Olmsted Quotes

“In his letters to Olmsted, Riotte also delineated, with keen transatlantic insight, a divide that he felt had doomed their efforts from the start. "We are judged from the standpoint of an American-indeed a very strange people!" he wrote.

Riotte and his ilk viewed society "as a congregation of men; whose aim it is to elevate the wellbeing of the aggregate by the combined exertion." Americans, by contrast, "look first upon themselves as private individuals, entitled to ask for all the rights and benefits of an organized community even to the detriment of the whole.... We idealize the community-you the individual! How is it possible, that we ever should amalgamate?"

Riotte closed by praising Olmsted's writing on the South but expressed doubt that it would diminish the Slave Power. "I don't know of any histori- cal record of an Aristocracy giving up their privileges, except in the case of revolutionary pressure.”
― Tony Horwitz, Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide

“UPON LEAVING MEXICO, THE OLMSTEDS RODE STRAIGHT TO SAN Antonio and "prepared for more rapid travel," shedding "useless weight" for their journey out of Texas. Having spent more than four months traversing the state, they exited it in three weeks, via Houston and Beaumont.

By the time they neared Louisiana, "the hot, soggy breath of the approaching summer was extremely depressing." This was particularly so for John, who'd set off for Texas with "the hope of invigorating weakened lungs."

Instead, the "abominable diet, and the fatigue" had "served to null the fresh benefits of pure air and stimulating travel." While slogging through a swampy plan near Beaumont, John fell from the saddle "in faint exhaustion," lying facedown on the ground for half an hour, "hardly breathing, and unable to speak.”
― Tony Horwitz, Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide

“The forest was dense, and filled with all manner of vines and rank undergrowth; the road was a vague opening, where obstructing trees had been felled, the stumps and rotten trunks remaining. Across actual quags a track of logs and saplings had been laid, but long ago, now rotten and in broken patches. As far as the eye could reach, muddy water, sent back by a south wind from the gulf, extended over the vast flat before us, to a depth of from two to six feet, as per immediate personal measurement. We spurred in.
One foot:
Two feet, with hard bottom:
Belly-deep, hard bottom:
Shoulder-deep, soft bottom:
Shoulder-deep, with a sucking mire:

The same, with a network of roots, in which a part of the legs are entangled, while the rest are plunging. The same, with a middle ground of loose poles; a rotten log, on which we rise dripping, to slip forward next moment, head under, haunches in air. It is evident we have reached one of the spots it would have been better to avoid.”
― Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey through Texas: Or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier

“The horses, reluctant and excited from the first, become furious and wild. At the next shoal-personal nastiness being past consideration-we dismount, at knee-deep, to give them a moment's rest, shifting the mule's saddle to the trembling long-legged mare, and turning Mr. Brown loose, to follow as he could. After a breathing-spell we resume our splashed seats and the line of wade. Experience has taught us something, and we are more shrewd in choice of footing, the slopes around large trees being attractively high ground, until, by a stumble on a covered root, a knee is nearly crushed against a cypress trunk. Gullies now commence, cut by the rapid course of waters flowing off before north winds, in which it is good luck to escape instant drowning. Then quag again; the pony bogs; the mare, quivering and unmanageable, jumps sidelong among loose corduroy; and here are two riders standing waist-deep in mud and water between two frantic, plunging-horses, fortunately not beneath them. Nack soon extricates himself, and joins the mule, looking on terrified from behind. Fanny, delirious, believes all her legs broken and strewn about her, and falls, with a whining snort, upon her side. With incessant struggles she makes herself a mud bath, in which, with blood-shot eyes, she furiously rotates, striking, now and then, some stump, against which she rises only to fall upon the other side, or upon her back, until her powers are exhausted, and her head sinks beneath the surface. Mingled with our uppermost sympathy are thoughts of the soaked note-books, and other contents of the saddle-bags, and of the.hundred dollars that drown with her. What of dense soil there was beneath her is now stirred to porridge, and it is a dangerous exploit to approach. But, with joint hands, we length succeed in grappling her bridle, and then in hauling her nostrils above water. She revives only for a new tumult of dizzy pawing, before which we hastily retreat. At a second pause her lariat is secured, and the saddle cut adrift. For a half-hour the alternate resuscitation continues, until we are able to drag the head of the poor beast, half strangled by the rope, as well as the mud and water, toward firmer ground, where she recovers slowly her senses and her footing. Any further attempts at crossing the somewhat "wet" Neches bottoms are, of course, abandoned, and even the return to the ferry is a serious sort of joke. However, we congratulate ourselves that we are leaving, not entering the State.”
― Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey through Texas: Or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier

“As for Judy, the terrier, the wet country had proved for her a great relief. Her ulcerated paws had been carefully covered with moccasins, and, from the beginning of the marshy country, daily improved, until she was able to accomplish the rare canine feat of over two thousand miles of steady travel. A day's pause was now to the tired creature a priceless boon, spent in a rest that was no less than intense. Selecting the quietest nook, she would coil herself with great deliberation, and for hour after hour not so much as move a muscle; immersed in a terrier's sleep, the tip of an eyelid never unlifted. I shall not soon forget her appearance in the Neches bottom. She was very averse-being anything but a water-dog-to enter at all; but seeing herself abandoned, as we waded away, jumped, with a yelp, into the water, and swam for the nearest stump; and so followed, alternately submerged in silence and mounted, with a series of dripping howls, upon these rotten pedestals.”
― Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey through Texas: Or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier

“The hot, soggy breath of the approaching summer was extremely depressing”
― Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey through Texas: Or a Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern Frontier