The first edition of this book is dated 1843. The publisher was George Routledge and Sons. The number of pages is 350.

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General information

Captain Frederick Marryat was born July 10 1792, and died August 8 1848. He retired from the British navy in 1828 in order to devote himself to writing. In the following 20 years he wrote 26 books, many of which are among the very best of English literature, and some of which are still in print.

Marryat had an extraordinary gift for the invention of episodes in his stories. He says somewhere that when he sat down for the day’s work, he never knew what he was going to write. He certainly was a literary genius.

“Monsieur Violet” was published in 1843, the twentieth book to flow from Marryat’s pen. It was written after Marryat’s visit to America, the Diary of which had been published in 1839. Much of the material for this book must have been gathered during that visit. The setting is North America.

This e-text was transcribed in 1998 by Nick Hodson, and was re-

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Contents

Chapter I.
The Revolution of 1830, which deprived Charles the Tenth of the throne of France, like all other great and sudden changes, proved the ruin of many individuals, more especially of many ancient families who were attached to the Court, and who would not desert the exiled monarch in his adversity.

Chapter II.
I was very young then—not thirteen years old; but if I was young, I had travelled much, and had gained that knowledge which is to be obtained by the eye—perhaps the best education we can have in our earlier years.

Chapter III.
This breaking up, for the time, of our agricultural settlement took place in the year 1838.

Chapter IV.
The Shoshones, or Snake Indians, are a brave and numerous people, occupying a large and beautiful tract of country, 540 miles from east to west, and nearly 300 miles from north to south.

Chapter V.
Every point having been arranged, I received my final instructions, and letters for the Governor of Monterey, to which was added a heavy bag of doubloons for my expenses.

Chapter VI.
I felt chilly, and I awoke. It was daylight. I stood on my feet and looked around me.

Chapter VII.
Nothing could have been more fortunate than our proceeding by sea.

Chapter VIII.
The Umbiquas came at last; their want of precaution shewed their certainty of success.

Chapter IX.
In the remarks which I am about to make relative to the Shoshones, I may as well observe that the same observations will equally apply to the Comanches, Apaches, and Arrapahoes, as they are but subdivisions and offsets from the original stock—the Shoshones.

Chapter X.
In narrating the unhappy death of the Prince, I have stated that the Crows bore no good-will to the white men established among the Shoshones.

Chapter XI.
At the beginning of the fall, a few months after my father’s death, I and my two comrades, Gabriel and Roche, were hunting in the rolling prairies of the South, on the eastern shores of the Buona Ventura.

Chapter XII.
Among these Apaches, our companions, were two Comanches, who, fifteen years before, had witnessed the death of the celebrated Overton.

Chapter XIII.
At last, we passed the Rio Grande, and a few days more brought us to Santa Fé.

Chapter XIV.
Time passed away, till I and my companions were heartily tired of our inactivity: besides, I was home-sick, and I had left articles of great value at the settlement, about which I was rather fidgety.

Chapter XV.
During my long absence and captivity among the Arrapahoes, I had often reflected upon the great advantages which would accrue if, by any possibility, the various tribes which were of Shoshone origin could be induced to unite with them in one confederacy; and the more I reflected upon the subject, the more resolved I became, that if ever I returned to the settlement, I would make the proposition to our chiefs in council.

Chapter XVI.
At this time, the generally bright prospects of California were clouding over.

Chapter XVII.
Up to the present portion of my narrative, I have lived and kept company with Indians and a few white men who had conformed to their manners and customs.

Chapter XVIII.
As circumstances, which I have yet to relate, have prevented my return to the Shoshones, and I shall have no more to say of their movements in these pages, I would fain pay them a just tribute before I continue my narrative.

Chapter XIX.
In the last chapter but one, I stated that I and my companions, Gabriel and Roche, had been delivered up to the Mexican agents, and were journeying, under an escort of thirty men, to the Mexican capital, to be hanged as an example to all liberators.

Chapter XX.
Happily for me and my two companions, there still remained two or three gentlemen in San Antonio.

Chapter XXI.
The Lepans were themselves going northwards, and for a few days we skirted, in company with them, the western borders of the Cross Timbers.

Chapter XXII.
The morning broke bright and cloudless, the sun rising from the horizon in all his majesty.

Chapter XXIII.
One morning, Roche, Gabriel, and myself were summoned to the Great Council Lodge; there we met with the four Comanches whom we had rescued some days before, and it would be difficult to translate from their glowing language their warm expressions of friendship and gratitude.

Chapter XXIV.
During my convalescence, my tent, or I should say, the lawn before it, became a kind of general divan, where the warrior and elders of the tribe would assemble, to smoke and relate the strange stories of days gone by.

Chapter XXV.
It was during my convalescence that the fate of the Texian expedition to Santa Fé was decided; and as the real facts have been studiously concealed, and my intelligence, gained from the Indians, who were disinterested parties, was afterwards fully corroborated by an Irish gentleman who had been persuaded to join it, I may as well relate them here.

Chapter XXVI.
At that time, the Pawnee Picts, themselves an offset of the Shoshones and Comanches, and speaking the same language—a tribe residing upon the northern shores of the Red River, and who had always been at peace with their ancestors, had committed some depredations upon the northern territory of the Comanches.

Chapter XXVII.
We remained a few days where we were encamped to repose our horses and enable them to support the fatigues of our journey through the rugged and swampy wilderness of North-east Texas.

Chapter XXVIII.
We had now entered a track of land similar to that which we had travelled over when on our route from the Wakoes to the Comanches.

Chapter XXIX.
Two days did we remain in our shelter, to regain our strength and to rest our horses.

Chapter XXX.
We continued our route for a few days, after we had left the buffaloes, and now turned our horses’ heads due east.

Chapter XXXI.
The Cherokee Indians, a portion of whom we had just met on such friendly terms, are probably destined to act no inconsiderable part in the future history of Texas.

Chapter XXXII.
We had now entered the white settlements of the Sabine river, and found, to our astonishment, that, far from arriving at civilisation, we were receding from it; the farms of the Wakoes and well-cultivated fields of the Pawnee-Picts, their numerous cattle and comfortable dwellings, were a strong contrast to the miserable twelve-feet-square mud-and-log cabins we passed by.

Chapter XXXIII.
We were now but twenty miles from the Red River, and yet this short distance proved to be the most difficult travelling we had experienced for a long while.

Chapter XXXIV.
The next morning our American companions bade us farewell, and resumed their journey; but Captain Finn insisted that Gabriel, Roche, and I should not leave him so soon.

Chapter XXXV.
The next morning, we all three started, and by noon we had crossed the Washita River.

Chapter XXXVI.
From Batesville to the southern Missouri border, the road continues for a hundred miles, through a dreary solitude of rocky mountains and pine forests, full of snakes and a variety of game, but without the smallest vestige of civilisation.

Chapter XXXVII.
At last we arrived at the plantation of Mr. Courtenay: the house was one of the very few buildings in the United States in which taste was displayed.

Chapter XXXVIII.
My readers have already been made acquainted with the history of the “Book,” upon which the imposture of Mormonism has been founded, and of the acquaintance which took place between Rigdon and Joe Smith, whose career I shall now introduce.

Chapter XXXIX.
I must pass over many details interesting in themselves; but too long to insert in this work.

Chapter XL.
While I was at Mr. Courtenay’s plantation I had a panther adventure, a circumstance which, in itself, would be scarcely worth mentioning, were it not that this fierce animal was thought to have entirely left the country for more than twenty years.

Chapter XLI.
The day of the fishing at length arrived; our party of ladies and gentlemen, with the black cooks and twenty slaves, started two hours before sunrise, and, after a smart ride of some twelve miles, we halted before a long row of tents, which had been erected for the occasion, on the shores of one of these numerous and beautiful western lakes.

Chapter XLII.
Nauvoo, the holy city of the Mormons, and present capital of their empire, is situated in the north-western part of Illinois, on the east bank of the Mississippi, in latitude 40 degrees 33 minutes North; it is bounded on the north, south, and west by the river, which there forms a large curve, and is nearly two miles wide.

Chapter XLIII.
Let us now examine into the political views of the Mormons, and follow Smith in his lofty and aspiring visions of sovereignty for the future.

Chapter XLIV.
Having now related the principal events which I witnessed, or in which I was an actor, both in California and in Texas, as these countries are still new and but little known (for, indeed, the Texians themselves know nothing of their inland country), I will attempt a topographical sketch of these regions, and also make some remarks upon the animals which inhabit the immense prairies and mountains of the wilderness.

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