A Duke’s Opinions of Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia
[From a Review of “Travels of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar” in 1825-6.]
In his journey through Virginia, our traveller visited Mr. Jefferson, with whom, however, he does not appear to have been as much struck as he had been with the late Mr. Adams. The Natural Bridge he pronounces “one of the greatest wonders of nature he ever beheld,” albeit he had seen “Vesuvius and the Phlegrean Fields, the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland, the Island of Staffa, and the Falls of Niagara.” “Finally” (to use a favorite mode of expression of his own), he is amazed at the profusion of militia titles in Virginia, which almost persuaded him that he was at the headquarters of a grand army, and at the aristocratic notions of some of the gentlemen in the same state, who make no secret of their taste for primogeniture laws and hereditary nobility.
He passed through North Carolina too rapidly to do anything like justice to the many remarkable things which that respectable state has to boast of. Accordingly, his observations are principally confined to the inns where he stopped, the roads over which he travelled, and the mere exterior of the towns and villages which the stage-coach traverses in its route. He is of opinion, from what he saw in that region, that “it would be a good speculation to establish a glass manufactory in a country, where there is such a want of glass, and a superabundance of pine-trees and sand.” It had almost escaped us, that he here for the first time made the acquaintance of a “great many large vultures, called buzzards, the shooting of which is prohibited, as they feed upon carrion, and contribute in this manner to the salubrity of the country.” This “parlous wild-fowl” has the honor to attract the attention of his Highness again in Charleston, where he informs us that its life is, in like manner, protected by law, and where it is called from its resemblance to another bird, the turkey-buzzard.... In Columbia, he became acquainted with most of the distinguished inhabitants, of whose very kind attentions to him he speaks in high terms. The following good-natured hint too may not be altogether useless: “At Professor Henry’s a very agreeable society assembled at dinner. At that party I observed a singular manner which is practiced; the ladies sit down by themselves at one of the corners of the table. But I broke the old custom, and glided between them; and no one’s appetite was injured thereby.”....
Nothing... can be a stronger exemplification of the difficulties under which a stranger labors, in his efforts to acquire a knowledge of a country new to him, than the perpetual mistakes which our distinguished traveller commits in his brief notices of Georgia.... Even the complexion of the people of Georgia displeased him, and, coming from a Court where French was not only the fashionable but the common language of social intercourse, he considers the education of women neglected, because they are not taught that language in situations where they might never have occasion to use it.