Various Spanish writers, Malte-Brun, Humboldt, Gen. Pike, and others, have described this country superficially; Gen. Pike, perhaps, more satisfactorily, and more to the common apprehension, than any who preceded him. Baron Humboldt, only travelled it, and rapidly, in one direction.[136] Pike was a kind of a state prisoner, while in it, and was necessarily, much restricted in his means for making observations. Perhaps no person has had more ample chances of this kind, than Dr. Willard. Unfortunately, he was there with the feeling and temperament, which are usually appended to the people from his section of the country, and whose principle object is to secure, what the New Englander calls the main chance. He now bitterly regrets, that he did not more highly appreciate, while he was in that interesting, and in a great measure undescribed and unexplored country, his opportunities to have made a book of travels of very high interest.
As it was, he remained in the country nearly three years, made his first essays at operating on the living fibre among the New-Mexicans, traversed the whole extent of country from Taos to Matamoras, a distance by the travelled line, of more than 2000 miles. He travelled leisurely, and at intervals, through the country, practising physic at the more important towns, making some stay at Santa Fe, Chihuahua, Monterey, Saltilleo, Maspimi, Matamoras, &c. We note in his journal, which details the events and journeyings of each day, proofs of the hospitality of the higher classes of the citizens, and of the readiness of the people to trust themselves to an American stranger, who appears among them in the character of a physician, { 273} although they consider him a heretic. This is evidence conclusive of their deep respect for the supposed learning, acuteness and talents of the people from our division of the continent. He made money rapidly, as a physician among them. But it seems, he looked from the 'leeks and fleshpots' of this distant and strange country, with a filial remembrance, towards the common mother of us all, the land of his birth; and preferred to return, and encounter the scramble and competition of an over crowded profession, certainly with inferior prospects of present pecuniary advantage. We admire that feeling, in our countrymen, which prompts them, in remote and foreign lands, still to turn their thoughts towards home, as the place of the charities, views and motives, that render life desirable. A true hearted American, living or dying, as long as pulsation lasts, _dulces reminiscitur Argos_. It will gratify the reader to learn, that our enterprising, modest and amiable traveller spoiled the Philistines, in an honorable and honest way, of a sum of dollars, which to a young, sober and calculating New-Englander, may be considered the embryo germ of a future fortune.