Title: Autograph Letter Signed - 1854 Letter-Journal of a Voyage to New Orleans and Chinese on the Mississippi Author: Keyes, Charles Melvin Place: Jackson, Louisiana Publisher: Date: January 9, 1854 Description: Autograph Letter Signed (“Charley M.”). To his sisters in Vermont. 8pp. Diary-like account of a 24 year-old New England man’s three-week voyage from Boston to New Orleans - to seek a job at an Insane Asylum, having apparently worked as a male nurse at an asylum in Massachusetts. Keyes set sail on December 5, 1853, and after a week of seasickness, recorded his first views of an ocean water spout and a shark, his arrival at the Bahamas, where he caught sight of a notorious pirate refuge and the Captain recalled the “Negro Governor” of one island who had once greeted him, barefoot and in shirt sleeves, in a boat “rowed by six darkies”. Keyes eventually found his sea legs and climbed aloft to sit on a yardarm 100 feet above the sea, while sailors, “lazy scamps”, believing him to be a Doctor, begged him for medical advice. Sailing past Key West (“quite a place” with “a fort, churches, lighthouse”) and British Honduras, through the Gulf of Mexico, Keyes finally arrived, day after Christmas, at the fascinating city of New Orleans: “…a great many very fine buildings and streets with stores containing all the rich things imaginable kept by northern men… much like Boston”; though the French Quarter was radically different: “French, Creoles, Germans, Irish, negroes, Jews and gentiles all mixed up and all gabbing as fast as they can, especially at the markets…tended by men and women together of all colors and sizes…” New Year’s fell on a Sunday, yet stores and theaters were as open as the churches, with all the street cars running and “boys firing crackers all day…much more like the 4th of July” then a peaceful New England Sabbath. Unable to find a job in the city, Keyes took a boat 160 miles up the Mississippi to Jackson, site of the state Insane Asylum, his fellow passengers being “seven Chinese men dressed in the style of their country…their heads were shaved, except the crown about four inches in diameter which was left to grow long and was braided and hung as low as the knee on some of them, some had on brocade silk pants tight as they be and some had pants very large indeed….” Despite all the attractions of his adventurous voyage, Keyes soon returned to his Vermont home, where he married and settled as a merchant. Partial transcript available on request. Lot Amendments Condition: Very good. Item number: 238188
Title: Autograph Letter Signed - 1854 Letter-Journal of a Voyage to New Orleans and Chinese on the Mississippi Author: Keyes, Charles Melvin Place: Jackson, Louisiana Publisher: Date: January 9, 1854 Description: Autograph Letter Signed (“Charley M.”). To his sisters in Vermont. 8pp. Diary-like account of a 24 year-old New England man’s three-week voyage from Boston to New Orleans - to seek a job at an Insane Asylum, having apparently worked as a male nurse at an asylum in Massachusetts. Keyes set sail on December 5, 1853, and after a week of seasickness, recorded his first views of an ocean water spout and a shark, his arrival at the Bahamas, where he caught sight of a notorious pirate refuge and the Captain recalled the “Negro Governor” of one island who had once greeted him, barefoot and in shirt sleeves, in a boat “rowed by six darkies”. Keyes eventually found his sea legs and climbed aloft to sit on a yardarm 100 feet above the sea, while sailors, “lazy scamps”, believing him to be a Doctor, begged him for medical advice. Sailing past Key West (“quite a place” with “a fort, churches, lighthouse”) and British Honduras, through the Gulf of Mexico, Keyes finally arrived, day after Christmas, at the fascinating city of New Orleans: “…a great many very fine buildings and streets with stores containing all the rich things imaginable kept by northern men… much like Boston”; though the French Quarter was radically different: “French, Creoles, Germans, Irish, negroes, Jews and gentiles all mixed up and all gabbing as fast as they can, especially at the markets…tended by men and women together of all colors and sizes…” New Year’s fell on a Sunday, yet stores and theaters were as open as the churches, with all the street cars running and “boys firing crackers all day…much more like the 4th of July” then a peaceful New England Sabbath. Unable to find a job in the city, Keyes took a boat 160 miles up the Mississippi to Jackson, site of the state Insane Asylum, his fellow passengers being “seven Chinese men dressed in the style of their country…their heads were shaved, except the crown about four inches in diameter which was left to grow long and was braided and hung as low as the knee on some of them, some had on brocade silk pants tight as they be and some had pants very large indeed….” Despite all the attractions of his adventurous voyage, Keyes soon returned to his Vermont home, where he married and settled as a merchant. Partial transcript available on request. Lot Amendments Condition: Very good. Item number: 238188
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
