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John Goldie in North
Anerica |
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APPENDIX II. JOHN GOLDIE IN by John Goldie described his
entire three-year North American itinerary in a publication of the Edinburgh
Philosophical Society published in 1822 (Spawn, 1961). He had set sail for
North America from Leith, Scotland, in 1817 and landed in Halifax. He then
went to Montreal where he met Frederick Pursh (1774-1820), author of the two
volume "Flora Americae Septentrionalis" published in 1814, which
described botanical materials collected during the Lewis and Clark
expedition, and which was the "first complete treatise on the plants of
North America north of Mexico" (Humphrey, 1961). Pursh had been
suffering from ill health and would die the year after Goldie returned to
Scotland. Pursh was living in Montreal and for twelve years had been struggling
to finish a flora of Canada, concentrating primarily on what is now the
Province of Quebec (Humphrey, 1961). Pursh had earlier taken his North
American plant collections to England, where he wrote the manuscript for his
1814 publication. It is likely he had some communication with Sir William J.
Hooker, Goldie's mentor at the Glasgow Botanical Gardens, who would himself
write another North American flora in 1840 (see part one of this series).
This is perhaps why Goldie chose Montreal as his first point of contact -
because Pursh worked there. Although Pursh never did complete the Canadian
flora, he apparently never lost sight of the importance to science of the
Lewis and Clark collections from the western half of the continent for he
urged Goldie to connect up with traders leaving Montreal for the north-west
in the spring of the next year. This Goldie was never to do, for Pursh,
perhaps too ill and perhaps not overly impressed with the young man, did not
establish the connections Goldie needed to proceed into the western
wilderness. This, Goldie's successor, David Douglas, would later do, with
spectacular success (see part one of this series). It was also perhaps Pursh's
12-year sojourn in Montreal that contributed to intellectual conditions
leading to the actual publication of a two-volume flora of Canada in 1862 in
French by Abbe L. Provancher, cure de Portneuf, and the rich botanical
tradition in Quebec. Pursh, how-ever, "made several important botanical
excursions ... on foot and assembled important collec-tions, especially from
the Province of Quebec, but all of these were destroyed by fire. As a
consequence, nothing was salvaged, and there is no record of the years of
labor he had devoted to his Canadian project" (Humphrey, 1961). In the
years 1812-1814 the British government had endured a further attempt at
territorial expansion on the part of their former North American subjects,
who had become independent of British rule during the eighteenth century and
had instituted a new nation entitled the United States of America. The
northern boundary of this new nation in 1814 was pretty much what it is
today, south and east of Lakes Erie and Ontario and their connecting
waterways, and the northern boundaries of the New England states. British territory north of this
boundary was called Canada and was divided into two provinces, Lower and
Upper Canada - the generally French settlements in the east, and settlements
west of these areas. Botanists and other travelers of the period mention
Upper (Canada West, the Upper Province) and Lower Canada (Canada East, the
Eastern Province) quite frequently, and it is useful to understand the areas
included in these designations. Upper seems to refer to "upriver"
in the Great Lakes. By 1855, according to a gazetteer of that year (Thomas
and Baldwin, 1855), these names were obsolete. This gazetteer indicated that
the boundaries of Canada proper were not fixed in 1855, except on the
southern side, and did not really extend west of the prairie sections of the
Great Lakes region. Canada's chief mountain chain was the Green Mountains
"from the latitude of Quebec terminating between the Bay of Chaleur and
Gaspe Point," the Mealy Mountains north of these, and north again to
Wotchish Mountain between the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Hudson's Bay. Far cry
from the images of the Canadian Rockies today which dominate our perception
of Canadian highlands! Upper and Lower Canada had been separated by the
Ottawa River. "Lower Canada, or Canada East, and the peninsular portion
of Canada West, is formed by the N. shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario, and the
river St. Lawrence, to about long. 70° W., after which the state of Maine and
the province of New Brunswick mark its N.E. limit. The W. side, again,
comprising Canada West, is formed by the N. shores of Lakes Superior and
Huron." The peninsular portion terminated in Lake Erie, the southern
boundary 280 miles in length. The eastern province terminated in Cape Gaspe.
The peninsular region of Upper Canada was southern Ontario, and included the
Niagara peninsula, Toronto, east to Windsor. In his first year, Goldie
walked from Montreal down through New York State to Albany, then on to New
York City. He made extensive collections in the pine barrens of eastern New
Jersey near Quaker's Bridge, "a country which, though barren and thinly
inhabited, yet presents many rarities to the botanist, and gave me more
gratification than any part of America that I have seen" (Goldie, 1822,
quoted by Spawn, 1961), that is, during his three year stay. Goldie sent all
these collections to Scotland, but they never arrived there, much to his
disappointment. He scraped together enough money by teaching along the Mohawk
River in New York before returning to Montreal where he learned he had failed
to procure the patronage of Pursh. The next year, Goldie performed manual
labor to support himself and botanized along the Ottawa River. These
specimens, sent to Scotland, were lost in the St. Lawrence by the wreck of
the ship on which they were deposited. At last, in his third year, having
earned and borrowed just enough money to support his own field work, Goldie
set off on his last chance to make a success of his trip to North America -
the itinerary which he described in his diary of 1819.
Goldie's journal is entitled
"Diary of a Journey Through Upper Canada and Some of the New England
States." His journey in Upper Canada was along the north shore of Lake Ontario
from Montreal down to Niagara Falls and Fort Erie and thereon into the states
of New York and Pennsylvania. His diary does not include his visits to the
New England states during the first two years of his trip, and the diary
title may reflect more ambition than he was able to muster - indeed, he never
published it himself, and it had only been printed privately in 1897, then
heavily edited of its interesting political and social commentary (Spawn,
1961). It is to Mr. Spawn of Philadelphia, the descendants of John Goldie in
Ontario and the trustees of the Toronto Public Library, who own the
manuscript, that we owe thanks for having the unexpurgated version privately
printed in the 1960's. Goldie was young and eager to
go somewhere, perhaps in the manner of the scholars of the French Academy
invited by the brilliant young Napoleon to serve as soldiers of the French
army, which was committed to one of the maddest and most successful
campaigns: the conquest of ancient Egypt at the threshold of Africa, and the
opening of the mysteries of its Mameluke traditions, social, political and
natural historical data to an educated and curious Europe in the years just
before the turning of the Eighteenth Century. Goldie was even packed and
ready for an expedition to the Congo basin but was replaced at the last
moment by a man with more influence (Spawn, 1961). He was ready to descend
into the wilds of western North America, but was disappointed in this, too.
It is almost with relief for his well being that we learn of his decision to
explore the relatively civilized areas that constituted his actual
exploration. The fabulous, spectacular best-selling diaries and accounts of
explorers such as David Burton and H. M. Stanley in darkest Africa, where
chilling accounts of barbarous traditions and events of the slave trade, of
personal sickness and suffering made them imperative reading in the Victorian
age set Goldie's little account in one of the minor classes of the species.
Yet it is compelling reading because its author was just as serious,
determined, fascinated and objective. Six days out of Montreal,
Goldie did see the spot where the corpse of a victim of a murder was found.
No, not the corpse itself, but "part of the cloths still remain in the
snow where he was lying." While the great African explorers described
the barbarities which lead outraged Europeans and Americans to bring the
African slave trade to an end, Goldie related his dismay at one of the inns
near Salina, New York, in which he lodged for the night "to witness the
general inattention to even the external duties of the Sabbath, both in the
States and in Canada" where the citizenry engaged in "drinking,
shooting, fishing, or some such amusement, and that even by many who consider
themselves to have good moral characters." Goldie quitted the inn in
disgust. How fortunate for the young man that he did not perish on the Congo,
as did the man who used his connections to take his place and as did much of
the rest of that expedition (Spawn, 1961). Goldie observed the sands that
ringed Lake Ontario and impoverished the crops, being remnants of the old
beaches when the Lakes were higher, or outwash and morainal deposits from
what we now know to have been glacial melt sediments. Scoured, barren and
uneven rocky areas ringed northern Lake Ontario, too, where farms had not
been established. He was tormented by mosquitoes and blackflies day and night
as he walked on foot, carrying all he owned in a knapsack, and his
collections (in a collecting book - insects he kept in his hat) besides.
Mosquitoes also bothered Linnaeus' student Peter Kalm (1770), who explored
the Niagara area in 1750 and in whose writings they are several times
described. So prevalent were they that a traveler's face would become covered
with blood from their bites, and one's face a swollen mass, resembling small
pox, such that "people are ashamed to appear in public." The land,
especially in the glaciated regions, was much wetter than is evident now
after centuries of land modifications, stream control, drainage, etc., and
these insects have consequently declined, although frequently mentioned in
early writings. Penstemon hirsutus (L.) Willd., which grows all along the
dry, windswept crest of the Niagara River gorge today, covered the east bank
of a creek thirty miles east of the Toronto area (called by Goldie York).
From here he passed through miles of "barren sandy Pine Woods, which it
is probable will never be cleared" presumably due to the infertile
character of the soil. More sand was observed on the cliffs of Scarborough.
After having spent a productive time in the New Jersey pine barrens, Goldie
was disappointed at not finding similar rarities in what the local people
called the Pine Plains of York. A week was spent collecting in the woods and
swamps of Lake Simcoe - still a marvelous botanical area and the type
locality for one species at least, Ranunculus rhomboideus (Goldie);
Goldie in Edinb. phil. jour. 6., p. 329, t.11 f. 1; Hook. fl. Bor.-Am. I, p.
12. The type locality given as "In dry sandy fields, near Lake Simcoe,
Upper Canada [Ontario Co., Ontario]" (in Jones and Fuller, 1955).
Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa) was found there and a
white-flowered Euphorbia. Goldie regretted his single week there for
he felt new species could be found and described at this locality. Again, "a Sandy Pine
Barren" could be seen for five miles south of Toronto along the lake, so
rich in botanical material that he wished "that there were more of the
Pine barrens, even than what there are" and that the soils were sandy.
Twenty-eight miles south of Toronto, and thirty in direct line, Goldie was
met with the "incredulous surprise" of seeing a"great body of
smoke on the opposite side of the Lake" - Niagara. Niagara could be
heard at the same distance. Goldie now saw Platanus occidentalis growing
naturally at the northern limit of its range. The soil along the Niagara
River from Niagara-on-the--Lake to Queenston was sandy and the roads lined
with cherry and peach trees, on the former of which he refreshed himself, as water
was very dear.
From Queenston, Goldie
ascended the escarpment and began his geological and geographic observations,
some of which I have described in the first part of this series. The
Whirlpool impressed him, and he observed the sheer cliff faces and the
forested talus slope of the gorge walls. A 28-step ladder had been placed
here from the top of the gorge to the top of the talus slope by which Goldie
descended into what might have been Whirlpool Ravine today, where he found
"two species of little ferns which I had not hitherto met with,"
probably Maidenhair Spleenwort (Asplenium trichomanes) and Purple
Cliff-brake (Pellaea glabella) - both conspicuous on the cliff-faces, and
the last one in particular quite rare. He was puzzled that he could just
barely make out the sound of the falls, though only a few miles south of it.
So typical of the surrounding region were all the approaches to the falls
that, according to Goldie, even 200 yards distant from the cataracts, the
traveler could not have detected their existence. Goldie came to the
cataracts from above the Niagara Moraine above what is now the Queen Victoria
Park for "before getting to Table Rock you must descend a pretty steep
bank at a little distance." He was astute enough to recognize this lower
area was the former bed of the Niagara River. At that time that famous
dolomite ledge at the extreme flank of the Horseshoe Falls still touched
water. Only seven years later (1826), the eighteen year-old George Clinton
would hang "with [his] body partly over Table Rock and [gaze] at the
rage and turmoil below" (Zenkert, 1934). The twenty-four year old Goldie
was "extremely disappointed with respect to the sound of the falling of
so great a body of water ... having read that [at the bottom of the fall] the
sound was there far greater than above but still had the mortification to be
disappointed." What Goldie had read, had also come to the attention of
Linnaeus's student Peter Kalm, who visited the falls in 1750, who noted
"several who have spoken of these falls have declared that the roaring
noise is so deafening that people ... cannot hear each other speak ... but I
did not find it so" (Kalm, 1770). Goldie observed Goat Island and
that "there are 10 more Islands immediately adjoining to it, eight on
the American side and two on the Canadian." One quarter-mile downriver
[on the Canadian side] another 28-step ladder affixed above to an Arbor Vitae
tree had been set into the gorge to the top of the talus slope and he
descended to the water's edge. At the bottom of the ladder "Mr. Forsyth
who keeps the nearest Inn, has erected a covered stairway by which all who
choose may go on paying" a fee. This lower path, obliterated since the
turn of this century by power development, was "rather difficult walking
... from the quantity of loose rocks, lying along the water's edge, that have
fallen from the bank" and the projecting top strata, of which, for
example, Table Rock was composed, crumbled "a very small portion of them
having fallen upon me ... would have been a termination of all my
labors." Here is described the wonderful sensations and danger attending
the opening behind the curtain of water made by the extensive overhang of the
upper strata - the precursor of the Caves of the Winds on both shores, and
the air "in violent agitation" behind the curtain. It was July 12th
and the vegetation on the talus slopes by the water curtain of the Horseshoe
Falls presented "a number of plants which I had not hitherto observed,
some of them however I had not the pleasure of seeing in blossom." These
might several weeks later have proved to have been the lovely autumn
flowering Fringed Gentian (Gentianopsis procera) and Kalm's Hypericum
(Hypericum kalmianum) remarked on by other botanists in this place.
The bridge to Goat Island had
just been constructed in 1818 (in 1817 the first bridge was destroyed by ice)
- only one year before Goldie's visit, such that he exclaimed "I had
always considered this Island as being inaccessible to man." No bridge
had yet been made to Luna or the Three Sisters, according to the map Goldie
drew in his diary. Goldie was probably the first botanist to have had
opportunity to examine the primitive Goat Island flora. He was lured across
the River on the ferryboat and crossed the bridge for 25 cents (children half
price). David Douglas would collect on Goat Island four years later (1823)
and Asa Gray, newly graduated from college in 1831, would collect botanical
rarities at Terrapin Point which he would share with John Torrey and thereby
begin a botanical alliance which would establish the science of botany on the
American continent.
Even after only one year's
accessibility by bridge "there is a good road around the Island, and a
considerable portion of the [upriver] end is cleared and at present carries a
good crop of corn ... and it contains at present one log house." The
family of Peter and Augustus Porter had bought the islands at the brinks of
the Falls by 1815. The clearing had been made, for turnips and an unfortunate
little herd of goats by a brother of John Stecknan, survivor of the Devil's
Hole Massacre of 1763 and licensed operator of the portage on the American
side when that was crown territory (Porter, 1900). This log house probably
was erected during British territorial possession by the Stedman family, who
enjoyed taking their visitors on the harrowing passage to the island over the
shoals and shallow areas on the north side of the Niagara River immediately
upstream from the rapids. The hut is depicted in Porter's article on the
history of Goat Island, was located above a natural spring on Goat Island on
the north side and served as a temporary refuge for Francis Abbott, an
unhappy young man whom the Porter's permitted to live on their island for a
year or so before his death - he was otherwise known as The Hermit of Goat
Island. Goldie passed to Fort Erie,
crossing to Black Rock, Buffalo, New York. The road along Lake Erie was built
in the native sands there. Goldie noted "a general deficiency in the
flax crop in this part of the country" south of Buffalo "owing to
want of sufficient moisture." Zenkert (1934) referred to a decline in
the occurrence of a flax-parasite, Flax Dodder (Cuscuta epilinum) due
to the decline of flax cultivation in the Niagara Frontier. In Cattaraugus,
Goldie was delighted to find an expanse of swampy grown covered with Rhododendron
maximum in flower and Liriodendron tulipifera with four-foot
bases, called, perhaps mistakenly by Goldie, the cucumber tree by the
inhabitants due to its fruit resembling a small cucumber (which rather Magnolia
acuminata does). In the vicinity of Erie, Goldie found a water route,
French Creek, from Waterford south to Pittsburgh. He stayed at an inn
purporting to have boarded Joseph Bonaparte, "eldest of the
Bonapartes," brother to Napoleon, who lived in the United States from
1815 to 1844 (Spawn, 1961). Any reference to trees was to oaks, mostly in a
state of regeneration, either from abandoned settlements or from fires. From
Pittsburgh Goldie returned north up the AUeghany River to Olean, New York.
From Olean to Angelica (32 miles) "the predominating wood is Pine, with
a few of the harder woods interspersed." He reached Bath, in Steuben
Co., to Penn-Yan, to Salina in the vicinity of which Goldie observed the
construction of the Erie Canal, later finished in 1825. Governor DeWitt Clinton was
governor of New York. In Auburn, New York, Goldie saw that the State was
building its second prison, the first being in New York City. The Legislature
had, just prior to Goldie's visit, been debating where to put this second prison.
When the Porter's first made their bid to buy Goat Island "the
Legislature declined to authorize the sale ... stating as its reason that it
expected to use the Island itself, erecting thereon in the near future either
a State prison or a State arsenal" (Porter, 1900). This is a testament
to the natural impregnability and isolation the island enjoyed, and the
unusual development and preservation of its ecosystem. From Sackett's Harbor, Goldie
sailed to Kingston for Montreal. Perhaps on his final return to Montreal,
Goldie managed to get the roots of the species of fern which bears his name,
Dryopteris goldiana, later published by Hooker (as Aspidium) in
Goldie's 1822 paper. The fern was cultivated in Glasgow from these roots. The
plants "which I carried with myself" were "the whole that I
saved out of the produce of nearly three years spent in botanical
researches." "The botanical notes, kept separately from the diary,
are believed to have been lost" (Spawn, 1961) - which accounts for why
so little of a botanical nature is included in the diary. Another of the
plants he collected which became type specimens includes Helianthus
microcephalus Torr. & Gray (Gray, Fl. N. Am. 2:329 (1842) Type
locality: "Thickets and in alluvial soil, upper Canada.' (Goldie, in herb.
Hook.) Western Pennsylvania! ...." The specimens Torrey or Gray saw in
Europe, in the Glasgow Botanical Garden herbarium (or Kew) where presumably
Goldie's specimens were deposited, reflect the itinerary of Goldie's trip. Acknowledgments: I would like
to thank Ed Ciszek and Shaun Hardy for essential library assistance at the
Buffalo Museum of Science research library. This article is part of a study
of the botany associated with Niagara Falls funded by the Niagara Frontier
Chapter of the Adirondack Mountain Club and the N.Y. State Dept. of Parks,
Recreation and Historic Preserva-tion. Botanical Services, Buffalo, assisted
with the cost of publication. Literature Cited Eckel, P. M. 1989. Goldie in North America,
Part 1. Niagara Falls and the Theory of Evolution. 1989. Clintonia 4(6): 1-5. Goldie, John. 1819. Diary of a Journey Through
Upper Canada and Some of the New England States, 1819. Privately published.
In the copy seen from the Sidney B. Coulter Library, Onondaga Community
College, Syracuse, New York, 13215, penciled in the title page is the
notation "Toronto, Ontario, 1961." Mr. Willman Spawn of
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has written an introduction and notes to the
latest published edition. Humphrey, H. B. 1961. Makers of North American
Botany. Chronica Botanica No. 21. Ronald Press Co. New York. Jones, G. N. & G. D. Fuller. 1955.
Vascular Plants of Illinois. University of Illinois Press, Urbana. Kalm, P. 1770. Peter Kalm's Travels in North America.
The English Version of 1770. Dover Books, New York. Porter, P. A. 1900. Goat Island, in Sixteenth
Annual Report of the Commission for the State Reservation at Niagara for the
Year 1899. Albany, pp. 75-129. (Source of illustrations.) Provancher, Abbe L. 1862. 2 Vols. Flore
Canadienne. Joseph Darveau, Quebec. Spawn, W. 1961. in Goldie, 1819. Ibid. Thomas, J. & T. Baldwin, T. 1855. A
Complete Pronouncing Gazetteer, or Geographical Dictionary of the World. J.
B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia. Zenkert, C. A. 1934. Flora of the Niagara
Frontier Region. Bulletin of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences Vol.
XVI. Buffalo. |
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