Albert Gallatin | Page 6

Letters of recommendation to distinguished Americans were also forwarded, and in these it is found, to the high credit of the family, that no distinction was made between the two young men, although Serre seems to have been considered as the originator of the bold move. The intervention of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld d'Enville was solicited, and a letter was obtained by him from Benjamin Franklin--then American minister at the Court of Versailles--to his son-in-law, Richard Bache. Lady Juliana Penn wrote in their behalf to John Penn at Philadelphia, and Mademoiselle Pictet to Colonel Kinloch, member of the Continental Congress from South Carolina. Thus supported in their undertaking the youthful travelers sailed from L'Orient on May 27, in an American vessel, the Kattie, Captain Loring. Of the sum which Gallatin, who supplied the capital for the expedition, brought from Geneva, one half had been expended in their land journey and the payment of the passages to Boston; one half, eighty louis d'or--the equivalent of four hundred silver dollars--remained, part of which they invested in tea. Reaching the American coast in a fog, or bad weather, they were landed at Cape Ann on July 14. From Gloucester they rode the next day to Boston on horseback, a distance of thirty miles. Here they put up at a French café, "The Sign of the Alliance," in Fore Street, kept by one Tahon, and began to consider what step they should next take in the new world.
The prospects were not encouraging; the military fortunes of the struggling nation were never at a lower ebb than during the summer which intervened between the disaster of Camden and the discovery of Arnold's treason. Washington's army lay at New Windsor in enforced inactivity; enlistments were few, and the currency was almost worthless. Such was the stagnation in trade, that the young strangers found it extremely difficult to dispose of their little venture in tea. Two months were passed at the café, in waiting for an opportunity to go to Philadelphia, where Congress was in session, and where they expected to find the influential persons to whom they were accredited; also letters from Geneva. But this journey was no easy matter. The usual routes of travel were interrupted. New York was the fortified headquarters of the British army, and the Middle States were only to be reached by a détour through the American lines above the Highlands and behind the Jersey Hills.
The homesick youths found little to amuse or interest them in Boston, and grew very weary of its monotonous life and Puritanic tone. They missed the public amusements to which they were accustomed in their own country, and complained of the superstitious observance of Sunday, when "singing, fiddling, card-playing and bowling were forbidden." Foreigners were not welcome guests in this town of prejudice. The sailors of the French fleet had already been the cause of one riot. Gallatin's letters show that this aversion was fully reciprocated by him.
The neighboring country had some points of interest. No Swiss ever saw a hill without an intense desire to get to its top. They soon felt the magnetic attraction of the Blue Hills of Milton, and, descrying from their summit the distant mountains north of Worcester, made a pedestrian excursion thither the following day. Mr. Gallatin was wont to relate with glee an incident of this trip, which Mr. John Russell Bartlett repeats in his "Reminiscences."
"The tavern at which he stopped on his journey was kept by a man who partook in a considerable degree of the curiosity even now-a-days manifested by some landlords in the back parts of New England to know the whole history of their guests. Noticing Mr. Gallatin's French accent he said, 'Just from France, eh! You are a Frenchman, I suppose.' 'No!' said Mr. Gallatin, 'I am not from France.' 'You can't be from England, I am sure?' 'No!' was the reply. 'From Spain?' 'No!' 'From Germany?' 'No!' 'Well, where on earth are you from then, or what are you?' eagerly asked the inquisitive landlord. 'I am a Swiss,' replied Mr. Gallatin. 'Swiss, Swiss, Swiss!' exclaimed the landlord, in astonishment. 'Which of the ten tribes are the Swiss?'"
Nor was this an unnatural remark. At this time Mr. Gallatin did not speak English with facility, and indeed was never free from a foreign accent.
At the little café they met a Swiss woman, the wife of a Genevan, one De Lesdernier, who had been for thirty years established in Nova Scotia, but, becoming compromised in the attempt to revolutionize the colony, was compelled to fly to New England, and had settled at Machias, on the northeastern extremity of the Maine frontier. Tempted by her account of this region, and perhaps making a virtue of necessity, Gallatin and Serre bartered their tea for rum, sugar, and