". . . The stealthy crawl of the Indian, and his inflexible nerve in such situations, are instances of the dominion of habit over the senses, that are almost incredible. The broken sticks, the dry leaf, the rustling branch, and the sharp thorn that would betray another, are instinctively avoided. . . ."
Sir William Drummond Stewart, 7th Baronet (1795 – 1871) was a Scottish adventurer and British military officer who traveled extensively in the American West for nearly seven years in the 1830s. In 1837 he took along the American artist, Alfred Jacob Miller, hiring him to do sketches of the trip. In 1846 Stewart published a book based on his travels in the West, titled "Altowan, or Incidents of Life and Adventure in the Rocky Mountains."
Stewart was with Wellington at Waterloo, and had elsewhere seen hard fighting in his day. The second son of one of the most ancient families in Great Britain, with the blood of princes in his veins, and connected by birth and intermarriages with royalty itself, had retired upon half-pay; and in the spirit of adventure, which forms a prominent trait in his character, visited the United States for the sole purpose of penetrating the great wildernesses of the West, and partaking in the excitement and adventure which it promised; regardless alike of the privations and dangers inseparable from such a life. He "visited the different establishments of the Hudson Bay Company; and spent three winters in the Rocky Mountains, in Oregon, and Upper California." An excellent opportunity was there presented for learning what life is in those wild and rugged regions.
"During his long sojourn in the wilderness, he had literally suffered every thing but death from hostile bands of Indians—from hunger, exposure and fatigue. He had met with 'hairbreadth ' scapes' of every kind,' but he had hunted and killed the grizzly bear and the Buffalo; he had seen and lived with the North American Indian in his native wilds; and he had looked upon a country fresh from the hands of the Creator—filled with magnificent lakes, lofty mountains, and boundless prairies, which spoke the nothingness of man, and involuntarily carried the heart and mind from nature up to nature's God.
Altowan is free from those tedious redundancies which too often lumber books of travel; and consisting mainly of thrilling incidents of adventure, the reader is hurried on from scene to scene with the rapidity of a hunting party in hot pursuit of game. It contains more adventure than many works professedly fictitious; and being a narrative of real life, it is doubly interesting. No other book could be more recommended to the reader for correct insight into life in the far west. The author writes from observation and experience, and with the "pen" of not only a "ready," but a graphic writer.
This work is, notwithstanding its very wild character, a truly beautiful composition and the author, in his love for savage life, has not made this more terrible than it really is. Continually at war, no man can venture a hundred yards from his friend, or the tribe to which he belongs, and be safe from the ball of the rifle, or arrow from the bow, of some one of his numerous enemies. The book is full of exciting events and startling incidents, and the agreeable style of the narrative carries the reader on from page to page with unflagging interest and unalloyed pleasure. The pictures of Indian life are touched with the pencil of one who paints directly from nature ; and the various scenes and characters are often shadowed forth with a delicacy, vividness of coloring and general beauty, which naturally lead to the conclusion that the author is no mere novice in his art.
Sir William Drummond Stewart, 7th Baronet (1795 – 1871) was a Scottish adventurer and British military officer who traveled extensively in the American West for nearly seven years in the 1830s. In 1837 he took along the American artist, Alfred Jacob Miller, hiring him to do sketches of the trip. In 1846 Stewart published a book based on his travels in the West, titled "Altowan, or Incidents of Life and Adventure in the Rocky Mountains."
Stewart was with Wellington at Waterloo, and had elsewhere seen hard fighting in his day. The second son of one of the most ancient families in Great Britain, with the blood of princes in his veins, and connected by birth and intermarriages with royalty itself, had retired upon half-pay; and in the spirit of adventure, which forms a prominent trait in his character, visited the United States for the sole purpose of penetrating the great wildernesses of the West, and partaking in the excitement and adventure which it promised; regardless alike of the privations and dangers inseparable from such a life. He "visited the different establishments of the Hudson Bay Company; and spent three winters in the Rocky Mountains, in Oregon, and Upper California." An excellent opportunity was there presented for learning what life is in those wild and rugged regions.
"During his long sojourn in the wilderness, he had literally suffered every thing but death from hostile bands of Indians—from hunger, exposure and fatigue. He had met with 'hairbreadth ' scapes' of every kind,' but he had hunted and killed the grizzly bear and the Buffalo; he had seen and lived with the North American Indian in his native wilds; and he had looked upon a country fresh from the hands of the Creator—filled with magnificent lakes, lofty mountains, and boundless prairies, which spoke the nothingness of man, and involuntarily carried the heart and mind from nature up to nature's God.
Altowan is free from those tedious redundancies which too often lumber books of travel; and consisting mainly of thrilling incidents of adventure, the reader is hurried on from scene to scene with the rapidity of a hunting party in hot pursuit of game. It contains more adventure than many works professedly fictitious; and being a narrative of real life, it is doubly interesting. No other book could be more recommended to the reader for correct insight into life in the far west. The author writes from observation and experience, and with the "pen" of not only a "ready," but a graphic writer.
This work is, notwithstanding its very wild character, a truly beautiful composition and the author, in his love for savage life, has not made this more terrible than it really is. Continually at war, no man can venture a hundred yards from his friend, or the tribe to which he belongs, and be safe from the ball of the rifle, or arrow from the bow, of some one of his numerous enemies. The book is full of exciting events and startling incidents, and the agreeable style of the narrative carries the reader on from page to page with unflagging interest and unalloyed pleasure. The pictures of Indian life are touched with the pencil of one who paints directly from nature ; and the various scenes and characters are often shadowed forth with a delicacy, vividness of coloring and general beauty, which naturally lead to the conclusion that the author is no mere novice in his art.
