In Boston, I took up the mantle of the wealthy trader, partner in several thriving enterprises. It turned out I was my own leading competitor. Two of my investments were now worthless, the companies having suffered great reverses in a financial panic. But three of them more than made up for the reverses, having become the leading shipping companies in the United States. I had to now think of them that way having again beaten the British army in a small war, called by them the War of 1812. Again, they were helped by the French under Napoleon who kept the main British army occupied on the continent, and would until that peasant upstart met his Waterloo.
Actually, the companies were performing well without my active intervention and I prudently thought it best to continue my silent partnership. I did not want to interrupt the functioning of a company which performed so well without my assistance. Let well enough alone is never bad advice and too frequently ignored, especially by politicians.
American settlement had extended beyond the Mississippi River. I found myself becoming interested in seeing this great land. My earlier encounter, when Indians still controlled much land, had not been of the most edifying results, that is, running for our lives as we did. Traveling in much more comfortable circumstances as now seemed possible, piqued my curiosity.
And so, I set out by boat to see this land. Though that at a glance is a contradiction, it is not. I traveled first to New Orleans, the great port of the Mississippi River, which guards the entrance to the center of the continent. Disembarking there I found a city both wild and yet genteel. It was an important trading center, so wealth accumulated. The rich of the city established a genteel ‘Southern’ culture, abounding in parties, overlaid atop the French Creole influence. I had introduction into the society, being of a trading company myself.
At one and the same time, all that work brought men, rough and tumble men, to perform the work. Their entertainments were of a different ilk entirely. The city was filled with drinking establishments and establishments of less wholesome pursuits. Much of the female population of the city was ensconced in the various houses servicing the lusty desires of the men, from the genteel women working in fine houses to which I was introduced by gentlemen, to the slatterns who served the dock men and rough river men. The only thing that was more popular than the women was drinking and gambling. I found out that the gamblers of the river did not let chance guide their fortunes, they cheated. False cards, false dice, false sleeves, false hearts, helped them in their quest to separate the unwary from their money. I lost just enough to learn a lesson that I never again needed to learn. It was in many ways, a cheap lesson. Such was New Orleans.
I spent enough time to tire of the frivolities of New Orleans before taking a paddleboat north. The riverboat stopped at nearly every little berg along the river. I took the opportunity to talk to many settlers and learn of their desires for the future and opinions. The cities flowed by: Clairborne, Baton Rouge, Vicksburg, Greenville, Rosedale, and Memphis named after the famous lost city in Egypt.
In the southern Missouri Territory, the great Ohio River emptied into the Mississippi. The confluence of these two great rivers was amazing. The Ohio was a mile wide and poured into the even greater Mississippi. Having only seen the small rivers of England and Boston, I could not imagine the volume of water carried by these great courses. It was almost as if the sea itself was flowing.
I sat one day on the bank of the confluence and watched the unending streams carrying an endless supply of water southward. And I thought about how much water these rivers carried and how vast the lands must be that these rivers emptied the water on them. Like a great bolt, I understood many things sitting there in the buzzing heat of a Missouri afternoon.
His Majesty’s government had given the former colonists full rights and powers as a country. And these people had a confidence and vigor in them that was contagious. I had caught it myself, coming to regard myself as one of them and becoming embroiled even in their peculiar politics. The country was adding great swatches of land to the union of states, the largest being the sale of land by the French and the settlement of that land. The only opposition came from the savage inhabitants. Many battles were fought but the superiority of the settlers was never in doubt and the tide of settlement swamped the savages pushing them back and extending the frontier of the United States ever westward. By 1835, the former colonies of Great Britain were now many times larger than the mother country, perhaps as large as all of Europe when they finished settling this vast continent.
It was that vast land combined with their vast confidence that I had seen that made me know of a certainty, this country would surpass the mother country some day soon. Their vitality would lead these people to conquer the continent. Why just the territories? Why not Canada, a few acres of snow, as my old friend, Voltaire, described it? And Mexico, currently held by the French, why not take it? The Americans had shown that it wasn’t possible for a European power to try to subdue an area twenty times greater than their own lands. It is one thing to push aside savages and claim a territory. It is decidedly more difficult to conquer their own descendents trained and armed with modern weapons and half a world away.
I knew then, as a great epiphany, that the Old World was not the place to make a fortune. It was this New World. And I knew the key; transportation, the business I was already well situated in.
I boarded the river boat up the Ohio, a spring in my step and a plan already launched in my mind. I honed it as I traveled up river, learning the ins and outs of business from everyone I met.
I traveled overland and crossed the Appalachian Mountains and back to Boston, a journey now much easier and safer than my previous sally through the wilds of New York. Where the savages had not been tamed, they had been exterminated.
(Editor’s Note: I have chosen not to redact this testament despite antiquated and outdated views expressed; for that is how a European would have viewed the world. It is presented as it was written, warts and all.)
Once back in Boston, I applied myself to my plans. With two partners who were of a mind with me, we took such monies as we possessed and began investing in the river boats and barge companies, including several ferry crossings of the great rivers.
One of the partners was quite adamant that railroads would someday revolutionize transportation. Although many lines were unprofitable, it was because they attempted to compete with existing canal boats. We decided our lines would go where no boats could travel, opening up transport to previously un-served areas, but areas of growing wealth. It took a longer view to wait while a region grew to profit the road, but it was surety. Eventually, we made a pile of money from these roads. What we profited, we poured back into the companies, making them grow all the faster.
These business ventures kept me only partially occupied. I had continued in my readings, having been once roused to the highest thought by Voltaire, I could not forsake such readings without a sense of loss. I have mentioned the vitality of these Americans. That vitality began to be shown in ways other than simply a quest for land to the west. There sprang from the native soil writers of some worth. Perhaps the greatest of these was James Fenimore Cooper, whose works delighted not only Americans but Europeans as well with their tales of the frontier. I never did meet Mr. Cooper, and I am sorry for that. I did chance to meet a new writer who would come to be a great writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Emerson was a man cut of the same cloth as my old friend Voltaire, and as such I immediately took a liking to him. He, too, had aroused the religious establishment against him for proclaiming that Jesus of Nazareth was a great man, but not God. From the reactions you would think Emerson had committed every sin imaginable, and was accused of such by the blind pedants of the time. We became friends and had many lively discussions over the course of the years. Having learned the Deist tradition from Voltaire, I was not shocked by Mr. Emerson’s views, and I offered such support as I could. Mr. Emerson was forever grateful to me of support when he most needed it.
He sent me a draft once of an essay which he proposed to publish, Self-Reliance. In it, I sensed that same vigor that seemed to define this new land, so different from the old world. I knew, reading this essay that Ralph had expressed the very soul of America. I wrote him back complimenting him greatly and telling him my thoughts. When published, I was not the only reader to consider this was the work of a great and noble mind.
And the ring. Yes, I am writing this testament to inform you of the ring. It was in this period that I far surpassed the normal span for a man’s life. Yet, I remained young to all appearances. If there had been any doubt of the ring’s power, it was long answered by this point. I came to trust the ring, dare I say it, with my life, for it had given me life beyond human ken.
It was also during this period, after I left England and while I was establishing a commercial base in the new country, that I had most occasion to use the ring. I had no permanent liaison and therefore, the most opportunity of use of its special powers. I could not at this far remove even estimate the numbers of women who fell under its power during those years, for it was a long period, many decades.
Perhaps, an instance will stand for all. A typical encounter while traveling, one quite pleasant, occurred, which therefore has stood out in my memory, in the small town of Cincinnati on the Ohio River. The river-boat anchored for the night. Many men gathered at a dance hall right off the river front which collected all sorts of river rats from barge men to gamblers to traders and pole men. There was an assortment of girls as well. Now, I could have my choice of any woman present for a small charge and I had done so often enough. The money made little difference to me for the pleasures it would buy.
But this night, I was taken by a girl with a strange accent. I called her to me, introduced myself, and inquired of her name. She told me her name was Chastity, but I knew that was her stage name. I laughed and asked her real name. She blushed and admitted her name was Fiona, a good Irish name. I had a wild idea then and proposed it to young Fiona, “Look girl, why don’t we leave this establishment for the night?”
“Mr. Johnson, he’s the owner, he would be furious I wasn’t holding up my end,” she said.
“And what would you bring in to him on a typical night like this?” I asked.
She looked around. Not many men were taking girls upstairs. Most were drinking or gambling. “Maybe three or four dollars. He rents the room at fifty cents to the men.”
The poor girl would have to service six to eight men in a night. I pulled from my pocket a silver five dollar piece and put it in her hand. “Give him this and tell him you will be gone till tomorrow.” She looked at the coin and me. “Go,” I said.
She smiled and jumped up. I watched as this Mr. Johnson argued with Fiona until she slapped the five dollar piece on the bar. He started to say something and she went to pick it back up. His hand slammed down on it. She smiled coyly, turned, and hurried up the stairs. This Johnson fellow eyed me suspiciously. I smiled and finished my beer.
Fiona was back in minutes, her hair up and pulled tight, a simple dress on, looking all the more like any young woman. It is some chameleon ability that women have to go from tart to maid and back again so quickly, I think to use against men for their deception.
I gave her my arm which she gladly took and I escorted her from the saloon. We walked along the river talking of her village in Ireland. It was poor land up high in the hills and barely grew enough to feed the family. She left for America with a promise of a position serving a fine family. The position turned out to be in a salon in Boston. She had run away after a while but there was little else for a woman like her, disgraced in the eyes of most. She had heard that there were more men than women in the west and went there hoping to reverse her fortunes. Maybe she would for there were many men who would not care of her background to get a good woman of their own.
I had a cabin on the riverboat and led her to the boat. She demurred. Isn’t it peculiar that a woman who would have sold her virtue for coppers would not give it away to a man she had just met, that being sinful? But such it was. I felt the ring on my hand and said to the girl, “Come with me to my cabin and show me all you know of the arts of amore.” I felt the power of the ring leap forth, the ring buzzed and the three stones shone in the dark night.
Fiona relaxed at that command and held my arm as we mounted the rolling boat and made for my cabin. Soon clothes were on the floor and we were rolling together in synchrony with the boat. It was my first experience of sex on a boat. The joining was usual, but the rhythm enforced by the gentle rocking of waves slowed us, and we moved at the same slow leisurly pace. It prolonged the act, but also served to heighten it, the extension allowing ever greater pressure of passion to build until, when we both spent, it was a complete release emptying us of all and leaving both drained and yet satisfied beyond measure. I have sought since to duplicate this experience and have never been able to do it exactly.
In the morning, Fiona had once more shown me her skills in the Arts Amore. I sent her off with a gold coin for I had cheated her of her pay the night before. She was quite happy and thanked me profusely, before changing back into a prim lady and leaving. Such was my experience of love on the frontier.
Copyright Rod O'Steele © 2007, 2009