While in Vermont, I received a salary of eighteen hundred dollars per
annum, which enabled me to pursue my studies, _ex academia_, at
Middlebury College. In conversation with President Davis, I learned that
this was the highest salary paid in the State, he himself receiving
eleven hundred, and the Governor of the State but eight hundred.
The extensive and interesting journeys connected with the manufacturing
impulse of these engagements, reaching over a varied surface of several
hundred miles, opened up scenes of life and adventure which gave me a
foretaste of, and preparedness for, the deeper experiences of the
western wilderness; and the war with England was no sooner closed than I
made ready to share in the exploration of the FAR WEST. The wonderful
accounts brought from the Mississippi valley--its fertility, extent, and
resources--inspired a wish to see it for myself, and to this end I made
some preliminary explorations in Western New York, in 1816 and 1817. I
reached Olean, on the source of the Alleghany River, early in 1818,
while the snow was yet upon the ground, and had to wait several weeks
for the opening of that stream.
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