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Public opinion in these days requires of an author some apology for his intrusion upon the preoccupied fichl of literature. How much more, then, of one who puts into print what was written with no such object. The following Letters contain no more than a narrative of a tour through Canada and the Northern States of America in the autumn of 186k Whatever merit they may have consists in their presenting to the reader a traveller's first impressions of the country and people of which they speak, recorded from day to day, without afterthought or reconsideration. By the desire of some who saw them in manuscript they were printed for private circulation amongst those for whom they were originaiiy intended, and their favorable reception in that limited circle has induced the writer to think that others also may find in them something to interest and amuse. G. T. B. PI M Lincoln's Inn; Jan., 18GG. Av night at tw( tive c miles Queb< at pr( partici a trip a plea not ru break i — thai relieve into e our b( impuls Gate ai I. LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. Oa board " The North American," Saturday, August 13M, 1864. After being knocked about for nine days and nights on the open sea, we sighted land this morning at twelve o'clock, and are now proceeding in compara- tive quiet through the straits of Belle Isle, with 700 miles still between us and the longed-for harbour of Quebec. I do not know that I have much to tell you at present, for our voyage has been marked by no particular incident beyond the ordinary occurrences of a trip across the Atlantic by this loute; but it is such a pleasure to find yourself in smooth water again— not running your head into your neighbour's ribs, nor breaking your shins against every bench in the saloon —that, notwithstanding the fact that I could now relieve my eyes, wearied as they are with straining into empty space, by a view of land on each side of our beam, I am seized with an almost involuntary impulse to sit down at the table below, and coramuni- cate at once to you the joyful announcement that we 1 LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. i have said good-bye to the Atlantic and its troubles, and can now reckon with tolerable certainty upon a speedy completion of what the captain considers " a good passage/' Sea voyages, I suppose, are usually pretty much such as we have hitherto had, for I imagine that what I have seen enables me to form a good idea of an ordinary ocean trip, and I do not see that this idea is much different from my preconceived notions of such an excursion ; and probably your notions of the same would very much coincide with mine, and so I shall not trouble you with any attempt at a lengthy de- scription of so hackneyed a subject. " Nothing in the world to do, with plenty of time to do it in," to my mind, is the most brief and accurate description of a passenger's life on board ship ; and I cannot see that a sailor's life, in such weather as we have had, is much more than an elaborate working out of the same satisfactory arrangement. Perhaps I ara hard upon the seafaring race ; possibly I am so constituted that I cannot extract from a continued contemplation of the "vasty deep" that mental and bodily exercise which land-lubbers like myself are taught to seek as necessary to salvation of soul and body. All I know is that I can imagine no life which I would mt choose rather than a sailor's in good weather, wlien there seems to me to be such an absence of employment of hand or brain as no other occupation in the world LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. would offer. Say what they will, sailors persuade me that life aboard can be anything but 3 will never in< tolerably dull ; poetise as they may, enthusiasts will never m.ke me believe that the sample fact of dashing through the water at full speed can compensate for the lack of anything to see or do on the way. It seems to me that a sailor must depend, for the bare excite- ment mIucIi will keep the rust from his mind and muscle, upon the fury of the winds and waves ; and if such be the only medium through which he can get that necessary amount of excitement, Heaven defend me from a life like his ! Now you must not imagine, from these few observa- tions, that we have been gliding along as it were upon a mill-pond, with a fair breeze all our way. We have liad, as I remarked above, - a good passage," yet that by no means signifies a smooth one. In fact, I have observed by experience that this is a nautical expres- sion of wonderful elasticity, which, in the mouths of a captam and his crew, may mean anything short of actual shipwreck. But we had two days, about half way across the Atlantic, which, compared with the other days, were enjoyable; still, even then, I think we all found It very hard to contrive some species of amuse- ment. We stared at the water, and vowed it was beautiful; we stared at the sky (for it M^as the only time when it was visible), and declared it to be clearer than It was at home; and for a time, no doubt, th^. J i I im LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL f ' contenjplation of the sea and sky, under such favor- able circumstances, is very pleasant ; but, like venison every day for dinner, it grows stale ; and, after all, if the eye is to rest on no sign of animal or vegetable life, the solitudes of nature, to please the ordinary observer, must be of a far more imposing character than that which is presented by the ocean on a calm day. And so I thought with myself, as I sat upon the deck for several consecutive days, and strained my eyes in every direction, in the hope of seeing a porpoise at least, or a gull, or a distant sail — anything, in fact, to convince me that I had a companion in life, if it had been only a wild goose. And then I wished it would blow a gale, or that somebody would go up a mast and tumble off, or that it would rain, or snow, or freeze, or do anything but preserve the imperturbable calm, which provoked me with its excessive dulness. And yet, I suppose, rough thick weather must be ad- mitted to be duller still. Yet there is this consolation, perhaps, though but a poor one, that in a fog you may possibly comfort yourself with the idea that there might be something to see if it was only clear, while in clear weather you see only too clearly that there is abso- lutely nothing to see at all ; but, at the same time, there is a great deal of sameness and monotony about a damp fog, and more about a well-sustained, heavy roll in an Atlantic swell ; and the fun of seeing the soup in your lap, and your neighbour's fork within an ace of your ch favor- e venison 'ter all, if vegetable ordinary character )n a calm upon the i my eyes rpoise at in fact, life, if it vibhed it go up a or snow, fturbable dulness. t be ad- Lsolation, you may ire miglit in clear is abso- ne, there t a damp ill in an ' in your of your LIVERPOOL TO MONTRKAL. 5 eye, soon becomes a sort of practical joke which the Second Life Guards would hardly perpetrate; and 1 am afraid you would, as I did, inevitably come to the conclusion that an ocean voyage, rough or smooth, is particularly dull. These are my general impressions, the result of what little experience I have had ; but do not suppose that I have found this voyage very tedious or wearisome. Luckily, we have a better selection of passengers than the first sight of them led me to anticipate, and we have some of us fraternised wonderfully together ; and the effect of our growing intimacy has been to let out some curious revelations, which have kept our tongues alive, and our ears on the alert, through many an hour of our long journey. But if I am to introduce you to the inmates of the ship, I think I ought to begin with the captain. Well, the captain is a remarkably plea- sant, affable man, who entertains us at the table with good anecdotes of his nautical experience, and, what is far more to his credit, manifests an amount of caution and skill in the conduct of the ship, which the late officers of this company never displayed ; for I cannot but see that this route is a very dangerous one, and nothing but extreme care can guide a vessel safely through the perils of the northern fogs and icebergs ; and the knowledge that this company has lost no less than eight steamships in as many years makes us ap- preciate the more highly the presence of these estim- V- ft* gj^l 6 LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. able qualities in our present captain. Next to him sits a gushing young damsel of three-and-twenty, who IS gon.g out to be married under the escort of a Ca- nadian parson, who occupies the seat on her left and manifests the most affectionate zeal in his delicaf^ office. On the other side of the captain sits an elderly i^nghshman, who has travelled throughout the len^^th and breadth of the New World, and has been very kind in putting me up to everything that ought to be seen, and how to see it. My place is between him and an agreeable young English banker, with whom I shall probably travel as far as Toronto, and in whom I expect to find a very pleasant compagnon de voyage • and on the other side of the table sit two young limbs of the law trom Lincoln^s Inn, on a long-vacation tour, like myself; and opposite them a Canadian doctor, who IS delightfully vulgar and amusing. These are the passengers with whom I have chiefly fraternised ; but lower down the table is a wonderful specimen of what most of us at first supposed to be a member of the swell mob. But by this gentleman hangs a tale, for we had observed a strange desire evinced by this personage to watch the movements of a repulsive-looking individual, with very long dirtv black hair, whose features indicated unmistakable felony ; and inquiry into the matter has revealed to us the somewhat startling fact that the long-haired miscreant is no more nor less than his face foretold-- LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. 7 that he is, in fact, a felon who has been captured in London, and is now on his way to Quebec, in charge of the flash cockney, who is a well-known Serjeant L the London detective force. As you may suppose, this discovery was not particularly well received in the saloon, more especially amongst the ladies, with whom the assurance that the prisoner was locked up in his cabin at night did not seem to compensate for the dis- agreeable associations attached to the idea of sitting at table with him throughout the day. We had hardly acquainted ourselves with the truth of this story, when a rumour spread amongst the passengers that there was another individual on board whom it was found necessary to lock up in his cabin ; and true enough we discovered it to be that there was a wretched man below who had come on board dead drunk, and had kept so ever since, and had lately been seized with a severe attack of delirium tremens, which made him so violent as to render it imperative that he should be tied down in his berth. So this was another subject of conversation, and evervbody wondered what the miserable creature would be like, if he ever recovered from his attack, and had the face to show in the sa- loon, and was uncommonly disappointed to find, on his first appearance yesterday at the table, that he was, after all, when sober, an extremely quiet, well-behaved gentleman, with a very agreeable wife and daughter, who were evidently well used to the fellow's eccentricities. 8 LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. M The rest of our tablcj and that on the other side of the saloon, are filled up with Scotch and Irish, mostly of the timber- merchant class, and several French Ca- nadians; and amongat them is a Yankee captain, in whom I have been immensely disappointed, for he is one of the most agreeable of the passengers, and I feel sure that if I meet many more such specimens of the Yankee race, my prejudices against them will be com- pletely smothered ; and from what I hear on board this vessel, I should not wonder if that were the result of my visit to their country. At any rate, I am pretty certain that I shall not find them such a set of ruffians as I anticipated ; indeed, I am positive that no branch of the human race could present such a miserable picture as that which I had painted to myself as the portrait of a Yankee ; so they cannot lose in my esti- mation, and must, as far as I see, gain. The junior officers of the ship are a decent lot of men ; and the steerage passengers, though not very sweet, are not noisy ; and here I think you have a miniature view, which will enable you to form some idea of the society on board our gallant ship. And now, having given you this slight sketch of the vessel and her freight, I suppose I ought to try and say a few words about the voyage itself; but, as I said before, an ocean voyage is characterised by no incident whatever unless you have a gale, and fortunately for our peace and comfort we were not so favoured. To LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. 9 ir side of 1, mostly ench Ca- ptain, in for he is nd I feel IS of the be com- )n board he result m pretty f ruffians branch niserable If as the my esti- le junior and the are not ire view, e society 3h of the trv and is I said incident itely for ed. To begin with, then, our first three days, after leaving Londonderry, were days of but little progress, for we had a head wind and a heavy sea ; and glad though I may honestly say I was to make acquaintance with the waves of the Atlantic, I may quite as honestly say that I have no anxiety to cultivate this acquaintance, or be anything more than a very distant friend. I should like to give you some idea of the " swell" on the At- lantic, but am afraid that you would be disinclined to believe in the justice of my comparison, if I were to suggest to you anything on land with which to com- pare it ; yet I think I may venture thus far with safety, and say that the rising and sinking upon the ocean swell is more like going up and down Holborn Hill than anything of which I can jast now think; by which I mean that if you could fancy yourself gliding down such an inclined plane as that of Holborn Hill, and up such another as Snow Hill, with a long heavy lurch on to one beam as you went up, and another perhaps longer and heavier on to the other beam as you came down, and then imagined this grand but stomach-trying movement to continue for several days without cessation, you would get some notion of the kind of thing to which we had to get accustomed. Dinner, under these circumstances, is, naturally enough, a matter of some little difficulty. The first two days I was rather seedy, and showed but little desire for eating or drinking, but still I was not -^o 10 LIVERPOOL TO MONTBEAl. unhappy as many. The fact is that I can stand the upward and down«,ard movement tolerably well • bnt It 18 the complex motion of the pitch and the roll that to the uninitiated is so heartrending. However, the third day saw me at the table with a famous appetite, arc this, I believe, lasted me throughout the voyage • and It really is wonderful to see how readily one can adapt one's self ,o the vicissitudes of fortune, or rather of the ship ; but still I do not consider that I have vet mastered the difficulty of taking soup in a heavy sea. Ihe plates and dishes are, of course, all secured be- tween layers or ledges of iron running parallel with the edges of the table; and this necessary but enrions arrangement suggests the idea of pigs feeding out of a trough; and very much like pigs many of us fed, for there was, as there is on the Peninsula and Oriental steamers-as there always is, I believe, on any pas- senger steamers-a profusion of viands of every kind ■ indeed, many of the dishes each day have been quite first-rate, insomuch so, that I find great difficulty in appreciating the ignominy of podtion attached to the status of "son of a sea-cook," and fancy that I should not much object to being looked upon as the offspring of such a c/u-f as had the superintendence of our cuisine. On Sunday, the roughest day perhaps of all, we had a somewhat poor attempt at service, in the prayers and psalms whereof the motion of the vessel gave ^s much LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. 11 the appearance of the United States " Jumpers" and " Shakers ;" while in the sermon the Canadian parson was both mentally and bodily emphatically at sea. The next two days were finer and more enjoyable, and our log-book showed a much higher score of miles com- pleted in the day's run. "Wednesday, again, was rough; Thursday pretty much the same; Friday cold and foggy. And now I began to see the dangers and difficulties of this route ; for we were fast approaching the track of the icebergs in their passage from the North to the Gulf-stream, in whose genial warmth they are gradually dissolved, after spreading around them, in their course from the Arctic regions, an amount of cold and fog which must be felt and seen to be Relieved, And here it was that the captain evi- denced those estimable qualities to which I have alluded above. Nothing could exceed the cautious vigilance, with which he superintended the steering of the ship. The fog was at times awfully thick, and the air so ex- cessively cold, that though we could not discern the ice, we felt pretty sure that it was all around us. The vessel was put at half speed, with sails furled ; but the sea was high and the wind aft, and so a collision at the rate ar which even then we were going would have been most disastrous. The excitement of this situa- tion, however, did not last long, and Friday night was clear enough to enable us to resume our usual speed. But it was bitterly cold, and all my means of wrap- 13 LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. ping up did little towards keeping the damp out of my bones. I do not know that I was more surprised with any- thing on the voyage than this excessive cold. It ap- pears to be cpused by the ice which drifts down from the North, from Greenland and Labrador, and the vast area of cold water with which these icebergs travel ; and the fogs are created by the meeting of these cold waters of the Northern seas with the warm waters of the Gulf-stream, and the condensation of the hot air from the South at it flows over the cold waters from the North. This I imagine to be the true explanation of these extraordinary cold fogs, which have baffled the art of every navigator; but whatever it may be, it un- doubtedly is a striking characteristic of this route, and by no means an agreeable one. I had no idea, when I left Liverpool, that I was about to be brought into such a freezing climate ; in fact, it never struck me that I was about to visit the neighbourhood of Green- land ; but a little reflection enabled me to see that our going so far north is only the result of the curve which we must necessarily take in order to get by the shortest route from one to another of two points situated as Liverpool and Quebec in the upper part of the Northern Hemisphere. I am afraid that I cannot exactly ex- plain what I mean by this "curve;" but I think you will see it by taking an orange and laying it on either end upon the table, and you will find that, to take the LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. 13 shortest line from one to another of two points, each situated near the top of the orange, you will have to ascend slightly to that part where the circumference is smaller, and in coming down again to the point of your destination you will complete a portion of a curve, which, on a larger scale upon the earth's surface, is called in navigation "the great curve." It is thus, then, that this route brings those who take it into such high latitudes. Of course, the Belle Isle line is only open to navigation in the height of summer; but even now, as I have said, the thermometer stood so low, that I might easily have imagined myself to be in tne depth of a severe winter. This morning was clear and sunny, though the air was still sharp ; but the mistfj were all gone, and now for the first time I got a view of the icebergs which had been our constant terror yesterday. They are certainly of a most imposing character, and with the sun shining brightly upon their jagged and broken edges, present an appearance upon the surface of the ocean of which I can give you no idea. They are of almost every hue and shape — somj like fantastic castles with marble turrets and dark-shadowed casements; some like gigantic conical ant-hills ; some like cathe- dral spires ; others like Eastern mosques with rounded domes ; all a strange jumble of hard edges and gro- tesque outlines, which assume a thousand different forms as the vessel speeds by their lofty sides, and 14 LIVERPOOL TO MOXTKEAL. onngs their various pe»k,, at each yard of her pro gress, ,„to a „e» alig„ment with the eve. Then there were ,vhales .pouting all round them', and porpoisea rolhng an „„1,3 and divers upon the waves, iJ.C 11 m\ '" T l*'"""'' ""' '" '"' i-exporienced eyes till long after the sailors had deseried it, • and so th,s morning has passed away pleasantly enough and my appetite has gone up a do.en degrees ; in fae.,' I eel myself another man altogether, and qnite agree with the Insh sailor, who vowed that, after all the best part of going to sea was the getting to 'land agam. " ' Monday, August 15M. Our voyage is • ow pretty nearly clo.ed ; we have our pdot on board and are steaming up the St. Law- renee wuh afa,r wind, and by breakfast time to-morrow morn„,g shall be (we hope) off the Citadel of Quebec hunday was a splendid day, and though not a very smooth o,.c, for a screw steamer mil roll, yet a favo.. .ea.ly 300 m.les m the twenty-four hours, which was no e than the captain thought the ship " |,ad in her " leebergs were still plentiful up to a late hour on Saturday eveu.ng, but most of them were rendered h>.rmlcss by having drifted ashore on Belle Isle, 'r Newj,undland, where the waves broke over tLm grandly. Once we counted twenty-three in view. LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. 15 some of course diminutive, but many of enormous dimensions, 150 or 200 feet above the water, and many liundred yards in breadth and length. Such a height above the level of the water gives an enormous sum total of cubic feet, for you must remember that float- ing ice carries eight times as much of its mass below the water as is visible above. Some huge monsters had stranded in water where the chart showed a depth of many fathoms. I dare say you have not a very intimate acquaint- ance with the geography of these inhospitable regions. I was very shaky on the subject, but am decidedly im- proving. The straits of Belle Isle lie between the coast of Labrador and Newfoundland, and the island whence they take their name is at the entrance to the straits. It is a bleak barren rock, enveloped in fog, and snow, and ice, and perhaps you cannot quite see why it bears so promising a name. Some of the passengers suggested that it was a very poor joke on the part of some sarcastic navigator ; but I can easily suppose the most uninviting of rocks to be welcomed as " beauti- ful " by any sailor who had been long knocked about in those dreary waters. The straits are about thirtv miles wide on the average, and a hundred miles in length, but there is a strong current through them which carried us along at an immense speed : and now we are safe across the gulf of the St. Lawrence, and (iOO miles from the Atlantic, in water as clear and 11 r^ 'A 16 LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. smooth as glass, with fine scenery on either side of us, and a bright blue sky above. It is a wonderful river, the St. Lawrence, far more like a large inland sea than what you or I are accus- tomed to look upon as a river. For several -hundred miles from the ocean its banks are barely visible, and where they can be seen in this clear atmosphere would be quite invisible under our English sky, and even now at this great distance up the stream, over 600 miles, the width of the river is at times as much as thirty. But, of course, this marvellous display of natural irrigation is the great wonder of every stran-er and had I not been in the South of Europe I should have been as much astonished with the extraordinary clearness of the atmosphere. There is at this moment in sight I rock and signal station eighty miles distant from the spot where we now are. Such a statement will hardly be believed at home, but the outline is as definitely marked as if it were within ten miles. We are now in a very diff-erent climate, in fact it is fast becoming uncommonly hot, and after the cold through which we have passed the heat tells upon us with ten- fold effect. I do not think I found it so warm in the Mediterranean last month, and I am sure I did not see what has been amusing us more or less all the afternoon, "the mirage » and its quaint impositions of distant lakes and inverted mountains. Sometimes the whole of the hills on each side of us were seen LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. 17 repeated topsj'-turvy on tlie horizon : all the ships were double, that is, had an inverted image of themselves above them ; one in the far distance had a third reflection of itself standing on the hull of the inverted image — this appearance, I believe, is very unusual — and still further from us was seen hanging in the air the image of a vessel ,vhich was " hull down " below the horizon, totally out ol' sight. This last certainly is a most ex- traordinary instance of the atmospherical refraction which creates the morning and evening twilight, and brings most forcibly to one's mind the means by which we are enabled to see the sun's disc so much earlier and later than it would, but for this refraction, be visible. The others are curious instances of seeing double; from which, however, I do not wish you to infer, that to see things in this way it is at all neces- sary to go through the same preliminaries as are indis- pensable to the attainment of the same result at home. 10 p.m. — "We have all been on deck gazing in won- der at the Aurora Borealis, as it has for the last hour and a half been darting up its roseate streaks of fire from the northern horizon. The moon is shinins- with a brightness which I have only seen equalled at Malta, but her rays seem to have little or no effect in diminishing the powerful light of the Aurora. I wonder why this is not more often seen at home. It is visible any fine night in Canada, far further south than England. ^1 1 2 18 LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. h4 QUEBKC, Wednesday, August \7t/i. I am now safe and snug at RussclPs Hotel, Quebec. We reached the custom-house wharf at 7 a.m, yester- day, and may consider that we have made a good pas- sage, having acconiplislied the distance of something under 3000 miles in less than eleven days. Every one was up very early yesterday morning to see the scenery of the St. Lawrence and the view of the city as we approached. The banks had contracted very much since we saw them the day before, and the stream was studded with numerous islands, uncultivated but prettily wooded, till just as we reached Quebec the river narrowed to the very respectable, but for this continent insignificant, width of two miles. The banks all along were thickly populated ; French farms and country villages alternated on either side ; neat look- ing villages with pretty churches fringed the margin of the water, and shoals of little fishing boats plied their trade along the shores. Seven o'clock had just struck when we breasted the citadel of Quebec, and fired an iin osin,?; salute from two little pocket guns on the ir,aii/ dock. Quebec is grand from the river, clustering at the foot of a bold precipice from which the citadel frowns down upon the stream, and round behind the citadel walls creeping up the back of the rock with picturesque roofs and tower- LlVEllPOOL TO MONTilEAL. 19 ing spires which glitter in the sunlight like crystal. The cause of this peculiar brilliancy is the fact that the material used for roofing is tin. All the best houses, all church spires, all domes and gable ends are covered with tin. In our climate of course this cover- ing would barely last out a week ; but here, where the air is so perfectly dry, that corroding and rust are almost unknown, tin, tliough the most expensive at first, is in the end the cheapest as well as the most durable metal for the purpose. It looks well, especi- ally in the sun's rays ; gives a good finish to the stone buildings, and I have no c'oubt gathers less snow than the old-fashioned slates and tiles. ii.t any rate it is a great addition to the scenery. Down below the town and round the base of the rock are spacious quays, with water deep enough to allow the largest vessels to lie alongside ; and across the stream on the opposite bank is a fine range of hills, with a large town facing the citadel, and known by the name of Levi Point pro- nounced by Canadians Pint Leavy. Breakfast over at our hotel, in company with some of our passengers we hired a caleche, or rather a couple of those peculiar vehicles, each of which carries two persons. They are the funniest-looking machines, with the oddest horses, that I have seen for a lonir time; there is no pretence to strength or ornament about them; two wheels with a diminutive imitation of the London mau-about-town's cab perched upon 20 LIVKllPOOL TO MONTH KAL, H « them, and a little box-seat in front ; no springs, and a horse all harness — and the vehielc is complete. But the horse eau go ahead, like the population, and the apparent absence of springs is possibly due to the in- different pavement of the streets, which is in many of them of wooden planks laid transversely across the road, and in others of stone, so unevenly put down that I think it really the worse of the two. But the streets are too steep to admit of the construction of a good road, being for the most part narrow and tortu- ous, twisting in and out amongst the French-looking houses of the " habitans " which tlirow out all sorts of odd angles in every conceivable direction as if desi- rous of thrusting in the way of a good street every obstruction they possibly can. From, the strong de- clivities on either side of the citadel heights I should think there must be little need of sanitary regulations, as the first heavy shower pours down a iiood from above which washes down, with the speed of a torrent, all filth that would otherwise accunudate. The upper town is handsome and elegant — a striking contrast to the lower ; but, after all, the city is one which does not improve upon acquaintance; it looks extremely well from the river, but will not do at all when you come to examine it closely. From the top of the citadel we had a glorious view of the city, the river, and the sur- rounding country. We strolled along the fortifications, looked at the spot where Wolfe fell, heard the noon- LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. 21 clay gun fired from the summit of the fort, and the grand reverberation, caused by its discharge, amon<^st the opposite heights, and driving through the city pro- cceded to the celebrated falls of Montmorenci, by a pretty drive of ten miles along the northern bank of the river. These falls pleased us all immenselv. They are far finer than anything of the kind I had seen in Europe. The body of water is enormous, the nreei- pice over which it is dashed is 250 feet liigh, and the scenery above and below the falls romantic; all neces- sary adjuncts to a good waterfall. Montreal, Friday, August I9th. A walk on the Esplanade, a lounge on the Terrace, a visit to the quays and the Houses of Parliament (a temporary erection while the buildings at Ottawa are 1.1 progress) finished my stay in Quebec, and in the afternoon my friend the banker and myself took the steamer for Montreal, where we are now located in the great hotel known as the St. Lawrence Hall. This was my first introduction to the river steamers of the New World, and truly they are an institution to which nothing that we have can for a moment be compared for comfort and speed combined. The Ameri- can river-boat, of which the Canadian is a copy, is no- thing more nor less thau an immense fln^fino. hoM a ii>m 22 LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. characteristic type of the peopi themselves, a curious combination of democratic follies and aristocratic pro- pensities ; a mixture of every kind of life — fast life, slow life, busy life, and lazy life, all under one roof. The saloon is a tine handsome room of great length and good height, fitted up with exaggerated decorations, ex- travagant and, as / think, tasteless. Along either side are the state cabins, each and all a good bedroom in itself, comfortably arranged and extremely well ventilated ; and around them, on the outside, runs a sort of open deck or platform, where the passengers sit and promenade at their pleasure. At 6 p.m. was served in the saloon, at the lower end, which is set apart as a dining-room, a handsome " high tea /^ and after tea there was music, cards, chess, and so on, till late in the evening, when, after a final moonlight walk outside, the passengers turned in. I found my bed very comfortable, so did my companion, in so much so that we both had great difficulty in rousing ourselves on reaching Montreal, where we arrived in the morn- ing at 7.30. I am extremely glad that I came by boat rather than by rail, contrary to the advice of some of my friends ; for, though the journey occupies more time, yet the boats are very fast, the river is worth seeing, and the little insight I have gained into the American river-boat life has well repaid me for the extra time thus occupied. Besides, it is cheap travelling, and very LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. 23 amusing. I know (at present, at least) no other place where you can see a working artisan in fustian sitting down at table next a well-dressed lady, and lounging on an elegant sofa side by side with a high-bred swell. And then there is such a delightful air of perfect in- dependence and absence of respect for anything or any- body, an amount of self possession which is quite charm- ing; and yet a certain civility withal, but rude and un- polished, as I should hardly have expected it in a district where the population is considerably more than half of it of French extraction. I never recollect seeing such an example of the great principle of self-help as was dis- played to me that evening at tea, where every one not bearishly or greedily, but with cool deliberate self- possession, helped himself or herself to the dish which was nearest, without a thought for the want of other appetites. I do not mean to say that there is any lack of charity amongst the Canadians ; from what I hear I believe no people can be more kind, attentive, and hospitable; but the great idea amongst them all seems to be -help yourself," "never do for another what he can do for himself," good maxims enough in their way, but here, I suspect, carried a stretch too far Fashion seems to be set by the lower classes, though that, of course, is a term which would not be heard in a country like this, - where every man is as good as his neighbour, and, if anything, better," Manners are taken from the same class. No waiter addrp««. 'oa If --' 24 LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. as ill- >> ^ no cabman, or porter, or crossing sweeper (if there be any), would dignify you with such a title. Why should he? He is away from the stuck-up one-horse aristocracy of England ; he looks upon them with pity and C(mtempt, calls them " proud and poor," "ten generations behind the age/' " worthy only of a glass case and a place in a museum of antique curiosities." He is, in fact, un-English; he tells you that he is not, but he is, a Yankee—a Yankee in the sense in which we use the term at home, as synonymous with everything that smacks of democracy. You may accuse him of a desire for annexation to the Northern States of America, but he will be so loud in denying it, that you will have to change the subject. You may take up the key note of the ' Times,' and charge him vn th want of loyalty to the British Government, and he will of course as loudly der.y this ; but talk to him and you will see that in- dependence is the " acme " of his desires, and to perfect it he knows no other means than by " throwing off the British yoke." The day of final emancipation from the apron-strings of the mother country may not be yet at hand, but the child is fully weaned, and the novel scheme for a grand confederation of the British pro- vinces of this continent, which is now being broached in the journals, shows that he is shortly intending to essay running alone. We have taken a walk round Montreal, and are LIVERPOOL TO MONTREAL. 25 greatly astonished with what we have seen. To people arriving with the idea of finding the inhabitants dwelling in log shanties and brushwood huts it must be a surprising sight to come upon a fine handsome city, with splendid buildings and noble churches, and all the indications of affluence which are characteristic of a wealthy commercial city j but of this I must speak in my next. ^^i II. MONTREAL TO TORONTO. Iii Montreal, ' August 20th. My last letter left me safely landed in Montreal, after a pleasant night-journey by steamer from Quebec, and gave you a hint, I believe, that this city far surpassed all my preconceived ideas of Canada. As yet, of course, I have only seen the more civilized side of Canadian life, and never expected to come across the rougher experiences of the Western forests in the streets of Montreal p.nd Quebec ; but I must fairly admit that I did not look for much that is grand, or costly, or im- posing, or is associated with our ideas of wealth' and luxury—I might almost say extravagance. Rapid de- velopment, brilliant progress, I knew I was sure to find, but not such a finished exterior. -I anticipated a young colony with an old head, but not one with so old a face. Now my first walk through the streets of this city quite upset all ray ideas, and showed me that MONTREAL TO TOROXTO. 27 there was much more of the Old World's architectural magnificence here than I had been willing to believe Whether it was that my long-acquired habit of associ- ating all capitals of agricultural districts with Ipswich prevented me from anticipating in this country any higher style of architecture than is to be met with in that most respectable but seedy town, I know not ; but I certainly never expected to find that Canada had its Paris. However, I have been undeceived ; and if you know any one labouring under a like delusion, you may at once enlighten them, and tell them that the buildings of Montreal surpass those of many a fine city on their side of the Atlantic. The St. Lawrence Hall, the hotel in which I am staying—a well-known house amongst Canadians and Americans— is situated in the centre of the handsome edifices to which I have alluded. I will not trouble you with an enumeration of them, but merely say that ^hese buildings are chiefly banks, offices of insurance, and other public companies, fine churches and chapels,' spacious colleges, and asylums and hospitals, all well placed in broad streets, or detached in commanding positions. Those which pleased me most were the French cathedral, the Palais de Justice, and the Post Office— all perfect in their way. And then there are markets, three in number, and splendid stores, after the style of Cannon Street, and handsome squares in the suburbs, and grand wharves along the river, and r a: ili 28 MONTREAL TO TOKON'TO. iUii » I Jii much more that is worth a visit, of vvliich I have not time to tell. The city is backed by a thickly-wooded mountain, round tiie summit of which I had a beau- tiful drive to get a view of the neighbourhood: and a grand one it is, with the city and its sparkling tin roofs beneath you, and the mighty St. Lawrence, two miles wide, beyond and all around the island on which the city stands, and at the western end of the city the far- famed Victoria tubular bridge spanning the breadth of the great river, and in the distance across the stream the purple mountains of Vermont, from which the Yankee sentinel can daily whet his hungry appetite by gazing at the tempting bait below. The 'New York Herald' is still at the old game, thirsting for " Canada's blood ;" and if I am to believe what I hear of the vast circulation and influence of that beautiful journal, there must be an enormous number across the frontier who are intent upon thus satiating their thirst. But Canada is quite deaf to all their threats, perfectly indifferent to their taunts and sneers ; and yet I do not like to think that the ' Times' was right in its charges against the colony, and that the Canadian self- confidence is so much like apathy. They tell me that the volunteer movement is progressing, but I cannot say that I have seen anything of it yet. I only know that the volunteer department is entrusted to the care of the Attorney.general, under whose tender guidance it is said to thrive; from which fact I am led to con- MONTREAL TO TORONTO. 29 elude that lawyers here eschew red tape, else I should hardly expect to find a precocious younjr colony, of very liberal views and independent principles, consigning its military organization to such a wholesale dealer in that repulsive article. The carriage in which my drive was taken, in com- pany with a lady and gentleman whose acquaintance I have made, was a perfect model of what a voilure a deux chtvaux should be, set upon large and light Ame- rican wheels, and drawn by two excellent animals. There is, perhaps, more ornament upon the body of the carriage than we in England should admit, in the shape of electro-plated hinges, decorations, and devices; but extravagant ornament is the fashion here; and after all, I doubt whether we at home are not too sparing with our colours, in our endeavours to attain a tame neatness. I cannot understand why we consider it necessary at home to plant our carriages upon pon- derous wheels, only suitable for Pickford^s vans or the cars of the Indian Juggernaut, while here every vehicle but those adapted for the transport of the very heaviest goods is set on high, light, elegant wheels, that seem to run as if they could not help it, and carry the horses on before them, as the sleighs do in the snow. It is not that our English roads are too rough for the Ame- rican wheels ; Heaven knows, the turnpikes are bad enough in all conscience here. It is not, I feel sure, that, as a Yankee suggested to me, these light wheels 30 MONTUEAL TO TOUONTO. i !,[■. \U t ! would succumb beneath the weight of an English belle (It would take half-a-dozen Yankee belles to make a shadow). It must be, I suppose, as an irritated Eng- hshman remarked, that an "old-countr/' horse would always be running away with them ; and I verily be- lieve that the adoption of these wheels is in no small degree due to the poverty of the horse-fiesh of this continent. Still, " any-way,- as the Yankees say, here are the wheels, and here, too, as I have alreadv seen, are many and many an ingenious adaptation or im-' provement of a familiar old-world article, some easy .uethod of working an old and elaborate contrivance some simple modification of a complicated machine' some smart creation of American ingenuity ; and that not only in the cities and towns, but even in the vil- lages, the hamlets, the very fields—displayed alike in the gigantic grain-elevators of the corn-marts of the Western cities, and in the simple Canadian cottage pump ; so that I begin to wonder uo longer at the '' mean," - pitiable," " paltry" position which we, the " poor old one-horse nation," occupy in the eves of this enlightened " go-ahead" continent. I suppose you will expect me to tell you somethino- about the hotel life of the New World ; and though I have not at present seen that peculiar characteristic of this continent in its fullest force and vigour, and shall not till I leave Canada, yet I am told that the St Lawrence Hall, of Montreal, is intended to give, aud MONTREAL TO TORONTO. 31 ;lish belle make a ited Eng. rse would v^erilv be- no small h of this say, here ady seen, 1 or im- •me easy itrivance, machine, and that I the vil- alike in s of the cottage r at the we, the s of this methinor bough I ristic of id shall the St. ve, and does give, an excellent miniature portrait of the vast hotels of New York. You have read Sala's letters to the 'Daily Telegraph,' and Russell's to the 'Times,' and other works upon this subject, of which all of us in England have heard so nuch. Some of them are, of course, exaggerated ; but it is difficult to convey a powerful impression of anything in language which shall be forcible but not extravagant; still, most of what I had heard and read of this life is faithful and true, and, accordingly, I looked in the St. Lawren.e Hall for just what I found, and little more. Well, I must ask you to imagine a fine handsome house, after the style of the new hotels in Loudon or Paris, with a noble entrance-hall, fronted by a covered arcade, opening npon a wide welUbuilt street. Before the doorwav of the hall will be a busy medley of carts, cabs, carriages and omnibuses in the road, and drivers, porters, pas- sengers, and baggage on the pavement. Inside the door, upon the right, is the reading-room, with the journals in frames upon reading-desks along the walls • and upon the left you will find the bar or coffee-room --a sort of well-dressed English taproom— and all about the doorway, the reading-room, and the bar, vou will jostle against a crowd of noisy visitors, and hear ^uch a buzz of human voices, as will drown the tur- moil of the traffic in the street. A few steps further 1", and you will find yourself in a lofty second or inner liall, where the noise and bustle seems ten times greater I >l 33 MONTREAL TO TORONTO. V ^: than at the entrance to tlie hotel. Opposite to you, at tlie further end of this inner hall, will be a long counter, on which lies the visitors' book, with guid:;- books, maps, almanacks, and directories, and Ijchind the counter you will see the maUre.(Vh6lel, with his cashiers, clerks, and various assistants. On the right of the hull you will iind the post office and newspaper- stall, circulating library, and telegraph bureau; and on the left the lavatory and, not the least important, the Ijurber's shop. All along the counter, and in and out the barber's shop you. will see and hear the most doing. At the counter, from morning to night, one incessant roll of clamour for beds and bills, and at the barber's from dawn till dinner, a succession of unshorn Yankees — a Yankee never shaves himself— submitting their cheeks to tlie barber's razor, and their ears to his latest news. You must not mind smoke, for you will be smo- thered with it ; you must learn to tolerate chewing, or you will get bilious; you must be indifferent to spitting, or you will dL of nausea. Montreal is crammca with Americans; they are always here in great numbers, and now the war has at least doubled them. South- erners there are some, but Yankees pieponderate ; and with all the occupants of the hotel, be they of what nation they may, Yankee manners and customs are certainly the fashionable thing. But you must take no notice of these little eccentricities of our funny cousins, and look at the master, the host himself. Yoii MONTREAL TO TORONTO. 33 will see him smoking his ci-ar behind the counter, and conversing with his visitors right and left, ex- clianging civilities with his new-comers, and shaking hands with those who are leaving him— very atten- tive, very affable ; in fact, exactly suited to his work, and this is saying a great deal, for a formidable task it must be to manage the details of the various depart- ments in one of these gigantic establishments, and well may the Yankees form their estimate of a man's smart- ness by his natural capacity for keeping an hotel. Passing on through the hall, and ascending the grand staircase, you will reach the reception-room— a handsome salon, of large and lofty dimensions, with anterooms and boudoirs attached to it ; and here you will find ladies and gentlemen in knots upon the chairs and sofas, receiving visitors, or conversing amongst themselves ; and at the piano, in the centre of the room, ten to one but you will see a precocious young Yankee girl, of the age of sixteen perhaps, or under, playing away before the assembled multitude, perfectly regardless of the ears and eyes intent upon her— pos- sibly even impudent enough to be practising her scales. Further on you will come upon the dining-hall— an elegant room like the last, entered by splendidly wide passages or corridors, and filled with innumerable small tables, which hold from four to eight or ten " covers" each. The bedrooms are large, light, and airy, and the ventilation of the building perfect. t ■ A.' "«l = i ■'* J. (, i II I IM in I 34 MONTREAL TO TORONTO. It IS a noisy life this, of course; but for a bachelor travelling " solo - I can imagine nothing more enter- tainmg, and the living is cheap enough, when compared with the rates of our first-class hotels at home. Throughout this continent the charge is always so much per day, on the principle of the foreign '^pen- sions,- and at all the best hotels in Canada that charge IS now two dollars, i. e., something over eight shillings. For this you get bed, breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, and supper— such a meal at each sitting as would feast a Londoner for a week—everything in fact but beverages other than water, or what an American elegantly terms -drinks.- Breakfast goes on from 8 to 11, lunch from 1 to 2, dinner from 5 to 7, tea from 8 to 10, supper from 11 to 12, which signifies that to obtain any particular meal you must present yourself at some time between the two hours during which it is announced as obtainable. Breakfast I think the most striking meal, and so I will ask you to accompany me to that. We will drop in, say at 9.30, sit down casually at any of the numerous tables which has a vacant place, and in a business-like tone of voice call for the carte. Now, having read Sala's letters we shall not be the least puzzled at the length of the list of viands and delicacies, nor shall we forget his celebrated account of his first breakfast on this continent, and the difficulty he had to get anybody to attend to him because he ordered only one dish, I i> m MONTREAL TO TORONTO. 35 must say that I did not quite believe the accuracy of tliat statement ; but I find now that it is all absolutely true, and that a man, who sits down and orders an egg and a bit of toast, has just as much chance of getting any one to wait upon him, as he has of seeing the Thames pure, or Jhe Conservatives in office, or anv other physical impossibility. So we are wise, and instead of selecting such dishes as we wish to try, point out to the waiter some two or three of the fourteen, which we do not care to venture upor/ and boldly order up the rest. The effect upon the waiter is magical ; he puts us down as *' smart ones," and civility and attention are at once secured. This was my plan on my first breakfast here, but the result of the order was somewhat alarming, for I found my- self in about two minutes surrounded by a multitude of little oval dishes, on which were fish, steaks, chops ham, chicken, turkey, rissoles, potatoes (boiled, roast and fried), cabbage, corn, cheese, onions and pickle- besides plates of hot rolls, buns, crumpets, toast and biscmts, flanked by a great jug full of milk and an enormous vessel of coff-ee. However, in the midst of my bewilderment, which seemed to puzzle the waiter who had taken my order as a thing of every day occur- rence, my friend the banker turned up, and with his help I succeeded in demolishiug a considerable portion of the formidable array of dishes. But there was a Yankee next to us who ordered much the same as I had B.ii m 1 ,1 f ■ ■ 36 MONTREAL TO TORONTO. l'^ liil f : '! thus unintentionally been burdened with, and what was our astonishment to see him take six soft-boiled eggs, and breaking them on the edge of a tumbler, drop in suc- cessively their respective yolks, and then, after two or three whirls of his spoon in the glass, gobble them up as an "appetiser," with a gurgle of delight that was quite musical. This was only the preliminary canter. You might have thought, perhaps, that at any rate he was off on his raid upon the menu, but no, he was only going through his paces previous to entering upon the severer work before him, and when he did set to, " my eye, warnt it a caution to snakes ? " Fish, steaks, chops, sausages, omelets, with vegetables of several kinds, vanished like gnats before a thunder- storm j coffee and tea chased one another down that capacious throat, till, in less than three quarters of an hour from the firing of the first shot, the table was well nigh cleared, and a glass of iced milk brought to a triumphant close this interesting performance. Luncheon is served on the same liberal scale, dinner, tea, and supper, ditto. It is no use trying to shirk a dish, the waiters will insist on your trying everything, so your only course is to try. Everybody tries every dish ; no one feels any compunction at leaving un- touched what has been brought to him; waste is immaterial, for meat is dirt-cheap, vegetables and fruit abundant. All ages of either sex eat extravagantly ; no one looks astonished to see " a lovely plant of six- MONTREAL TO TORONTO. 37 teen summers," tucking down at breakfast kidneys, liam, and sausages after a tremendous plateful of fish ; no one stares to see a precocious youth of nine going straight through the dinner carte like a steam mowiug-machine, puffing, and blowing, and spitting like an ill-used engine. It is a wonderful thing, truly, this Yankee appetite. I have been told in England that I myself am not deficient in this respect; I admit a considerable executive capacity — but set mc down by a middle-aged Yankee lady, and by her side I am a mouse. And yet with all this absorption of tissue-making material, there is, as Sala says, nothing to show for it —the men are all lanky, gaunt, fleshless, yellow- coraplexioned, haggard lamp posts; the women, lean, skinny, angular, all sharp corners and edges — waltzing with them, till you get used to it, must be torture. I do not know how to account for this invariable poverty of flesh — possibly it arises from over-feeding, as cats grow thin upon black beetles ; perhaps it is the physical result of an exaggerated sort of Banting's system; and for my part I believe it almost impossible to get fat on meat three times a day — but T suppose the climate has much to do with it; Arctic frosts and tropical heats alternating in unbroken succession are not appa- rently adapted for the cultivation of anything like a corporation. North America may be the field of enter- prise for every humbug under the sun, but Banting. t -wl 38 MONTREAL TO TORONTO. Ottawa, August 22nd. I am now in the future capital of the two provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. My journey here was made by rail to Lachine, a few miles west of Montreal, and thence by steamer up the Ottawa river. We had anticipated a fine day's excursion, but unfortunately the bush had taken fire, and the country for miles and miles around was enveloped in clouds of smoke. At times the fog was so thick that we had to stop and drop our auchor ; at others we were delaved bv frequent soundings ; once we made a complete circuit, and only discovered that we were returning to Montreal when the sun broke through the fog v.pon the wrong side of us. The Ottawa is a noble stream, called by the Indians the " Grand River,-'' varying from two miles to one in breadth, and fringed by steep precipitous banks, with pleasing landscape scenery above them. But of this last I saw little or nothing, for the fog scarcely cleared all day, and it was not till near midnight that we reached the City of Ottawa. Since my arrival here we have had some heavy rains, which have extinguished the bush fire, that might, but for this fortuitous downfall, have, I am told, burnt for weeks. It is difficult to give you any idea of what one of these fires is like. It is by no means easy to convey an impression of what is signified by " the MONTREAL TO TORONTO. 39 bush/' You must picture to yourself a tangled forest of closely.packed moderate-sized trees, with a dense undergrowth of shrubs; pines will be the most pre- valent trees, but beech, maple, oak, sumac, walnut, and poplar, may all be included under the general term pine forest." Imagine this mass of leaf to extend over a flat swampy area of hundreds of square miles broken only here and there by the log hut of some' lonely settler, or the freshly cleared corn-field of a newly arrived farmer. You must then suppose the underwood to have taken fire from some seemingly in- significant accident-~a spark from a settler's pipe perhaps, or a lighted ember from his log fire • and the heat of the sun's rays ha. so scorched the trees that they burn like touchwood down to the very roots and so the fire is communicated to the parched turf or soil of the swamp, which smoulders away like peat for days and weeks and months, till rain falls and extinguishes the fire, after it has eaten its way into the earth perhaps three feet deep. At present you would find it difficult to recognise in Ottawa the future metropolis of Canada. The in habitants talk of it as Ottawa City, but it is much more hke an overgrown village perched upon the top of a steep cliff, and straggles along the banks of the river and out away into the country bevond, as if all the houses were afraid of touching each other, and objected to the formality of a continuous street. No one seems III 40 MONTREAL TO TOKONTO. exactly to know why it has been selected as the seat of Government. Some tell me, to avoid throwing down an apple of discord between the rival candidates, Alontreal, Quebec, and Toronto, by preferring any one of them. Some say it was selected by mistake; some, I believe, think it was done by the Queen to spite the Canadians. But for whatever cause selected, it has every element necessary for the creation of a great city, and for the capital of the two provinces— a grand river, a lovely site, a considerable distance between its walls and the Yankee frontier, a very central position as regards the Eastern and Western Provinces, and easy access from all sides. People are talking about the proposed coalition of all the provinces now under British rule, and saying that, if this federation scheme comes off, Ottawa will never be permitted to retain her .ecently acquired privilege ; and that the seat of Government must in that case remain, as it now is, in Quebec. But I cannot believe that any one who has ever seen the new Parliament Buildings in course of erection at Ottawa would be so barbarous as to demand the destruction of that beautiful edifice. The cost of the new Houses has been enormous, and I do not think the Canadians are likely to stand by and see this money thrown to the winds. If the Parliament Buildings are not to be used, I cannot imagine a more flagrant instance of reckless expenditure. The Buildings consist of a central block, in which MONTREAL TO TORONTO. 41 arc comprised the House or Chamber of the Legislative Council (the Lords), and the House of Assembly (the Commons), flanked by two wings, containing the various Government offices, an arrangement which brings them altogether under one roof; and fronted by a spacious quadrangle, which will be ornamented with trees. The back of tlie buildings runs parallel with the river ; and, as with our Houses at home, there is a handsome terrace upon the river bank, only that the bank is here 100 feet high, and the river is not a sewer. The style is gothic, less ornamented than St. Stephen's, and, I think, more substantial and effective. It is the work of native talent, and the Canadians may justly be proud, as they certainly are, of this magnificent pile. Everything has been done in the most costly style, and I think you would be as much surprised as I was to come upon such a building in what may be yet called the wilds of Canada. The rain was coming down in tropical fashion when we left the Houses of Parliament, but the Chaudiere Falls well repaid us the ducking we got in visiting them. A fine bridge spans the river just below these celebrated Falls, and from thence there is a view which some people say is second only to Niagara in grandeur and magnificence. There is a marvellous variety about these Falls which I have never seen equalled elsewhere. Arrayed in every imaginable form, in vast dark masses, in graceful cascades, in tumbling spray, they present 42 MONTREAL TO TOHONTO. ir, the appoarancc of a hundred rivers .struggling with the rocks for a passage. And when tlie hundred passages are found, they plunge over the preeipiee into a deep, dark basm, where they hiss, and boil, and seethe, and M'lm-I round in such hot haste as to verifv the justice ot their name of choMdure, or caldron. By tiie Falls IS one of the numerous saw-mills so prevalent in Ca- "ada, which we next visited, and well worth the visit Jt was ; but I have not time to tell you of the ma- chinery, the noise, the saws, the bustle and business of the establishment, for I must say a word about the timl)er-sl,des> down one of which we took a ride in imitation, I suppose, of the Prince of Wales, who' did the same thing on his visit to Canada. These slides are not uncommon in the Ottawa being an mgenious method of avoiding the cataracts, and sending the timber from above to below the foaming T^'aters, without endangering the destruction of the raft by eolhsion with kindred rafts below, or annihilation on the rocks. They consist of a small miniature plan ot a series of canals and weirs, so managed that the water never runs at so steep a gradient as to make it break and foam, but passes smoothly over a succession of mchned planes at an angle of forty-five degrees or less. At the bottom of each separate '^shute" is a wooden platform or -apron,- upon which the rafters are precipitated, and so preserved from diving down under the surface by the impetus of their fall. To MONTREAL TO TORONTO. 43 understand how the thing works, you must know that a raft'' consists of thirty or forty separate " cribs/' that is, subd livisions or small rafts, each crib complete in itself, and all bound together by cords and withes. In coming down the rapids, or running the slides, the raft is broken up into cribs, and so reduced to a more manageable size ; and at the bottom of the slide, when the descent of all is completed, the cribs are again attached, and follow the current in ons continuous raft till more slides or rapids are reached, when the process IS repeated. They say that there is considerable danger in shooting these slides, but it is much exaggerated. Anyhow, I have done it once, and am safe. I do not care to try it again ; but I wanted to be able to say that I had done it, though, a Sidney Smith said, it would have been just as easy to say that, without ever facing It at all. My fellow-traveller and myself were, however, above any such imposture, so we walked to the head of the slide, got leave to go down with the two steerers upon one, and, stepping on board, found ourselves instantly in the current. It was a curious sensation certainly, not over agreeable, but very ex- citing. In a few seconds we were upon the first in. clined plane, and down we shot at a terrible pace, till m less time than I can tell it in, we lodged upon the first -apron" with a bump and a crash that sent the timbers jumping beneath our feet, and deluged the fore part of the crib with spray and foam. Then on again 44 MONTRliAL TO TORONTO. If i9 before we had bare time to recover our l)alance, down the next incline, with another bump upon the next apron, and so on down two more, when we thought oar troubles were at an end ; but no, the crib in front of us had lost a spar in its downward passage, which had struck rigiit athwart the current. There was no time to skedaddle, no chance of making a ''strategic movement" ; we hardly saw the obstacle in our way, when the end of our crib came upon it, and v.ith a leap into the air, and a terrific splash on the descent into the water, we cleared the spar, and found ourselves in quiet water.' I am glad that I saw this little incident, for it gave me a good idea of the dangers with which the poor raftsmen have to contend. It is a hard life— harder than you or I, perhaps, could have imagined it possible for human beings to endure. Five hundred miles down the stream, through rapids and slides, had the brave voyageurs who manned our crib brought the timber island which was now their only home. Fourteen mouths' absence from civilised life amongst the bears and wolves of the backwoods had been necessary to fell, carry, and put together the hundreds of trees of which the whole raft was composed, and two months more would elapse before they would be safely moored at Quebec, beyond the dangers of the rapids and the slides. A little hut, no kroner than a dog-kenuel, with just a hole in front by which to creep in on hands and knees, was the only MONTREAL TO TORONTO. 45 awn- a covering from the rain and the storm ; a plank ing, on n])riglit poles, formed their only apology for kitchen, and three or four tin pots and an iron caul- flron composed the kitchen utensils, dinner-service, and plate. But for all this indication of needy circum- stances, there was an amount of pride amongst the twenty or thirty occupants of the raft which, to a stranger to the country, must be astonishing. Not one of them would have received a sixpence for his trouble in taking us down the slide; each and all would have treated the offer as an insult. And so it is throughout Canada ; so it is, I hear, in the States. No tipping waiters, no feeing porters ; their spirit of independence forbids them to take any remuneration from any one but their master. They hold themselves in every bit as good a position as the visitor on whom they wait ; he looks upon them as of equal station with himself. No grades, no classes, no rank. We in England are totally unable to realise this great level- ling principle ; but it crops up in Canada as it does in the States, at every turn you take. You will meet it m the railway officials, who will quietly tell you to carry your bag yourself; you will find it in the cham- bermaid, who will answer the bell or not, just as she pleases, and if you politely suggest that you rang, will coolly reply that she is " quite aware of it f you will notice it everywhere in being addressed as " Mister" —none but niggers will call you " Sir" — and find that m !i i6 MONTREAL TO TOKO\T(). m . % 110 request made of you is ever preceded by " if you please," no act of civility on your part followed by "thauk you.- Uniforms, liveries, and such-likc fri- volities of a bloated aristocracy, are alike discarded. The railway guard is dressed as yourself, the porters better; tiie captain and sailors of the steam-boats as town merchants and mechanics; the coachmen and grooms as private gentlemen. But Avith all this inde- pendence—this over-laboured acting out of tiie liberte efface, fraternite system— there are, as I see already,' many redeeming points about it. There may be little courtesy in tlie manners of the people, but there is plenty of generosity ; no French politesse, but a ready hand ; no good breeding, but a willing heart. Society IS in a rough, rude state out here, but there is some- thing about it which I like, for all that ; nothing like pnde, nothing artificial, as amongst our upper classes at home, no gulf separating rich from poor; but I will not say more in this strain, or you will be looking on me as a Democrat, and I do not consider that I am so far gone as that at present. The last few pages I have been writing at Toronto, where I arrived on the morning of the 25th ; and here I am now, staying Avith my cousin and his wife at their cottage in Yorkville, a suburb of Toronto, about two miles from the central part of the city. I left Ottawa on the morning of the 23rd by the - cars"— you never go by train on this continent— to Prescott, on the ;l MO.NTIIK.IL TO TOHONTO. JT St. Lawrence about 120 miles al.ove Montreal, where I took the steam-boat, for the purpose of running the rapids between Prescott and iMontreal. The fall i„ the nver between the two plaees is very great, so mueh so as to ereate a suecessiou of rapids at various inter- vals, up w neh it is, of eourse, impossible for any boats to pass; but they venture to shoot them -•.«,„ the stream, performing the up journey through a long ser,es of loeks and eanals. Having heard that it was a very exeiting trip down the river, and a sight whieh I should regret to have missed, I determined to make the journey, though at the cost of retracing my steps towards the east; but I am satisfied that the trip well repaid me. ^ The seenery of the river here is not very strikin-. (or the eountry is flat and uninteresting, so that I was glad to arrive at the first of the four Kapids whieh lay 'otween us and Montreal. These were the Galop «ap,ds the easiest of the four to run; in faet, there was httle or no perceptible effect on the motion of the vessel w,th the exception of an acceleration of an al- ready h.gh speed. But they only acted as a sort of a«. Z f T''' '"''"""' " ^<="«»ti'>n scenes" whieh met about mueh more, the current was fiercer, the interest 01 the s«rr«undn,g country greater. There we went tor two or more miles through the wild and roarin. waters, wh,Ie they dashed themselves in f„ry against a 4 48 MONTREAL TO TORONTO. the vessel, liissinfv and scctliing around as if panting to devour her. It was a grand sight to see how the flood licavcs and hounds over the polislied roeks, that vainly try to stem its course, and to ride over the lofty waves in which it rises in its wrath. It makes one's heart leap to tliink tliat one single slip on the pilot's part would hurl the ship to her grave ; but the Indian to wliose steady skill we trust, has been trained from boyhood to the work, and the four strong helms- men at tlie wheel stand ready to obey the slightest signal. Ti»c steam is shut off, and the vessel dashes in amongst the rocks that glare through the water in terrible proximity, atul down the narrow channel we are hurried with fearful nwndity on the crest of tiie rough, unruly waves, some mes running straight upon a rock, as it would seem, but, by a well-timed turn of the wheel, shooting aside and past the danger in safety; sometimes bumping and rolling on the breakers as they buffet and beat upon our bows; and then on again down another incline, where the current glides un^ broken through the shoals, till we are once more in the calm of the broad stream. The Cedar and La- chine rapids, equally exciting, and, perhaps, more dangerous, were safely passed in gallant stvle, and before dusk we were steaming under the giant arches of the tubular bridge up to the quay of IMontreal. Arriving there, 1 left again that 'night fur Prescott by the (J rand Trunk railroad. Slept at Prescott (a • II MONTREAL TO TORONTO. 49 miserable place), and on the 24th took the steamer to Toronto, jjy noon our good ship was steaming into the mazes of the Thousapd Islands and their far-famed lake— a labyrinth of loveliness which no water scenery that I know equals. It smacks rather of an Irish " bull " to say it, but there are some eighteen hundred of these islands scattered about in careless irregularity in the current of the river ; some small, so small that they seem only a few yards in circumference ; others, again, some miles in circuit, all rich in verdure and fringed with trees down to the very margin of the lake. Ever and anon we hurry through a narrow channel between two islets, that almost jam us in their grasp, apparently rushing into a cuUde-sac from which no exit is visible; but as we near the seemingly im- penetrable barrier of rock, an opening discloses itself through which we turn only to find ourselves similarly land-locked again. And so it is for nearly fifty miles, the same land-locking, the same mode of egress, while we sail along in the midst of a continuation of rock and tree, browns and greens of every hue, such as I think the Scotch Highlands cannot surpass in depth and variety. After leaving Kingston we were soon out of sight of land— a novel idea in the case of fresh-water,— and we had a roughish night, too, upon the lake ; but the morning was bright and clear, and by eight o'clock we were at the wharf of Toronto. 4 ^ 60 MONTREAL TO TORONTO. Toronto is a very pleasant town. I am not sure that I do not prefer it to Montreal. The streets are wide, the houses good, and the suburbs and parks beautiful. Then there are some fine buildings to be seen : the English and French Cathedrals ; the Uni- versity, in the style of the new Parliament Houses of Ottawa; and the famous Osgoode Hall, which has been talked of as a model for our new law-courts in Lincoln^s Inn, and which may well be followed, for I do not see how it is possible to have any handsomer, better arranged building. I certainly was most sur- prised to find a young colony like this in the possession of such an institution. The courts are perfect ; large, lofty, and well ventilated ; fitted with comfortable seats for the bar, convenient means of access to them, and luxurious cushions for the Q.Cs., which are, I should fear, pre-eminently conducive to sleep. But, for all that, I do not see why it is necessarr to keep the English Bar awake by putting them on seats upon which it is almost impossible to be decently comfortable. There is a handsome library, too, which is at present chiefly shelves, but I suppose the books will arrive in time ; if not, they can easily send to Chancery Lane for a few boxes of those old editions of legal text- books, which are said to be seen now and then packing for the colonies. The Judges and the Bar are very much what they are at home, except that they go bare- headed and eschew wigs ; a practice that entails an MONTREAL TO TORONTO. 5^ amo„,.t „f hair-brushing to which the hard-worke.l profess,™al adviser cannot be expected to sacrifice his chent s interest. A wi^ covers a multitude of short- comings. I have done little since I have been in Toronto but walk about the town, ride in the street-cars, eat drmk, and enjoy myself; and to-morrow I am off with my eousm on a tour to the West and the Mississippi. Tins >s a grand time for travelling in the States, for the railway fare is at ordinary times exceedinglv ow »"d, bemg fixed by statute, has not been affect'ed b^ he present exceptional rise in prices. Consequently, inghsh gold or .ts equivalent, the expense of a jour- 2 « a mere song. Gold, when I landed, stood at he extraordmary height of 260. A timely whisper hmted to me a coming fall, so with more cunosity than confidence in the solvency of the United States, I nwested largely in greenbacks. Ten minutes afte^ n.y purchase the next telegram sent it down 10 per eent. I begin to feel stealing over me the contagious .nfl ence of the gambling fever, with which the whole ontment ,s infected, from Wall Street even Z ds .t down another ten points, and then another. and another ten I And how if it rushes up ? I dare not hmk of the alternative, nor have I time, for I am off at once to Niagara, where a treat is in store for - -I. \^Lich X ucive long been reckoning. If ^r m \i Ml III. NIAGARA TO BUFFALO. Chicago, September 4th, 1864. I AM now fairly amongst the Americans, imbibing all I can of the manners and customs of " the Great West," and attempting to get an insight into the character of the people ; but they are at present a tremendous puz- zle to me, unlike any nation whose representatives I have ever met with ; as little like plain, honest, steady- going Englishmen, as I believe it possible for a people professing to speak the English language to be. In fact I find that before I came out here I knew as little about them as I do of the inhabitants of the unex- plored wilds of Central Africa, indeed, I might almost s»y less, for I dare say it would not be difficult to guess with tolerable precision at the probable characteristics of those savage races ; but I do not believe the clair. voyance of Dr. dimming himself could have prophe- sied to me the strange features of this unique country and its people. But of this more anon. My last letter, I think, brought me up to Toronto, where I NIAGARA TO BUFFALO. 53 spent four pleasant days with my cousin and his wife in their comfortable cottage, and told you what I had seen in their pretty little city; so that I will now conduct you across the lake of Ontario to the world's wonder — Niagara. We started for the Falls by steamer on the morning of Tuesday, August the 30th, landing on the American side by the mouth of the Niagara River, and proceeding by rail to the largest of the several hotels on. that side, ^'The Cataract." The journey was only a short one, noticeable for nothing beyond the curious feature presented by the confluence of the Niagara River and the broad waters of the Lake; where, as with the Rhone and the Arve at Geneva, the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence at Montreal the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic Ocean, there seems to be such a want of chemical affinity between the two currents that their waters will rot intermingle; for miles you could trace the line of contact, so distinctly marked that you might fancy some hidden breakwater kept the two apart. Our steamer took us about eight miles up the Niagara River, a very pretty sail through lofty wooded cliffs, and thence " the cars" whisked us along the top of the American shore, skirting the edge of the precipice at such a gi l.dy height as made me shudder to look down and see the angry rapids foaming and fretting beneath us. Half an hour, and we were m sight of the cloud of mist that day and night rises iati i !i.mt m 5 54 NIAGARA TO BUFFALO. from tho Falls, high above the forest and the town; and another half-hour, and, after a very distant peep at the Falls themselves, we were landing from thr. cars within a few yards of the great Cataract Hotel. The house stands close upon the edge of the upper rapids of the river, just where they race and hustle through the rocks, as they prepare themselves for their final leap into the abyss beyond. There is no view from the windows of the actual Falls, but the scenery around is beautiful. The rooms open out upon the rapids, the drawing-room, a splendid apartment, with a balcony running round it, from which we took our first view of the magnificent scene; our second look at the same grand picture being obtained from a wooden pier thrown out upon some boulder-stones that have lodged in the midst of the current. Opposite to the Hotel lies Goat Island, concealing from the eye the Canadian Falls, but adding to the beauty of the rapids by its own exquisite loveliness of foliage. It is this island that divides the waters of the river into two currents that are precipitated over the Canadian and American Falls. The Canadian or Horse-shoe Fall, is far the grander of the two. The An erican, of less volume, is at right angles with the former, some little distance lower down the river, for the Canadian Fall, the more powerful, has eaten away the upper bed of the stream faster than her sister Fall, and so retreated, as it were, several hundred yards higher up the gorge. m-m^^^ NIAGARA TO BUFFALO. 55 Passing by a suspension bridge which connects Goat Island with the mainland, we walked to the lowest corner of the islet, and stood at once upon the brink of the precipice down which thunders the American Fall. No scene that I have ever witnessed over- whelmed me with such uncontrollable wonder as that which I looked upon, when I first stood on the margin of the plunge of the mighty cataract. The height, the power, and volume of the Falls exceeded my utmost expectations. I had been told that I should be dis- appointed ; but if there be any who have been, I can- not conceive what their imagination could have antici- pated. I own I expected more noise, but the state of the atmosphere aflPects that, and the roar of the Falls, Hke that of Bottom and Earl Russell, will at one time be as paltry and insignificant as at another it will be grand and terrifying. I should like to have the power to give you some idea of the sublimity of the scene, but it is utterly useless to attempt a description of what is wholly indescribable. The tortuous surgings of the rapids, the sudden calmness at the brow of the cataract the majestic sea-green curve in which the liquid mass glides over the edge of the precipice, the silvery ring, lets into which it is broken up soon after leaving the brink of the rock, the feathery mist in which it showers down into the cloud of spray that ever veils the last fifty feet of the Fall, and the infernal writhe and whiteness in which it reappears in the depths of the I' I" 56 NIAGARA TO BUFFALO. 41 \ IB' abyss, — all these wondrous features of the Queen of Cataracts must be seen, watched, sat beside for hours and days, before the mind can grasp the magnificence of the scene. But we were as yet only in sight of the American Fall. A walk along the further side of Goat Island brought us in view of the Canadian Fall, and then I found that I had been expending my fullest admira- tion and astonishment upon a mere thread of Niagara, the thousandth part of its volume and grandeur, for there was before me again the same glorious scene that I have so briefly sketched ; only it was a thousand times intensified. We ascended, and took a view from every one of the numerous points from which tourists are expected to survey the Falls, and paid all those preposterous sums which tourists are invariably doomed to give for Niagara has its excursionists by thousands, and its "look-outs," " summer-houses,^' "retreats," "stair- cases," ** perilous seats," and such-like attractions for an excursion party; but it is less cockneyfied, for all that, than many a place that I have visited — less so than Jhamouni and the Rigi, and such favorite resorts that do not draw half so many visitors as the Falls, Having done our duty as pure excursionists, and been bled accordingly, we took a carriage and drove off to the Canadian side of the river, crossing by the famous suspension bridge which connects the British and American territories. It is an extraordinary triumph NIAGARA TO BUFFALO. 57 of engineering skill to have thrown across the yawning gulf such a mass of weighty metal as here spans the torrent. How it ever got there, is to my mind a dark inexplicable mystery, the solution of which I am not mathematician or engineer enough to see ; but there it is, to testify, in conjunction with the tubular bridge of Montreal and the canals of the St. Lawrence, to the ingenuity and enterprise of the people of Canada. The bridge is two miles below the falls, so that the view thence is too distant to be effective ; but the drive up to them along the Canadian cliff, past " The Clifton House," the great Canadian hotel, is, I think, the most beautiful road I have ever seen. It is from this side that you get, in one grand comprehensive landscape, the whole length of the American and Canadian Falls, with the steep precipices of Goat Island between them, and the cliffs of the American bank further down the gorge, and above them the roofs, and spires, and gables of the town peering out from amid the forest that forms the background of the picture. Table Rock is si lofty shelving promontory of limestone jutting out from the Canadian shore close upon the brink of the plunge of the great Horse-shoe Fall ; and there we sat, as all tourists do, and gazed in rapture at the marvels of nature unfolded around, above, beneath us. I cannot tell you what we saw ; you could not depicture it to yourself if 1 could. I will only say that that one view from Table Rock would f I iTTTlr ^H 1 I 58 NIAGARA TO BUFFALO. ill Ml repay any one a journey from the farthest corner of the world. All the landscapes I have ever seen-all the snow, pictures of the Alps-all the coast- scenery of the Mediterranean— all the lochs and moors of 'the Scotch Highlands— sink into insignificance when com- pared with the incomparable grandeur of Niagara. It IS not the Falls themselves alone that create the mag. mhcence of the scene ; but the beauty of the landscape, ot which they are the centre, adds a hundredfold to their intrinsic splendour. The setting is worthy of the gem. But it is useless to tell you how I sat and wondered at the majesty of the view from Table Rock ; you must go and stand there yourself, and then vou will be amazed, as I was, at the all-absorbing interest of the scene, and ponder, as I did, upon the marvellous force and volume of the waters that every second plunge down the heights before you, and wonder whence comes the inexhaustible supply, and whither it goes, and how many a long roll of countless summers has looked on the same unvaried scene ; and then you will wish, perhaps, to put down on paper some little me- mento of what you saw and felt, and find, I dare say, as I do, that the attempt is futile. But a distant view of the Falls gives but a faint idea of their solemn grandeur. To comprehend them in their awe-inspiring sublimity, you must descend to the base of the cliff, and walk in amongst the spray, and under the curve of their flight down the precipice, and ^r NIAGARA TO BUFFALO. 5d see the terrific power of their waters and the impotence of man beside them ; in fact, you must do as I did. make the expedition to the " Cave of the Winds," and then you will have impressed upon your mind, perhaps too forcibly, the detail of the more awful properties of Niagara, which a close acquaintance can alone reveal to you. The " Cave" lies underneath the American Fall ; the trip is decidedly a perilous one, but it is 'Uhe thing," and so, to be fashionable, I did it. The party of ad- venturers consisted of eight, with a guide, a French Canadian. At a house by the foot of the Fall, we were provided with a dress, or at least an apology for a costume, the very queerest, oddest-looking, scantiest set of garments in which I have ever appeared in public. The suit consisted of a remarkably thin threadbare flannel shirt, a much thinner and much more thread- bare pair of flannel drawers, a pair of flannel socks or slippers, and a cord round the waist ; the whole sur- mounted by an oilskin skull-cap. I never felt more hke the maniac who persisted in confining his street toilette to "hatband and straps," or realised more painfully the confusing effect of the penetrating glances of half a dozen young ladies, than on the occasion when our little party in Indian file threaded the gauntlet of the inquisitive ones who had drawn up to see us enter the cave. But a bold face and buoyant spirits were necessary for the work that lay before us. 60 NIAGARA TO BUFFALO. After a few words of counsel from the guide nimut not being frightened, but keeping straight ahead, and energetic assurances that we should not be drowned— though wc should be sure to fancy that would be the result, for every one, he said, thought so at first— we descended some steps that led right down into the spray of tiie Fall, and at the bottom came upon a path or narrow ledge that wound along the cliff inside the arch- way of the Fall. From tl)e moment that we left the stairs, we got into a fine pelting rain that gradually increased in weight and volume, till it bore down upon our skull- caps like hail upon a skylight. But the cave lay on the further side of the sheet of water, throu-h which we had to get as best we could. How that was, I cannot tell you. The guide led the way into the steam and turmoil, bending himself nearly double to keep the beating spray from his nostrils, and clinging on to the slimy rock, for the foothold was slippery and difficult. I believe T did the same, but I cannot say. The guide was immediately lost to our view; and all that I could hear, amid the thunder of the cataract beside us, was an injunction to push on when it came to the worst, for the illogical reason that it was shorter to get beyond the sheet of water than to turn back. I cannot de- scribe to you what a terrifying scene it was— how the waters roared around us— how the stifling spray beat upon our faces, so as to drive all the breath out of our NIAOAttA TO DUFFALO. CI hodies—how tlie wind, caused by' the falling mnss of water, l)lew about i.i a thousand blinding gusts (as if old .'Eolus had untied every single sack, and let out the ul.ole of his seminary for a general holiday), dashing the rain into our faces and chests, or driving it agains't our backs and legs, or both ways at once with equal fury— or what I did, or what I saw. I do not know where, or why, r, how I went. I only know that I went down into this watery hell, and came up again uninjured, but very n.-ch out of breath and awfully frightened, half blinded, n^ore than half deafened, and three-quarters drowned. The rest was comparatively simple— merely a scramble through the mist over slmiy polished rocks, a swim across a little pool, and a climb to a chair fixed on a rugged crag, when I found myself out in front of the Fall, with a splendid view of it looking upwards before me, and, the greatest novelty of all, a circular rainbow all around me, at times too even doubled. Five minutes' rest upon Uie crag, and we retraced our steps—for there was no other way back again to terra firraa— and then in again amongst the rain and the din of waters, more panting for breath, more struggling with the wanton gusts, more bewildering of the eye and ear, more clinging for bare life to the slimy rock, and climbing up the slippery staircase; and so we reached the more hos- pitable regions of the open air, and again ran the gauntlet of the curious eyes that awaited our return to k '1! i 62 NIAGAIiA TO BUFFALO. dayhght-lcss nervous, pcrliaps, about their gnze alter vvhat we had faced below, but very nn.eh Lre diWffh and disreputable. I do not know tbat I should care to make the expedition again, thougi^ I met one rather stout Canadian, who told me he went down regularly twice a week, under the idea that it would reduee his fat; but I am not by nature an.phibious, and I consider the feat well worthy of the certificate with winch the guide presents the visitors before they leave testifying to the fact that they have " passed through the Cave of the Winds." The Cata.;act Hotel was filled with guests— all the I otels always are-and there was an amount of style about them which was very diflerent from anything I had seen in Canada. Dinner was served with profuse liberality- dinner toilettes as profuse in their extrava- gance, colour everywhere, gaiety ditto; a whirl of excitement, dress, flirtation,and fun; and all for ^4 a dav Mlnch at the rate at which I sold my gold, was equiii to 6*. iJd. sterling, including music in the evenin-^ by a first-rate band, and such a Charlotte Russe as I irever tasted eh where, and ice-creams, and lots of back hair and no crinoline, and such blue eyes, and endless other luxuries, that made me very loth to leave the Falls as we at length did, en route for the Great West. Our first station was Buffalo. An hour's ride in the cars brought us to the depot or terminus, here pronounced " deapo," and five minutes more to the NIAOAIIA TO BUFFALO. 63 Araencan House, the chief hotel of that city. Buffalo i« a Imnclsome city of 100,000 inhabitants, just at the lower end of Lake Erie. The main street is one of the hnest streets I know-a broad, well-paved avenue strctch.ng from the quays on the lake shore for a dis- tance of tliree miles back into the country ; the lower end composed of enorn^ -s warehouses, stores, shops and hotels-the upper p .ion of splendid private re2 deuces. We could not help uotUU^g how different from Canada was the aspect of everything we saw in this the first great American city which lay in our road; how busy were the wharves and the streets leading to them, how fine were all the buildings, how tasty and elegant the - boulevards" running into the main street from the various suburbs of the city; how wealthy and prosperous everything looked and every, body; how "go-ahead" was legibly written on ;» that met our eyes, and echoed in every word that struck our ears. There is a peculiar characteristic about these new American cities which is unlike any- lank I have ever seen upon our side of the Atlantic. Ihe people themselves express this trait by the word tast, an epithet in which they take the greatest delight for they are everlastingly assuring you that this much-' prized feature is to be found in their national character to an extent unknown in the Old World. - We are a very fast people, yess- — sirrrr— -eeeeee." And true enough there is a rapidity of development in their 4 \>i\ 64 NIAGARA TO BUFFALO. r 1 national and individual life, in their ideas and institu- tions, ^vhich in great measure justifies their vainglory; the e^rg is prematurely hatched, the foetus artificially developed, and yet the pace does not kill. The wheels run easily, the machinery is well oiled ; there is less hitch or clog about it than in Canada. In Buffalo, and in Cleveland, which 1 passed through yesterday, and still more in Chicago, where I now am, there is a smartness, a brilliancy, a dash about everything, the like of which I did not see in the Canadian cities, still less have I seen it in steady-going old England. I do not know how to explain to you what I mean— I hardly know how to realize to myself what it is that makes this people differ so from any other with whom I have come in contact; but there certainly is amongst the^e Western men a marked element of dis- similarity from all European races, a peculiarity of character which I have never seen sufficiently brought out in the writings of any newspaper correspondent or author. In fact, the more I see of the Americans, the more plainly I see how great and lamentable an ignorance of each other the people of two continents may live in, in spite of all the modern facilities of com- munication, when they have 3,000 miles' breadth of water interposed between them, and no direct reason for improving their acquaintance. Soon after our arrival the intelligence reached the town that General M'Clellan had been nominated at NIAGARA TO BUFFALO. 65 i3 high 111 iavour just now at J!ii(r-.|„ . „„t n ^ i ■ sidci-cd t\,n hr. ■ "™-'°> not that lie is cou- ' '"' "" ""^^^ '•epreseutative of his party but the Deinocratic "nlatforn" ,„i • i ■ '""V. ""t the ties of the West, where, as far as I can see the o,n.l,hca„ .< ticket " will cu., no favour. To ^h So L ■■""' '''^'™'^' "'"' ^^■"'-^li- - the ou ,t"°; '^'"«^''^— '1 on this continent, for This i, !f '""^ '" ""^ P»P"'»"^ «ties. lieiv it 'th. "'""' ", '"^ '"'"^^*"'« "•»« *° travel 1., with the approachiug election so near at hand 1 a u;::*^'""^''?' ""'* '° ^^* «* »ythi„g. i i ^ h nlV '""^ ""•" "' ""^ ^"'"^ -"test. T , ' ''^'""' "<' '""" "equally eonfident of success and ^"- ^^^"''=^' P'"!''-^ "re very cautious about !'!' i ■> 1 H s 1 S- ' 8 1 ' i 'K t i ■^ ' 66 NIAGARA TO BUrFALO. what they say on the subject of politics; they will venture readily enough upon general remarks, but be- yond these they are unwilling to trust themselves. Indeed, I have only met with one man who opened his heart to me, and gave me what I suppose to have been his real ideas ; but he may have been a spy only sounding me. Still there is plenty of talk and squab- ble amongst themselves, for party feeling, running at all times far higher than it does with our less excitable politicians, is naturally swollen by the flood of war • and Democrats and Republicans have a gulf between them which no coalition could bridge over. Two of my fellow-voyagers from England joined my cousin and myself at Buffalo, and the following evening our party of four left by one of the Lake Erie steamers for Cleveland, on the Southern shore, intending to take the cars thence to Chicago, a dis- tance in all of 530 miles. But that is a mere nothing to the erratic people of this continent — a distance which I believe they would travel, if they could, every day of the year. For travelling is cheap, and, though not rapid (in the West), extremely comfortable. In the first place the water-communication is on such a scale as no other quarter of the world can equal, and the steamers that make use of it are in every way excellent. Then the open cars are well adapted for a land where all stand upon the same level, and though the track is not well laid, slow travelling obviates NIAGARA TO BUFFALO. 57 Jolting; and in a country like this, where food is cheap and labour dear, and time proportionately htti value, speed is an objeet of less moment than in t gland where every minute has its specific value i^ go d, and necessity drives men to a deadly strugg e w.th t,me ,n wh.ch they strive to crowd Lty s'ch m nutes mto every second. But here life is not such a burden; money is made with half the labour, and goes more than twice as far; food is cheap, land he .ame, house-rent not yet high, labour extrem ly scarce and wages good enough, I should have thought, to populate the country ten times as fast as the pre ent lab ter ""T'' "'"^ °' *« "-"--t labourer., my wonder is that one single Irishman rema,ns at ho™e. Mechanics, clerks, "cashiers a pa,d almost fabulous wages: I eannot imagine how c .gh pr,ces can be afforded by the mafters, Z ye s httle or no saving of money; it comes with marvellous ease and rapidity, and goes as rapidly again 11 ere ,s no s laving to lay by for the future; IL of e bee s xnst.nct.ve providence for the frosts, none of t^.e beaver's care for her young. Why should there b,^' ■de,s that h.s duty,s done. What reason has he oro„e, He has risen from the lowest 1 Himself, his son can make his way as well • if „ot b» -.v .0 to his Satanic majesty's dominiols. And L i HI ' ^V > "ifl f. 68 NIAGARA TO BUFFALO. t M ' I I i !! be does in three cases out of five. Aristocracy is a thing so odious in the eyes of the people, old family pride and what they call "English feudalism '^ are so nauseous in this land of freedom, that a man who staits without a penny in the world has a better chance often of success than the millionaire's son with his pockets full. Then life is short, good old age, so common at home, is here very rarely met with, so saving of money for selfish reasons is a thing worse than useless : a butterfly's life, a short and a merry one, is to be said, I suppose, of no people with such truth as of the Americans. Well then, if money is made so fa?t, and is so little worth keeping, it must be spent, and how can it be done more agreeably to the restless character of the makers of it, than by travelling? Locomotion is made very easy ; the arrangements are jjcrfect ; every, body plays into everybody's hands; the hotels, the trains, the boats, and the omnibuses all work together most harmoniously. If the train by which you are to travel stops anywhere to enable the passengers to dine, A ou will not get dinner at the hotel ; if the boat gives a breakfast, you must take it on board, or go without; if the train gets in by supper time, you are expected to look for nothing to eat at the refreshment rooms, but wait till you reach your hotel. Then the steam- boats all "connect" with the trains, and the trains with the steamboats, and the omnibuses with both. NIAGARA TO BUPPAI.0. * 69 W,ere the cars ruu i„ connection with the boats the ^0 ,s earned right down to the side of the tha where no water eommunication exi.ts, the railway 'L' down the principal street, and the depot is i„ 1 tre of the town • for an A,„. ■ , " ""'" "11 , lor an American does not look imo,, a rail™„d as a nuisance to be kept ont of silht Z amongst the back -lums of acity, b„t treats ft 7" it reallr i« «!,» ^ treats it as what reaily ,s, the greatest comfort and convenience of e present century. Add to ail this the I Zra of he fares, fixed in most cases by Act of CongresT Ld w;rnor"^^*n''"'"'"'^^ 1 prices. J^or me, with the advantaffp nf th. ;vorable exchange, the fares are ridicule .' It c^s Cleveland n • steamboat to ueveland It ,s a marvel to me that John Bull and 1 the nations of Europe, whose gold is abund t d not come out and travel here. The fare I have mel tioned IS not unusually low • indeed I 1, T tis,.mo„t e !">•«, inaeea l have seen adver. ^ ments of some fares that would sound to your ea"s round. '■""'"" """'"='^^'1 »" the year canf Tut' ' ^'T- ''"' """"•""'■" '" ''"^^l' t'"' Ameri- de h" r '" ^'"^"'""-y --bers; every one does his or her proper number of miles in th, !Uf 70 NIAGARA TO BUFFALO. I ; ■y every year. Country seats are unknown, and some change beitig neecssary to keep them alive, the people rush to and fro in a restless way that would surprise you, were you to see it. One old gentleman told me that he took his family to the seaside, 1800 miles, every year, and 1800 back, with less trouble and con- cern, I dare say, than a Londoner would make about going down to Ipswich. A youth of fifteen thinks himself ill-used, if he has not seen all the great cities of his country and the interior of every State ; a girl of thirteen considers her education neglected if her parents have not allowed her to see more. But it is not only in summer that the traffic is so enormous; it is all the year round just the same. People in the East are sure to have friends and relations in the West, who have come to grief and migrated thither, and the truants must be visited every year. Adven- turers and prodigals from the West m iat be welcomed as often in their deserted homes. So the nation is in a chronic state of "fidgets.^' Men and women of every age, babies in arras, and men who are called old, females almost as numerous as the males, crowd the cars, stuff the steamboats, overwhelm the omnibuses, and storm the hotels. This fearful overcrowding of all the conveyances is the only nuisance which I have hitherto experienced in travelling, and in the cars it has sometimes amounted to something more than a personal inconvenience. NUOAKA TO BDfTAlO. 71 You have heard, of eourse, of the extravagant respect I>«"1 l.y the people of the West to what I eannot con- »c.ent,ousIy call here the softer sex-their frames are much too angular and uninviting. Now, I do not be- hevc u. all this exaggerated deference to the weaker sex. If I have paid my fare for a seat in the cars I .10 not see why I .hould give it up to any ill.clad woman who enters after me. If I have taken the rouble to secure a berth in the steamboat, I do not know on what principle of equity I am called upon to g.ve .t up to the ugliest woman who may ask for it In the street ears the evil is far worse. No matter how full of hard-worked men the car may be, any fish- woman with her basket on her arm will hail it, know- >ng that some gentleman must rise for her. It i, an unnatural, untrue, mock respect, productive of ill con- sequences in the female mind, and, besides, totally superfical; for with all this unhealthy outward show of deference, there is not half that quiet easy courtesy and simple unaffected homage which are the aeknow- iedged tribute to the fair sex amongst the educated classes of England. I am getting behind-hand, I am afraid, in my account of what I have seen and done, for I have been two days in Chicago, and have not yet carried you more than half way here. But the novelty of every- thmg and everybody gives me so much to say, that I iiH Mi ,n, \ ij, I it' i 72 NIAGAUA TO BUFFALO. raup't plead this as my excuse for taking you over the ground at first so slowly. You will overtake me, 1 have no doubt, when my supply of first impressions is all let oflP. ! 4 IV. CLEVELAl^D TO CHICAGO. St. Vavl's, September 10th reLTJn '"!' ''"' °' """' '"'°" ■"«' - I "■-' good mghu rest on board the steamboat, we found ourselves m the morning off Cleveland harbour; and landing, proceeded to look at the eity. It i. a ver; pretty place, much like Buffalo, though of smalle'r .mens.on.; but more tastefully laid out especially n the suburbs, where the merchants' houses are really , ;e . f ^"^ '""' '"'"^ '"'=•' """t^™"^ that olut cture, decoration, and ornament would have been m their eyes foolishness and insanity. But I 2» was more mistaken. Utilitarians as they are a ve every other nation of the earth, they are na^rally great lovers of ornament, and i; their pr vate residences they display a„ amount of taste and w V) ' ■i CLEVELAND TO CHICAGO. I i ; , II I !i ' r, 1 kno\vlec1{,'e of " the beautiful," which tlic Italian villas can hardly exceed. With the Americans, as with the people of Italy, there seems to be a peculiar apprecia- tion of decorative art. Like the Italian, the American seems to demand art, not as a luxury, but as a neces- sity. If he cannot have it in good material he will have it in bad ; but in some shape or other he will gratify his eye, without which his vision would be blindness. If his means be ample, he will have his house of stone or marble ; if he cannot have it in stone, he will have it in stucco or painted iron ; if he cannot afford that, he will cover his house with creep- ers, or plant beside it some elegant tree ; but satisfy his craving he certainly will. Trees are a great feature in every town and city. The first thing which an Ameri- can does, in laying out a new street, is to plant on either side some ornamental timber: so that everv city becomes a map of Parisian " boulevards," which add warmth and colour to the buildings, and in the sum- mer heats are incalculably useful. There is no particular object of interest in Cleve- land, as indeed there can hardly be in any city in so new a country as this ; there is of course an excellent hotel of unwieldy size and tremendous business, and if it does not always live in my memory for the almost inconceivable nastiness of its marble floors, notwith- standing the gigantic proportions of its spittoons, it certainly will for a dinner which I there had for the r^f CLEVFLAND TO CHICAGO. 75 sum of 1*. S^d. 8ter"inj?, .uch as I could not have had in London or Paris to- • v nty times that sum. I have diligently preserved tit bill of fare for your special edification. I wi.^L ,ume of our English Ilotel-Jews could see it and note the charge. (See next page.) Dinner over, we proceeded to the station, and en- gaged berths in the sleeping car for Chicago. This was my first introduction to this great institution of the model Kepublic, and for the life of me I cannot see why our night journeys in England should not be per- formed in some such comfortable way. You know I dare say, what these cars are like, for you will recollect that there was one to be seen at the last exhibition, of 1862. I know no reason why a similar system should not be adopted at home ; though I do not suppose our English ladies would take to them very readily ; at any rate I am sure they would never turn in, as they do here, in the same car with the men, quite promiscuously. But a woman can do, and does, here, many things that she could never do in England ; one of which that speaks more for the American people than any other fact I know, is, that she can travel unattended from one end of the Union to the other in absolute security from insult or interference of officious gallan- try. The sleeping car, being a novelty, was very amusing, and our novitiate equally amusing to the old travellers, who were continually bothering us with questions about our system, and Mr. Briggs's murder. m W ^' ^ ill ! ■|.« WMj 11 :i\ DINNER. CLEVELAND, 0, SEPT. 2, 1864. BOILED. SOUP. Tomato with Rice. FISH. Trout, Baked, Claret Sauce. Leg of Mutton, Caper sauce, iinoked Bacon with Greens. Corned Beef witli Tiirnijjs. Smoked Beef Tongue, with Spinach. Beef, a la mode. Ham with Cabbage. ROAST. Ribs of Beef, with Horseradish. Lamb, Mint sauce. Ham, Champagne sauce. Pork, Apple sauce. Loin of Veal. Saddle of Mutton with Jelly. Lamb Chops, Saute h la Jardiuaire. Call's Brains, au Grattin, Sauce Alemaud Veal Chops, breaded, h la Italian. Kidneys, saute, Champagne sauce. I'riccasee of Youug Chickens. ENTREES. Maccaroni baked with Cheese Pancakes, with Jelly, il la Celestine. Fillets of Trout, Tomato sauce. Breast of Lamb, stuffed, au fine Herbs. Chicken Giblets, stewed, Wine sauce. Spiced Beef, i\ la mode. Beef Tongue. Leg of Mutton. Boiled Potatoes. Maslied Potatoes. Baked Potatoes. Hominy. Green Com. Cold Slaw. Cucumbers. Mixed Pickles. COLD DISHES. Pressed Com Beef. Loin of Veal. Round of Beef VEGETABLES. Egg Plant. Turnips. Beets. Onions. Sucotasli. RELISHES. Lettuce. French Mustard. Worcester Sauce. Squaslies. Cabbage. Snap Beans. Rice and Milk. Tomatoes. Horse Radish. Old Cheese. Pepper Sauce. PASTRY AND DESSERT. Rice Pudding. Melons. Apple Pie. Sponge Cake. Custard Pie. Fruit Cake. Peach Puffs. Ice Cream. Raisins. FRUIT. Apples. Pears. Nuts. JelJy Tartlets. Peaches. FRENCH COFFEE. CLEVELAND TO CHICAGO. 77 Indeed I have hardly met an American who has not at one time or another, in the course of conversation inquired of me whether such an assault is not of fre- quent occurrence. The papers have made more fuss about It than our English journals ever did. They look upon the system as an evidence of the tyrannical oppression to which a people will submit in the hands of a bloated aristocracy, and tell you, with virtuous in- d.gnation, that no American citizen would ever allow himself to be locked up like a common vagabond. The newspapers teem with puritanical bosh about " the profligacy of the English railway cars,- "sin on uheels,^' and such like sensational headings. Why the nation has gone mad upon the incident of this un- fortunate murder— the solitary instance, so far as I know—is more than I can conceive ; but, excepting the great fight between Sayers and Heenan, I do not sup- pose any subject of English history has more inter- ested the American nation than this mysterious exploit of Mr. Miiller. I bad a comfortable night^s rest ; comfortable, I mean, considering the time and place of my courtship of Morpheus ; but they do not lay the track here with I'alf the care with which our engineers put it down at iiome ; indeed the distances to be covered are so enor- mous, that in the present state of the country it could not pay to execute the lines with tiie same finish So the rails are laid with little or no precision, upon logs of ^ ! "4 Vii 11 lil_ A^ji^Ji! 78 CLEVELAND TO CHICAGO. wood, which are called " ties," tossed down promiscu- ously upon the road, which is not half levelled. Nothing in particular keeps the " ties" in their places, for they are covered with no ballast, not even sunk an inch into the ground. Less can be seen to preserve the rails on the " ties" ; and on the older portions of the Grand Trunk of Canada, the worst specimens of railway engineering I have ever ridden over, the rails lie as if they partook of the general independence of the country, each bar of iron a separate entity, quite dis- tinct from and unconnected with its neighbouring bar, with inches often of vertical and lateral deviation between the two; wliich irregularity makes itself pain- fully evident to any one that has unluckily taken a seat over a wheel, by a series of bumps and jars, and shocks to the nervous system that are simply excruci- ating. But the Grand Trunk is improving ; probably the complaints of the public induced the manager, a Canadian notoriety, to take a seat for five minutes over a wheel. He is a fat podgy personage, and it would tell on him fearfully — but, however that may be, the lines are being re-laid, and the people are no longer to be subjected to a corporal punishment to which Eng- lish school discipline is a joke. After a da])]>lc in a teaspoonful of water, and a scrape with a bit of an old sack, in a box, which is dignified with the title of " wash room" — for the American cars are, as it were, moveable hotels, with every accommo- CLEVELAND TO CHICAGO, 79 dation complete (including what, I think, from a sani- tary point of view, had very much better not be there) I took a walk up and down the train, with the rest of my fellow.passengers, and thereby improved my appe- tite for the breakfast which we were to take at a station on the road. It was very well served, for the Americans understand this sort of thing quite as well as our French neighbours; and by the time I had .smoked a cigar, and taken another walk, to digest my meal, the cars reached Chicago. I now proceed to give you some account of this city and first of the hotel at which I have been staying The Tremont House is the largest hotel that I have seen as yet, though I am told that it is beaten by those in New York. It is a splendid block of buildings, arranged very much upon the principle of the St. Lawrence Hall at Montreal, with the exception that the basement floor of the block is occupied by shops in the exterior while the inner portion is devoted to the offices and kitchens. The reception rooms are gigantic, the dinin- rooms still more so, and the noise and bustle of the establishment surpass anything you can imagine, it would be all very ccniortable if it were not for that notorious Amedcan peculiarity, tobacco^chewing, and Its unavoidab^ consequences. I am soxry to have to trouble you with so unpleasant a subject, but the fact is that, if I am to touch upon tlie national characteristics of the people, I do not see 80 CLEVEL.AND TO CHICAGO. ! how I can omit one which is undoubtedly, to a stranger, the most noticeable of all. It is a matter which every visitor to this country has written and talked of, and I had heard on all sides so much about it, that I thought the evil much exaggerated. But now that I have come and seen for myself the extravagant extent to which this beastly practice is carried, aj ) me dis- gusting filthiness of habits attendant upuix it, I can assure you that Russell and Sala have not said a word too hursh on this subject, which is a crying stain upon the enlightened civilisation of the people. I know I am in the West only as yet, where refinement of man- ners is little cultivated at present, and I am assured that tobacco-chewing, though by no means uncommon in the East, is there conducted in a much more gentle- manly style. But refine as you will, you cannot indulge in this luxury and not offend against the la^s of decent society. If a man '' chews " he must spit, and expectorated tobacco-juice must be nasty. You might say, naturally enough, " Why not use the spit- toons ?" Impossible — they would be swamped in no time. There are plenty of dark and dirty corners in the halls and passages of every hotel, where, in the centre of a nauseating triangle of deep brown splashes and greasy blotches of bhick, you will find a brown earthen vessel sustaining an ill-directed fire of reddish fluid from the thousand passing throats ; but plentiful as these vessels are they are quite unequal to the demand. CLEVEIAND TO CHICAGO. gj So the Yankee make., a spittoon of every floor upoa >vl.,ch he stands. No matter of what material it con- s.sts, carpet or marble, he must spit. From the pave- ment m tl,o street withi.. a do.en yards of the front door to tue passages in the attics, the steps, corridors and Stan-cases are one vast nncivilised pigsty. You can hardly hud a man in one of whose cheeks you will not sec a protuberance like the nuts in a monkey's iaw • -■«.. ca,n,ot watch his mouth for two minutes without observmg a brown streak flying from it in amongst the boots of the bystanders. You converse with one of -o.e b,pcd cnttle-fish, and it makes no difference in tl.eact,v,ty of his bronchial muscles; enter into con- vcrsat,o„ with two or three of them, and you will have to keep It up under a cross fire of murky jets squirted across your face, over your shoulder, between vour legs over your hat-everywhere, in fact, within a bare inch 01 .vour person, as if you were standing up to a per- formance of the Chinese juggler's impalement. But I mm give the Yankees credit for being a match for anr of our V. .mbledon shots ; their oral accuracy of aim i; really surprising, and, like the Indian's skill with his ^ow. only to be accounted for by constant practice, following upon early education in the art, and juvenile oxpmraents upon flies on the walls. And if the sight 01 all tins nastiness is ofl'ensive to the eye, the unman- Mrly noises by which it is accompanied are even more nauseous to the ear. Some of these fellows will retch 6 i It 1 ii • i! I 82 CLEVELAND TO CHICAGO. and hawk in such a way that you would think they would spit themselves inside out; no weak-minded patient, under the influence of an electro-biologist's evil eye, could be more demonstrative in his efforts to get rid of the fancied poison. But I dare say you will be wondering how the ladies put up with all this beastliness. They do not ; they have a separate establishment of their own — a separate entrance, separate drawing-rooms, separate staircases in every hotel. They could not associate with the majority of the men whose habits are so diabolical, so they sit, go out, and come in by themselves, except in the case of husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, and so on, in which cases, of course, a man is admitted to the ladies' drawing-rooms ; not that he is impera- tively excluded under other circumstances ; but it is unusual for a gentleman unattended by ladies to venture into the sanctum of the fair sex. This reminds me of a curious feature I have fre- quently observed in the manners and customs of this people, which is, the unjust preference given at all the railways, steamboats, and hotels to any man who can claim any sort of connection with any member of the opposite sex who will give him her protecting wing. 1 have remarked on the unfair advantages given to the weaker sex themselves, and now I must tell vou of the still more unjust privileges which are conceded to men who are taken to be travelling with them. In England CIEVEIAND TO CHICAGO. §3 and on the contineat of Europe we are accustomed-I cannot deny it-to look upon the presence of a female compamon as a drawback to the facilities of comfort, able ocomotion ; but here I can assure you that a bachelor has a hard time of it, unless he has skill or "npudence enough to attach himself to the skirt of some guardiar. angel. If yo„ do not mind doing a bit "i Yankee smartness, you can easily manage to ■•epre- -"t yourself as "compagnon de voyage" to some fair or unfa,r protector. I am not particular to a r in , matter of th.s kind ; the system is so absurd that I cons,der myself justified in resorting to any low artifice t at may tend to demonstrate its folly; so I have con- stantly tned some impromptu dodge of practising an m,posmon upon the railway conductor, or the steam, oat steward, and several times with complete success V,th some officials the doing of a little light' porterage I' e way of a shawl or a dressing-case I have found to lacly. With one .t was necessary to do some heavier w.t and carry a very dirty disagreeable baby for an ugly 1 -dressed mother, before I could induce him to give me a erth as "one of the party." It is a scandalous system Itogether. Even granting that the females ought all to be accommodated flrst-a matter upon which I have 7 """'"'-I ^«e no principle whatever npon which the same privileges are to be extended to any loafer "ho passes himself off as in any way connected with MiMk- 84 CLEVELAND TO CHICAOO. i I 'W t , i tliera, in preference to a man who may liave been waiting twice as long for a place, but unfortunately happens to be alone and honest. "While the rule is so easily evaded, it is perhaps not so great a hardship, for the people are extremely free and easy, and you have no difficulty in getting into conversation with any one ; but, at the same time, I object very much to the bother of constantly dressing myself in false colours, and I have had serious thoughts of hiring some old woman to travel with me through the West. Any specimen of her sex would do equally well — an old nigger, even, I think would pay — and next time I visit this extraordinary country I must find some means of making a more satisfactory provision for the evasion of this extravagant rule. I do not know that I have anything particular to say about the city of Chicago itself. As I said before, all American cities repeat themselves, like the Chinese. You know, of course how it lies, on the south-west corner of the Lake of Michigan ; and you have heard how the streets that now contain nearly 300,000 in- habitants were less than thirty years ago, open prairie Never, I suppose, since the birth of history has a new town sprung to life with more marvellous, fairy-like rapidity, than have the stone and marble edifices that compose this great mushroom city of the plain. To walk through the broad handsome streets and inspect the lofty buildings on either side, and then to think ■■««A CLKYELAND TO CHICAGO. 85 that twenty-nine years ago there were scarce a dozen shanties on the spot, is to attempt to realise a thing so difficult of comprehension, that the mind becomes sceptical and refuses to believe it.. But so it is; and if you consider for a moment the site on which the city stands, the head of the vast central plain of the North American continent, a region of natural fertility elsewhere unmatched ; its facilities for water commu- nication with the Eastern States and Europe; its position, the focus to which converge the lines of Vail- way from all parts of Illinois and Indiana, from Wis- consin and Iowa, States which constitute the richest district of this agricultural wealth ; the long neglect of these natural resources, and the rapid development now consequent upon their discovery; it becomes easier to understand how it is that Chicago has thus rapidly become, what it now is, the greatest primary grain depot in the world, the fountainhead of the vast stream of commerce which passes round the great lakes down the St. Lawrence, bearing the bountiful produce of the Western States to the markets of I^urope. The city is, in fact, what the Democrats would have it recognised to be, the capital of the Western States ; and I think the day is not far distant, though farther off than the English journals imagine, when Chicago and St. Louis— a city whose progress has been equally astounding— will be pitted in all the jealousy of a struggle for election to the honour of l! 80 CLEVELAND TO CHICAGO. :it being the commercial metropolis of a Western Con- federacy. On Sunday I attended service at the fashionable church, a very fine one — the churches in all these new cities are handsome and abundant — and heard a most eloquent sermon in the style of Dr. Goulburn, and music, such as I never heard at any other place than Exeter Hall, performed by four professionals, whose singing was the most delightful specimen of sacred harmony that the most critical ear could wish to listen to. The rest of the day was spent in prome- nading the town. Sunday is not well observed, for the foreign element in the city is enormous; and those shops that do no business on the Sabbath open their doors iiid windows, so that to the eye of a careless observer the trade might seem to be as lively as on any week- day. There was a violent storm raging on the lake, which agitated the waters just as much as I have ever seen them troubled in the English Channel, and the promenade by the lake shore was consequently deserted for more sheltered quarters of the city. But we walked to the end of it, just to get a view of some of the magnificent houses that have lately been erected on the lake shore by the more lucky of the great grain speculators of Chicago — splendid mansions many of them, of red freestone or white marble, adorned with greenhouses, creepers, and standard vines, worthy residences for English peers, though lightly spoken of as " summer boxes " by the nobodies who have screwed CLEVELAND TO CIIICAOO. 87 a fortune out of this wretched war, and cannot get rid of it fast enough, with all the gambling and extrava- gance of this precocious city. One peculiarity about the majority of the buildings, characteristic of the gigantic scale upon which, like the Egyptians of old, the Americans love to work, is the fact that they have been bodily raised in blocks of ten to forty or fifty houses at once from the original level at which they stood. The city was apparently run up in such reckless haste that the question of drainage was entirely forgotten, and it was not until successive in- undations of the basement floors, which then stood below the level of the lake, warned the inhabitants of their precarious and unhealthy situation, that the attention of the architects was seriously called to the necessity for a change. English eyes, so they tell me here, would have seen no other way out of the difficulty than to pull down the whole city and reconstruct it on a higher level. But Yankee smartness knew a trick worth two of that, and with a bold defiant deter- mination to outstrip all the wonders of the Old World, and " wliip its engineers out of their boots " — a Yankee simile which you would better appreciate, if you were to see the great ponderous square-toed Wellingtons worn by the true American citizens, and the difficulty hey have in getting into or out of them— conceived the original idea of lifting the whole city bodily into the air, and, by the aid of powerful screws and other ''Yankee notions/' it is now a. fait accompli. Ut-- ^. ^ ^^-.o. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 7 ^vJ' W.- /^.. 7^ 1.0 I.I 1.25 »- lilil t US 6" 12.2 12.0 1.8 U 11.6 V. <^ /a Am Photographic Sciences Corporation iV #> V % .V r-1.^ \ 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. U5B0 (716) 873-4503 ? f/. ^ ^ "^^m .1 V. CHICAGO. Toronto, September 15 th. The next iday was w . t, cold, and uncomfortable. I do not believe in climate ; it is a failure everywhere. People point here to their blue skies and clear atmo- sphere, and tell you they " guess you do not see anything like that at home," under the impression that the sun is a sort of illuminated plane, of which we in England only see the wrong side. But I frequently have the honour of explaining to them that " November fogs" are not usual in July and August ; and that malarious fevers, which result from the fearfully sudden changes of the American climate, are incidents of a rarefied atmosphere which " the Britishers" would be unwilling to take in exchange for their dull leaden skies and equable temperature. The fashionable disease here is not gout, but biliousness. There is a bilious look about everybody's face that makes the whole nation pale and yellow as children at the game of snapdragon CHICAGO. 89 —a jaundiced gamboge in the visages of tlie men, that makes me think they must have swallowed the gold that has so mysteriously absented itself from the public gaze in favour of the countless raids of green- backs with which the country is overwhelmed. But, bar.'ing their sallow looks and yellow-ochre tint of countenance, these Western men and women are a marvellously fine race. Their frames are tall, well pro- portioned, symmetrical, and wiry. The average height of the men is astonishing. I have walked for hours in the streets of Chicago without meeting a native as short as myself. Most of their hats are almost out of sight — if I were shortsighted, would be totally. The women are tall, though not gawky, yet not exactly elegant. I have not yet decided where the defect lies, but there is something wanting somewhere. I think it is in the walk, which is rather duck-like, with an affec- tation of " saiP or '' sweep" that looks " stagy." A little more rotundity of form to take off the corners would be required by an English connoisseur; but Yankee girls, like the men, are not given to lateral extension —they grow like poplars rather than pollards. Square and angular, however, though they be, all praise is due to their cast of features, which is in every case more or less classical, in gome really beautiful. The cheek- bones are too high, the eyes too deeply set, particularly in the men, to make the full face represent the perfect type of beauty, but I jfm sure that no other nation im 90 CHICAGO. that I know anything of could show so large a propor- tion of fine profiles. I have looked diligently for an ugly face — by which I mean one that has no features at all, such as we often see in England, and is known as the genus " college bed-maker'^ — but I have not been able to discover one that might not at least be considered passable. The percentage of good-looking people is undoubtedly far higher in America than it is at home, though the percentage of " beauties'' is as certainly less. But the good looks are temporary, as you have often heard. Beauty fades in this climate as prematurely jas the leaves fall from the trees. But its early death is not all due to atmospheric influences j it is a constitutional decay. Englishwomen will, in some cases, retain out here their youthful looks, long after their contemporaries of the Yankee tribe have buried theirs in sallow sunken cheeks, and holler eyes, and toothless angular jaws — ^iust as I observe some English trees in the public gardens fresh and green as in early spring, while their American brothers around them are already putting on their autumn i^»-ess. This is one view of the American *' constitution" which to a medical man must be very interesting. I do not pro- fess to account for it. Climate is a large element in this shortlived youthful freshness, this premature aridity of the vital fluids ; but sweets, pie-crust, and iced water immoderately indulged in from the cradle to the grave, have, I suspect, as much to do with it. Yet CHICAGO. it is a matter of national interest; for it is an acknow- ledged fact tliat if the population of the United States were left to the natural increase of the pure Americpn blood, the census would never justify the confident expectations of the people as to their marvellous numerical growth. But I have no time to tell you how surprised I was to find the American cLaracter so radically different from the English— how numerous are the points in which this great diversity consists. I am at a loss to know how to give you any idea o^ the general impres- sions I have formed of the Western people of this Contmcnt, but I think they may be brieflv expre : .ed by saymg that, physically, the men and women are Scotch, with French heads; intellectuallv, they are educated Japanese ; socially, they are French without manners; morally, they are Spaniards without ro- raance. In a word, they are un-English. The Conti- nental European element enters largely into their composition. One-fourth of the shops in certain quarters of Chicago bear German names and signs. Immigration daily adds to the kettleful of nationaliries and climate warms the blood of the Anglo-Sa on ingredient ; so the Western settlers become, like other inhabitants of the same parallels of latitude all th. world over, hot, peppery, choleric, impulsive, foolishly impatient of anything that the most sensitive of Ileidel- berg duellists could distort into what he calls an insult I It (I 93 CHICAGO. to his honour, inflammable in tiie company of females as a lion or a bull. They tell me that pistols and bowie- knives are not so ruthlessly employed as they were four years ago. The war has diverted men^s passions into another channel, organized and concentrated them in a direction in which they can have full play ; so that travellers by the Mississippi boats have given up the good old practice of sitting down to " whist'' and '•euchre" with revolvers beside them on the table, and street murders are almost out of date. But there is still a marvellous recklessness of human life and Lynch- law atrocities. Every day since I have been in the West I have read in some paper or other a paragraph or two, or more, recording the nummary shooting of some fancied enemies. Here is one casually culled from a daily chronicle of the incidents of lifj in New York. "All officer was shot last night while defending a woman from ruffians. " A Mr. Burnett was shot while attempting to secure a burglar, caught on his premises. " A woman named Catherine Smith wa" shot through a window of her residence in Second Avenue. " A fireman named James Cornes was shot on the corner of Thir- teenth Street and Fifth Avenue. "Martin O'Connell was shot on the corner of Stanton Street and Bowery. " The above is a partial chapter of crimes in this city last night." The climax is always introduced by a statement CHICAGO. 93 that the victor "drew" — not, "«/' but "his revolver," as if a pistol were as naturally to be found in a man's pocket as his handkerchief. No legal consequences seem to follow this promiscuous use of " repeaters." There are no police to take notice of it, or, if there are, they will be " mum " for a " cocktail." Persons with whom I have talked tell me they make a practice of carrying one of these civilising emblems of the westward march of Christianity. Sometimes I have had this humiliating confession from the mouth of a well-educated "high-toned" gentleman; at others, from the lips of daredevil youngsters, who seemed very incredulous of my assertion that my only weapon of offensive warfare was a tooth-pick. One gentleman told me he carried a pistol merely as a protection against the soldiers, with which the country now swarms; but I have never fourd any of them so thirsty after English blood as the * New York Herald * would indicate. Now and then I hav3 had to listen to brilliant invectives against the despotisms of Europe, and the British Government in particular (for Britishers are looked down upon by a Yankee as perhaps the most overridden of all the Continental peoples); but I have bitten my lips and held my tongue, and being, I consider, tolerably slow to wrath, I have managed without much difficulty to keep my skull unriddled with slugs. Besides, I feel confident that it is by no means necessary to get into any such scrapes. It is ll» '^^Hi^H mm ^■■/■ll i " Indeed," I said, " who is he talking to V " Oh, they are two of our great lawyers ; that one that spat just then, is to be our next new judge." *' Well," I said, " how long will the judge keep us ?" " I guess he won't be long, he always has a bit of a chat first before he goes up into his boje." You may suppose from this conversation that my ideas of judicial etiquette were rather rudely shocked. Only think of our Master of the Rolls, or any other equally cons^equential, unbending occupant of our bench, chatting away with the bar and the clerks in the centre of the court preparatory to the business of the day ! Fancy the Lord Cliief Baron in shorts and a slouched hat, with a quid in his check, and his feet above his head, discussing the topics of the day with a knot of similarly-clad rowdies in a like horizontal position, and then, when he thought the public patience exhausted, clearing his throat with a roar that would have done credit to a lion, ascending his seat to take the business of the morning, and from his chair across the desk before him discharging his exhausted quid at the Brobdinguagian vessel of abomination that occupied the centre of the sacred semicircle. But this is just what you might have seen that morning in the chief court of the State of Illiuois, and just, I suppose, what may be seen any day in that same polite assembly. CHICAGO, 97 lou migl.t tli.nk, perhaps, as I did, that nothing couhl ever be done in such « chaos of anomalies as that • but here again is the great enigma of these Republican' in8t.tutH,ns. No sooner had the judge taken his srat tlian the work was begun, and pushed through with a rapidity and regularity that astonished me. Motions were taken and polished off in a way that would have horrified V.-O. Kindersley. There did not appear to be any books, or bags, or papers in the room A small pocket memorandum was all that I could see in the hands of most of the barristers, while some did their work with the help of nothing more than a walkmg-stick. There was very little said; in fact most of the business was transacted in a private whisper with the judge; each man, who had anything to " move," going up the steps and leaning forward over the side of the judge's desk, across which there flew a fe^v hurried words, and the thing was done. There was no visible usher of the court, and yet there was no no.se or confusion; no bags, wigs, and gowns,* but yet a certain amount of rude unpolished etiquette; no dignity on the Bench, but a smart business-like d-- cision which commanded respect. Indeed, I almost began to think that the abolition of our court para- phernaha would expedite the transaction of our busi- ness, and should have voted in its favour, only that just as the thought crossed my mind the judge aimed again at the spittoon, and back came all my loyalty to 7 r •!, I im i 93 CriCAGO. ( i ■ 1 I our time-lionoured institutions like a rush of blood to the head. lie could nut have done that in a wig. The libel case came on shortly afterwards. It seemed to be conducted much as it might have been at home. The jury were sworn, as in Scotland, with the right arm uplifted, and were addressed in a voluble speech, which consisted chiefly of vulgar abuse of tlie opposing counsel, who paced up and down the semicircle during the delivery of the address, ever and anon venting his wrath in a nauseating attack upon the spittoon. With a powerful iperoration tiie speaker wound up, and in an instant his feet were on the table before him, and a fresh quid was in his mouth. AVhat was said in answer to his attack I am unable to say, for the atmosphere of the court was oppressive (the day beiug very sultry), and a retreat was imperative. So we fled from the presence of the law to that of a mysteri- ous individual whose acquaintance we had made in the cars, and who had asked us to come and call on him. We found him in a little wooden cottage, crowded with sumptuous furniture, and looking for all the "world like a pawnbrokf r's shop. Beside him was sit- ting, in costume that looked much more like a " chemise de nuit" than a *' robe du raatin,'^ a big bouncing York- shire woman, whom he introduced as his wife ; and the other occupant of the house was his son, who had opened the door for us, a precocious young brat of { ! a CHICAGO. 99 twelve, with a couple of gaudy rings. Mr. Knox him- self, an expectorator of true transatlantic calibre, was reclining upon a luxurious sofa, shoeless, coatless, vest, less; smoking a magnificent cigar, and being fanned by his wife. He was a smart clever man, and had given us much information in the cars about the country and the people, but had mystified us exceed- ingly about himself and his occupation. So we thought we Mould pump him again, and thence came about our visit. He had talked about the great coal-oil trade and the Oil City of Pennsylvania, so we tackled him about it, and he confessed that he had, till a few days ago, been largely engaged in the trade ; in fact, had been one of the largest proprietors of the oil works ; but a little reverse had befallen him, and so he had " executed a masterly flank movement" into the suburbs of Chicago, where he intended to lie by for a few months, and raise the wind for a fresh start in life. He had been occupying an enormous house at the Oil City, built with the money he had there made at a pace which whipped all the incredible stories of the golden- showered fortunes of Sau Francisco, and now he was next to penniless; so he had packed up some of his best furnitul-e, and settled in this humble cot to retrench a little before venturing into the speculating world again. Now, this case is one only of a thousand. Com- mercial gambling is carried on here to such a fatal 100 CHICAGO. extent that a failure of this kiud is thougnt as little of as an attack of dyspepsia. " Some falls," we know at home, " are means the happier to rise." But here I have heard it said that a man is not reckoned " smart" till he has had a break-down, and " smart- ness," Anglice dishonesty, is the highest trait in the successful American's character. The social ladder is a sort of fire-escape, from the top of which a man may slide to the bottom without damaging himself, and find plenty of friends to help him up again : for credit is cheap ; you can get it anywhere j everybody will take you on' trust — a strange inconsistency of Yankee nature which has struck me constantly on my travels — anc* expect you to do the same in return ; and if you do, be alive, for everybody lives on his neighbour, and the least smart goes to the wall. That was where we found Mr. Knox just then, but he had a scheme in hand for righting himself, and as it makes no difierence out here what a man was, to the public, who look only to what he is, it mattered not that the line of specu- lation he was about to try was as remote from that in which he had failed as the two poles. What it actually was he kept within his breast ; but it might have been anything on earth that ever brought a man in an honest or dishonest penny. A lawyer will come to grief and turn tailor, a banker will stop payment and become " a traveller," a shoe-black may fail and take to politics and be a cabinet minister. No questions are CHICAGO. asked about the past ; bygones are unreservedly by- gones; family stigma is as little regarded as ancestral respectability. Every American citizen, like the meanest of :French corporals, carries a marshal's bdton in his knapsack. " Noa quis, sed quid V is the question put to every one, the test of merit, the principle of reward. Paientage, pedigree, lineal superiority, are disregarded. Integrity gives place to " smartness /' social position to unscrupulous ingenuity. Good stock is a weight upon a man's back, beneath which he can rarely struggle against the immigrant upstarts from the East, and^not be beaten in the race. Good blood is a curse to a man, that brings down on his head, in language more violent than that of John Bright or any other platform demagogue, all the foolish prejudices and savage denunciations of these enemies of what they call ^' European aristocracy." So the men of real worth are kept below the surface by the mushroom nobodies that are always coming to the top like the stones on a ploughed field, to be removed perhaps as quickly, but only in favour of other " shoddy" more pushing and unscrupulous than themselves. The social scale has become inverted. Man is looked upon as a mere machine of so much dollar-making power ; and no matter what the internal economy of the works, the productive capacity is the only thing regarded. And lie that makes the largest amount of money (I cannot say " income," for commercial success is not stable or 102 CHICAGO. 'I durable enough to permit men here to talk of annual *' incomes"), he that fills the biggest coffers with the greatest rapidity and ease is the smartest, the best man. All this Mas well explained to us by Mr. Knox him- self, lie made no secret of the thing. He detailed to us one or two of his smartest tricks in the short years of his commercial life, and propounded to us others that were then brewing under his presiding care ; and so confident was he of his eventual success that he invited me over to see him this time next year, in a mansion twice as large as that he had just quitted; and I felt very much inclined to accept his offer, just out of curiosity to see what can be done in this wonderful country by that most original of all virtues, Yankee smartness. Well. I must not write any longer on this theme. Our stay in Chicago was a very anmsing one, for we dived into every corner of the city, in order to see every phase of Western life. But of course there are no objects worthy of description in the smaller streets, nothing like the picturesque poverty of an Italian town, or the plain naked pauperism of London. Some of the larger thoroughfares are still unfinished, for tlie city is in its infancy, and in those there yet remain a few wooden chalets, which will in ? short time give place to white marble blocks, like those that already stand around them. The city officers have already inter- CHICAGO. 103 dieted the ereetion of any more wooden Vouses, to en- sure the safety and magnificence of the town ; and ten or fifteen years hence, when the great streets are all complete, and every building is fronted with marble, Chicago will be as grand a city as any on this con- tnient. From the top of the lantern turret of the Court House there is a splendid view of the city and the suburbs, w,.h the lake and the prairies on either side. And on this balcony, while enjoying the prospect, I had an interesting conversation with a very dirty, looking individual, whom I should have taken to be conductor of a London "penny 'bus." But no he was a colonel in the United States army, lately in command of a negro regiment in Sherman\s force. His history was a curious one, by his own accou.it, for he had served three years in the armv, half of the time with the Confederates, and half with the Federals He was the son of a small Southern planter, enlisted m the Southern army against his will, and getting tired of eighteen months' short rations and hard work he had volunteered his services to the North, and donned the light blue trousers and dark blue coat of tlie Federal troops. His conduct seems to have been so much admired that he was forthwith put in com- mand of one of the negro regiments; and having been m the habit of managing slaves in the South, he got Ins regiment into a high state of efficiency, and, accord- 104 CHICAGO. n\ ing to his story, did wonders ^A'ith it. But what im- pressed this conversation on my mind was the sicken- ing tale he told of the inhuman harbarities practised on the field wherever his black reg:inient was engaged. Prisoners slaughtered, bodies mutilated, wounded men deliberately carved to death, as in tiie most horrible legends of Chinese executions, no quarter given, none asked — all this, and more than I had read in the English newspapers, was fully corroborated by his storv. I can well understand the exasperation of the South at the arming of the emaiicipated slaves, but really the tales that I hear of Southern cruelty and ])ush-whacking lawlessness, allowing for the falsity of nine tenths of what I am told, leave me in the gravest doubts about the justice of my Southern sympathies, with which I undoubtedly sailed from England. I am well aware that I am seeing only one side of the question, but the Democratic party of the West have a fair appreciation of the other, and from them I think I can get with tolerable accuracy at the statement of the opposite side. I do not intend to wheel round and turn Northerner, without cause or reason ; hut you must not be surprised if I come home with my ideas of Southern chivalry considerably modified. I will only say that I have not made up my mind about it at present, and shall not without consideration. At any rate, I cannot possibly entertain such respect for the en, none CHICAGO. 105 Ncrth as would lead me heart and soul to espouse their cause, but, atthe same time, I am unable to discover those nobier points of cliaracter which had enlisted my sympathies on the Southern side ; so that I am inclined to be and talk neutrality ; and, with all due deference to the thunders of the ' Index/ and the conscientious opinions of the able men who conduct it, I must at present decline to go with them without further inquiry. And this I find no easy matter. The question is so complicj^.ted that every one I talk with looks at it in a different light, and has a fresh solution for the difficulty. It seems to me to be very little understood at home, and less, I sometimes think, here. But I am trying to get at the bottom of it, and if I ever dc I will tell you what I think upon the sub. ject. Till then, you and all readers of the ' Index ' may consider me simply neutral. Our friend in blue had occupied so much of our time with his voluble yarns about the war— in the course of which he related with much satisfaction how he had been the providential means of hurrying out of the world an equal number of Federals and Con- federates in the course of his creditable career— that we had little time to walk down to the wharf and look over one of the famous " elevators » that have made the fortunes of so many Western grain merchants. I have no time to describe its operation; but you may imagine the ingenious economy of time and labour Vi 106 CHICAGO. gained by the working of these elevators when I tell you that the lar«]jest vessel that plies upon the Northern hikes can be unsliipped of its load of grain (which is carried in bulk) in the course of a few hours. The vessels draw up under the walls of these gigantic buildings, and into the hold is thrust a great ele- piiantine trunk, which sucks up the loose grain to the topmost story of the house. There it is cleaned, and winnowed, and sortetl, and in a few minutes down it comes again through several pipes, according to its quality, into the railway trucks that draw up to receive it at the back of the building, and so it goes off to the markets of the East. That which we visited was one of the largest of »\\, an enormous pile of wood, looking like an overgrown barn, or a very fine specimen of a Pickford's van. It had three great trunks at work upon the cargo of three grain ships, and a regular depot of trucks behind it receiving the grain, which it rained forth in a host of golden showers. Inside all was noise and dust. We threaded cur way some dis- tance through it to get a notion of the business going on within, but the din stunned us, and the dust stifled us, and we " skedaddled " into the open air again, more bewildered than edified by our visit, and very hot and peppery, looking for all the world as if we had been racing in a flour sack, or pelted with " confetti " at a Roman carnival. I cannot tell you how many of these elevators there are along the quays of Chicago, hut CHICAGO. 107 their number is considerable, and their proportions are huge; and the sight of these in operation, with the busy aspect of the harbour, the river, and the wliarves, would enable you to form some estimate of the vast grain business that has raised this city like magic from the prairie. I do not know that I have anything else to tell you of Chicago, except that the mosquitoes are ten times as troublesome as any that I met in Malta. They do not seem to bother the natives, perhaps their blood is too bad to be worth the sucking, or else they are naturally mosquito proof; but the instinctive attentions of these insects to a stranger from the old world beat those of the most vigilant terrier that was ever set to welcome visitors in a yard. But it is' no joke to receive too much of their attentions, as I did on the first night of ray stay in the city ; and it is a dreadful waste of the precious hours that ought to be devoted to peaceful slumber to spend one fourth of them in clearing the mosquito curtains and the bedclothes of the almost in- visible enemy. And shake the curtains and the coun- terpanes as you will, flip about your towels as you may, you are tolerably sure to leave in some hidden corner one of the most accive of his tribe, who will wait upon you as soon as you have tucked yourself up for the night, and considerately attend you till the day, trumpeting around your ears to announce his vigilance, as he looks out for a soft spot to settle upon, where 108 CHICAGO. the skin is thin and the blood is abundant. And though I am not given to spirituous liquors, I find the place which suits them as we'l as any other is the ex. tremity of my nose. Yes, mosquitoes are the bane of every hot climate. The more 1 travel the more con- vinced am I that Dr. Hooker is right, in pronouncing climate to be "a failure everywhere.'' But there are other agencies of personal annoyance besides mos- quitoes, and of all the worst are the flies. In England we are accustomed to look on a fly as a quiet, in- offensive animal, easily got rid of when not wanted ; but here he is quite another character — the most impudent, brazenfaced, shameless ruffian you can imagine. He does not care for shakes of the head or fillips with a handkerchief one atom. You must deliberately pluck him off" the feeding-ground on which he has billeted himself. Midges in the Scotch High- lands are nothing to these abominable flies. No article of food is safe for a moment from their attacks. Every morsel in your plate has an army encamped upon it, which throws out a batch of skirmishers over the mouthful you have cut and are just raising to your lips. Every dish has to be protected as best as it can be by a defensive screen of fine wire gauze, which com- pletely hides the delicacies within, and makes you feel as if you were sitting down to dine off" a lot of black fencing-masks. Truly, that fourth plague of old must have fearfully troubled the Egyptians. i 9. SI 11 VI. THROUGH THE WEST. Cornwall ; September 22nd. I HAVE beeu wandering some way from my sub- ject, and I think it high time to find out my bearinc^s before I am quite lost in the maze of innumerable matters of which I might sit and write had I time and mclination ; so I will endeavour to take up again the missed trail, and tell you what I saw on my way to the Mississippi. We left Chicago for the city of St. Paul, Minne- sota, on the morning of September 6th. The journey occupied nearly three days— one in the cars to La Crosse, where we struck the Mississippi, 250 miles from Chicago, and thence 200 miles up the river by steam- boats to St. Paul. Our railroad journey was marked by no particular incident beyond the death of a couple of cows run over by our engine on the track ; but that IS an everyday occurrence in this country; so much 80, that every engine is armed with an ingeniously i i 110 THROUGH THE WEST. contrived, plough-sliaped macliinc, called in Yankee parlance a " cow-catcher," which " catches" up p11 stray cowa and other animals that may happen to be unconsciously blocking the way, and either impales them on its iron apex or heaves them bodily aside clear of tl'e wheels. For hedges and ditches there are none, and " snake fencing'^ even, for such tre- mendous distances as must be here enclosed, costs far more than the companies can afford; so they ease their consciences by stringing together a few loose timbers here and there, as may be convenient, over the least dilapidated of which the goutiest old cow could leap with ease; and, beef being cheap, a very moderate outlay in hush-money will shut the mouth of any irritated farmer. As, then, every Loudon sweet-shop has its inevitable ''fly-catcher," so every American cn-glne (it rhymes to red wine) has its in- separable " cow-catcher." It is so arranged that the contact of the catcher with the body to be removed causes no serious concussion, such as to throw the cars off the track, or indeed do more than give you a gentle hint that " there goes another cow." On the occasion of which I am speaking nothing more was perceptible than a very slight shock, M'hich the natives recognised instantly as " a cow ;" and had it not been for the remark of a neighbour, that he thought " there must be tv/o this time," I should have been quite unconscioTJs of what had happened, and never have THROUGH THE WEST. Ill got out, when the train was brouglit to a standstill, to see the mangled remains unspitted from the point of the instrument. Tiie presence of this machine in front of the fore wheels of every engine reminds me of another weapon which takes its place in winter— the snow-plough, an indispensable adjunct in the drifts, without which locomotion would be an enigma. It is a very hand- some, well-finished instrument, highly ornamental, and when in action, I am told, its effect is really beautiful, as it dashes away the snow on either side in a shining silver shower. Indeed, the whole engine is a much better-looking, better-cared-for institution than the dull-green, smoke-dried machine, that nobody sits near, if he can help it, on our English railways. In Ame- rica it becomes an imposing, gay, gaudy monster, decorated with flags and burnished brass, with a large, handsome bell, which peals forth a merry " rondo'' °at every crossing, every village or hamlet on the line, to warn the inhabitants of its approach; and such a whistle, too, as not all the professionals in sibilant variations that occupy the gallery of " the Vie.-" on boxing night could compete with for diabolical noises. The only thing I know of capable of making a more fiendish row than the whistle of an American railway engine is the whistle of an American steamboat. To the drum of a sensitive ear this latter is absolutely excruciating; and if you ever have, what you are 112 THROUGH THE WEST. pretty sure of having at some period or other durin<^ a visit to thi8 continent, a racking bilious headacho, you will thorouglily appreciate what I say. I am not very particular on the subject of noises; any one who has been tiioroughly trained at school to learning his morrow's repetition at one end of a room, while ** high- cock-a-lorum.jig.jig-jig>' is going on at the other, does not readily lose that acquired indifference to disturb- iug influences which Bass and Babbage are unable to master. But the steampipes of the American boats are intensely aggravating; far more worthy of par- liamentary interference than the vilest compound of heterogeneous discordance that ever was churned in a barrel-organ. I should not mind even if they limited tliemselves to one screech only at a time. They in- variably belch forth three distinct sustained "whoops," with just interval enough between each two io allow you to recover from the shock of the first, when the second stuns you again. But I suppose one could get used to the infliction, as one does to sermons and the income tax; at any rate, the natives seem to like it, for they hurry forth from every house to muster on each landing-stage by the river side at the first note of the trumpa- tongued siren; and there they gape and stare at li- hoarse monster (like the Trojans at the monster horse) as she empties her living cargo upon the wharf, to such a deafening bellow as all the wax that Ulysses stuffed into his crew's ears could never have kept out of mine. thing. iT' THROUGH THE WEST. 113 But tins ,s a land of wonders, and steam-whistling is only one of them. There are plenty of other things that excite my astoninhment, as I proeeed on my travels amongst these wonderful people. I wonder why the boats and trains aro all so crowded ; where the travel- lers come f.om, where they are going, that the traffic should be so incessant. I wonder how the boats steam so fast uithout blowing up more often than they do I;vonder how the trains run through the streets of the ctics without frightening all the horses and killing all the children. I wonder how the boats all ^o without any visible captain, the trains without any tangible conductor; how anything, in fact, goes right at all, where nobody seems to have the management of any- thing. I wonder why the toes of all the boots are square, as in the armour of the middle ages- and how far up the body a Yankee's "Wellingtons- extend, seeing tliat the ordinary custom of tucking the trousers-I beg his pardon, " pants »~up to the knee discloses no termination of the leather easing I wonder why these square-toed soles are always to be seen looking out of every window, and why you will mvanably find a Yankee^s feet where you would expect to find ills head. I wonder whether pocket-handker- chiefs are forbidden by the Constitution, and where the Yankees got the notion that spittoons were intended as receptacles for ends of cigars, and nothing else. I wonder what chewing-gum is made of, and why the women 8 114 THROUGH THE WEST. are never easy unless they arc engaged in dissolving that or candies. I wonder why there are no children in tlie States, no girls or boys as in merry England, but only immatured young men and women, a la Frangaisc, without a particle of French esprit. I wonder who is the master of a household, the embodi- ment of the English " paterfamilias," seeing that the mistress is as good as the master, and the meanest " slavey," in her own estimation at any rate, better than either. I wonder how it is that no one ever lauglis, or tries a joke or a pun but the President; find dinner is a solemn feed, the gravity whereof must bo undisturbed by that delightful badinage of wit and humour, which is the best served dish at an English table. I wonder whether the Americans of the ]']ast are at all like those of the West, and if so, how it comes about that human nature has been able to scrape itself so bare cf the polish which old-fashioned Europe supposes to be inseparable from education, however superficial. I wonder why everybody com- bines, with an almost Puritanical love for the inside of a place of w^orship, such a barefaced disregard for the third commandment as would excite the envy of the most blasphemous of British bargees, and would have " whipped " the vocabulary of the famous fishwoman of liillingsgate as thoroughly as did the wit^s retort that she was a " parallelepiped." I wonder, indeed, at everything I see and hear ; wonder, in fact, whether, THROUGH THE WEST. iin if I stayed here for the rest of my life, I should ever understand one jot the better this most marvellous of marvellous people. Our route to tlie Mississippi ran across a traet of the great prairie country, in the centre of which the city of Chicago stands. Much of it has been settled an, cultivated, and so the aspect of the land^as been ."atcnally changed; but here and there, as the cars 'l';»gsed along their heavy weight, with those excruoi- atn,g jerks which would throw any but an American tram off the track, it was possible to get some little >. ea of the scene which used to meet the eye when to hand of man had as yet been idle upon the surface of tl^ sou, and far and wide as the sight could reach, he heavmg waves of long rank grass rolled along to the m„s,e of the western breeze-not a tree, not a shrub to break the hardness of the dull even outline I'ot a s,gn of human life to relieve the monotonv of the andscape, not a sound save the whi. of the' prairie fowls wings to tell that any life was there,_and stand 'vherever the traveller wonld, on uuv hillock or —ce he could find, he would see the horizon still hounded by the same green distance, and for davs ,s he pursued his journey, the sun would rise out oVlnd «nk mto the same endless ocean of unvaried verduro i«t people have "gushed" and poetised enough upon the r„ bug prairies of the West, and I, who have not seen them in their primitive glory, have no right to rr ' 'W 116 THROUGH THE WEST. follow suit. For myself, I must confess that I like variety of outline in preference to solemnity ot repe- tition, picturesque irregularity rather than severe monotony, Kensington's ornamental waters far better than the open sea. The country was drearily level. The famous dun cow, which lluskiij saw above the distant horizon on his visit to Cambridge, would stand out sharper and clearer here, with less, if possible, to interrupt a full view of its proportions than in the vicinity of that mathematical focus. Ever since I left Ottawa and Montreal, I have experienced most keenly that longing for a bit of swelling ground which used to drive the Cambridge undergraduates, when in "the blues "about the flatness of everything, to seek a view of those noted mole- heaps which cruel sarcasm calls the " Gog- Magogs.'^ I do not suppose anything is more likely to strike the traveller in the West than this wearisome evenness of the country. I noticed witb disappointment the same feature, but less aggravated, in what I have at present seen of Canada. Do not imagine that I mean to say that the groimd is absolutely so painfully level as in the fen-country of the Eastern Counties of England, but there is nothing like a mountain about it, nothing which the wildest imagination, or the purest disregard for accuracy, could designate as a tenth-rate hill. Trees, there were a few, further on towards the Mississippi, where the railroad struck again THROUGH THK WEST. 117 into straggling remnants of tlie old primeval forests • and ever and again some indication of the many settle ' raents that are rapidly springing up from the ground to take the place of the tangled brushwood so fast ais- appearing before the torch of the Anglo-Saxon, Towns too we passed, busy centres of incipient wealth and prosperity, where was going on a l)risk trade in timber from the lately cleared forests, and where, I doubt not a fe^y years hence you would see a lively market for the gram to which tlie forests are giving place. Bordering the track on either side, the country was for the most part already clear, and where so cleared it was divided into large fields partitioned off in parallel- ograms, by - snake fences" of split logs piled one above another, in a sort of zigzag pattern, without cord or tie of any kind. The generality of the fences seemed to be of this simple character, for all the world hke those jointed penny rules or measures, that, as a child, I used to have the ilLluck to get off every Christmas tree. But some farmers, of less easy ap- proach, have fenced their lots off from the encroach- ments of their neighbours, by laying side by side around their borders an army of roots and stumps of the trees cleared off their land. The points of the roots are turned outwards, without being cut off or clipped '"to any sort of shape, but there they are left to harden like iron, which they soon do under the in- fluence of the dry atmosphere J and most curious is t ( It; : fl 118 T 11 no U (3 II THE WEST. their appearance, and, to a huiitsmau, I should say, far more formidable than the thickest and tallest of Leicestershire " bull-finches," for they tower aloft, some of thom many feet into the air, more irregular perhaps, than the bayonets of the most awkward squad of British Volunteers that ever claimed the Government subsidy, but presenting a chevuujc de frise, that no cattle or trespassers could penetrate, without the respective loss of hide or nether garments. The corn, which on this continent means exclu- sively Indian corn, in contradistinction to wheat, was in many places up aiul stored — it is never stacked — when we passed along the road ; for it ripens with marvellous rapidity, attaining its fvdl height of ten and twelve feet, and in Kentucky even more, in the short space of three months. In some places, h wevei, we came across farms where the harvest was going on, and the farmers were levelling the huge corn-stalks, of almost sugar-cane height and substance, with heavy two-handed sickles that reminded me of Turkif;li scimitars. In other places we passed through patclics of corn of later growth, still ripening for the harvest, with pumpkins and water-melons upon the ground beneath it, interspersed Avith the stalks. The abund- ance of these fruits is marvellous ; they grow every- where and anywhere, and when the inhabitants of the country have stufled themselves with all they cah digest — and the amount they do digest is astonishing THROUGH THE WEST. 119 -they t„rn the cattlo into the fields to finish tluMn and woulfln^fc it sliock the nerves of tl,e Jewish nicr^ chants of Covent Garden, to see the beasts revellin<^ m fruit tliat wonkl do credit to any English dessert" I wonder if I shall ever have the heart again to stuu.p up to those nosey groecrs the exorbitant price thcv (Icaiand Ibr such a melon as I have seen a cow eat fJr iiotliing. Whilst upon the subject of melons and pumpkins let me say that the vegetable productions of this con tinent, and the vegetarian tastes of the natives, are ta an Englishman, who rarely sees any other accom^ pammentto his^ roast beef than potatoes and horse- radish, matters of constant astonishment. In the first place, there is the sweet potato, the original potato I suppose, from which ours is to the Yankee mind -i degenerate descendant. But I do not at all ao-ree with that view, and have, I suspect, all Ireland with me m my opinion, though I have had several en- counters upon the subject with certain obstinate waiters, who persisted in bringing me the sweet genus m preference to the ordinary kind. Indeed it is necessary to specify the latter as "common potatoes;" and much as my feelings revolt at tho application of so humiliating an epithet to what I consider, without doubt, the finest vegetable ever invented, I find it the only way of insuring its presence on my tabk-. Then there is the egg.plant, served iu slices fried, first rate ; a 120 THIlOUnil THE WKST. squash, a sort of vegetable nuirrow, mashed, and succo- tash, something like it, butii very decent; hominy, apparently grains of the Indian corn in a compound of butter; and the inevitable tomatoes, always pronounced " tomaytoes," as necessary to an American at his din- ner as his iced-water, and that is absolutely indispen- sable. Then there is the green Indian corn boiled into a yellowish white, which everybody eats before the pudding, first besmearing it with butter, and then holding it to his or her mouth, as the case may be, with both hands^ and, as it rotates upon the two fore- fingers, gnawing the grains from the stalk, like a rat nibbling round the wick of a candle. ^ The process for a lady is an inelegant one, but I do not know that there is any other mode of consumption ; for the corn is of too tough a texture to cut, and the grains are too firmly implanted in the little cavities of the stalk iu which they grow to allow them to be detached by a fork or spoon — and they pass out into your mouth so easily when you apply your fore-teeth to their sides, that I am quite certain they were intended to be so eaten. Add to those that I have enumerated, every veget- able that we have at home, and you will not wonder at the surprise of the nigger, who waited on me at my first hotel dinner, when I innocently ordered " vegetables,'^ and to his necessary demand, " What vegetables ? " as innocently answered, "Whatever there are," utterly THROUGH THE WEST. 121 unconscious of the prodigious results of what seemed to me a most natural order. But my neighbours wore not half so amazed at the preposterous number of small dishes by which my order was followed up as you might have imagined. No American sits down to his meat without at least half a dozen vegetables all on separate saucers, and all going at once ; for he has them arranged all round his plate, and dives into them promiscuously, as the particular mouthful he is engaged upon may seem to require one or the other • and therefore, if, instead of half a dozen, I had a dozen and a half of these small saucers round me, no one thought it particularly extravagant. If any eccentricity on my part surprised any one, it Tvas that I did not consume the whole of thenj. We passed for many hours through various scenes of farming life in the West. In a few cases through moderate-sized farms, in nfK)st through lately settled lots, where the virgin soil was in every stage of gradual adaptation to the presence of civilised ''man. Here, tiie fields were already laid out and fenced off, but the stumps of the felled trees were still in the' ground, blackened with the fire annually applied to them, to deaden their vitality, and loosen their hold upon the soil, until, in the fourth or fifth vear, they coiihr be bodily uprooted from their matrix,' In the mean time grass had been sown around them, or scanty Indian corn, but in general the forest had been so '■ ;j I ipf 122 THROUGH THE WEST. thick that little space was left between the scarred and crumbling stumps. Here, the trees had been lately felled, and their trunks were lying about the ground in confusion picturesque enough to gladden an artist's eye. There, some new comer had just fired the forest, and goodly giants of pine and oak and beech were being charred to ashes by the flames, in a reck- less waste that would have vexed the spirit of an English landowner. But wood is so abundant that no one knows what to do with it, and inland carriage far too expensive to make the export of it pay ; so that, unless it he farm be situated in the neighbour- hood of some large stream, down which the timber can be floated to the soa-board, the forest growth must be destroyed on tiie spot. The road throughout was novel, but after a time monotonous. The eye soon wearies of branchless trunks and charred stems, alternating for miles and miles with ploughed fields and snake or root fences, without an undulation of the ground to relieve the flatness of the country. And as for the forests them- selves, I did not see any striking peculiarity in thb trees or their size ; and, indeed, I was at first puzzled to see that their growth was comparatively so diminutive in a country which must have been overspread with wood for ages. But this is explained by the frequent oc- currence of the conflagrations that rage through the forests of these dry climates in the summer heats, N: Ifi THROUGH TOE WEST. 123 w o,e ,„ro„ds play such havoc a,.ong the trees th,.t a Wty years' growth of timber is almost a rarity. The rea beauty of the American forests is only to be seen m the fall, ,vhe„ they clothe themselves in such a vanety of autumnal tints as would n.ake the gayest olinghsh October foliage pale and dull beside then. ut as yet the sun was hot, and Nature's autumn dresses jri her wurdrobe. Before I take you to the Mississippi I should like to say a few words about the agricultural rosourees of , f I """^ ''■"''" "^ -'^ '"'■^W'^'^ not in- aptly eal ,t. Not that I consider myself qualified to .peak with any weight upon the subject, or wish you to .magtne that I have any thoughts of setting myself upas an authority upon a matter of which you ,re ™rc I can have little knowledge. But we have all heard ■so much of the vast tide of emigration that is daily «ettmg m to the shores of this continent on its way Westward to the great valley of the Mississippi, that .vou cannot suppose I have travelled through the country where these strangers f.om the old world are makmg their new homes, without picking „p some in, formamn about the land of their choice; and what l.ttle I have thus learnt I think it my dnty to trans- mil to you. It must be conceded, I presume, by the most self- contented of British landowners that the present condifon of the agricultural body of our people is is 1 11 1 hBH If ■I' If. l.?t THROUGH THE WllST. pecuniarily inferior to that of any other class. Farmers, we know, are by nature and profession grumblers, but if you or I were as often victimized by the weather or the grub, we should be as bitter too, and farmers' grievances, now-a-days are by no means limited to eccentricities of the i)arometer, or the attacks of insidious entoma. So long as Great Britain continues to prosper, the value of land must increase, for there can be no increase of the land itself, and the farmer derives no benefit from the ever-growing competition for its possession. He has to compete not only with men of his own stamina and profession, but with others, who have made their money in other walks of life, and will pay for the advantages of a country re- tireinent a price which is not measurable by the ordiiuiry rates of profit. Then, with his rent raised by this continued competition, he has to meet in his own market the produce of foreig.'i lands, whose purchase price is little or nothing, or rent perhaps as trivial. He has, of course, the cost of transport in his favour, but freight only balances the manure, without which his soil cannot be cultivated, and foreigners, whose land is rich enough to yield without manure, or extensive enough to render it unnecessary to expend upon it an equal amount of labour, can undersell him at pleasure. So the British farmer has turned dairyman, and the special adaptation of the soil for the rearing of stock has tended to modify the evil effects of foreign ' % ij THROUGH THE WEST lor. competition i„ corn. But, it is an undoubted fact, that the proportion between our producers and con' suniers of food is undergoing a rapid cliaui,^e. Tl.e manufacturing, mining, and town populations are fast absorbing the business of the country, and while the landowners' profits increase with the rising value of land, the area left for the farmer is diminished, and the competition for it proportionally a.,gmented. Such, or somewhat similar, are the reasons, I fancy which are inducing the present attempts to thin the ranks of home competition, by sending off the young and enterprising to some quarter of the globe where they can possess themselves of a fertile soil, and thence contribute to the .vants of the old country, whose home resources are utterly inadequate to supply the mouths of her dense population. Whither then to send them? No country, per- haps, offers greater inducements to the settler than the upper valley of the Mississippi. In few places, I suppose, can land be procured on more favorable terms than in the prairies of Illinois or the surrounding states. For instance, the Illinois Central liailroad Company are ottering for sale more than a million acres on either side of their line, at prices varying, at the present rate of gold, from 12^. to 60.9. an acre, on long credit, extending over a period of seven years. The soil, composed of a deep rich loam, bears analytical comparison with the most fertile organic deposits! It ': '• 12G TIIIIOUGH Tin; WliST. iH sencrnlly so easily worked tluit tlic l.ibour of one man is as effective as that of miny on rocicier soils, and far more productive. The natives have a saying that a man has nothinvharf lay the steamer ready to receive the train's cargo. To our great disappoint- ment the boat was not one of those far-famed denizens of the Mississippi, whose huge proportions and pro- pensities to blowing up, are equally notoriou, in the annals of Western America ; but a very poor specimen of the shipwright's architecture, of extremely modest dimensions, and most uncomfortable passenger accom- modation ; and for this unlocked for usurper of the THE MISSISSIPPI. 133 domains of the great river, we had to thank the "Father of Waters » himself, who had been so reduced by the long drought which had prevailed throughout the summer, that none but the most insignificant craft could pass his scanty shadows. Tlie rusli for the few berths that were to be had was thoroughly cliaracter- istic of the people. It was entirely confined to the " ladies "~a generic term which includes all the sex, from the President's wife to the meanest white "help"— and whilst they fought and clamoured amongst themselves for the coveted luxury of a dirty berth, the humbler representatives of the weaker sex— the American idea of my own— waited with exemplary patience outside, for the chance of what at school we used to call the - scrapings." But the chance was infini- tesimally small ; there were not half berths enough for "the ladies," the steward told us, so I resigned myself to fate and ingenuity to find a place for the night's rest, and spent the few minutes we had before leaving the pier in admiring the figures of two gigantic Indian warriors who came on board the boat for whiskey and cigars. They were noble specimens of humanity; six feet three or four in height as they stood in their woollen socks, which served them for shoes. A coarse blanket thrown carelessly over the shoulders, and a band round the head with a few feathers in it, seemed to be the only other article of dress with which they encum- 131 THE MISSISSIPPI. bercd their toilet. There was no difHdenco or shyness about their manner, as they moved in and out amongst the passengers ; they carried themselves erect as worthy representatives of the proudest of tribes, the great Sioux — a tribe that has cost the American government more trouble, money, and lives, than any other ; the very tribe in fact which has this summer broken out again in the northern Mississippi, and to repress which our boat was carrying up soldiers detached from the army of Sherman. No doubt it was to spy out the number and destination of these troops that the visit of the wily pair was made, but their cool cunning and intrepidity had secured them an easy admission to the steamboat as friendly Sioux of the opposition party that disap- proved of the late massacres perpetrated by their fellow- kinsman in the North. I watched with interest their quiet cat-like movements through the crowd, and, as I looked at their featurec, I was immensely struck with the theory I had heard of their affinity to the Mongol or Tartar race — the same broad flat countenance and high square cheek bones, the same tendency to oblique- ness in the eye's position and form, the same long straight black hair, the same copperish-yellow colour of skin, that I believe to be the characteristic features of those mysterious people., As the whistle sounded, they moved sullenly off to communicate, I suppose, the intelligence of what they had learnt to their brethren in arms, and having THE MISSISSTPPT. 135 watched them off the boat, I seized one of the mattresses that were being thrown promiscuously upon the cabin floor, and there, in the midst of a Babel of snorers similarly situated with myself, I contrived to get as much sleep, as the incessant trampling of the restless spirits who could not find a place to lay their heads, and the noisy political discussion of those who sat up to make a night of it, would admit of my taking. But I was not let alone long. Before five o'clock the black stewards hoisted the ends of the mattresses and tipped out their occupants on to the floor, and there I might have lain if I had liked, as some few did with imperturbable ." nonchalance," surrounded by niggers sweeping all over them, and tumbling against their limbs, and setting tables across their stomachs, and chairs and benches upon their legs, only that I preferred to rise and look at the Mississippi ; and, having performed the most cursory of all superficial ablutions, with a teaspoonful of water and a square inch or two of unused towel, I rushed upon the deck, and saw something after this fashion : A broad expanse of extrem.ely shallow water; a number of oddly-shaped marshy-looking islands; a tortuous channel in and out amongst them, very difficult of navigation, and intersected by frequent sandbanks, on the top of which the keel of our boat grated at every other bend in the stream, with a dull sound that brought home to the passengers the un- .! ,1 136 THE MISSISSIPPI. comfortable apprehension of the possibility of sticking fast on one of these banks and seeing much more of the Mississippi than "vve had bargained for ; a low vegetation on most of these islands, very much like that which may be seen on any of the alluvial deposits on the Thames ; a range of steep bluflFs on either bank rising abruptly from the water^s edge, sparsely wooded and bare alternately, but bold in outline and pre- cipitous. Such was my first impression of the Mississippi scenery, and such it is now, for there was little or no variety, save where the line of the high bluffs was 'occasionally broken by a deep wild-looking ravine, in the shelter of which lay now and then a few farmers' cottages, and sometimes, but at long intervals, a village or a town. There was an impressive sense of solitude forced upon me by the aspect of everything around ; a feeling of loneliness not even dispelled by the appearance of the small towns at which we called on our passage ; for, shut in, as they were, by the narrow gorges in which they lay, and debarred from communication with the outer world except by the shallow waters through which we were feeling our way, they seemed to me so many hermits' settlements ; each one, as it lay in the distance, promising to be the most advanced outpost of these lonely pioneers of civilisation, till another and another successively came in view, to testify to the fact that neither the solitudes of the prairie, nor the THE MISSISSIPPI. 137 darkness of the forest, can stem the advance of human enterprise. Beyond these few detached settlers' colonies, there was nothing to be seen indicative of the busy hfe that must, no doubt, ere long, in the progress of development of the great North-West, culminate towards the waters we were traversing. Besides our own boat, none did we see, but her sister craft on the downward passage, laden with recruits from the North for Sherman^s army. A few rude looking " lumberers, '^ at the various wood stations at which we called for fuel, a few cows near the settlements, and a good sprinkling of herons and kingfishers, the latter of a brilliant blue, were the only varieties in the long panorama of shallow water, marshy islands, sandy banks and distant bluffs ; and glad as I was to feef that I was actually upon the great Father of Waters, I must confess that my visit to his Majesty's presence disap. pointed me. I ought, however, in candour to add, that his unimposing aspect was in great measure due to the unprecedented drought j and that, had he been rolling down his accustomed body of water, and carrying his visitors comfortably housed in the floating palaces which at ordinary times ride with ease upon his surface, I should have come away with a far better opinion of his right co his accredited position as the Father of Waters j as it was, he appeared to me very much in the light of an impostor, and, as one of my fellow-travellers observed, I think it extremely doubtful 138 THE MISSISSIPPI. •whether, in his then state of aqueous insolvency, proud little Father Thames himself would have owned him even for a poor relation. Well, as there was really so little to see outside the boat, or, at least, so little which it would interest you to hear of, I will turn your attention to that from which I myself derived more amusement — the bo.at itself and the passengers. In the first place, as to the boat. It was the queerest machine by which I had ever travelled. It had neither paddles nor screw, but an enormous water-wheel of the rudest construction, at the stern, worked by the most primitive of engines, which occu- pied the after part of the lower deck. Engine, fur- nace, fuel, and all, entirely above the water's level; for the boat drew but a few inches of water. The upper deck consisted of a sort of apology for a saloon, with a few boxes on either side, that answered the purpose of ladies' berths ; and in a sort of balcony that ran round the outside of this deck, and on the roof of it, the passengers aired themselves upon a limited number of kitchen chairs and three-legged stools that formed the only furniture of the vessel. After staring for some time at the lazy movements of the great wheel, and deciding that the whole concern looked exactly like a locomotive water-mill, without the slightest pre- tensions about it of conformity to the ordinary lines upon which I had hitherto supposed it necessary to construct a boat, I studied the passengers. THE MISSISSIPPI. 139 The majority of them were soldiers, as T have already mentioned, on their way northwards to qnell the outbreak amongst the Indians. Of the general appearance of the Northern army as yet I know but little. I shall have more opportunity of speaking on that point when I get to Washington and New York. Suffice it to say now, for the benefit of those who read nothing but the ' Times ' and are content with what they there read, however great the internal evidence of its untruth, that they were not English, nor Irish, nor Germans, nor French, nor any but genuine Americans ; farmers mostly, and farmers' sons, well in- formed on every point of common interest to the public at large, quiet and orderly to a degree which sur- prised me and my fellow-travellers from England. We mixed and talked with them with much pleasure, and gleaned from them what we could of their ideas about the prospects of the war. They spoke of the Southern enemy with no animosity beyond what they vented upon the large slave-holders, to whose machinations they attributed the co-operation of the poorer classes. What fQVf expressions of ill-feeling they used were poured forth against the Southern women, whom some of them, who had come from New Orleans, declared to be perfect she-devils incarnate ; and if but a few fea- tures in their portrait of a Southern woman be correct, I must admit that General Butler's task in that devoted city ^vas no easy one; and, indeed, I should 140 THE MISSISSIPPI. feel much inclined to be ungallant enough to go further, and say that the extreme measures to which he resorted during his "Reign of Terror" were not wholly uiijustificd. At any rate it is admitted by all that much improvement in the domestic and sanitary arrangements of the city has resulted from his un- welcome dictatorship ; and that what was formerly a sink of pestilence and iniquity is now a decent and well organized community. We talked of Grant and McClellan, and found that the latter had completely lost the ephemeral popularity that America vouchsafes to her short-lived favorites. " The young Napoleon," but a few months back the idol of the army, was now rarely spoken of without a sneer. Grant, whose highest quality in their eyes seemed to be his con- descension in sleeping upon a private^s blanket, was now the darling of the day. Should his long-looked- for plunge into Richmond be much further delayed, his name will be consigned without scruple or cere- mony to the rack of obloquy and anathemas upon which the North has annihilated so many of her transient heroes. Sherman and Sheridan are also in the ascend- ant. The reign of each promises to be a brilliant one; the marvel of its brilliancy, perhaps, like the meteor's, only to be equalled by that of its rapid evanescence. Of all the generals that this war has called into being, whether on the side of North or South, Robert Lee is the only one who has retained : 1 r THE MISSISSIPPI. 141 the place to which the chances of battle have raised him. But his milicary genius is undoubtedly superior to that of his enemies or his rivals in arms. None, perhaps, are more ready to admit his talent than the soldiers of the Northern army- the admission, perhaps, you may say, is but politic, as adding to the credit due to his defeat, whenever that may be effected— but, at any rate, the Northern soldiers are candid enough to confess, what their journalists with asinine obstinacy deny, that they have not a general who can hold a candle to him. But there were plenty of other passengers besides the soldiers, all affable and communicative ; and from them we gathered, in the course of conversation, an in- definite number of diametrically opposite views of the coming political contest. We had Kepublicans, Democrats, Copper-heads, and Abolitionists on board, and each representative of every one of these parties held different ideas about everything from those which his fellow-representatives entertained. The subject of greatest difference was the war itself in its political aspect. Politics, of course, every one in America talks. It comes more naturally to them than their A B C. They seem to suck it in with their mother's milk, for the women are " bluer " in politics than the m'en ; they lisp it in the nursery, babble it in the school' room, fight about it in the academy, and drink over it in the bars, till the whole nation becomes saturated with '•" J L 'All ikii^l 142 THE MISSISSIPPI. the virus of what I may call " politicomanie," a disease which injects its poisonous infusions into every member of the state with such fatal eflPect, that the free work- ing of the whole body is incalculably cramped and crippled by it. No department is free from its in- fluence. Courts of Justice are victims to its sway. Judges and juries cannot resist the party feeling which its constant presence everywhere engenders. Stump oratory and platform declamation feed it. Paltry pulpiteers propagate it, and hot-headed journalists sub- sist upon it. You hear it in every walk of life, read it in every printed page of paper. In the cars, on the boats, in the streets, at the hotels, in the churches, nothing but politics. Soldiers, sailors, tinkers, tailors, parsons, ploughboys, porters, waiters, kno no subject of conversation but the eternal politics. You think, in your innocence, to avoid it in the drawing-room, but you find the ladies as keen upon it as the men. Elderly ladies of the Republican persuasion lecture you upon the crimes of the Democratic leaders. Youthful beauties, that would do honour to an English ball room, question you upon the doctrine of State rights. Middle-aged females bore you to death with puzzling interrogations about your own Constitution. And if in disgust you retire to your bedroom, and happen to ring for the chambermaid, she asks you whether you think the Democrats will withdraw the THE MISSISSIPPI. 143 fourth plank of their platform, and if they do what will be the consequence. Well, then, you will not wonder that the chief sub- ject of conversation was politics, nor, perhaps, will you be surprised to hear that, by the time our passage up the Mississippi came to an end, I had had a great deal more of politics than was good for either me or my temper. We discussed them with the captain (a very seedy gentleman, by the bye), with the steward (a seedier one), with the engineers, the soldiers, the gentlemen passengers, and the lady passengers; and such a muddle-headed maze of mystification did my brain get lost in, after three days' incessant struggling to deduce some consistent result from the thousand-and-one ideas with which it was assailed, that I shall, out of chari- table feelings for yours, abstain from inflicting upon you what, I feel sure, will do you no good. I will only add that the chief cause of my mystification was a smart, affable young lady, who laid down her theories of the science in such an authoritative style of diction, that I was at first completely awed into the mildest submission to her precepts. But her father, in com- passion, I presume, for the evident weakness of my defensive armour, rebuked her with an admonition to hit somebody of her own size, and she spared me accordingly. I saw a good deal of this party during our passage. They were extremely agreeable people. The father had just come from Chicago, whither he it K ' 144 THE MISSISSIPPI. had been sent as a delegate to the great Democratic Convention. He lived in the State of New York, where I have no doubt he was a man of some influence amongst the extreme Democrats, for he was a copper- head, every inch of him, and, accordingly, all his talents, time, and toil were devoted exclusively to thwarting the Government in the conduct of the war, and promoting the interests of the enemy. He spoke despondingly of his country as the worst- governed on the face of the inhabited globe, heaped upon Old Abe such a mountain of abuse as only an American would condescend to pitch upon him, snarled at the ministers, jeered at the generals, and ridiculed the troops. It was all done too in a gentlemanly way, for he was a man of good education and refined manner; but I must say I have no sympathy with those whose patriot- ism, like Mr. Bright's, requires a Rosses telescope to be seen at all — a very ''milk and watery way" — consist- ing solely in a love of their country's protection with- out a thought for the protection of their country. In fact I have a great contempt for copperheads in gene- ral ; they are simply Confederates who have not the pluck to avow it. The affable young lady and her papa and mamma and brother engaged me in conversation till late in the evening, when it struck me that the scenery through which we were passing was worth observance — and I looked out and found it to be so. We had passed, in the THE MISSISSIPPI. 145 afternoon, through a vast sheet of water, five miles wide and many long, where the river expands into a lake or broad, which bears the name of Lake Pepin ; thence past Wanona's Rock, the crag whence the Indian maiden flung herself in despair at the persecu- tions wreaked on her by her tribe for her wilful love of the paleface J past the Chimney Mountain, a roman- tic formation on the left bank ; and Redwing, a prettily situated town, which the parting rays of the sinking sun lit up, as we stopped there for the mails, with such an array of red and gold as neither pen nor pencil could depict. The river^s breadth was much less here, and under the tumbled forms of the rocky bluffs, which girt the water's edge, we lay for a time to take in fuel, and glad enough to rest there, for the scene was exquisite. Then on again to the West, into the golden glow that streamed down to us over the flood, and as we went the gold and the blue above us faded into a soft hazy green, and darkness set in at once without a twilight. It was eleven at night when I was roused from my reveries by the announcement that we had met the other steamer into which we were to be transferred, a boat of lighter draught than that on which we then «'ere, and better adapted for navigating the shallows which, of course, became more numerous as we ascended the river. The Uro boats came to an anchor in the middle of the stream, and a flat-bottomed barge 10 i \i' m 146 THE MISSISSIPPI. with a plank thrown across to it from each boat served to establish a communication between them. In a minute an illumination was extemporised on board each of the boats by means of a lighted brazier, filled with tar and such like combustibles, and beneath the lurid glare shed by the blazing matter ensued such a scene of noise and bustle as I never shall forget. What a subject for a picture that would have been ! The bustling and confusion amongst the two sets of passengers changing from boat to boat, the awkward meetings on the narrow planks, the flights of the boxes and carpet-bags pell-mell inio the bottom of the barge, the hurry and scurry amongst the black stewards, the falling embers from the burning braziers, the life and light in the centre of the stream, the blackness and solitude all around. With all the confusion, however, the change of cargoes was an afi'air of but a few minutes ; but the scene was so strange, so novel, the fiery redness of the braziers, and the objects illumi- nated by them so unearthly, that I see it all as vividly now as if it were still before me, and often, I dare say, shall I call up in my dreams this midnight boat-chang- ing on the Mississippi. The new vessel, a minature of the other, was much more stufl'y, close, and uncomfortable. Berths of course were out of the question. Sleeping room on the floors was at a premium ; and mattresses unobtain- able, for love or money. But fraud got me a quarter ,■"« THE MISSISSIPPI. 147 of one, and on my allotted portion of it I somehow or other contrived to doze in the midst of a perfect maze of arms, and legs, and heads, and feet, interspersed with hats, coats, collars, ties, and boots ; the oddest medley that I ever saw upon the floor of any room ; and, judging from her convulsive laughter at my appearance or rather dis-appearance in the midst of it so too thought the affable young lady. I was very tired, however, aud did not heed her playful sallies, but my slumbers were not healthy or refreshing by any means, and when the black steward at 4.3o\.ra. tipped up the mattresses to clear and sweep the room, I was quite content to get away from the atmosphere and the fleas. * You may wonder possibly how they managed to cook us any meals, seeing that their space was so limited. I know I did, and so I do now. I can offer no explanation. I am sure there was no kitchen, and I know there was no fire. I never saw any cook on board, nor anything cooking. But you may stake your fortune, that where there are any Americans, there will always be plenty to eat (and generally I should say the converse holds good, and that where there is plenty to eat there will always be Americans) and therefore I felt perfectly confident that our appe' tites would be well cared for, and so they wero. We had hot meats on the table for breakfast, dinner, tea and supper; but I am to this day as ignorant as the !! p *'ii 148 THE MISSISSIPPI. astonished parent in Beauty and the Beast how or whence they got there. The next day was much like the preceding ; ditto the scenery — only that the river banks drew nearer together, whicli I thought added considerably to the beautv of the stream. The only variation in the day's proceedings was some remarkably bad rifle practice by the soldiers at the numerous herons upon the sand banks, and a still more indiff'erent practice at larger objects in the shape of cows in the adjacent meadows. Nothing astonishes me more than the reckless use of firearms in this country. Men and boys play witii "six-shooters'' as if they were as harmless as chil- dren's pop-guns. The beautiful science of the P. R. ("Prize King" fair reader) is utterly scouted in the States for the more effective satisfaction adminis- tered by the revolver. The natural an of an Ameri- can, offensive or defensive, is not — pardon the "bull" his fist, but his pistol. He carries it about with him in its leathern receptacle beneath his coat, at all times, and in all places. He knows nothing of the European etiquette which restricts its use to the hour of cock-crow, and regards the orthodox ac=:'onipani- ment of coffee as a superlative absurdity. Young or old, high or low, he must have his six-shooter. The father and brothers of the affable young lady, refined and well educated as they were, carried their pistols as a matter of course. True, when I expostulated with THE MISSIS^^IPPI. 149 them, they excused themselves by saying that they were intended only as a means of defence against tlie possible assaults of the soldiers ; but the copperheads dehght in making martyrs of themselves, or rather holding themselves out as victims to a martyrdom which is purely imaginary, and I consider the pretext of these two gentlemen nothing but a specious defence of a barbarous usage which must condemn itself in the eyes of any educated man. However that may be, there is the established habit, and if civilians are habitually so reckless in the employment of murderous weapons, it was not to be marvelled at that the soldiers, tolerably inured to the atrocities of the guerilla warfare of the West, should exhibit a pre- eminent heedlessness in the promiscuous use of their rifles. They spent the whole morning in random shots at everything live or dead that offered a conve- nient mark. They seemed to have a perfectly un- limited supply of the U. S. ammunition, and being citizens of a free republic, were free to do what they liked with it, — an elysian perfection of uncon- ditional license in the boasted possession of which a Yankee is for ever impressing upon you the superiority of his political condition, and which, in Yankee par- lance, consists in the right of every man to do as he ''dam pleases." I never saw any people more alive to the existence of their constitutional rights than the soldiers in the present instance. How many hundred I III WT: 150 THE MISSISSIPPI. k shots were fired I know not, nor do I see why I or anybody else on board was not shot every bit as much as the objects actually aimed at. If I saw one rifle pointed at my head, I saw a hundred. Revolvers were swung carelessly about with much less caution than is exhibited in an English cover. Across the deck, through the rigging, out of the saloon-windows, over the hats of the passengers, anyhow, was kept up an irregular discharge of the most independent firing I have ever witnessed. Nobody seemed to mind it, ladies and children took little or no notice of it, and, stranger still, no harm seemed to come of it, either to those on board or the objects of assault. I thought I saw a poor cow struck, but to the disappointment of her enemy she walked off untouched. Soon after mid-day we landed at a point in the river beyond which the shallows would not admit onr boat. There we were to wait for a still lighter tug to carry us up to St. Paul's. I was tired of the river, and hearing that the city was only twelve miles off pro- posed a walk. It was accepted by about twenty of ths passengers, whi^h, considering that an American never walks, could only be accounted for by their being as weary of the boat as myself; and under the guid- ance of one who said he knew the road, our party accordingly started. The path lay at first up through a thin belt of elm, oak, and beech — pretty enough in itself, but too little — and thence out across ten miles THE MISSISSIPPI, 151 of the hottest, dustiest plaia I ever traversed. It was a real joy to see the distant^ roofs and steeples of St. Paul's in view as we came down again to the river, and better still to be upon the curious bridge which connects the low level bank, on which we then were with the high chalky bluff on which the city stands — a most distressingly un traditional bridge, all on the oblique and very awkward, like a great clumsy fire- escape propped up against a high wall — but best of all to be splashing about, and rinsing off the very palpable results of a three days' roughing it on those awful boats, down in the cool depths of a glorious bath, beneath the shelter of what the Paulites call their " Internay- tional Hoe-tel/* I m VIII. FROM THE MISSISSII'PI TO THE ST. LAWllENCE. , Washington; October lOth. St. Paul's is as yet m its infancy. But a very few years ago this precocious child of the prairie was not even thought of, and now she has not only assumed to herself the name of a city — every American town does that, whether it has any right to the appellation or no — but she has summoned together, while hardly into her teens, a population of twenty thousand inhabitants, and, when fairly of age, will rival in size many a European capital. At present her prosperity seems to be due to the fur trade, which is enormous. Every other shop is a furrier's. The streets are redolent of hides. Wolf, fox, bear, mink, wild-cat — every 'Specimen of the genus "vermin " — is to be seen dangling in the windows. And, strange to say, even in the headquarters of the furriers there is carried on such a system of deception as I should have thought .ilOM THE MISSISSIPPI TO THE ST. LAWRENCE. 153 incredible, had I not seen it actually at work. Chicanery, I suppose, like charity, begins at home ; and so in the heart of the great fur country com. mences an elaborate process of dyeing, and staining, and veneering, which would astonish the belles of London and Paris, who flatter themselves that they pay for the genuine article. I do not believe one muff in a hundred is what it purports to be. Sable is concocted out of anything, mink is cooked up out of the mangiest of mangy skins. Ermine is deliberately painted on the seediest of repulsive hides. The manufacture of ancient coins, Yankee shoddv. Lillo pickles, or London milk, could not reveal greater scholarship in the art of humbug. I wonder what proportion of the cloaks, muffs, boas and tippet-?, that I see in London does really come off the backs of animals whose name they bear, seeing that the genuine thing is so extremely rare in the district of its native home. But the wreck of the lloyal George has proved large enough to furnish a city of English mansions, the santo sudario or sacred winding-sheet of Turin has produced sufficient stuff to furnish sails for the fleets of Italy, the bullets picked up on the field of Waterloo would have slaughtered the whole popu- lation of Europe, and why should not the sables and minks of St. PauFs be numerous enough to satisfy the demands of all the toilettes of the civilised world ? But "fur'' is not the only staff of life to the 154 FHOM THE MISSISSIPPI ! : inhabitants of St. Paul's. Agriculture increases its area, and every day sees new settlers arriving and fresh lands subjected to the plough. Commerce follows in its wake, and being on the highway of the Mississippi, the great artery of the North West, the city must rise in importance with the development of the country, and the signs of its future rise are already visible. In itself it is by no means beautiful. It stands favorably on a chalky eminence above the river, and from a terrace npon the cliff there is an extensive v^ew of the surrounding country ; but there are no fine houses, as in Chicago, nor handsome streets and towering warehouses. The buildings are ir- regular and low, and almost as mean as in the western end of Oxford Street. I do not know that I can say anything of them more derogatory to their character than that. The sun next day was equatorial. I am not quite sure that I know what that may be, but I know that the thermometer in the shade was up to 100°, and standing in the sun was an absolute impossibihty. They say that nothing is ever seen in the daytime in the streets of Malta but Englishmen and dogs, and certainly there was nothing else that day in the streets of St. Paul's. But, protected as we were with umbrellas, and tolerably inured to noonday roastings, we were totally unable to stand the blaze and glare. Less than five minutes in the open air (to be properly TO THE ST. LAWRENCE. 155 •lelicate) dissolved me utterly into floods of tears, and five minutes more, as I retreated home again, fried me dry and stupid. But time was precious, and there was plenty to bo seen in the neighbourhood ; so, after a brief siesta, we determined to stand for neither sun nor ceremony, and, divesting ourselves of coat and waistcoat, took our seats in an open caleche and started out for a drive into the country. The afternoon was slightly cooler, but still uncomfortably hot ; how the Lorses pulled under it I cannot imagine, but they travellea well, and we were soon eight miles from St. PauPs, crossing the Mississippi in a ferry-boat beneath the frownin- heights of Fort Snelling. The ferry-boat was worked in the same way as those upon the Rhine, by the means of a rope and running wheel upon it, the boat being laid obliquely across the stream and left to the current to force it along the rope. A steep climb up the other bank landed us at the gate of the fort. It was a very shady specimen of a fortification, having no pretensions whatever to engineering skill, and less to comfort and accommodation. The only attraction it possessed in our eyes was the fact that it then con- tained some Indian prisoners lately captured in the frontier war, whom we were anxious to inspect. We stated our wish to the sentinel, which was peremptorily refused j but our driver, a capital fellow, was as anxious as ourselves that we should miss none of the lions of " i\ ' i ' SM w t 1 1' fl 1 1 156 FROM THE MISSISSIPPI the country, and, hastily dismounting, tackled the bewildered sentry with such an ebullition of remon- strati ve volubility — the pith of which appeared to be that the colonel was a great friend of his and would let him in directly if he only knev/ he was there — that the sentry yielded in despair, and handed us to a corporal to be duly lionised round. We were shown into a good-sized airy chamber, and there, at the further end, chained by the leg to a ring in the wall, sat the objects of our search, the two Indian prisoners. They were both princes of their tribe, very fine specimens of their race, the Sioux, large limbed, well proportioned, lithe and supple as tigers. One, who rejoiced in the name of " Little Six," was of great age, more than ninety, but he seemed to lack none of his youthful vigour, and saving a few gray hairs upon his head, time had laid no finger-mark upon him. The other, " Medicine Bottle," was of middle age, of handsome cast of countenance, and splendid frame. He had lately been adorning himself in his war paint — which they both delighted in daubing on and washing off again two or three times a week — and had, in a fit of eccentricity, removed the whole of it except a bright vermilion streak down the middle of his hair, which parted in the centre of his forehead. They were both engaged in eating nuts, brought in by their friends in the neighbourhood, who seemed to be permitted access to them much more TO THE ST. LAWRENCE. 157 readily than I should have supposed expedient ; and in this operation they slacked not for a moment all the time we were inspecting and making our remarks upon them, simply lingering in the mastication of every other nut to cool themselves with a fan that lay beside each ; for they seemed to suffer from the heat as much and more than we did, though their dres? 'vas of the most unscrupulously meagre kind. ^ looked harmless enough as we saw them, and it was difficult to trace any evidence in their features of the ferocity which had characterised their recent deeds. And yet they had both taken the lead in one of the most barbarous massacres of whites that had occurred for years. Little Six was in the habit of boasting that he had on that occasion successfully scalped thirteen women and children, and as matiy men. What Medicine Bottle's particular feats had been we did not hear. They were both under sentence of execution, of course, but that did not seem to trouble them. I suppose they consoled themselves with the hope that they were going to the Good Spirit, into whose presence the scalping of whites is, I believe, the surest passport. I have often wondered at the almost paradoxical effect upon the aboriginal heathen races of contact with Christianity. I never have been able to understand how it is that the religion of the Cross, as it sheds its warm light in the presence of the native mind, seems to call into life and action all the evil seeds that i i I i 158 FROM THE MISSISSIPPI 1 11 rankle there, and, once vivified and brought to the surface, choke both soul and body. Whence is this mysterious anomaly ^ I have asked a great many questions here with a view to get some clue to the secret of the notorious extermination that has been stealthily but steadily, like a hidden cancer, doing its deadly work upon the North American Indians, from the day that Columbus first set foot upon the soil. Well-informed people with whom I have conversed have their different theories, but no one of them appears to me satisfactory. Philosophers propound it as an established axiom, without a thought of the horrors of the principle it involves, that all aboriginal races are^ by that very fact, doomed to speedy and inevitable destruction as soon as they come in contact with people of European origin. They declare it to be only a question of time, and call it idle to admit any other basis of calculation when dealing with this matter in a practical way. And, sad to say, modern experience points to the truth of the philosophers' view. Not- withstanding the well-meant efforts of philanthropists to preserve and civilise the scattered remnants of the human family which the progress of enterprise brings to knowledge, sooner or later the same fate overtakes all savage races. Do what governments will to pre- serve the inferior race from the aggression of the superior, the natives " die in the white man's breath;" and contact with Christianity, which should, at least, TO THE ST. LAWRENCE. 159 confer a more extended knowledge of physics, if not a higher moral standard, seems to be to the aboriginal tribes the sure signal of present extinction. Various causes may be assigned which play their part in this wholesale murder. The importation of European dis- eases, particularly smallpox, a scourge which commits amongst the savage races such devastation as the plague-days of old London could not match for viru- lence—the introduction of "fire-water" and tobacco, to which they evince an unconquerable propensity—and the infusion of an unhealthy taste for all the worst practicesof civilised communities— are powerful agencies in the dark work of destruction. Border warfare with tiie new comers and suicidal contests amongst them- selves reduce their numbers, perhaps, more surely than the insidious agencies of civilised vice. But cruelty of borderers and international strife will not alone ac- count for the prodigious revelations of statistics. What there is in the savage nature so abhorrent from the "white" that the two will not mingle, but must con- tend in antagonistic rivalry till the weaker is absorbed in the more powerful solvent, has never been explained. Various efforts are being made to induce the two opposite characters to assimilate themselves, but with- out avail. The Indians in Canada and the Northern States, who have their own allotted territory,, cannot even be persuaded by the example of the active in- dustry around them to till the soil which the respective 160 FROM THE MISSISSIPPI governments reserve to them. They are content to inhabit a desert in the centre of a garden — to typity death in the midst of life. The pheiiomenon of the disease is still a mystery, and no treatment yet at- tempted can resuscitate the fast-failing patient. Behind the fort was a large camp containing several thousand men, recruits, chiefly from the North Western districts. Their tents were mathematically set out — large, neat, and orderly. On the training-ground beside them the men were being put through their manual exercise. The exhibition was by no means perfect, but the performers were fresh hands, and the veterans who were instructing them did not seem to know much about it. They were to march shortly against the Indians. From the terrace on which the fort stands there is a fine view of the Mississippi, and. the Minnesota, which falls into it at this point. We gazed at it for a short time, and then drove on to the falls of Minne-ha-ha, immortalised by Longfellow. I did not expect to come upon such a scene as the poet has idealised, nor an encampment of Indians on the margin of the stream such as he has pictured, which, however it might have added to the landscape, would in their present white-blood-thirstiness have much disconcerted our party; but I own I was not a little disappointed to find that the Falls of Minne-ha-ha were now little else than a tea-garden. Some enterprising speculator TO THE ST. LAWRENCE. 161 from the East has located himself on the roadside, and there has run up a small inn for the sale of spiritu- ous liquors, and seems to find the custom of the numerous pilgrims to the scene pay him for his trouble. I thought that we should be fhe only visitors; in fact, I did not imagine that in this out of the way corner of the world there could be any extensive number of excursionists to a spot so retired from town or village. But an assertion of an intention on my part to bathe at the bottom of his garden made him very red and angry, and no assurance that I had not the smallest idea he had any visitors, or the slightest desire to insult them, nothing, in fact, but the purchase of ''a drink ^' pacified his indignation. The immediate vicinity of the Falls is one of the prettiest little glens conceivable; very narrow, very deep, charmingly wooded, and altogether lovely ; at the head of it is a bold rock, and from the top of the rock should fall the cascade which we had come to see. But, alas, the thirsty sun, which had so sadly reduced the Mississippi, had unmercifully sucked out the vitals of the poor little stream, and instead of bubbling and frothing over the precipice in the sparkling, joyous fulness of heart which has given it its name of the "laughing waters", it was then all shrivelled and parched, and could only drop a few silent tears of melancholy for its wasted condition. I really felt quite sad for the little rivulet, though inclined to II 'A A \l 162 FROM THE MISSISSIPPI :; ti I doubt wlietlier it ever deserved the eulogies whicli poets and painters have bestowed upon it ; but there certainly was the sweetest little pool at the base of the rock, so dark, and deep, and still, that I almost forgave tHe stream for the disappointment it caused me at looking so insignificant. We did not s»tay long — pace poet and painter — but drove on to Minneapolis, a very pretty town on the right bank of the Mississippi, and thence across by a suspension bridge to St. Anthony on the left bank, a similar town, and there we halted for a short time to get a peep at the Falls of St. Anthony. But the water was too low, and all that was to be seen was a mass of tumbled rock of every size and shape, with here and there a little eddy in the gaps between the crags, indications of the terrible rapids that break and foam about them when the river is at its proper height. Thence we mounted the steep which leads to the summit of the bank, and so along the edge of the cliff, till the sun went down upon one of the prettiest scenes I have met with on this Continent. The river ran beneath us at the bottom of a narrow gorge, its banks wooded to the water's edge, and dotted with an occasional house that peeped forth from the dense dark foliage ; and behind us, as we looked back, lay the ])roken rocks of the Falls, with the towers and steeples of St. Anthony, and the bridge and Minneapolis beyond. The sunlight hues were fairy-like, bright and TO THE ST. LAWRENCE. 1G3 diversified as those which I had seen on the Missis- sippi ; and if anything rewarded me for tho long wc ary journey I had taken to get to this, the farthes't point of my North-Western excursion, it was this evening's drive. Darkness soon set in, and we lurned away from the river to make straight for home. The road was primitive and exciting, for it was traversed by nume- rous gullies, which were spanncu by wooden bridges composed simply of a lot of loose planks, very uneven, and very rotten. Some of the planks were broken half oflP, some had great apertures in their centre, some had gone altogether. Why the horses were not thrown or killed, or why the carriage was not let through or upset, to this day I cannot satisfactorily answer. Our driver said the animals were used to the bridges, and so they seemed, for if they did get any one or more of their legs through the timbers, they did not appear to be the least disconcerted, but struggled methodically till they got them out, and resumed their course. At one chasm they took a fair leap, and the carriage fol- lowed them across it in splendid style. I think from my experience of this drive, that cross-country carriage practice would be much less difficult than you might imagine ; and I should suggest to our Irish Turfites a steeple chase in chariots, as an extremely practicable, and I would venture to think sufficiently '^ sensa- tional " termination of a day^s sport. 1' J rl 164 FROM THE MISSISSIPPI A little incident occurred on the road eminently illustrutive of the relative positions of master and ser- vant in the model republic. Some time after leaving the river we came to a small roadside inn, at which our driver pulled up to water his horses. This done, he called to us in the carriage — " Now then gentlemen, come on, guess we'd better have a drink ; it's ^nation hot, and I feel a mind to throw myself outside /(^ 7 Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 .id at the next station, where we dis- mounted, we found in waiting for us a handsome car- riage and pair, sent by our host to take us up to his house. The gate leading to his property was close by, and thence we had a most lovely drive through a prettily wooded glen, resembling those sweet dells that abound in the Scottish Highlands, and at the end of it we emerged upon a low rocky promontory, running out into the bay of Salem, on the margin of which stood one of the prettiest summer residences conceiv- able. There our host received us, and after an intro- duction to his family, we started with him to survey his grounds. They were very tastefully laid out. Nature had done the greater portion of the work for him; what artificial additions he had made were in ex- cellent harmony with the original. A few skilful arrange- ments of loose boulder stones, a wild creeper dexterously trained, a natural cavern ingeniously taken advantage of, sufificed to enhance the beauty of this leaf from Nature's book, and aiford a specimen of landscape gardening which I have rarely seen equalled. His farm was as neat as his garden. His cattle of good breed, some of them fine Aiderneys. His pigs, to my surprise Suf- folk, so clean and sweet, that I felt half inclined to embrace them for old acquaintance sake. His stables. PI m II 192 BOSTON. not less nent and wholesome, so arranged as to keep his horses' heads to the daylight, instead of blinding their eyes by the ordinary confinement of their view to a hundred square inches of blank wall. His barn and yards perfect models of what farm premises should be. It seemed strange to me, I can hardly say why, to find an American ruralising in this way exactly like our country gentlemen. I was not prepared for any- thing half so English. I came out with the idea that everybody l^ved in an hotel, rich and poor alike, and as for English squires in America, I should sooner have looked for a Harrow and Eton cricket match. But here was the model English gentleman reproduced in all his ease and luxury, surrounded by the comforts of an elegant house, a large circle of friends and visitors, carriages and horses for the pretty drives in the neigh- bourhood, yachts and sailing boats for the bay, and spending his leisure hours of relaxation from the cares of public life in just the sort of model farming which pleases the pride and pilfers the pockets of the genuine squire in Old England. Alderman Mechi would hardly guess, perhaps, that he had a disciple amongst the Yankees. I do not suppose the number of such country gentlemen on this continent is any- thing but very small. I can safely assert that I have met with extremely few who could by any stretch of imagination be mistaken for that true type of good BOSTON. 198 manners and good breeding which is to he seen so fre- quently at home. The Yankee may be decently educated, intelligent, aflFable, courteous, but, with all this, I must confess it, he will seldom be a gentleman. There is always something about him which prevents his being classified as such, some vulgarity in his look, his dress, his gesture, his language, that stamps him as unworthy of the name. It is impossible to define precisely what the several distinguishing marks of his degeneracy are. A " boots,'* you know, m tell from the general appearance of the leathers which he has to clean whether their respective owners are gentlemen or not, but I dare say he would find it difficult to describe to you what the different signs are upon which he founds his judgment. So with me and these Yankees. In the same way as a public-school man is generally to be told by his fellows, though the shades of distinc- tion may be so fine that they could give no definite ex- planation of the exact grounds of their decision, so I am unable to lay down in any comprehensive statement the precise method by which I arrive at the general proposi- tion that no Yankee is a gentleman. The voice and intona- tion, however much it grates upon the ear, I put out of the question as a national peculiarity which ought to have little weight in the estimation of individual charac- ter. But there are other points which grate as much upon the senses, of which I can only say this, that I am sure they would lead you to the same conclusion. 13 liS P If tf 194 BOSTON. A friend of mine, a good scholar and an ever ready wit, who emigrated to New Zealand, complained in piteous language of the lack of any educated ears upon which he could crack his classical jokes. I do not urge the same complaint against the Americans, nor have I the same title to do so. But I must say that any Englishman who has had a University educa- tion would find that he had little in common with the ordinary run of Americans, nothing sympathetic between their ideas and his. You may imagine, then, what a pleasure it was to be in the presence of one in whom we could not recognise any of these disparaging indications which we had found so distressingly nume- rous. AVith Mr. Loring it was far otherwise, and the few hours of conversation which we had with him that day passed as agreeably, and I hope, profitably, as any I passed upon the Continent. The chief subject of discussion was the war. It had a painful interest for Mr. Loring — he had a son, a grandson, a nephew, and four cousius then at the front. But lie told us he was no exception to the rest of his countrymen in New England ; he could point out a street in Boston from every house in which had gone forth at least one member of the family to fight for the cause they upheld. I have before hinted that my innocent confidence in the ' Times' had in this respect, as in many others, led me into the most grievous errors. You have been told how surprised I BOSTON. 195 Avas to find in the army of the West so small a pro- portion of foreigners comparatively with what T had anticipated ; and if you consider the enormous number of German and other immigrants who have settled here and enjoyed the privileges of their citizenship, you will see that the alien settlers have scarcely turned out with the alacrity that might have been expected of them, in defence of the government under >vhich they live. But I believe the most inconsiderate par- tisaus of the South will allow that the Western army is composed of the proper stuff', and therefore it is rather with the army of the East that I wish to deal. Now, I am writing this in Washington, which is the head quarters of that army, and I have had already some means of judging of the material of which it is composed. There are Irish in it, no doubt; there are English, there are French and Germans in the ranks; but the proportion is surprisingly less tlian you and I have been led to believe. Nine or ten hundred dollars bounty-money paid down, and high wages besides, are enough in themselves to attract from every quarter of the globe the waifs and strays of humanity. War is a game of chance, and all who have nothing to lose can afford to have a throw in it. A flesh-wound or an attack of rheumatism may send them to the rear undamaged, and a place in the lists of the Invalid Corps is a comfortable sinecure. But if you will not admit that the Northerners theujsclves have borne auv lit. 196 BOSTON. part in the brunt of war, how will you explain the fact that the merchant's office, the tradesman's warehouse, the lawyer's chambers, the colleges and schools, are deserted by their ordinary tenants ; and the very busi- ness of the Treasury, the Post Office, the State de- partment, nay, even the War Office itself, is of neces- sity entrusted to female heads and hands ? If you deny that the Federals have done anything more than provide the money wherewith to bait the hook for alien merce- naries, what is the meaning of the mourning garments in which half the nation is clad ? what is the explana- tion of the widows' weeds that confront you at every step ? It used to be the boast of the liberal-minded Englishman that he would hear the two sides of every question before he ventured to deliver judgment. Has he now forgotten the good old maxim, Audi alteram partem ? Have the influential journals of the day, in their admiration of a heroism, which the Federals as fully admit and honour, allowed us to see any but one side of this great question, and that painted in such extravagant colours as the * Index' itself, its recognised advocate, will not condescend to use ? I do not mean to subscribe to all that has been done by the North. The question is far too vast to enter upon in a simple letter ; but I say that the truth of the history of the last four years has been systematically kept from us by those from whom we had a right to hear it. Mr. Lorinff talked of this with emotion. " Some BOSTON. 197 of my countrymen," he said, " seemed to think that this party feeling and party writing was due as a, measure of retaliation for the empty rhodomontade of the ' New York Herald -/ but the comparison between the power and influence of that journal and that of one like the ' Times," is ludicrous." The ' Herald' is known to be conducted by a man of no principle what- ever — an outcast from our shores and all respectable society here ; and, for all I know, his staff of paper- defiling underlings are men of like origin and cha- racter. The paper circulates, but nobody believes a word he reads there. It sells for its size, the amount of reading contained in it, and the number and raci- ness of its advertisements ; but it exercises no more influence over the thinking portion of the people than does the 'Family Herald' or the ' Eecord' over the actions of the British Government. The ' Times' holds a very different position. It has attained such a power now, that it no longer is the mere exponent of the views and opinions of tlie day, but leads and moulds men's minds at its will. The Americans know this, and weigh every word of it accordingly. Our host was most earnest and impressive in his advocacy of the Federal cause. His quiet easy eloquence seemed to carry us along with him in his exposition of the origin of the war, and the doctrines involved in its justification. He proc^iimed the ques- tion to be none of expediency, or finance, or internal f! m > I 198 BOSTON. ffi . f,t !^i economy, nor even one of fundamental construction of the Constitution or organic law, but one underlying and beyond all these — the question of national life — the question whether the national union should be preserved, and the people continue to exist as a great and independent nation capable of yelf-government and secure from foreign aggression, or be split up and dismembered into any unforeseen number of weak and distracted municipalities, with clashing interests and embittering jealousies, to end eventually, perhaps, in iTiilitary despotism, as their only refuge from anarchy and perpetual war — the question, as he subsequently put it in a great speech in Boston, " Whether twenty million of freemen in arms against four millions of traitors under the rule of three hundred thousand slaveholders should ignomiuiously kneel as suppliants at their feet, to ascertain upon what terms they would condescend to resume their ancient sway in the na- tional Councils ; or what guarantees they would de- mand for the perpetuation and extension of their infernal traffic in flesh and blood :" and when the venerable orator closed his address to us by asserting that he was ready to lay down his life to-morrow for the cause, if he thought that the individual sacrifice would advance it, I felt that I was in the presence of a sober earnestness and devotional patriotism for which the Federals get little credit. But I must leave this subject. After a look at his Washing Cambridj lies abou the long in a pret neat look unworthy There is architect! consist ol style perl imposing but ugly house, no makers ; from tlie larly imp: We ca had mad' undergrac college, s( to mess BOSTON. 199 son's charger, which had become quite unnerved by tlje long list of blooay engagements and the sufferings from exposure through which he had passed, and was now being nursed at home la a pretty paddock near the house, we said good-bye to our host, and were soon again in Boston. Before I take you with me to Washington, I must tell you that we paid a visit to Cambridge, the seat of the University of Harvard. It lies about three miles out of the city, across one of the long low bridges which cross the Charles Eiver, in a pretty situation, amongst handsome timber and neat looking residences. Tlie college itself is utterly unworthy of comparison with its English namesake. There is a library and a chapel, but of neither is the architecture very grand, and the collegiate buildings consist of about half a dozen detached blocks, in a style perhaps less impressive than that peculiarly un- imposing college. Downing. The lecture-hall is large, but ugly. Dining-hall there is none; nor Senate- house, nor " High,'' nor " King's Parade," nor bed- makers; and, generally, I should say that the visitor from the English Universities would not be particu- larly impressed with the American imitation. We called on some friends whose acquaintance we had made, and saw the sort of rooms in which the undergraduates reside. Some of them "room m college, some in lodgings, as with us ; but they seem to mess together at certain of the boarding-houses ii ■ 200 BOSTON. ! >l which surround the college ; and at six o'clock, when we called, our friends had just had tea. This did not sound to us much like the English idea of University life. The students did not appear to have any amuse- ment beyond that of loafing, and loafing in particular about the porch of the Post Office — for letters are never delivered here, and what you want in this country you go for (or without) — no cricket, no rowing, nor racquets ; only loafing, and tea at six ! What a picture of University education ! It really was most melancholy to see these poor youths stalking unhappily about and finishing their bread and butter at the door of their mess-house, in the idea, no doubt, that they were at least following, if not improving upon, the system of University life in old England. There were no " gates." How could an American citizen be subjected to such a restraint ? No sacred grass. Who should keep an American citizen off it ? They were free to go and do as they pleased, how, when, and where they pleased, and the result seemed to me to be that they did nothing. The only thing that could have transported me mentally to the banks of the Cam was the announcement that there was morn- ing chapel at seven ; only that I was at the same time told that the service was Unitarian — I do not know what that is like, but it sounds as if it lasted much longer than ours does as read at " morning chapels" — and that it came directly after breakfast, which was BOSTON. 201 at half-past six. — I do not know what that may be like either, but I cannot fancy anything more unlike the customs of either Cam or Isis. Further on is Mount Auburn, the cemetery for the city of Boston. It is a lovely spot — almost as beau- tiful as Pere la Chaise — ornamented with handsome timber of every variety, and decked with all the extrava- gance with which the French decorate their burial- grounds. The flowers on and around the monu- ments were tasty and elegant. All was in harmony, and not vulgar. I have since seen the cemetery at Baltimore, and that again is as admirable. The burial-ground seems to me to be one of the most con- spicuous ornaments of the large cities of this conti- nent. It is invariably well planted, tastily laid out, though possibly, to the English eye, too highly orna- mental, and well cared-for; and, like the great ceme- tery at Munich, it usually becomes one of the fashion- able promenades of the citizens. Death, in this country, has little of th^ attendant awe which its presence awakens with us. Possibly the Americans are right in discouraging the mysterious repugnance to the sight of it in the death-chamber which the English habits too readily, I think, foster. The fu- neral here takes place often on the day following the death, more generally the second day after, seldom later. Invitations to attend are not issued, as our custom is. All who care to pay the last tribute of f^m-. 202 BOSTON. rei,pect to their departed friend do so. Those who are nearly related or intimately connected with the family come in black ; others in their ordinary dress. Tiie only mourning provided by the officials is a small band of crape for the arm. The corpse lies in its coffin uncovered, in a convenient room ; and there all who attend take their last look at the lifeless features. This done, the lid is soldered down, and the coffin is plp.^ed in a hearse, which is either altogether open or has ddes of glass. The funeral procession is rather a motley one : the variety of the costumes and the ve- hicles detracts from the solemnity of sorrow, which, notwithstanding the dissipated looks of our mutes, acr m panics an English funeral. Women, too, follow the body to the grave; but they do everything in America which the men do, from wearing their hair cut short and close to the head to gum-chewing and platform declamation. Of course I saw Bunker's Hill, and the great monu- ment commemorative of the defeat of the Britishers, as I had previously seen the sacred oak under which Washington first unsheathed his sword in defence of his country ; and though I could not see anything much like a hill upon the spot, yet the height of the monu- ment made up for the want of any elevation in the ground ; and from the top of it there was a magnifi- cent view to be had of Boston mapped out beneath us, and the docks and the shipping beyond, and the bright BOSTON. 203 blue sea in the distance; but I must have wearied you witl» attempts at scenic descriptions, and so I will pass on to the Navy Yard. We had, at first, some difficulty in getting admission; but when once through the gates with the help of an introduction from the landlord of our hotel, we met with every attention and civility from the officers on guard. There was plenty of life there, you may be sure. The exigencies of the war have raised from the earth, as it were by magic, a gigantic Vulcan's workshop in the midst of a city, where four years ago, I suppose, a gun or a shell was a nine days' wonder. Our time was much too short for our own pleasure, as well as that of the cap- tain of the guard, who was anxious that we should see everything — not exactly everything, however, because we were not permitted to look at one of the new Moni- tors which was then being finished for service. Still we managed to get near enough to her to see that her plates were not solid, but composed of five separate layers, a plan which I believe has been found by us far inferior to the solid plate, though I suppose rapidity of con- struction is gained by the American method, and that is the object at which they aim. She certainly was the queerest looking craft that I ever set eyes upon. You have seen them represented in the ' Illustrated London News,' and with accuracy too, only that they are actually lower in the water than those portraits of them would lead you to imagine. This particular one of ii» 204 BOSTON. which I speak showed less than a foot above the water- line, so that practically no part of her was visible but the two ugly turrets in her centre. What a life it must be below ! How any man can be found willing to sink himself in tbis sort of aggravated salmon-box, and gasp at the bottom of a funnel for the few cubic inches of air that can be conveyed down it, with shots playing all around him from an enemy who cannot be seen, and guns above his head that are pretty sure to burst, and torpedoes beneath his feet, and what the Yankees call ** a right smart chance " of swamping if it comes on to blow, is one of the wonders of the world. How the spirit of Nelson must have coloured on receiv- ing the first telegram of these revolutions in the ser- vice ! A hurried view round the forges, the castings both of guns and shell, and a glimpse at the finishing shops, and the scene of activity on the quay which was covered with " Parrott " guns, or ''soda- water bottles," as they are called, from the absurd similarity of their form, and, as I ventured to add, equally brittle nature j and then we had to leave for New York. We did so with regret. The place was more congenial to our natures than any other we had visited. It will always live in my memory as the first town on this continent in which a lady, Canadian or American, thanked me for giving up to her my seat in a street car, and the place where I first learnt that a Yankee could be a gentleman. X. WASHINGTON. On Board the Kangaroo; November, 1864. It was late on Saturday, October 1st, when I reached Washington. I had intended to stop the night in Baltimore, but saw so little there worth stopping for, that I determined to push on at once to objects of greater interest. Our party had left Boston four days before by the night mail for New York. The distance of more than 200 miles was very easily got over, for I had a capital berth in a very comfortable slf^eping- car, and I slept in perfect unconsciousness of what was going on, unaware even of the presence in the opposite berth of two very pretty girls, dozing quietly in front of me, till I was roused, about seven o'clock in the morning, by the attendant of the car, who brought me my boots, and told me that we were in New York. I looked out, and found that our train had become a series of street-cars. It had been split up into seg- ments, two or three cars in a division, to each of which 206 WASHINGTON. r: was attached a tenm of half-a-dozen horses, who rattled us down the centre of the street, through which the rails are carried far into the heart of the city. The time that was occupied in passing to the dep6t I spent in a* tolerably satisfactory toilet. It would be absurd to expect much of the comfort of an ordinary dressin"- room on board either a train or a steam l)oat. I was thankful enough for what means of ablution I could get in the little box attached to the car ; and though it might seem strange to you to nieet a railway- carriage coming down Oxford Street, with a lot of men towelling their faces, and putting on their coats upon the platform at one end of it, and a posse of women polishing up their back hair at the other, I can assure you that I took to it all as naturally as if I had been brought up to the system from my vac- cination. Tiiis is something like independence, if you will. Arrived at the depot, I had nothing to do but to walk up to the hotel, " The Fifth Avenue,'' of world- wide fame, and sit down to breakfast. My luggage troubled me not; it was checked for the hotel, and would follow me '^efore I wanted it. What, I ask, is the just cause or J Tio'diraent whv tLis simplest of sys- tems should not ue imported into England? If rou do not approve of the idea of making your toilette iii a public street, at least you must admit that the Ame- ricans are wise in their attempts to diminish the fatigue of a long night journey; and parents who have thei i Washington. 207 scruples need not let their daughters sleep in the same compartment with a couple of young gentlemen. But these things excite no wonder in the States; and though I find it hard to reconcile myself to this open abhorrence of prudery, I cannot see that any one is much the worse for it. I shall say nothing al^ut New York now, except that my first three days in the city aroused my loudest approbation of its grandeur. We had Washington to see, and Baltimore, and Philadelphia; and so I will leave New York for the present. The cars to Balti- more we-e far inferior to those on tlie Boston line. The train was crammed with soldiers going down to the front, redolent of dirt, tobacco-smoke, and bad language. At four o'clock in the morning we were driving in sections of cars through Philadelphia. It seemed an enormous city, and so we afterwards fou.id it. Thence we pushed on to Baltimore. I had been dozing again, as well as the jolting of the cars would permit me to do, when I was roused by the stoppage of the train, which was again broken up into segments, and shunted on to a steam ferry that was to take us over a small inlet of the sea. And here it was that we first came in visible contact with the presence of war. A Confederate raid had, in the early part of the year, been made upon the country around, with a view of getting at Baltimore ; and strong guards had been necessarily maintained there ever since. So here, when 1 i«iii! li r case. " Am I to go up ?" said I, rather astonished at the off-hand manner of my unceremonious friend, who was retreating down the passage without so much as an offer to usher me into the presence of the great man. " Guess so, walk right in." I did so, though my instinctive habits led me to knock at the door before entering, a piece of delicacy which was, I find, quite superfluous, and there, in slippers and an easy chair, engaged upon the Illustrated London News, I found the secretary of state. 1 explained who I was, produced my letter, and was cordially welcomed. Like his chief antagonist, Little John, Mr. Seward is of diminutive stature, not nearly so long as his despatches, but every bit as difficult to deal with. WASHINGTON. 229 Americans, as a rule, are so free and easy that a stranger is at home with them in a minute, but the secretary is not one of these. He was civil, and courteous, and aflfable, but at the same time unpleasant. One of those men who wait with a smile upon their cheeks till you have finished your spntence, and then sit upon you like a ' Saturday Review.' I talked with him a long time, asked him a great many questions without expecting a direct answer, and listened in admiration to his diplomatical replies. He talked of the English and their constitution, and explained how his was modelled on ours, with a view to the nearest approxi- mation to constitutional perfection. He spoke of the war, of which he admitted that no one could yet see the end ; of slavery, and the difficulty of the problem j of the coming election, which he considered no longer doubt- ful j of the " Anglo-rebel " privateers, and the French occupation of Mexico. He was properly bitter about the English sympathy with the South, and said that no English paper he had seen had the slightest notion of the question at issue. He had written pages and pages to the British government to try and make them understand the war, bnt they were childish or obstinate, or both, and he supposed it would be left to the next generation to reveal the truth in its proper light. Having sufficiently disturbed his equilibrium by getting him on this tender point, I thought it time to go, and retired, but before leaving I got a promise I ii/i 230 WASHINGTON. from him to write to, Stanton, of whom he was evidently in great alarm, for a pass for myself and companions. He did not commit himself so far as to say he thought it at all certain that we should be allowed to go to the front, which he explained was a matter of the greatest favour. I paid several subsequent visits to the secretary of state, and found him on each occasion more obhque and diplomatic than ever. He wrote, however, accord- ing to his promise, but our desired visit to the army caused us an enormous amount of trouble, and only led us to see that red tape and circumlocution are as rampant in Washington as they are in Downing Street or Pall Mall. For teri days we persisted in our attempt, attacked everybody whom we thought in any way likely to facilitate our object, from the British ministers to the porters at the war office ; colonels, captains, provost marshals, military agents, war-office clerks, secretaries, and officers of the sanitary commission j but, alas, all to no purpose. On the tenth day of our labours, just as we were on the eve of accomplishing our object, we were informed that Grant, for some reason best known to himself, probably a disaster which he did not want recorded, refused to give the required pass; and so Seward and we were snubbed. It was a bitter disap- pointment to us. We had wasted valuable time in Washington and done little else but "loaf" since our arrival. All that is to be seen there might have been WASHINGTON. 231 dawdled through in a couple of days. The failure of our scheme, I am afraid, has somewhat embittered my thoughts and words about the place, but I was intensely disgusted at being kept kicking my heels there, when my time was so short, and then having to " make tracks " airpaKTOQ. But, after all, we were not very idle, and how we amused ourselves you shall hear. Washington is now under the thumb of certain military dictators who call themselves provost-maishals, and their rod, I confess, is of particularly hard metal. No one is allowed to sojourn in the city without some satisfactory ground. No one in uniform can show in the street without a properly countersigned pass, for every quarter of the city is paraded day and night by strong patrols, by whom each passenger or lounger is stopped and called upon to produce his papers ; and woe to the luckless wight whose documents are pronounced fishy. It is wonderful to see the complacence with which a Federal soldier will, for the hundredth time in one afternoon, dive into his pocket for the papers that he has already exhibited to nmety-nine corporals and their pickets ; wonderful, indeed, to see the dove-like simplicity with which the A^merican Bird o' Freedom submits to be clipped and caged. But times like these must have their Syllas, and I do not suppose the despotism of the North can compare ia tyranny with that of Rich- mond. We are not inconvenienced by it beyond the ill 232 WASHINGTON. I'' "i nuisance of being confined to the streets and sulurbs without the possibility of getting outside ; at least, unless provided with the requisite pass. I made two or three attempts at the bridges across the Potomac, but was always received with half a dozen bayonets, and ordered back into the city; and as the rifles were all loaded, I thought it imprudent to make a bolt of it and give the sentries a running shot. However, finding that we had so much time on our liands, and being tired of being boxed up in the city, we sought the editor of the New York Times, and with the lielp of his department, and my letter to Seward, added to natural advantages of a general mild- ness ^bout our looks and language, and one or two " white lies," we got a pass from the provost- marshal, and a hearty shake of the hand, and after putting our names to a declaration of secresy as to what we should see and hear, we were allowed to leave the charmed circle. It was a pleasant triumph at the bridge to be chal- lenged by the fiery sentries, and squash them with the production of the magic talisman from the provost- marshal's. They grounded arms and were civil. We crossed the long bridge that spans the Potomac, passed through the earthworks and stockade with which its southern gate is defended, and stood in Virginia. But do not expect me to " gush " about the thoughts that rushed to my brain upon first setting foot in Rebeldom. WASHINGTON. 233 The only sensation I remember tc have experienced at that moment was much lower in order and position, traceable in a great degree, I suspect, tc immoderate excesses in peaches and ice-creams. Our first object was Arlington House, the home of General Lee ; but on the way we visited a negro settlement called Freed- man's Village. It lies upon a high airy bluff over- looking the Potomac just within the Federal lines, and has been established by the Federal Government as an asylum for fugitive or captured slaves. Several thou- sands are now in the settlement, which is composed of a number of streets of log huts, all clean and neat as model lodging houses. The men are taught diflFerent trades, the women needlework, and the children are well schooled. As we came up to the school the little blacks were coming out to play, the very picture of fun and merriment, as full of playfulness as kittens, as boisterous in their ebullitions of it as English school children in their happiest humour; such a contrast from the Yankee school-child, who has not a spark of the kitten in him, who hates toys and games and boyishness, and talks Wall Street shop before he is in his teens. It would have done you good to see these little imps tumbling about in their gambols. They were the queerest little creatures in the world, all hues and shapes and sizes; several of them with hair of the brightest yellow, as if they had been dipped head-first in a paint-pot ; some of them all head, like tadpoles j ' ! 234 WASHINGTON. others all belly, like chimpanzees. I spoke to the schoolmaster, and asked him whether he had any difficulty in teaching them. His answer was, " Less difficulty than he had often had with whites." What a practical refutation of all the lluxleyite bosh which has been talked of late at the Anthropological ! Any one who watches the niggers that wait at table in the Yankee hotels cannot fail to see a marked difference of character between them and white-skinned waiters ; a childishness about their actions, a stolid apathy in their looks and movements, which indicate the absence of intellectual education. But, after alj, they seem to me a good bit brighter than many a clodhopper I have known at home, and I have not the slightest doubt that the clodhopper is none the worse for being free, nor the least faith in the good conscience of those who deny the negro any mental capacity beyond that of an ourang-outang. Ages of ignorance and oppression have smothered the intellectual fire, but it burns yet amongst the embers, and who shall say that it cannot be vivified 'i Freedman's Village is a good work, the only pity is that there is not more of it. Four miles from Washington we found ourselves at Arlington House, standing at the open window of the dining room and looking back across the Potomac at the glorious view of the distant city. The house is placed in a lovely situation on the crest of a beauti- fully wooded slope. It is a queer old-fashioned place. Washington. 285 Vvith heavy columns and flights of steps, strangely like what it is being now turned into — a mausoleum. The doors were all wide open, and we wall' 3d iu un- questioned by the soldiers who were lounging about the entrance. The rooms had been sacked of their best furniture and looked dreary and desolate. A few pic- tures remained upon the walls, one or two of them apparently of merit, whirh ^ance had saved from the bayonet for the Federal Government, who were going to put them up for sale. The carpets and curtains had gone; a few tables and chairs alone were left for the use of the soldiers who occupied the building. In front workmen were busy restoring the outer wall, for the park has been enclosed as a cemetery, and the house is to be the mausoleum. As we came into the park we had stopped to turn into a burial ground, where the victims of one night's assault had been laid to their last rest. The graves were in long parallelo- grams, divided by narrow lanes, each grave so close to its neighbour that the bodies must have all but touched. The Federal gravestones were marked with the names and regiments of those at whose heads they stood; The enemy's, which were promiscuously inter- spersed with them, were delineated with the single word Rebel. I cannot say how many hundreds there were, but I know that as I stood amongst them I was as much moved as if they had been as many thousands. Here was the result of a single assault upon the ranks 'I -I 236 WASHINGTON. of one brigade. Heaven knows how many other spirits fled to their home that night. It was one of the saddest sights I have ever seen. None of the crippled forms I had seen in the streets, none of the bleeding wounds that I had met with in the cars, not even the ghastly look of a poor fellow whose leg had just been summarily amputated at a railway station, turned me so sick and sorrowful as the sight of that soldiers' burial ground. And then to see the home of Robert Lee sacked and made into a cemetery, and to fancy the thoughts that would fill that great heart tQ behold the work of devastation going on, and to feel oneself actually in the presence of war with all its attendant horrors, and in the midst of people blinded t them by the blunting experience of four years' bloodshed. All these thoughts, and others like them, were so strange to me, and in their strangeness so painful, that I doubt whether I ever had a sadder walk than that visit to the heights of Arlington. From Arlington House we made our way across the rough uneven ground of which the southern bank of the river consists to some of the outlying forts that form the defences of Washington. I shall not say much about them ; not that I consider that anything my inexperienced pen might reveal could give such infor- mation to any one as would violate my oath of secrecy ; but because I really know so little about fortifications WASHINGTON. 237 that I cannot undertake to make them interesting. All I can say is that to me the place looked quite im- pregnable. I never found any position in which I could stand without being exposed to a cross fire from at least three batteries. I never saw one battery that was not commanded by half a dozen others. Every fort was in the orthodox star shape, with ditch and drawbridge and bomb-proof barracks; internally a model of engineering skill, and externally a tangled mass of pointed stakes and awkward trees with their branches all turned outwards and sharpened like needles, and black muzzles peering through them; and beyond all was a long line of rifle pits enclosing the whole of the fortifications, which cover an extent of ground that is incredible ; and if this is the sort of thing that has to be confronted before Richmond, and they tell me the works there are much stronger, I do not see, jbr my part, why the place should not hold out for ever. From these heights, and from those of George Town, which we afterwards ascended, upon the opposite bank, the views of Washington were magnifi- cent. The lofty white dome of the Capitol rising out of the dense foliage of its gardens, and towering above the low buildings of the city is always a beautiful ob- ject in the distance ; the basin in which the city lies, the Potomac and its lovely banks, the Italian skies and clear horizon, are worthy of the pen of a Ruskin or the pencil of a Turner ; but distance is everything r i ' 1 ^ i i if ri i ; ^'1 >M 238 WASHINGTON. with Washington, and when you are once inside <;he outskirts the sweet illusion is gone like a dream. I suppose you want to hear something of my im- pressions of the army. Well, to my mind, the Federal soldier is very much like the English militiaman, only that his hair and his legs are longer, his uniform is dirtier, and his whole cut more unmilitary. The dress is blue, Cambridge blue trousers and Oxford blue coat. The oflScers, many of them in entire suits of dark blue, look very much like our officers of the Royal Navy, except that they have no epaulettes. In- deed there is little or no ornament on the dress. The grades are marked by plain gilt bars upon the collar or the wrist or shoulder, and occasionally something extra upon the cap. This is generally the French cut foraging cap, with its diminutive crown ; but some regiments wear a tasty black brigand's hat, with a gold cord and tassel round it, that looks spicy and pic- turesque, and this hat is even sported to a great extent by other regiments when swelling it about off duty. But the Federal uniform is not at all showy or attractive, and if I did not know what a fascination there is in anv toggery, however unsightly, which is designed for military purposes, I should think it marvellous that the Federal officers should be so fond of their uniforms ; but when the 31st Surrey Volunteers see nothing un- becoming in their dress, why should the Yankee cap- tain be ashamed of his ? Tlie invalid corps, which forms a in the n exactly '. seemed As fo goodly ] gular, a] are Irisl German large pr be so, c( grants v and rea of the ( put the] rived fn those wl their de; foreign < presente listen to so I will war shal tioned 1 remarka before t dently i not to 1 i ii||i WASHINGTON. 239 forms a sort of household guard, is completely arrayed in the most radical of blues, and looks for all the world exactly like the sky-blue band of the C. U. V. C. I seemed to see a Sippel in every one of them. As for the men themselves, they are undoubtedly a goodly medley. Lanky, rawboned, scraggy, and an- gular, all who are Thankee; short and wiry, those who are Irish or French ; round and podgy, such as are Germans. I do not see that the foreigners are in any large proportion ; and if they were, why should it not be so, considering the enormous numbers of alien immi- grants who have been annually peopling the country, and reaping the advantages, whatever they may be, of the Government under which they have chosen to put themselves? If there is any benefit to be de- rived from Republican Constitutions, why should not those who attach themselves to them take up arms in their defence ? And, looking at it in this light, the foreign element seems to me by no means largely re- presented in the ranks. But I daresay you will not listen to me on this point in opposition to the ' Times,' so I will leave you to read it when the history of the war shall be impartially written, and pass on. I men- tioned that the men I saw of Sherman^s army were remarkably fine fellows — we shall hear more of them before the war is over. — but Grant's army is of evi- dently much inferior material. However, they nee not to be despised, I can assure you. They arj not ' f 240 WASHINGTON. very perfect in their step, or their movements, or their manual exercise; they are not very strictly discip- lined, and if a man is told to shoulder arms, and wants to blow his nose he will, as I heard one tell his captain that he "will do it presently/' But their organization is well adapted for the country in which they have to fight. As skirmishers, I believe, they are excellent. Thoroughly imbued with the Ame- rican theory of self-help and independence, each man feels himself an important unit in his corps, does battle on his own hook without prompting, and in the wild wooded battle-fields of this continent such tactics are indispensable. The behaviour of the troops in the town is most exemplary. Notwithstanding the pre- sence in the streets and suburbs of 60,000 to 70,000 men, the thoroughfares are as orderly as Belgrave Square. But then the pickets are numerous, and the Provost Marshal's wrath inexorable. But if you 'vant to see a queer sight, come and look at a negro regi- ment. Niggers anyhow are ungainly, and niggers in uniform ^re not soldier-like ; but I must say they do not drill badly. In fact they are so habituated to submission that immediate obedience to orders comes natural to them, and more than one captain has told me that he would far sooner command a company of blacks than whites. It is difficult to get at the truth about their efficiency on the field, but in numerical strength alone they must be very formidable. Their i v WASHINGTON. 24.1 capability for military service has been proved, and it seems to me that they will hereafter form a valuable and convenient weapon to use against any foreign power. For the cavalry that I saw I cannot say much. Their animals looked like superannuated cab- horses : their equestrian attainments were most ele- mentary; they were always bespattered with mud, un- civilised and unwholesome. You cannot be half an hour in the streets of Wash- ington now without seeing a detachment of deserters being again marched off to the front ; for desertion, tech- nically "bounty-jumping," has now become a regular trade, and men have been known to " jump" the bomi+y and ''start off" as many as twenty times. I cannot understand why the Government does not execute summary vengeance upon such rascals, but the only punishment they meet with when caught is to be for- warded to the front, and there, of course, in a country of this extent, the^ slip ofl" again with the greatest ease. If you do not see any Federal deserters you will see a gang of Confederate prisoners under escort to the rear. I saw lots of them being marched past the door of my hotel. Tiiey were always devoid of any uniform, clad in garments of every cut and hue, sometimes coat- less, sometimes hatless, sometimes even with naked feet. Wli it a picture of privation and miserv ! Many of them were fine handsome fellows, some of them old and gray-headed, some almost children, 16 I r ■f I, > 242 WASHINGTON. Terse and true words those of Grant's, that to fill their ranks the Confederate Government had " robbed the cradle and the grave." But the bravery of these men is undisputed. Loudest jf all in their praises have been the Federal soldiers with whom I have conversed : it reflects favorably upon themselves to tell them, but the tales they have told me of indi- vidual heroism are astonishing. The Arsenal claimed our attention for a short while. Like that at Boston, and any other that has been established in the Northern States, it was a scene of endless bustle and activity. Parrotts, and Armstrongs, and Whitvvorths were being finally adjusted upon their carriages ; Enfield and a hundred other sorts of mus- kets being finished for use ; shot being cast, and shell filled ; ambulances in course of manufacture, and am- muniti n in preparation for the front. It really is wonderful to see the gigantic scale upon which all these operations are being carried on — the miles of work- shops that have been erected — the acres of ground that are covered with the deadly apparatus of war — the multitude of the armed hosts of these modern Xerxes^ — the fleets of these baby Nelsons ; and to think that barely tour years back they had hardly a gun or hand to use one. Dogs are provided by nature with the ready implements of warfare, and therefore their delight in biting is instinctive ; but truly fighting seems to come as naturally to human kind. However, I do WASHINGTON. 243 not think the Americans are by choice a military na- tion. They will bark as loud as you like, but biting is not their ppstime ; and I have little doubt that when the end of this war comes they will find it much more congenial to their nature to retire peaceably to their stores and offices than to turn out to fight a foreign foe. There is one other institution of the day of which I must say a few words, and that is the Sanitary Commission. We had a letter of introduction to the secretary, and by his kindness were enabled to learn something of the working of this somewhat anomalous establishment. I say anomalous, because I think the peculiarity of the institution must strike any one from the Old World even more forcibly than the gigantic scale on which it works. It seemed to me so extra- ordinary to find a volunteer association like this co- existing and co-operating with the Government in the administration of those departments wherein we ordi- narily see the executive vested in the Government as their absolute prerogative — to see citizens, men and women, without any other warrant than their patriot- ism, exercising surveillance over the conduct of the State in that very one of its functions which it usually most jealously guards against intrusion — the organiza- tion of the national forces. After that terrible Crimean winter in which our troops rotted away like sheep, till they lost one half of their effective force, our I ii ■ 1 ; ■ It) m i' 244 WASHINGTON. Government agreed to the appointment of a Sanitary Commission to save the remnant of the army; but that Commission had to confine itself to the reorganization of the medical department and the recommendation of hygienic precautions. But the United States' Sani- tary Commission goes far beyond that. Organized originally to secure the greater health and comfort of the troops, it has gradually assumed to itself a hundred collateral duties, till now, after planting its civilian agents, doctors, inspectors, in the midst of every camp, it has charged itself with the duty, not only of taking care of the sick and wounded, but of making army censuses, obtaining transport for the soldiers, both to the field and home again, examining the cause of punishments inflicted, and obtaining redress where equitable, providing pay and pensions ; in fact, defend- ing the interests of the troops, not only against rogues and speculators, but even, in case of need, against the Government itself. The secretary said, and I think justly, that such an organization as this could have no existence in any country but America. It is essen- tially the creature of a republic ; its root is the people — a social body of individual members, born and bred to the spirit of individual inaction, which works by coalition and independent associations. The conduct of the war is entrusted to the Government, but the people fight, and the people have a right to see that their interests are duly cared for by the Government for WASHINGTON. 245 whom they fight — to supplement what the Government has omitted — to oppose what it has done wrongly. The Commission is the people's agent — their trustee, accountable to them for the due performance of the trust committed to it — the welfare of the soldier. This seems to be the theory of the institution. To you it may naturally enough appear to do little else than that which is properly the work of the War Office ; but re- member the circumstances under which the war burst upon the North — the absence of any efficient military organization — the inexperience of the Government in the task entrusted to it — the scale on which all had to be carried on ; and you will better see the origin of the Commission, if not the justification of its enormous powers. Still, I confess that it is difficult to under- stand the spirit of the chiefs who will tolerate such interference with the executive. It would be impossible, in the space of a letter, to give you any idea of the colossal work which the Com- mission undertakes. The honour of having given the first impulse to it belongs to the American women. Fort Sumter had hardly fallen when ladies' societies were formed in every corner of the Union to aid the patriot- ism of the soldiers by a devotion to their interests as patriotic. Bazaars were held, supplies collected, money poured in with munificent liberality; and the good work still continues so full and free, that the Com- mission has now a million dollars in its hands, and 1 " 11 i''t M% 246 WASHINGTON. supplies more numerous than it can distribute. Every local agency, however distant, is connected with a State centre; each State central office, with one of the two grand central administrative agencies for the army of the East or West ; which last are directly connected with the respective armies upon the field. The or- ganization of the system seems wonderful. The rami- fication of its many branches, as depicted on the ingenious chart which the secretary has made, asto- nished us with its compass and simplicity. I cannot stop to tell you of half that the secretary showed us. It was a most interesting day that we spent in visiting the receiving houses where the supplies are stored, the offices where the inquiries of relatives are answered, and those where the soldiers' papers are corrected, and their wages and pensions paid ; the homes where dis- charged and furloughed men are housed, and fed, and kept safely from the jaws of the rogues and sharpers who are ever ready to prey upon them, until they can be conveniently forwarded to their respective destina- tions. This last — the Special Relief service — is one of the most striking works of the Commission. It steps in with the needed advice and means of relief just where, under the rigid regulations of military rule, the army authorities leave the broken-down, furloughed, discharged, or invalided soldiers, and takes them forcibly into its safe keeping. Add to all this the provision of hospitals, soldiers' homes, hospital trains, writing ma- WASHINGTON. 247 terials and stamps, means of transit, and a thousand other acts of benevolence, and, not least, the proposed establishment of sanitaria, where maimed men are to be taught the means of getting a livelihood by the use of the members which the chances of war have still left them ; and you will get an inkling of the important part which the Sanitary Commission plays in the his- tory of the present war. There are two notorieties of the day of whom I have a little to say, and then I shall have done with Wash- ington. The first is General Grant. I knew that the general had been for several days in Willard's Hotel, but I never was able to see him. I had asked several people to point him out to me in the hall and reading- rooms, but was always met with the observation that he had that instant brushed up against mej but he was always away and out of sight before I could get a look at him. He haunted me like a will o^-the-wisp that I never could come up with, till I began to think myself the victim of a 1st of April hoax. But one morning at breakfast I sat opposite a little chap with an enormous appetite — a short, pug-nosed, monkey- faced little fellow, with a close-trimmed beard, like a quickset hedge, rather red, and very prickly; and I do not know that I should have taken any particular notice of him, if he had not been so silent and voracious as he was. Coming out of the coffee-room, I asked a waiter for the hundredth time to show me the general. ri ;1 m 248 WASHINGTON. He turned and pointed to a dumpy little man then walking towards us— no other than my little table companion with the powerful digestion. The waiter'b revelation amazed me. The figure to whom my atten- tion was directed was the very last amongst the hun- dreds in and out the hotel every day upon which I should have pitched as being that of the General Commander-in-chief of the amy of the Potomac. Such an unmilitary, insignificant exterior could not, I could have wagered anything, cover the soldier-like material of which Ulysses Grant has shown himself to be composed. I stepped after him and took another stare, but it only confirmed my astonishment. He looked more like a mechanic than ever, and a .very ordinary one, too. How often it is that one's antici- pations of great men are grievously disappointed by a glimpse of the original — how the ideal picture is dashed to atoms by the photograph ! I never had my aerial castle more thoroughly deraolished than in the case of General Grant. He may be a good horse to go, but he is a most undoubted rum one to look at; or, as the Yankees say, " he's a smart old 'oss, but his looks is very small pertaters." The general was in Wash- ington upon a consultation with the President as to an intended attack on Richmond, in which I heard, on good authority, that the general purposed to sacrifice the lives of 25,000 of his men— the sum at which he set the cost of success — ascooUyand deliberately as a man might WASHINGTON. 249 talk of venturing a stake of twenty-five cents upon any of the gambling-tables of New York. It is a horrible way of doing business, and so think his officers ; but Grant believes it the cl\eapest way in the end, and life in America is held cheap as dirt. But for all this cold- blooded indifference to the value of life, and bulldog tenacity of purpose. Grant is a popular man with those whose lives he plays with, and for no other reason, I believe, than that he refuses to swell about in his uni- for'n and distinctive marks of his exalted rank ; but he has oi: er claims upon the favour of the country, and the people look to him as the general who is to give the South her death-blow. The other celebrity of whom I have a few words to say is Mr. Lincoln. I had been very anxious to get an introduction to him ; but the summer vacation was but half through, and he was only in Washington a few hours every day, so that my chance of an interview seemed small. However, as I observed before, public life in America has no private side at all. What is an American citizen elected to the Presidency and paid for but to sit at home and listen at all hours to the wants of all who choose to assail him, from the clouds of hungry office-seekers to the country bumpkins lion- ising the city ? So we went to our friend the Under- Secretary of the Treasury, and told him we wanted to see the President, and could he manage it for us ? Oh, yes ! his daughter knew Abe well ; she would take us ft^'( ¥, r I i M 250 WASHINGTON. up in the evening to his country seat — the thing was as simple as possible. Accordingly^ at seven o'clock one evening, I and my two fellow-travellers called in a carriage at the Under-Secretary's, and carried off his daughter with us. We had hardly seen her before, but that made no diflFerence, and she was emphatically one of those strong-minded young ladies (and what American girl is not ?) who can take care of themselves without chaperons, and very well, too. It was dark when we reached the President's residence, so that we could see little of what it was like, beyond the fact that it stood in a sort of park, and was guarded by a regi- ment of troops, encamped picturesquely about the grounds ; for the house is some way beyond the Fe- deral lines, and the neighbourhood is infested with guerillas, to whom the President's head would be worth its weight in gold. There is a hospital in the en- closure, and Stanton, the Minister of War, has a house there, too ; so that there is quite a nursery of govern- ment officials under the protection of these particular bayonets. We drove up to the door, and being challenged by the sentry, replied with becoming modesty that we wanted to see Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. He let us pass, and we rang. I rather expected the door to have been opened by the disreputable coachman; but we were waited upon by a buttonless buttons, apparently the sole domestic on the premises, to whom we told our v, WASHINGTON. 251 wish. He suggested that it was rather late for an in- terview with Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln, and as it was then considerably past eight, I thought the hint very rea- sonable. Not so the Secretary's daughter. "With ready wit and admirable aplomb, she bade the officious page to go in and tell his master that there were three gentle^ n there, who had come three thousand miles for the press purpose of seeing him and his lady, and did not intend to p:o away till they had done so. The message, or the way in which it was delivered, or both, frightened the page, and I suppose the President, too. Who he imagined the three distinguished visitors to be, or how much his anticipations were disappointed, I know not ; but at any rate he yielded at once to the ultimatum of our fair companion, so far, at least, as to consent to gratify us with a sight of himself; but Mrs. Lincoln had retired to her room, and was not well enough to come down. I. must confess I was very much ashamed of myself for disturbing a quiet couple in this unceremonious way ; but it seemed to be all en regie, and if you are in Turkey, as the burlesque writers say, why not do as the Turkeys do ? We were usher id into a moderate-sized, neatly furnished drawing-room, where we were told the President would see us imme- diately. We had sat there but a few minutes, when there entered through the folding doors the long, lanky, lath-like figure that we had seen descending from the one-horse-shay, with hair ruffled, and eyes very sieepy. m 253 WASHINGTON. and — hear it, ye votaries of court etiquette ! — feet en- veloped in carpet slippers. We all rose somewhat confused by this abrupt introduction to the presence of the highest in the land, except, of course, the Secre- tary's daughter, who immediately offered her hand to the President, and in a few apt words explained who she was, and why she was there. Mr. Lincoln ad- vanced to me and my fellow-travellers, shook each of us warmly by the hand, expressed his pleasure at seeing us, and told us to take seats and make ourselves com- fortable. We did so, and were at home at once. All my uneasiness and awe vanished in a moment before the homely greeting of the President, and the genial smile which accompanied it ; and had they not, a glance at one of the carpet slippers jogging up and down upon the knee of the other leg in the most delightful free- dom of attitude, would have reassured me, were I a Nathaniel Winkle. The conversation was briskly kept up by the Presi- dent. It began, naturally enough, with questions about our tour, and the invariable interrogation that every American puts to a stranger as to what he thinks of *'our great country;" and then, after a passing allusion to the war, and a remark that we were seeing his country at an unfortunate time, Mr. Lincoln turned to England, and its political aspect and constitution ; and thence he went off, unasked, into a forcibly drawn sketch of the constitution of the United States, and the materia! of the since la Americs ten Eng tucion i an Ame to indue as a cun woman, ject. T get rath to listen authorit; was ver what ou iaunchec svstems landed (C WASHINGTON. 253 material points of diflPerence between the governments of the two countries. I have frequently remarked, since landing, the accurate knowledge possessed by- Americans upon a subject of which nine out of every ten Englishmen are in utter ignorance. The consti- tution is one of the first things which is drilled into an American child ; not that it requires much drilling to induce him to imbibe it — he takes to it instinctively as a curate to his bread and scrape — and any one, man, woman, or child, can give a fair exposition of the sub- ject. We had heard several before this, and began to get rather tired of them ; but we were glad, 'of course, to listen to anything upon the matter from the highest authority in the land, especially as his commentary was very lucid and intelligent. Of course he asked what our trade was ; and hearing that it was law, he launched of into some shrewd remarks about the legal systems of the two countries, and then talked of the landed tenures of England, and said we had some " queer things in the legal way'' at home, of which he seemed to think " quit rents" as queer as any. And then he told us hew, " in the State of Kentucky, where he was raised, they used to be troubled with the same mysterious relics of feudalism, and titles got into such an almighty mess with these pettifoggin' incumbrances turnin' up at every fresh tradin' with the land, and no one knowin' how to get rid of 'em, as this here airth never saw ;" and how he managed to relieve the titles. mn 254 WASHINGTON. I i and made his first step to fame in doing so. It was a treat to hear him talk of his early life, with a certain quiet i ride in his rise »rom the bottom of the ladder. And why is it not a matter to be proud of ? and where is the sting of the jeers of our English journals against the humble origin of Lincoln, the "rail-splitter?'' Abraham Lincoln has enemies enough, Heaven knows ; but " he never makes a friend that never makes a foe ;" and I am quite convinced that the President has many excellent qualities, Avhich will some day or other be recognised and appreciated. As for the stories in cir- culation about his tyranny and heartlessness, I do not believe a word of them. Just look at his physiognomy; it is not beautiful — Mrs. Lincoln herself could not make it so ; but at any rate you will see a winning smile in his eye, which, if nothing else can, will give the lie to such calumnies. But sit and talk with him for an hour, and note the instinctive kindliness of his every thought and word, and say if you have ever known a warmer-hearted, nobler spirit. The conversation next turned upon English poetry, the President saying that when we disturbed him he was deep in Pope. He seemed to be a great admirer of Pope, especially of his "Essay on Man;" going so far as to say that he thought it contained all the re- ligious instruction vv^hich it was necessary for a man to know. Then he mused for a moment or two, and asked us if we could show him any finer lines WASHINGTON. 255 if I than those ending, as he quoted them without hesi- tation— " All nature is but art, unknown to thee ; All chance, direction, which thou canst not aee ; All discord, harmony not underston ; All partial evil, universal good : And, spite of pride, in erring treason's spite, One truth is clear, whatever is, is right." And herej on getting to the last few words, his in- stinctive humour broke out, for to an extremely flat remark of mine upon the beauty of the verses he had repeated, he replied with a smile — " Yes, that's a conveiiient line, too, that last one. You see, a man may turn it, and say, ' Well, if what- ever is is right, why, then, whatever isn't must be wrong/ " And then he went off into a broad laugh, and we laughed, too — not so much at the joke, Avhich we thought decidedly poor, as at the way in which he delivered himself of it. The laugh ended, and I rose to go. I had heard the President make a joke — a very mild one, it is true — but I felt that the second great object of my visit to the country (Niagara being my first) had been achieved, and my mission, so to speak, was accomplished. The Secretary's daughter, after another hint at her regret that we could not have the chance of seeing Mrs. Lincoln — to which the Pre- sident replied, " I guess we shall not get to see Mrs. it pi 25b WASHINGTON. Lincoln down here again to-night" — rose and thanked him for his courtesy in according us so pleasant an interview; and the President, in return, assured her and us that the meeting had been equally agreeable to himself; and thanking us cordially for coming to see him, gave us each a hearty grip of the hand — it was much more than a shake — and we withdrew. So ended our visit to the President, a much more plea- sant one than I ever had with any other potentate ; and here shall end my talk of Washington, for I fear that I must have wearied you with details enough, though perhaps you may be willing to excuse them as a simple record of an evening with one of the great historical characters of this century. The] of the word, P each hs shall no them, b made uj we pro( cities oi think Pi street- ai a whole, I should suppose great th( white pa uneasine buff-brio XI. PHILADELPHIA AND NEW YORK. London ; Christmas, 1864. There still remain two of the most important cities of the Union of which I have had no time to say a word, Philadelphia and New York ; and yet they would each have afforded material for an ample letter. I shall not now trouble you at any length with either of them, but simply give you a few extracts from a diary made upon the spot. And first of Philadelphia, whither we proceeded direct from Washington. Of all the cities of the American continent which I visited, I think Philadelphia pleased me most. In grandeur of street-architecture the Quaker City is unsurpassed, as a whole, by New York ; in cleanliness it is unrivalled, I should imagine, by any city in the world. I do not suppose any Dutch village could match in purity its great thoroughfares. A speck of dirt upon the snow- white pavements of Philadelphia would cause as mucli uneasiness as a chalk-mark on a sweep's nose. The buff-bricked houses, with their green blinds, looked to 17 258 PHILADELPHIA. me as if they had just come out of a bath. The paint was everywhere as fresh and bright as if it had been laid on yesterday. Of the streets themselves I need tell you little ; they are, like those of every other city of the continent I saw but Boston, straight as the furrows of a well-ploughed field ; but unlike Chicago, and Buffalo, and Detroit, and Washington, less wide and straggling, and so, in my opinion, more handsome. The lions to be seen are the Hall of Independence, where the famous Declaration was signed — a grand piece of composition, by the bye, with which I wonder the University professionals do not experimentalise, in preference to many specimens of classical English which they operate upon for Greek or Latin prose. The pride which the Americans take in lionising a Britisher over the hall is thoroughly characteristic of the people, I suppose I was questioned a hundred times about it by various parties who wished to get a rise out of me. Had I seen it? When should I see it? Should I mind seeing it ? Surely I should not leave the conti- nent without a look at the arm>chair? Did I notice thi mk-stand and the pen ? Well, I have seen it, and I do not think much of it. It is a dingy old room, unworthy of the name of hall, extremely dirty, and not particularly well cared-for. However, it is one of the few historical antiquities that the Americans have to show, and, as such, it was of great interest. But I must say I thought the view from the summit of the steeple — Nes works. ware f< river is of the 1 the bar scale ; of und( nificent the san bining < to cone manner voirs ai hav3 bei The scei most be pretty vi upon th( an oppo] by them Close a white ] with no and han lege, whi by one ( PHILADELPHIA. 259 steeple above the hall much the best part of the show. —Next amongst the lions are the park and the water- works. These works are constructed upon the Dela- ware for the supply of the city. The water from the river is forced up by a mill, worked by the natural fall of the stream into enormous reservoirs many feet above the banks. Tiie works themselves are on a tremendous scale ; but we in this country can show the same sort of undertakings on a scale, I dare say, far more mag- nificent. However, I doubt if the English people have the same faculty that the Americans possess of com- bining ornament with utility. It would be impossible to conceive anything more tasty and elegant than the manner in which the slopes and vicinity of the reser- voirs are converted into ornamental gardens, which have become the fashionable promenade of the citizens. The scenery of the Delaware at the spot in question is most beautiful : lofty banks, covered with fine timber, pretty villas peering through the foliage, lovely walks upon the wooded slopes, have given the Philadelphians an opportunity for a public park which is justly called by them unique. Close by is another lion—the Girard College— a white marble edifice, in the style of a Greek temple, with noble columns, like those of the Parthenon, and handsome steps leading up to them. The col- lege, which is designed for poor orphans, was shown us by one of the masters; and we were much asto- ■A Art 'km H &m 260 PHILADELPHIA. .• 1 nished by the excellent system of education which Is pursued within its walls. The children are taught various trades — not only the practical work, but the theory of the thing as well. A lecture on electricity was being delivered to them when we were there, illus- trated by the most perfect instruments that I have ever known in the possession of a school. In fact, so far as I have seen or heard anything of the general edu- cation of the people, it is quite evident to me that the Americans are far in advance of us. You have only to talk for five minutes to the first person you meet in the street — a common labourer, if vou like — to find out that they have solved a question which is puzzling the brains of our legislators to little or no purpose. For mj' own part, I can see little force in the applica- tion to the educational question of the argument that no one values what is freely given to him so much as that which he has to pay for. The axiom may be often true enough ; but this matter concerns the children rather than the parents ; and it seems to me a cruel answer to give to those immediately concerned, that a free education is to be withheld from them because, forsooth, their parents would not appreciate it ; and so the child is to have no teaching unless the parent is able to pay the sum which is supposed necessary to secure its due appreciation. The free-schools of Ame- rica diffuse throughout the Union an amount of popular education which I do not believe we shall ever, arrive PHILADELPHIA. 261 at until we follow a similar system. There a cliild from the lowest ratiks of life may be trained and fitted for the highest without the expenditure on his educa- tion of a single farthing ; school-books even are found liira gratis. From the infant or primary school he passes on to the second school : from that, if worthv. he is transferred to the third stage — the academy — whence he is turned out into the world with a store of practical knowledge which eminently fits him for com- raeicial life ; and all gratis, and therefore, I suppose, unappreciated ! Go to the States, and see for yourself. Talk with the people, and hear their wonderful amount of what we call "general information;" look at their libraries, their reading-rooms, their cheap literature, the extraordinary number of their daily journals, tlieir love of reading for reading's sake. See, too, their admira- tion of the highest styles of English authorship ; their fondness of Shakespeare, whom I really think some of them believe to have been an American ; their love of Tennyson, whose last poem, which I bought at Chicago, has ha'l almost as extensive a sale in America as it has had at home. Read the report of the Schools Com- missioners, and see the evidence of the scientific men examined by them, to the effect that geological and such-like works find a readier sale in the States of the Union than they do in this country. And then say if you think the Americans fail to appreciate the advan- tages of education. But the subject is too compre- I'i. m &■ lVh 262 PHILADELPHIA. 11 -f-- hensive for a hasty letter, and I must tell you some- thing more of Philadelphia. It was election time in the State of Pennsylvania. The State officers were to be ebcted the day after I arrived, and this, the first of the State elections, was looked forward to with intense interest by the whole Union as an indication of the ultimate result of the coming Presidential election. Pennsylvania's vote "the key-stone State" — has generally decided the final judgment of the other States ; and so the excite- ment was quite sensational to see which party she would return as her representative, the Democrats or the Republicans. I do not think the Republicans had much apprehension about their ultimate success; but in the city itself tiie Democrat party was known to be very strong, and the contest likely to be severe. The streets, of course, were very gay. Americans are al- ways hanging out flags; and by the time I reached Philadelphia, I suppose I had seen a greater quantity of floating canvas than I had seen in the course of my whole life. But all the banners that had met my eye in the course of my travel across tlie States were no- thing as compared with the endless display which that day waved from mast and pole in the streets of Phila- delphia. Over the roof of every hotel, and above the smokeless chimneys of the houses, out of the windows of the tall marble warehouses, and over the doorways of the stores, fluttered, in every size and shape, the FUILArELFHIA. 263 everif -^.ing stars and stripes. You cannot imagine the lativ '. partiality of a Yankee for the abstract theory of • fi.^^. I assure you that I have grown so weary of the practical results of this monomania that I began at one time to see stars and stripes in everything I turned my eyes to. The sale of flags must be enor- mous. The war has put them at a premium ; and not barners only, and pennants, and standards ; for the shop-windows blaze with the national emblem printed and woven in stuffs of every kind that can be converted into handkerchiefs, shirts, cuffs, or collars. If the men ever wore any nether garments but the eternal *' sabbaticals," which they do not, I have no doubt I should have seen the stars and stripes floating round their spuidle calves, or tucked into their Wellingtons. If the women ever condescended to wear anything half so quiet, which they do not, I should have expected to see their bonnets and dresses starred and striped like their handkerchiefs. But stars and stripes even are not enough for Philadelphia on her election-days. She breaks out in a perfect flag fever ; and so, besides all the national banners that wave by hundreds from each side of the streets, she strings across every tho- roughfare, above the heads of the car and carriage drivers, whole acres of variegated stuffs blazoned with all the electioneering symbols that the sign-fabricators can concoct — portraits of the rival candidates, treated with unmistakable partiality by heavily biassed pencils ; ijl I I ,(1: 264 PHILADELPHIA. iff M f short biographies, and characteristic sayings of the various competitors, compiled by commentators more partial still; deifications of their own man, and libel- lous calumniations of the foe ; terse condensations of the principles and tenets of the two parties, and the arguments for supporting this or that. You might walk for hours up and down the streets with the back edge of your collar in the nape of your neck, scanning and reading the endless roll of pictures, mottoes, senti- ments, and sensation that flaunts across the centre of the road. Have you ever been in Genoa ? If you have you will recollect how in that wonderful city of extremes of new and old, good and bad, grand palaces and filthy alleys, side by side in harmonious discord, there is invariably to be seen fluttering from the win- dows something that adds to the inexhaustible supply of colour — sometimes, perhaps, a curtain, sometimes a bed, sometimes a carpet, sometimes a line-full of tat- tered clothes, a string of the brightest, gaudiest hues — always something exquisitely out of place and artis- tically picturesque. I do not mean to say that Phila- delphia is in tlie smallest way like Genoa. Perhaps there are no two cities in the world more unlike. You might drop a pin^s head on the snow-white pavements of Philadelphia and find it as easily as your glove ; you might almost drop your glove in Genoa and lose it as readily as a pin^s head, But I must say that the aspect of the Quaker City brought back to me most PHILADELPHIA. 265 vividly the lights and colours of old Genoa, only that it was much more like Greenwich fair, save that it was far too respectable. The streets, you will gather then, were gay enough, and the people, too, were all astir. Lincoln and M'Clelhm badges were sported like dolls on the Derby day. Knots of loungers were talking earnestly on the side-walks, eager faces were hurrying to and fro ; but where was the row ? My only idea of an elaotiou was the hustings, which I soon found the Americans did not keep ; and not being able to make them understand what I wanted to see I naturally enough, as I thought, asked to be shown the place where " all the row " was. They laughed, and said I should not find any. What, universal suffrages, ballot-boxes, Baines and Belrkeley, and no row ? I repeat it, none whatever. The votes were taken at certain houses fitted up for the occasion distributed throughout the different wards of the city, whither the electors repair to vote, and these polling places are known as " precincts.'' By the precincts stand a few men with a number of small bundles of paper slips neatly tied up with a piece of thread, on which are printed the names of the several candidates for the offices that are to be filled up. These are the voting papers or tickets. Each party has its ticket distributors, who take care that every one shall be duly presented with a proper bundle. The electors instinctively form themselves into a queue, and advance ::il 266 PHILADELPHIA. in order to the windovv at which the votes are taken, and there they deposit in the box one or other of the two tickets, republican or democratic, as their taste and fancy lead them. This done they move off as quietly and orderly as if they were in church. No speechifying, no hooting, no peelers and rotten eggs. Well, I thought, if this was the result of voting by ballot, it was the tamest thing imaginable, and if I never opposed it for any other reason I certainly should object to it as the death-blow of all the fun that is to be got out of an election. But my hopes of some excitement were not entirely blighted. The day passed off mildly enough, but when the business was done, and the results were made known, I began to see that the true Anglo Saxon mob element was not altogether extinct. The head^quarters of the two parties were established opposite to one another in the main street, and there, as the evening came on, there cougregated a crowd as noisy and boisterous as any British elector could wish to see. By ten o'clock the results of the voting in the various v/ards were coming in fast and ominous, and as they arrived they were posted up in a transparency, for no Stentor's lungs could have conveyed them intelligibly to the noisy throng below. The night drew on, and the excitement increased. Each fresh announcement of the state of the poll was hailed with louder cheers and hisses than the last ; and then, about eleven o'clock, PHILADELPHIA. 267 the streets were besieged by processions of representa- tives of the different wards, bearing before them iu a transparency their respective numbers, with the total result of the voting in their several departments. Some were preceded by bands, some carried torches, some lanterns. In all, the men walked in long rows stretching across the breadth of the street, sweeping before them, or on to the pavement, all who did not care to join them. Being anxious to see where they went and what became of them, I joined the Elever ih. Ward which had carried Lincoln by a large majority, and placing myself in the centre of a ro^.y of extremely noisy electors, I paraded a considerable portion of the town iu this novel and exciting formation. Things went on smoothly enough barring a menacing storm of growls and hisses through which we had to pass at the democratic head quarters, until unfortunately iu one of the narrowest streets of all, we met face to face the Eighth Ward which had inscribed upon its trans- parency an overwhelming majority for M^Clel! a. I had been anticipating a crisis of this sort and wonder- ing what would be the efTecl of it. But I need not have wondered. What cou'd it be but an al.nighty v^w ? The two bands broke off iu the i 'ddle of their respective bars, and met in deadly conflict. The lanterns went out, the torches descended v.u il^e heads of the unwary, the democratic transparency got upset, and our's received a bullet through its centre. Some 268 PHILADELPHIA. rushed forward to join the melee, some fled to the rear. Objecting to pistols, I took tlie latter course, and in the asylum of a friendly chemist's waited till the fray should cease. Two or three more pistol shots were exchanged, and some one was said to be wounded, but nobody seemed to take much notice of it, and in a short time the combatants b^r' had enough of it and dispersed. Who was hit I - er heard. The chemist appeared to think it nothing out of the common, and .the papers said not a word about it ; but pistols are fair at any time in America, and a fortiori at an election. It was getting on in the small hours of the morning before I finally reached my hotel, and even then, and all night long, the streets were occupied by processions and crowds. What the actual result was it was utterly impossible to determine. Each side claimed a clear majority in each and every ward, and the state of uncertainty in which I went to bed was only aggra- vated by the morning papers, which proved, by incon- testable evidence, that their respective parties had been magnificently triumphant. However, I must say no more of the election. I will only add a word about ray hotel, the Con- tinental, the largest but one in the States. The prize Mammoth of these monstrous lodging-houses is that in the city of St. Louis, which has beds for half the State of Mississippi, and even then is so crowded that it has to litter down some of its visitors fifteen or PHILADELPHIA. 269 sixteen in a room. Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum, what a smell of blood for the mosquitoes ! Do not imagine that I was subjected to the same infliction at the Con- tinental. The house was preposterously full in conse- quence of the election, but I rebelled openly on being shown into a dormitory with beds enough in it for a hospital ward, and by turning on pretty strongly the Civis Romanus tap, I succeeded in obtaining an English- man's birthright, a .oom and castle to myself. In one of my earliest letters I attempted to give you some little idea of the hotel life of America, but I had not then seen it in its grandest scale. All that I then said of the size and stir and bustle of these leviathans may be multiplied by ten, and that will still leave a margin for due allowance for the microscopic properties of an impulsive pen. The dining-halls, the corridors, the ladies' boudoirs, the lifts and staircases themselves, were at the Continental too tremendous in Egyptian- like largeness and magni'iicence to give me any chance of gaining credit for my story if I tell it you in detail. Besides, what notion could you form of the house from a dry list of facts and figures ? What definite idea have you ever got out of any statement of the super- ficial area of a continent, or the estimated distance of a planet, out of any statistics indeed at all ? Would that I had John Leech's pencil to portray the scene of gaiety atid amusement that unrolls itself from morn to eve within the walls of these hotels; or Charles .._»*• 270 PHILADELPHIA. Dickens's pen to tell of the endless flow of life and labour, langour and love, that never ebbs from the seven o'clock breakfast to the midnight supper; how the men bustle about the staircase, or loaf and lounge ueside the counter in the hall ; how they sit and spit over their daily papers, and stand and spit about the bar ; how they sprawl on the chairs at tlie barber's shop, and smoke like chimneys everywhere ; how the women dress and sail about the corridors, how they feed at all the meals, how they talk politics and city markets in nasal notes an octave too high ; the jigs they play on the drawing-room piano, the instruments they play upon, and how they play them. Nothing can be more difficult of investigation than English life to a foreigner. Hedged round by all the impenetrable barriers of caste prejudices and cold reserve, and running in a hundred different grooves distinct and separate each from each, the English people in private life must seem to the inquiring stranger as unapproach- able as the Tomb of Hebron ; but in the States it is far otherwise, and even if it were not, the hotels them- selves would give the traveller an insight into the manners and customs of the country the like of which he could not get elsewhere. I do not for a moment wish you to infer that all America lives in hotels according to the popular notion of their mode of living entertained by us at home. But every hotel is a portrait in miniature of the city in which it stands. PHILADELPHIA. 271 In its halls, and dining-rooms, and around its bar, you may meet a representative of every class in the social scale. Merchants, lawyers, ministers of all creeds, soldiers, sailors, farmers, schoolmasters, can be met and talked to, and questioned, and joked with, as in their own private studies. Ladies, young, old, ugly, or pretty, can be seen and heard in their indoor manners. Boys and girls can be seen and wondered at in their utter ignorance of child-like playfulness. You can sit down at table with the Commander-in-chief and see him polish off his corn and iced water, and follow him down to the bar and scrutinise him over his cocktails. You may see the prettiest girl in the Union without her bonnet, and wonder how long it took her to do her hair; or hear the ugliest talk of stocks, and wonder where she learnt it all. You may stare at children at their meals going through the carte from top to bottom without parental interference or control, and marvel at their ever attaining a proper development under such a regime as that. You can get an insight — superficial it may be, but even that is veiled from you anywhere else — into social life of every grade, high, low, rich, poor, all ages and denominations, and study the habits of every class, and manners (when they have any). And all this without the slightest personal inconvenience, for you need do nothing but lounge about and keep your eyes and ears open, while the living diorama hurries on around you. And 7-: 272 NEW YORK. i the show, too, is cheap enough, little above the daily expense of a stall at an ordinary theatre, and far more instructing and amusing. English people think it English to affect a dislike of these establishments, but to a visitor they are everything. Frenchmen — and they are very easily amused — say they die of enmd in England, but no stranger need suffer from that disease amongst the /... tmmm 280 NEW YORK. a decent room, but in a dirty narrow strip of gallery, a sort of boarding-school pie, nothing but crust, with a few dusty shelves on the inside, containing a mass of nothing higgledy piggledy, unimaginably mouldy and abominable. It is utterly impossible to make out any single article exhibited. Possibly that is so upon principle, for it is perfectly certain that Barnum's Museum would never contain anv genuine wonder. The only thing I did decipher was a group of wax figures, playfully labelled " The Royal Family of England." Their style and execution was so atro- ciously vulgar and infamous, that I was half ashamed to be seen staring at them. But what is the use of being indignant at being hoaxed by Barnum. Did I not go into the trap with my eyes open ? Did I not, as I paid my 50 cents, know that I was throwing' it away ? Then why storm at the imposition ? Fancv- bazaar prices are at times very aggravating; but if' a young lady gives you no change out of half a sovereign upon the purchase of a two-and-sixpenny tooth-brush, or charges yo. eighteen-pence for a strawberry which she has kissed, you have at least the consolation that she does not pocket the receipts herself. Now, I must say it is somewhat degrading to think that you are supporting an impostor who has lived for years upon the greenness of the public; and yet the bare- faced impudence of the exhibition has a certain charm for admirers of original talent. And this, I suppose, NEW YORK. 281 is what attracts the crowds who daily besiege Barnum^s doors ; and this, perhaps, is why they do not take offence at the notice upon the empty aquarium, that "ths whale has unfortunately just died," and " the singing fish has been inadvertently delayed," or at the placard on the walls stating that " the giant is still confined to his bed," and that " it is with the deepest regret that Mr. Barnum informs the public, that the price of admission has been necessarily raised on account of the depreciation in the currency." However, I saw a seal play an organ, and that was an exhibition of cetaceous talent which, if you are anything of a natu- ralist, you will probably think worth my entrance fee. Well, Barnura's is a regular do, and having been there long enough to get properly ashamed of ourselves at being so done, we will pass on down Broadway, which becomes more crowded with foot-passengers on the side-walks, and blocked with carriages in the road- way, as we advance towards the sea, and in a short time we shall be in Wall Street. Wall Street, the New World's " hell," where more fortunes have been made and lost in one year of the last four than in cen- turies of the lives of other countries. It is an unim- posing street, of no length, nor width, nor architectural merit. Every other house is a broker's, with all sorts of money, and its representative, paper, displayed behind those diamond-patterned wire screens wh h mark the bureaux de change in Fleet Street or the 282 NEW YORK. Rue Rivoli. The paper samples arc as innumerable and as various as the tribes of fungi, and many of them much more mouldy and forlorn. The issue is so curious, and of such multiform diversity, that it would be perfectly impossible to predicate of any paper money what must be the prhnd facie evidence of its genuineness. It may have a white face witii a green back, in fact be a " green-back," or a white face with a red back, or be green, or red, or yellow, or brown, or half a dozen colours all at once. It may have re- presented on it a head of Washington, or Jefferson, or Lincoln, or s6me other president, or a governor of a state, or fifty others. It may be issued anywhere, and have been everywhere, and, consequently, be propor- tionally filthy. You — who never see any but sums of a decent amount represented by a paper currency, and, perhaps, do not even know what an Irish one-pounder may look, and smell, and feel like, after it has been tolerably thumbed by our Irish population — can have no conception of the abject state oi unwholesomeness to which a five-cent piece of paper money is reduced by a few months^ fingering in New York. You may get a handful of this degraded coinage in change for a street-car fare, so utterly unsavory and abominable that you will scarcely like to soil your fingers or your pocket with its greasy nastiness. It sticks to the lining, to your fingers, to your watch; coils round your pencil or your tooth-pick, or doubles itself into a NEAV YORK. 283 conglomerate of indistinguishable pulp. How much of this small paper is lost or rendered useless e\ety day the banks alone can tell. The issue must be a clear gain to them. I should hardly suppose a tenth part of it would ever survive to claim a metal equivalent. Prussian and Austrian money is a mystery dark enough to perplex many a British tourist ; Canadian coinage is almost as difficult of comprehension to any but a high wrangler ; but none can be so diabolical as the present postage currency of the United States. But I was speaking of Wall Street and its neigh- bourhood. And yet I do not know that I have much to say about it. If you want to see dirt and ungodli- ness, go to the bottom of it, and turn up Pearl Street. It is the oldest quarter of the town, where the Dutch built and traded years ago, ere ever the Yankee had a lo-catiou and a name. But Dutch cleanliness has departed. Respectable merchants have all emigrated higher up into the city, and Pearl Street is left to moulder and putrefy in the hands of the poorer popu- lation, who, being chiefly Irish, hold the dirt as much too sacred to meddle with. Well, if you do not like Pearl Street and its smells, turn into the Bowery. You will find it little cleaner, but vastly more amusing. Fancy Tottenham Court Road half as wide again, and the houses in it twice as irregular ; hang out all over the lower stories ten times as many carpets, clothes, tables, chairs, brooms, umbrellas, hats, and petticoats ; 284 NEW YORK. and spread about the pavement in everybody's way twenty times as many pots and pans and other articles of iron, glass and erockery ; plneard and advertise upon every vacant surface; turn the gin-palaces into "lager beer " saloons, with the exterior of a tenth-rate tap ; do everything out of doors upon the side-walks, business, eating, drinking, and smoking, and do it all as if you had 80 much time on your hands that you hardly knew how to occupy it ; and so you will have a tableau of the Bowery. If it was only narrow and full of filthy children, it would be much more like any of those curious old 'alleys of Genoa than a street of Anglo- Saxon householders. But the sun is tropical, and so are the stenches, and we must leave St. Giles' for Belgravia. So we will cross to the Fifth Avenue. The contrast is com- plete. For a continuous array of handsome residences I suppose the Fifth Avenue is unrivalled. The material of which they are built is that beautiful brown freestone that I have mentioned as giving so much warmth to the aspect of Broadway. The maples that line the edge of the pavements east a pleasant shade upon the lower windows, which are often surrounded by lovely creepers trained gracefully upon the walls. The doors are approached by flights of steps, for areas are unknown, and if they were not, the New York policeman is much too great a swell to carry on under- ground liaisons with the cook. If you want to see "a NEW YORK. 285 member of the force " really useful in his vocation, go and watch him at a dangerous corner of Broadway, and see the patronising air with which he conducts a nervous '^emale through the crowd of hurrying vehicles. Was ever escort more tender of his charge than he, as he softly places his neatly gloved right hand behind the waist of his protegee, raising the while the natty whip which he carries in his left to warn the drivers that they must nut pass until the lady be safe across. Do you wish fur information about the locality of any house or street? Ask him, and note the business- like way in which he produces from his pocket a map of the city, and points out to you thereon tlie route which you ought to take. Not that it is a matter of much difficulty to find your way about New York. The streets are all so straight, and the system of numbering them is so extremely simple, that nothing but an excess of stupidity or " salmon " could cause you to lose yourself in the chief thoroughfares. Those which run parallel with the Hudson are called " avenues,^' those which intersect them rectangularly, " streets." The avenues and streets are all numbered, and the numbers are displayed upon the corner lamp-posts, so that by day or night they are equally legible. Arithmetical addresses do not look so weU upon envelopes as our high-sounding voluminous des- criptions, and Rotten Row loungers might object to being described upon their visiting cards as of " E. 28G NEW YORK. n 27th and 3rd Av. 57a;" but a glance tells a New Yorker that the owner of the card occupies part of the corner house at ti.e junction of East Twenty .seventh Street and Third Avenue, that his door is in the said street, and that 57a is his bell. Could the in- formation be conveyed more briefly and effectively ? But we must follow the long line of vehicles that is making its way to the central park. Two miles or more of the beautiful Fifth Avenue have to be traversed before we reach the entrance gates. The park is still unfinished, but it promises to merit the loud praises which the Ndw Yorkers prospectively bestow on it. It is far more like the Crystal Palace gardens at Sydenham than any of our city parks, for the ground is very un- even, broken into diminutive ravines and gullies, which have been skilfully taken advantage of by the land- scape gardener who has superintended the work ; and there is a considerable surface of ornamental water, which winds about amongst the little vales; and there are rocky islets on its bosom, and tasty bridges lead- ing nowhere in particular, and waterfalls in unnatural situations, and fountains too, and orthodox grottoes, and terraces, and towers, and temples, and all the multitude of artificial details which we of the severer school think it scholar-like to denounce as "pandering to the vulgar eye," but which, for all our denunciations, are the most attractive incidents of a '* people's garden." And now turn your eyes from the park to NEW YORK. 287 the park'? visitors. Ihit look not for a Rotten Row, nor anything tlic least like it. Americans do not ride much for riding's sake, and when they do they never rise in their stirrups, but attempt the cavalry trot, and look very awkward and uncomfortable, and very much as if thoy were of Mr. IJriggs's mind to get inside and pull the blinds down. Nor think to see anything the leost like our "drive." How can you have anything resembling it without liveries and crests and shields, and all the explod vl emblems of a bloated monarchy? How can you expect an erratic im- pulsive Yankee, vol.iiile as a pea upon a hot plate, to bear the tedium of crawling at a snaiPs place round a pond in a " one-horse '' vehicle of feudal times ? No, put him in his buggy, and then he is happy. With wheels little broader than a halfpenny's edge, and a pair that can trot their sixteen miles an hour, he can bowl along down the Fifth Avenue, scamper round the Central Park, dash off a few miles in the country beyond, and another race round the park, shoot up the Fifth Avenue like a telegram, and be at his door again in less time than it takes us old fogies to think about it. It will probably somewhat startle you to see the buggies cutting about in every direction like express trains at Clapham Junction, and you will most likely be within an ace of being run down at least a dozen times ; but you will not find the park very inte- resting, and so I will take you back to the life I 288 NEW YORK. and Idstle of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and there our stroll through the town must end. What I did in New York would fill a volume ; but fear not, I am charitably-minded and shall spare you. There was always, as the Yankees say, "any quan- tity" to do. There was the Hudson to see, which we did, by making two delightful excursions up it, one about sixty miles to West Point, the great military school, which stands in one of the most lovely situa- tions that can possibly be conceived — Heidelberg itself cannot be finer— and the other, about half- way there, to r,pend a happy day with a friend who lives in one of the pretty villages which skirt the river's banks, where we were regaled with native sherry, pure and excellent, as I never tasted sherry elsewhere. The scenery of the Hudson is mag- nificent. Steaming along by the rocky heights through which its waters wind, you might fancy yourself upon the Khine, only that the colours of the autumn foliage are far too bright for European climates, and there are no quaint old fortresses upon the cliffs and promontories to cast down upon its sunny stream the shade of centuries ago. And how can I tell you of the endless diversion to be found in the streets themselves? Sometimes it was a procession of the famous fire-brigade, in their Garibaldi shirts and "dress" trousers, with their beautiful steam fire- engines burnished like mirrors, and decorated with NEW YORK. 289 I flowers and flags innumerable. Sometimes it was a " turn out " of the representatives of some club or union, in procession to the Cooper's Institute to hold a meeting upon the presidential election, or simply airing themselves and their banners. Sometimes it was a string of regiments on their way from or to the front. Sometimes a military funeral, solemn and gc 'geous j sometimes an Irish one, grotesque and ludi- crous. Then there were the passengers on the side- walks ; goat-faced warriors in brigand hats ; blue- cheeked civilians behind enormous cigars ; schoolgirls with their bundles of books returning from their studies, to which they had betaken themselves before the rest of the world was astir, though the world of New York is an early bird, and seven o'clock was the ladies' breakfast hour in the boarding-house wherein I spent a week of my visit. There were the omnibuses too without conductors, where the driver took your fare or not as you pleased to pay it through a hole in the roof behind him ; and the street-cars with their impudent managers, always crammed and uncomfortable, for there is no restriction as to the number of passengers, and people hail them be they ever so full, and scramble and cling on to the platform by which you ascend behind, like bees clustering upon a bough. Then there were the schools, of which we saw one, perhaps the most interesting sight of any that I saw iu the States, wl/ere the pupils were all marched into 19 290 NEW YORK. Ill l>lf prayers, and out again into their separate class-rooms, and wherever they had to move, to the music of piano- fortes, upon the chords of which the orders were sounded without word of command of any sort or kind. I wish you could have seen for yourself the numbers that were present in the great schoolroom, the mar- vellous discipline by which the fifteen hundred boys and girls were kept in order, without any other system of punishment for misbehaviour than refusal of per- mission to attend the school. I should like to tell you how the principal astonished me by this statement of their corrective system, and how I amused him by declaring that you might as well try to tame a tiger as think of keeping in order a room-full of fifteen hun- dred English scholars by the notes of a piano, with none but the negative punishment for misconduct of a limited banishment from study. But I have before observed upon the marked difference of nature between the children of the two continents, and certain it is that there is something in the American climate and con- stitution which smothers the natural ebullitions of fun and frolic and childlike playfulness that are the charm of an English child. The very kittens in the States are dull and graze as stoics. Yet I dare say this stoical demeanour of the Yankee children conduces to the success of their educational system, which all the world knows, is as perfect as popular education ever was. And now I must say good-bye to America. Though NEW YORK. 291 my subject is not exhausted, your patience must be, and so I will bring my story to a close. How I spent my time on the voyage home, and how it blew head- winds for the first five of the twelve days we were out, and how it rained for the next three, and how slow it was during the other four and everybody longed for the sight of land, and how they brightened up as the old " Kangaroo " ncarcd it, till they got quite boisterous at the first glimpse of the Irish coast, matters little. Sea voyages are all alike, except that some are more unpleasant than others, and having given you a voluminous extract from the los: of mv outward trip, I dare not inflict upon you another. There never is anything to do at sea but smoke, flirt, eat, or read novels; and you cannot be for ever at these without finding a sad monotony in the amuse- ment. Besides, if you have not a boatswain's stomach, it takes you pretty nearly half one of these Atlantic voyages to get up an appetite for any of these pur- suits. For it is pretty sure to blow, or rain, or do both ; and then you have to swelter and pant below in the stifling fustincss of the saloon, with all the windows screwed down, and perhaps a five-days- old smell of greasy dinner and engine-oil and sick passengers, an odour to which the monkey-house in the Zoological is as Rimmell's Ess Bouquet; or you retire to your cabin only to find it a condensed smelling-box of these vap' irs, and your cabin com- OQf) NEV; YOKK. f ^ panion overcome in the middle of it. And then tlie torture of tlie toilette, Dvj bumps your head gets against the basin or the wall, the abject helplessness in which you are kept involuntarily dancing about like a Perfect Cure, with your arms and knees at all sorts of drunken angles, like a puppet in a Pantochini- box ; and, worst of all, the agonies of a night with a heavy swell on, the inane way in which you tumble about the ledge whereon you try to lie, the wisps into which your sheets, no bigger than towels, roll them- selves under your labours, the games your portmanteau has with y6ur friend's hat-box upon the floor, the playful gambols of the passengers' boots with the books in the saloon, the appalling smashes amongst the crockery in the steward's cabin— all these are in- cidents of an ocean trip which have been food for many a graphic pen, and all of us know more or less of their miseries. Then, if it should be fine, what are you to do ? There are two or three extremely inno- cent pastimes, invented by the fertile brain of some muscular Christian in alarm at the bad condition to which he must be reduced by the deprivation of all bodily exercise beyond the ten-yard-constitutional he could get by doubling and redoubling like a tethered sentry. But they are all peculiarly slow. Sea-quoits which consists in laying hoops in a pail, reduces itself to a certainty, and becomes very mild. Shuffle-board is perhaps still milder. Follow-the-leader, which the aSF-a. • i NEW YORK. 293 emigrants play, is simply childish; and gymnastic evolutions about the rigging entail heavy fines, and the prospect of being lashed up by the sailors until payment. How dull and quarrelsome everybody got during * the last half of the passage, how they longed for the sight of land, and how they brightened up on ncaring it, and how envious the Liverpool passengers were of me because I was going to disembark at Queenstown, I leave you to imagine. There my travels were prac- tically at an end. How pretty I thought the harbour of Queenstown, how green and homely the Emerald Isle, how strange it was to come from a country where I had seen scarce half a dozen ill- clad people to a place where everybody seemed to be in the last stage of filth and pauperism, how the women all looked as if they had clothed themselves in relies of tattered attic carpets, and the men always had the seats of their trousers patched into the backs of their coats, and no buttons upon their garments where they should be, and holes in them unmistakable where they should not— all this and more I need not tell, though I am loth to lay aside my pen, pleasant as it is, and always must be, to sit and scribble about what one has seen and heard, as if one were a perfect Gulliver of travel, and had visited scenes in unknown lands where no human foot had ever trod. But things are seen by different eyes in very difi'erent and altered 294 NEW YORK. aspects, and stories of things described as seen may constantly present some new feature. I have tried to tell you what I have seen exactly as each object im- pressed nie at the moment I saw it, and this must be ray excuse for much that second thoughts might have omitted. T cannot hope to have interested you one half as much as I have amused myself. But scrib- bling is the tourist's safety-valve, Avhereby he can let off with less annoyance to his friends what is apt to become tedious in conversation. Bacon^ I know, has counseiied the traveller to " be rather advised in his answers than forward to tell stories ;" but he has closed his advice with another maxim, in the spirit of which you must consider me to have acted in the inditing of these letters — " "' .on a traveller re- turneth home, let him not le^.o the countries where he hath travelled altogether behind him." THE END. VBINXiiD BY J. E. ADLARD, BAETUOLOMEW CLOSE. as seen may have tried to li object im- this must be i might have sted you one But scrib- ty he can let /hat is apt to I know, has ivised in his but he has in the spirit ive acted in traveller re- mtries where 1(^7' •Vf" 2I.0S1C,