The Constable brothers were keenly aware of the uniqueness of what they had encountered on their journey through the United States. William outlived his older brother by twenty-eight years and returned to the United States in 1838, revisiting some of the sites they had seen thirty years before. Between what they had seen at the turn of the 19^th century and what was there on his return, impressed upon William how much had changed. In the Constable Papers are a few of the watercolors he painted, from memory of the places they had visited and a note, penned in the last years of his life, that describes the changes he witnessed and some of the reasons they had made the journey. The note also reveals something of the writer—humor in description of the company of three (noting their dog, Frank, named for Ben Franklin), a quirkily specific distance travelled, a modest self-effacement of his skill as diarist and artist, and a romantic sensibility and wistfulness for youthful exploits.

Extract from, Notes of a travel made in North America in the years 1806, 7, and 8 by a company of three, two brothers and their dog. Written by William Constable at Brighton, Sussex, in autumn of 1858 and concluded and signed on the 21st of November in that his 74th year. The travel, as therein recorded, was of 7,073¼ miles, 3175 on foot.

I do not however think meanly of my drawings, but am quite sure I pronounce a just judgement on them when I say they have in them but little of the skill and cunning of the artist. The scenes depicted are many of them subjects of very great grandeur, but for want of the skill found only in the hand of the practiced workman the greatness of them is often much belittled, that is a due representation of the magnitude and space proper to the subject not given. These defects do not result from faults in drawing but in the absence of skill in the application of colour, a skill which I believe is not often attained but by a long course of practice and the constant opportunity of studying models which exhibit this excellence. I am sensible too that an artist would have often made much more of my subjects by a more judicious arrangement of lights and shades. The excuse for all this may be very shortly stated in the fact that I am not an artist, nor have I ever had the opportunity of making myself one, and therefore my drawings do not aspire to be artistic works. However, against these acknowledged defects I can honestly affirm one redeeming quality—in every respect they are careful and correct drawings so far as outline is concerned. I have nowhere made exaggerations for the sake of effect, neither have I done violence to truth through idleness and carelessness.

With all my confessions of fault, I do not affect to believe my drawings a worthless production. They might well have been better—I have made them as well I could. I take no blame to myself that their merits are so small, but I am satisfied that, like good wine, they will increase in interest if not value with age, and, if there should be as much pains taken in the their preservation as I have used in their construction, they may probably last through several centuries. In this notion I will just observe that 30 to 32 years subsequent to making these drawings, that in 1838, I re-visited many of the scenes described, and found such alterations in the condition and aspect of the country as may justify the extravagance of my surmise as to what may happen in a few centuries. Thus, at the Falls of the River Genesee, where there was a succession of noble cataracts shrouded on every side by a dense unbroken forest, hiding in its dark recesses one little cabin, the only shelter within miles, I found on my last visit a busy city of 20,000 inhabitants, twenty large and powerful mills manufacturing flour which found its way into most of the markets of the old world, the West Indies, and south America, manufacturing of other kinds, printing presses, churches, chapels, and merchants’ stores and warehouses filled with the products of all the manufacturing countries of the earth. But the native charms of the scenery as I had known it was entirely swept away, the once delightful banks of the noble river were shorn of their sylvan beauty and the vanished forest replaced by obtrusive buildings of all sorts of unsightly figures. The upper Fall, or rapid, was so obliterated by the havoc of civilization that I could not discover where it had formerly been, My drawings of these falls have thus now already acquired the value of age, and if they should be lost, it is probable the renewal of them would be impossible. Changes such as these I found going on everywhere, though not always to so striking an extent. Buffalo, from a few cabins, was grown into an important city. The Ohio and Mississippi had been deprived of the magnificent solitudes by hordes of invading man, and the snorting steamboat had frightened away the swans, cranes, and pelicans which I had formerly seen in multitudes adorning the solitary shores of these magnificent streams. At that most picturesque and beautiful place, the Falls of the Passaic, where on my first visit there was standing opposed to my movements a low mural cliff that I had need to clamber over, there was now a level turnpike road, and, oh barbarous intrusion, within 20 yards a toll-gate exhibiting the usual sordid features of advertisements and so forth in front of the waterfall.

If thirty years have wrought such changes. It may not be too much to expect that, at the end of a century or two, these drawings, unpretentious as they are, may become valuable, not as works of art but as a record of the aspects of scenes in various places of North America as they were early in the 19^th century before the advent of man but long since passed away, and visible otherwise only through a misty tradition. So I hope that you, my reader, will be one amongst others to take care of them.