length, one can divide the boat into three
sections. <strong>The</strong> one in front is for the rowers (oarsmen) and for the kitchen. You have to
take great care that the roof is well sealed, and for this, it should be covered with a double
thickness, at least, of well-jointed boards. It is a very good idea to provide oneself with
extra oars, two [?] cables – one for the front and one for the back (the sternpost), and a
supply of new rope, which one can re-sell for 50 percent of the investment if you do not
use it.
One cannot do without a 15 to 20 foot skiff, and an Indian canoe, because one is liable to
lose one or the other, and if one only has one of these, it is not possible to rescue the one
that the current takes away. Besides this, one should be provided with axes to cut wood,
several boards for repair in case of accident, saws, nails, hammers, augers, chisels, and
hemp oakum to caulk with. All of these precautions are of the very greatest necessity.
14 Francoise Rene de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) published various travelogues, plays and novels, some of
which stated or implied that he had visited Louisiana and floated down the Mississippi. However, some
scholars have identified errors – in the same way that Jean-Baptiste Florian did – and now believe that
Chateaubriand did not in fact visit the American south. Note that Chateaubriand was born in St. Malo and
Jean-Baptiste or his wife may have known him. Chateaubriand’s father was a ship owner at St. Malo, as
was Pierre Beaugeard, grandfather of Jean-Baptiste’s wife, as was her uncle Nicolas.
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