Henry Clay was a great prophet as well as a great orator. We know now how the affection of the United States for Lafayette has grown and grown during the century in which the republic has stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific and its people increased from ten millions to more than a hundred millions.
In his journey through the country Lafayette passed through thousands of miles of wilderness and had several opportunities to renew his old acquaintance with the Indians. He had won their friendship during the Revolution by his sympathy for all men. Now he found that they had not forgotten the young chief whom they had called Kayoula. A girl of the Southern Creeks showed him a paper she had kept as a relic which turned out to be a letter of thanks written to her father by Lafayette forty-five years before. In western New York he met the famous chief Red Jacket, who reminded him that it was he who had argued the cause of the Indians at the council at Fort Schuyler in 1784. Lafayette remembered, and it delighted him greatly that the Indians were as eager to greet him as their white brothers.
Only one mishap occurred during the many journeys which might easily have proved full of perils. While ascending the Ohio River on his way to Louisville his steamer struck on a snag on a dark and rainy night. The boat immediately began to fill. Lafayette was hurried into a small boat and rowed ashore, in spite of his protests that he would not leave the steamer until he secured a snuff-box that Washington had given him. His secretary went below and got the snuff-box and his son George saved some other articles of value. All the party were safely landed, but they had to spend some hours on the river-bank with no protection from the rain and only a few crackers to eat. The next morning a freight steamer took them off and they proceeded on their journey.
When he was in Washington Lafayette made a visit to Mount Vernon, and spent some time in the beautiful house and grounds where he had once walked with the man whose friendship had been so dear to him. Like Washington, almost all the men of the Revolution had departed. The Frenchman found few of the soldiers and statesmen he had known then. One, however, Colonel Nicholas Fish, who had been with him at the storming of the redoubt at Yorktown, welcomed him in New York and went with him up the Hudson. “Nick,” said Lafayette, pointing out a certain height to Colonel Fish, “do you remember when we used to ride down that hill with the Newburgh girls on an ox-sled?” Many places along the Hudson served to remind him of incidents of the time when Washington had made his headquarters there.