"A MOCKERY OF SUBLIME ANTICIPATIONS" - John Joseph Hogan's first glimpse of America

It was 1848 - 165 years ago today that John Joseph Hogan, an eager, 19-year-old Irishman, first set eyes on America. Having gone as far as he could in his studies in Ireland, Hogan had decided he would go to America - St. Louis specifically - to study for the priesthood. Unlike most Irish emigrants, Hogan bypassed the East Coast, instead sailing from Liverpool aboard the clipper ship Berlin bound for New Orleans. 

December 14, 1848 was a Thursday – and foggy.  Young John Hogan, from the deck of the clipper ship, scanned the horizon eagerly for his first sight of America – his destined place. Anchored in the Gulf, waiting for tugboat escorts, they were greeted by the sediment load the Mississippi River carried to the Gulf. “Shrouded in fog banks, we anchored in muddy water that as far as the eye could reach, had befouled the color of the sea.” 

After five weeks and a day at sea, they had reached the mouth of the Mississippi. Hogan’s eager expectations were dashed at the sight of the muddy mingling of Gulf and river.

To a person from the British Isles, the United States, as seen at the mouths of the Mississippi, is a mockery of sublime anticipations. No bold headlands; no high, rocky bluffs; no cities on hills; no hills at all; no heathery uplands or daisied fields leading down to the sea; no murmuring sea, for there was no ebbing or flowing tide, not enough rise of tide to cover a croaking frog; no belt of strand to mark the boundary between land and water, for land and water seemed interlocked and of the amphibious kind—an impenetrable jungle of swamps and bushes, infested with sharks, snakes, and alligators. There was water enough, of the kind it was, but who dare drink of it? Ha! That from the marshes smelt of toads and reptiles; that from the Mississippi suggested a fish trap, for, besides mud, it may have a young alligator in it. And this is America—America indeed. Alas! No help for me now; I am on the Mississippi, and must go it. This ship I am on won't stop until I get to New Orleans; and if I throw myself overboard and attempt to swim ashore, maybe the alligators or the buzzards will get me. See the miserable, muddy banks, not high enough above water for a drowning rat to dry himself on.

From Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir by John Joseph Hogan. 

Undeterred by the impenetrable jungle that made a "mockery of sublime anticipations," Hogan pressed on, arriving in New Orleans the evening of December 15.   

The entire text of Hogan's memoir, Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir,  is contained in On the Mission in Missouri & Fifty Years Ago: A Memoir. On the Mission is his own account of his years as a pioneer priest in northwest and southeast Missouri (including his founding of the Irish Wilderness), spanning the Civil War and its immediate aftermath (1857-1868).  Both memoirs are included in one volume as well as extensive biographical information gleaned in our years of research.

Postscript:  Hogan was ordained in the Archdiocese of St.Louis in 1852. He later became the first bishop of St. Joseph, Missouri (1868); and in 1880, the first bishop of Kansas City, Missouri. He died in 1913.