Carter and Colonel
Haines, had rooms. While here, I was introduced one day to a man who
subsequently attracted a good deal of notice as a literary impostor.
This was a person named Hunter. He said that he derived this name from
his origin in the Indian country. He had a soft, compliant, half
quizzical look, and appeared to know nothing precisely, but dealt in
vague accounts and innuendoes. Having gone to London, the booksellers
thought him, it appears, a good subject for a book, and some hack was
employed to prepare it. It had a very slender basis in any observations
which this man was capable of furnishing; but abounded in misstatements
and vituperation of the policy of this government respecting the
Indians. This fellow is handled in the Oct. No. of the _North American
Review_, for 1825, in a manner which gives very little encouragement to
literary adventurers and cheats. The very man, John Dunn, of Missouri,
after whom he affected to have been named, denies that he ever heard
of him.
I had, thus far, seen but little of the Atlantic, except what could be
observed in a trip from New Orleans to New York, and knew very little of
its coasts by personal examination.
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