I 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 AN AUTUMN TOUR
 
 WOEKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 MODERN RATIONAL CHRISTIAN- 
 ITY. A Creed, by a Layman. Crown 8vo. cloth, 
 Is. 6d. ; paper covers, Is. 
 
 London : KOBEET HAEDWICKE, 192 Piccadilly. 
 
 INDIA and INDIAN ENGINEERING: 
 
 Three Lectures delivered at the Eoyal Engineer 
 Institute, Chatham, in July 1872. Crown 8vo. 
 cloth, 3s. 
 
 London : E. & F. N. SPON, 48 Charing Cross.
 
 AN AUTUMN TOUR 
 
 IN THE 
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA 
 
 BY 
 
 JULIUS GEORGE MEDLEY 
 
 LIEUT.-COL. ROYAL ENGINEERS 
 FELLOW OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALCUTTA 
 
 HENRY S. KING & Co. 
 
 65 CORNHILL & 12 PATERNOSTER Row, LONDON 
 1873
 
 (All rights reserved)
 
 E 
 K-g 
 
 TO 
 
 MY DEAR AUNT AND GODMOTHER 
 
 MARY THOMAS 
 
 THIS BOOK IS 
 
 AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 
 
 1145579

 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY THE UNITED STATES i 
 
 II. THE VOYAGE NEW YORK THE AMERICANS 
 
 THEIR ENERGY THEIR SILENCE 
 
 III. AMERICAN SOCIETY SPEECH HOSPITALITY 
 
 ABSENCE OF PAUPERISM AND DRUNKENNESS 
 TOBACCO-CHEWING NATIONAL VANITY IN- 
 FERIOR EDUCATION Low TONE OF THE PRESS 
 AMERICAN PATIENCE GENEROSITY RELIGIOUS 
 FEELING 26 
 
 IV. AMERICAN POLITICS AMERICAN AND ENGLISH 
 
 SOCIAL SYSTEMS CONTRASTED POLITICAL 
 QUESTIONS . 46 
 
 V. AMERICAN TRAVELLING RAILROADS STEAM 
 
 BOATS HOTELS 69 
 
 VI. THE HUDSON WEST POINT LAKES GEORGE AND 
 CHAMPLAIN NIAGARA DETROIT CHICAGO 
 THE MISSISSIPPI ST. JOSEPH THE MISSOURI 
 THE EMIGRATION QUESTION . . . .82
 
 Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 VII. ST. Louis CINCINNATI PITTSBURG WASHING- 
 TON PHILADELPHIA BOSTON -r- THE GREAT 
 FIRE HARVARD UNIVERSITY AMERICAN TECH- 
 NICAL EDUCATION 102 
 
 VIII. CANADA MONTREAL QUEBEC OTTAWA THE 
 
 COLONIAL QUESTION TORONTO . . .125 
 
 IX. AMERICAN ENGINEERING RAILROADS CHICAGO 
 WATER-WORKS ST. JOSEPH BRIDGE THE 
 MISSOURI ST. Louis BRIDGE EAST RIVER 
 BRIDGE TORPEDOES HELLGATE RIVER WORKS 142 
 APPENDIX 167
 
 An Autumn Tour 
 
 in the 
 
 United States and Canada. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 THERE are few of the usual attractions to 
 tempt the ordinary tourist to America. The 
 voyage across the Atlantic is always rather 
 formidable, the cost of travelling is high 
 especially since the Civil War, and the country 
 has but few antiquities or historical memorials, 
 its cities and public buildings being mere 
 copies of those in Europe. Even its natural 
 beauties, great as they are, have scarcely 
 enough speciality about them to tempt the 
 traveller to undertake the voyage and the 
 many hundred miles of wearisome travel 
 necessary to reach them. 
 
 B
 
 2 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 Yet, to the thoughtful and intelligent 
 English traveller, there are, I think, ample in- 
 ducements to be offered. It must surely be 
 interesting to see this vast territory, so lately 
 a part of the mother country, being gradually 
 settled and peopled to mark how the energy 
 and ability of the race to which he himself 
 belongs have, in so short a time, built large 
 cities, cultivated great tracts of country, 
 covered them with a network of railways and 
 canals, and introduced all, the modern ap- 
 pliances of science and civilisation into what 
 was but a few years ago an uncleared wilder- 
 ness above all, to observe the development of 
 English laws, social customs, and political prin- 
 ciples, under totally different circumstances 
 from those under which they originated. 
 
 Whether I may class myself amongst the 
 thoughtful and intelligent or not, such, at any 
 rate, were the motives that had long made 
 me anxious to visit the United States ; and 
 though the time which I was able to devote 
 to my visit was unfortunately but too short, 
 still I trust I have brought away some clear 
 impressions of the country and people, which 
 are in the main truthful, as they certainly are 
 honest. I went with every disposition to be 
 pleased and with no pre-conceived theories to
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 3 
 
 maintain. I did not go altogether ignorant 
 of the geography, history or politics of the 
 country ; and therefore, necessarily, I had 
 formed opinions on many points. But I may 
 fairly say that I held those opinions in abey- 
 ance, and though many have been confirmed, 
 others have been considerably modified or 
 altogether changed. 
 
 If it be objected that a traveller has no right 
 to record his impressions after so short 
 a visit, it may be replied that while a longer 
 residence will of course give greater value to 
 his remarks, yet those very peculiarities which 
 are most important to be noticed will elude 
 his observation as he becomes accustomed to 
 them. Thus, though his picture would, in the 
 latter case, be more highly finished, it would 
 probably be wanting in sharpness of outline, 
 and in the very individuality which makes it 
 a portrait. 
 
 Perhaps an Anglo-Indian is more compe- 
 tent to a task of this sort than the ordinary 
 Englishman. His ultra-English experience 
 stands him in good stead ; he has been 
 accustomed to view things from a different 
 stand-point, and to judge of them to a great 
 extent apart from English prejudices. 
 In many respects, however, no two countries 
 
 B 2
 
 4 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 present a more striking- contrast to one another 
 than India and the United States : the one, 
 so intensely conservative that even five 
 hundred years count but little in modifying 
 the physical aspect of the country or the social 
 character of the people ; the other, so progres- 
 sive that it is difficult for the annalist to keep 
 pace with its rapid growth. The one, a 
 country whose history reaches back into 
 the far-distant past, with a civilisation, art and 
 science of its own, however corrupt and de- 
 graded at present, with a dense population of 
 many different races, under the government 
 of a handful of foreigners, who rule it with a 
 despotism tempered only by their own sense 
 of justice and duty ; the other, a country 
 whose history is not yet a hundred years old, 
 with a civilisation, religion, customs and even 
 political ideas brought second-hand from 
 Europe, and whose small population, increas- 
 ing yearly at a prodigious rate, and drawn 
 from many distinct nationalities, yet converts 
 them all into one homogeneous people, 
 governed entirely by themselves. 
 
 In one respect, certainly, I found it an 
 advantage, while in America, to have lived 
 many years in a country like India I was 
 better able to realise the great distances and
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. '5 
 
 vast extent of the States. The Englishman 
 who has never quitted England, or even if he 
 has only travelled on the European continent, 
 has great difficulty in appreciating the magni- 
 tude of a single country which is larger than 
 all the kingdoms of Europe put together. But 
 having travelled 1,500 miles continuously on 
 the Indian railways, I could at least compre- 
 hend the meaning of a journey more than 
 twice as long from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
 Oceans. 
 
 I had also travelled sufficiently in other 
 countries, besides Great Britain and India, 
 not to waste time in visiting what could be 
 equally well seen in Europe or in attempt- 
 ing to see too much ; and I endeavoured 
 to guard myself from the common fault of 
 every traveller, that of generalising too much 
 from individual instances. 
 
 Before attempting to give an account of 
 my tour or of my impressions of the country 
 and people, I shall take the liberty of 
 offering to the reader a little general informa- 
 tion about the United States, with which he 
 may or may not be already acquainted. 
 
 The United States of America comprehend 
 an area of more than three and a half millions
 
 6 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 of square miles : larger, that is, than the 
 whole of Europe, and entirely within the 
 temperate zone. This great country pos- 
 sesses the longest river in the world, and 
 many others second only to it, and that 
 magnificent chain of fresh water lakes which, 
 with the rivers, gives it such unequalled 
 facilities for inland navigation. Its grand 
 mountain ranges, the Rocky Mountains and 
 Sierra Nevadas, besides the Alleghanies and 
 others, hold untold mineral wealth and 
 inexhaustible supplies of coal. It has vast 
 forests of valuable timber; prairie lands of 
 such extent and fertility that they could grow 
 corn for ten times its present population ; and 
 bottom lands along the rivers which produce 
 the finest cotton, sugar, and other tropical 
 crops. 
 
 The climate is, of course, very various 
 over such an extent of country. That of the 
 Northern, Eastern and Central States may be 
 said to be much drier than our own, with 
 greater extremes of cold and heat. The 
 Southern States are semi-tropical in character. 
 The climate of the Western States, between 
 the Mississippi and the Pacific, is modified con- 
 siderably by the mountain ranges and the sea 
 coast. The rain-fall is generally moderate and
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 
 
 pretty evenly distributed ; but some of the 
 States, such as New Mexico and Colorado, 
 suffer greatly from drought, and have to resort 
 to artificial irrigation to secure their crops. 
 
 The Northern and Eastern States are 
 generally hilly or undulating and well wooded ; 
 as we advance into the interior, the country 
 becomes flatter and more open, until we cross 
 the great plains or rolling prairies in the 
 centre of the continent ; then we reach the 
 great Rocky Mountain chain, and finally the 
 beautifully varied scenery of the Pacific 
 States. 
 
 The following list of the States and terri- 
 tories 1 with their area and population is 
 taken from the official census for 1870. 
 
 Area, Population, etc. of the United States in 1870. 
 
 * 
 
 Area. 
 Sq. miles. 
 
 Population. 
 
 Chief Cities. 
 
 NEW ENGLAND 
 
 
 
 
 STATES 6. 
 
 
 
 
 Maine 
 
 35,000 
 
 626,915 
 
 Augusta, Portland. 
 
 New Hampshire 
 
 9,280 
 
 318,300 
 
 Concord, Portsmouth. 
 
 Vermont 
 
 10,212 
 
 330,351 
 
 Montpelier, Burlington. 
 
 Massachusetts 
 
 7,800 
 
 1,457,351 
 
 Boston, Worcester. 
 
 Connecticut 
 
 4,750 
 
 537,454 
 
 Hartford, New Haven. 
 
 Rhode Island . 
 
 1,306 
 
 217,353 
 
 Newport, Providence. 
 
 TOTAL 
 
 68,368 
 
 3,487,724 
 
 
 1 The newly settled districts not yet entitled to be fully 
 represented in Congress by reason of the sparseness of their 
 population, are called Territories and not States.
 
 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 Area, Population, etc. of the United States in 1870 (cont. 
 
 
 Area. 
 Sq. miles. 
 
 Population. 
 
 Chief Cities. 
 
 MIDDLE STATES 6. 
 
 
 
 
 New York 
 
 46,000 
 
 4,382,759 
 
 Albany, New York. 
 
 New Jersey . 
 
 8,320 
 
 906,096 
 
 Trenton, Newark. 
 
 Pennsylvania . 
 
 47,OOO 
 
 3,521,791 
 
 Harrisburg, Philadelphia. 
 
 Delaware 
 
 2,120 
 
 125,015 
 
 Dover, Wilmington. 
 
 Maryland 
 
 11,124 
 
 780,894 
 
 Annapolis, Baltimore. 
 
 District of Columbia 
 
 60 
 
 131,700 
 
 WASHINGTON. 
 
 TOTAL . 
 
 114,624 
 
 9,848,255 
 
 
 WESTERN STATES 9. 
 
 
 
 
 Ohio 
 
 39,964 
 
 2,665,260 
 
 Columbus, Cincinnati. 
 
 Indiana . 
 
 33,809 
 
 1,680,637 
 
 Indianapolis. 
 
 Illinois . 
 
 55,409 
 
 2,539,891 
 
 Springfield, Chicago. 
 
 Michigan 
 
 56,243 
 
 1,184,059 
 
 Lansing, Detroit. 
 
 Wisconsin 
 
 53,924 
 
 1,054,670 
 
 Madison, Milwaukee. 
 
 Iowa 
 
 55,ooo 
 
 1,191,792 
 
 Des Moines, Davenport. 
 
 Minnesota 
 
 83,53i 
 
 439,706 
 
 St. Paul, Minneapolis. 
 
 Kansas . 
 
 80,000 
 
 364,299 
 
 Topeka, Lawrence. 
 
 Nebraska 
 
 70,000 
 
 122,993 
 
 Lincoln, Omaha. 
 
 TOTAL . 
 
 527,880 
 
 11,243,307 
 
 
 SOUTH-WESTERN 
 
 
 
 
 STATES 8. 
 
 
 
 
 Alabama 
 
 50,722 
 
 996,992 
 
 Montgomery, Mobile. 
 
 Mississippi 
 
 47,156 
 
 827,922 
 
 Jackson, Vicksburg. 
 
 Louisiana 
 
 4i,346 
 
 726,915 
 
 New Orleans. 
 
 Texas . 
 
 274,356 
 
 818,579 
 
 Austin, Galveston. 
 
 Arkansas 
 
 52,198 
 
 484,471 
 
 Little Rock. 
 
 Tennessee 
 
 45,000 
 
 1,258,520 
 
 Nashville, Memphis. 
 
 Kentucky 
 
 37,68o 
 
 1,321,011 
 
 Frankford, Louisville. 
 
 Missouri 
 
 65,037 
 
 1,721,295 
 
 Jefferson City, St. Louis. 
 
 TOTAL 
 
 6i3,495 
 
 8,155,705 
 
 
 SOUTHERN STATES 6. 
 
 
 
 
 Virginia ^ 
 
 37,35 2 
 
 1,225,163 
 
 Richmond, Norfolk. 
 
 West Virginia 
 
 24,000 
 
 442,014 
 
 Wheeling. 
 
 North Carolina 
 
 . 50,700 
 
 1,071,361 
 
 Raleigh, Wilmington. 
 
 South Carolina 
 
 34,000 
 
 705,606 
 
 Columbia, Charleston. 
 
 Georgia . 
 
 58,000 
 
 1,184,109 
 
 Atlanta, Savannah. 
 
 Florida . 
 
 59,268 
 
 187,748 
 
 Tallahassee. 
 
 TOTAL . * . 
 
 263,320 
 
 4,816,001 

 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 
 
 Area, Population, etc. of the United States in 1870 (cont.) 
 
 
 Area. 
 Sq. miles. 
 
 Population. 
 
 Chief Cities. 
 
 PACIFIC STATES 3. 
 California 
 
 169,000 
 
 560,247 
 
 Sacramento, San Francisco. 
 
 Nevada . 
 
 .90,000 
 
 42,491 
 
 Carson City. 
 
 Oregon . 
 
 lOOjOOO 
 
 90,923 
 
 Salem, Portland. 
 
 TOTAL . 
 
 359,000 
 
 693,661 
 
 
 TERRITORIES 10. 
 
 
 
 
 Arizona . 
 
 131,000 
 
 9,658 
 
 Tucson 
 
 New Mexico . 
 
 110,000 
 
 91,874 
 
 Santa F. 
 
 Colorado 
 
 104,000 
 
 39,864 
 
 Denver. 
 
 Utah . 
 
 121. OOO 
 
 86,786 
 
 Salt Lake City. 
 
 Idaho 
 
 lOOjOOO 
 
 14,999 
 
 Boise City. 
 
 Montana 
 
 I5O,OOO 
 
 20,595 
 
 Virginia City. 
 
 Dakota . 
 
 22O,OOO 
 
 14,181 
 
 Yancton. 
 
 Wyoming 
 
 lOOjOOO 
 
 9,118 
 
 Cheyenne. 
 
 Washington . 
 Indian Territory 
 
 71,000 
 70,OOO 
 
 27,955 
 Est.6o,ooo ' 
 
 Olympia. 
 Tah-le-quah. 
 
 TOTAL . 
 
 1,177,000 
 
 375,130 
 
 
 Alaska . 
 
 400,000 
 
 Unknown. 
 
 Sitka. 
 
 Recapitulation. 
 
 STATES, &c 
 
 Area. 
 
 Total Popu- 
 lation 1870. 
 
 Free 
 coloured. 
 
 6 New England States 
 
 68,368 
 
 3,487,724 
 
 30,805 
 
 6 Middle States, &c. . 
 
 114,624 
 
 9,848,255 
 
 389,662 
 
 6 Southern States 
 
 263,320 
 
 4,8l6,OOI 
 
 1,975,116 
 
 8 South- Western States 
 
 613,495 
 
 8,155^05 
 
 2,312,177 
 
 9 Western States 
 
 527,880 
 
 11,243,307 
 
 154,915 
 
 3 Pacific States . 
 
 359,ooo 
 
 693,661 
 
 4,973 
 
 10 Territories . 
 
 1,177,000 
 
 375,130 
 
 i,499 
 
 Alaska . 
 
 400,000 
 
 
 
 GRAND TOTAL . 
 
 3,523,687 
 
 38,619,783 
 
 4,869,107 
 
 1 Not enumerated in the Census.
 
 1O AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 It will be seen that the area and population 
 are very unequally distributed. Rhode Island, 
 the smallest State, is not much larger than 
 Yorkshire ; Texas, the largest, is five times 
 as large, as England. The New England 
 and Middle States, whose united area is little 
 more than one-twentieth of the whole country, 
 have more than one-third of the total popula- 
 tion ; and in wealth, education and influence 
 are far ahead of the others, including as they 
 do nearly all the great cities, commercial 
 ports, and manufacturing centres. 
 
 The Southern and South-Western groups, 
 comprising the old slave-holding States, are 
 almost entirely agricultural, and rich in cotton, 
 rice and other tropical productions. They 
 have however one great port, New Orleans, 
 besides three others of some importance. 
 
 The Western States are entirely agricul- 
 tural and comprise the great wheat and corn 
 growing area, the level or rolling prairie lands 
 so admirably adapted to farming purposes. 
 
 The Pacific group comprises the great and 
 rising State of California with its fine port, 
 San Francisco, (the New York of the Pacific) 
 its fertile soil, magnificent scenery, varied 
 climate and important mineral wealth. The
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. I 1 
 
 other two States of this group are also rich 
 in minerals. 
 
 The thinly peopled Territories, forming 
 one-third of the whole area, with a united 
 population less, than that of the small State of 
 Connecticut, are partly agricultural and partly 
 mineral in character, and only await popula- 
 tion to develope their vast internal resources. 
 
 The population of the States which is now 
 about 40,000,000, is increasing so fast that 
 in fifty years it will probably amount to 
 100,000,000. The number of immigrants is 
 about 250,000 yearly, the Irish and Germans 
 forming by far the largest numbers ; but there 
 are also many English, Welsh, Scottish, 
 Swedes, Italians and others ; and of late years 
 there has been a very extensive Chinese 
 immigration into the Pacific States. There 
 are nearly 5,000,000 of coloured people in 
 the whole country, who are now all free and 
 have been admitted to the privilege of the 
 franchise. 
 
 With regard to the political constitution of 
 the country, each of the thirty-seven States 
 delegates a certain portion of its power to the 
 Central Government at Washington, return- 
 ing two Senators to Congress as representing 
 the State in its sovereign capacity and one
 
 12 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 Member to the House of Representatives, 
 for every 1 20,000 of its population : the 
 Senators are chosen for six years, the Re- 
 presentatives for two. Besides this, each 
 State has its own Legislative Assembly, 
 consisting of a Senate and a House of Repre- 
 sentatives, and makes its own laws, electing 
 its own Governor and other officials. 
 
 The President of the United States is 
 chosen every four years and is eligible for 
 re-election. He has the power of a veto 
 over any act passed by the two Houses of 
 Congress, but if they then pass it by a majority 
 of two- thirds, it becomes law. The Vice- 
 President is chosen at the same time as the 
 President, and is ex-officio President of the 
 Senate. Manhood suffrage prevails in all the 
 States without any educational or property 
 qualification. The Senators are, however, 
 chosen by the Legislatures of the various 
 States, and not directly by the people; while 
 the President and Vice- President are chosen 
 by electors nominated by the people for that 
 particular purpose, who are in number equal 
 to the two Houses of Legislature of the Stated 
 but who must not be Members of either 
 House. The Secretaries of State and other 
 executive officers cannot sit in Congress.
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 13 
 
 The Supreme Court consists of a Chief 
 and eight Associate Judges, who are nomi- 
 nated by the President for life or during 
 good behaviour. The judges of the district 
 courts are elected by the people. 
 
 The Revenue of the United States is at 
 present about 75,ooo,ooo/. sterling, raised 
 from customs, taxes, Government lands &c. ; it 
 has been largely augmented since the War, 
 chiefly by heavy customs' duties being im- 
 posed. The States raise their own revenue 
 for local purposes. The currency since the 
 War has been entirely in paper, and consists 
 of dollars and cents : the dollar being nomi- 
 nally worth about 45-. 2d., and the cent a 
 halfpenny. The premium on gold is at 
 present about thirteen per cent, in New York. 
 
 There is no established religion in the 
 States no hereditary titles of any sort no 
 law of entail. There is a standing army of 
 about 30,000 men and a small navy, both 
 largely recruited from foreigners. The ex- 
 penditure on both was only i i,ooo,ooo/. ster- 
 ling in the past year. The public debt 
 incurred during the War is being paid off at 
 the rate of 2O,ooo,ooo/. sterling annually.
 
 14 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE VOYAGE NEW YORK THE AMERICANS THEIR 
 ENERGY THEIR SILENCE. 
 
 I LEFT Liverpool on Thursday, September 
 5th, 1872, in the Inman screw steamer ' City 
 of Brooklyn.' We carried no cabin passen- 
 gers, besides some 500 in the steerage. After 
 a rough night in the Irish Channel, we 
 reached Queenstown, Ireland, at 9 o'clock 
 the following morning, and I took the oppor- 
 tunity of landing to call on General Sherman, 
 Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Army, who 
 happened to be at the hotel, waiting to em- 
 bark in the ' Baltic.' At 4 p.m. we had 
 received the express mails, via Dublin, and 
 were steaming along the south coast of Ire- 
 land on our way to New York. 
 
 Almost all our passengers were Americans, 
 many of whom had been making a summer 
 tour in England or on the Continent. We 
 had also the late U.S^ Consul at Liverpool on
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 15 
 
 board, to whose ability and energy during the 
 War his Government chiefly owed their suc- 
 cessful prosecution of the Alabama claims. 
 I was indebted to this gentleman for much 
 excellent advice and information in regard to 
 my projected tour, and to his amiable family 
 for an intimacy which made the voyage only 
 too short. The weather was generally cold, 
 and occasionally rainy ; for two days we had 
 strong head winds and the usual discomfort 
 attending a pitching steamer. On the 1 2th 
 we were running over the Great Bank of 
 Newfoundland, passing Cape Race in the 
 night ; this is sometimes sighted on the 
 voyage. This is the region of icebergs, 
 which however are rarely met with at this 
 time of year ; from April to July a sharp 
 look-out is kept for them, and a more 
 southerly course is generally pursued on the 
 Great Circle. 
 
 The ' City of Boston/ which was lost three 
 or four years ago, belonged to the Inman 
 line ; she sailed from Halifax in the month 
 of February and was never more heard of ; 
 it is supposed that she perished in the pack- 
 ice floating down from the north ; a hurri- 
 cane was blowing at the time and she prob- 
 ably broke up and foundered in a few minutes.
 
 1 6 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 The passage of the North Atlantic can indeed 
 never be considered free from danger. In 
 winter there are storms which often last for 
 days, and seas such as are probably met with 
 on no other ocean ; in summer there are 
 thunderstorms and icebergs ; so that a 
 smooth passage at any time is altogether 
 exceptional. In one season, three steamers 
 went ashore one after the other, owing to 
 their compasses being affected by a magnetic 
 storm. 
 
 However, we escaped all these casualties, 
 took the pilot on board on Sunday night, the 
 1 5th, and on Monday morning were running 
 past Sandy Hook through a cold wind and 
 drizzling rain. But the weather fortunately 
 cleared up just in time, and leaving Staten 
 Island with its green and wooded heights 
 and picturesque villas on our left, we entered 
 the beautiful harbour of New York, anchored 
 in the North River about 10 o'clock, and 
 after some delay were carried off by the 
 tender to the Custom House Wharf. A 
 cursory and very civil inspection of baggage 
 followed and consigning it all to the care of 
 one of the express agents, I started on foot 
 and enquired my way to the St. Nicholas 
 Hotel, in Broadway, to which I had been
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 17 
 
 recommended as a thoroughly American 
 house in every respect. 
 
 New York is situated at the mouth of the 
 Hudson River, in latitude 41, longitude 74. 
 The city proper is built on Manhattan 
 Island, which is separated by the Hudson 
 from Jersey City on the west, and by the 
 East River from Brooklyn and the smaller 
 suburbs on Long Island. The south or 
 lower end of Manhattan Island forms the 
 business quarter of the city and is the older 
 portion. The upper end contains the more 
 fashionable quarter and the majority of the 
 dwelling houses, and stretches along to the 
 Central Park, which may perhaps be ' cen- 
 tral ' before many years. Broadway, the 
 principal thoroughfare, runs about midway 
 through the length of the city, and is in 
 breadth and general appearance very like Ox- 
 ford Street, London. 
 
 New York proper has about 1,000,000 in- 
 habitants, but including Brooklyn, Jersey City 
 and the other suburbs, the whole population 
 is over a million and a half. The general 
 aspect of the city is like London, with a 
 touch of Paris about it. Stone and even 
 marble are extensively used in the houses, 
 and many of the public buildings, and even 
 
 c
 
 1 8 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 the shops, or 'stores' as they are always called, 
 are on a magnificent scale. The houses in 
 Fifth and Madison Avenues, and the cross 
 streets between Fourth and Sixth Avenues, 
 which include the best of the dwelling houses, 
 are generally of brown stone and of about 
 the size and general appearance of our 
 second-class residences in Belgravia or 
 Tyburnia. The streets are generally wide, 
 straight and well kept, and several of the 
 Avenues are planted with young trees. 
 Except Broadway itself, every principal 
 street has at least one line of rail for the 
 horse-cars, which are generally used by the 
 whole population. 1 
 
 The harbour of New York is among the 
 best and handsomest in the world, and is 
 crowded with shipping ; while steam-ferries 
 ply continually over the north and east rivers 
 to keep up the communication with the 
 suburbs. A project is now on foot for 
 bridging the East River, and so connecting 
 
 1 They are certainly a great convenience to the general 
 public, especially as the cabs, or rather hackney-coaches, of 
 New York, are little used for general purposes owing to their 
 extortionate charges, but the rails of the horse-cars, both here 
 and in every other town, are an abominable nuisance to 
 private vehicles. In Broadway, omnibuses are used similar 
 to our own.
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 19 
 
 New York and Brooklyn by a suspension 
 bridge of 1,600 feet span, the towers of 
 which are already nearly completed. 
 
 Among the most noticeable buildings in 
 New York are the New Post Office (not yet 
 completed), the Town Hall, many of the 
 Churches, the principal Hotels, and several 
 of the leading Banks, Insurance Offices, and 
 Stores ; for information about all of which 
 I must refer the reader to Appleton's excel- 
 lent guide-book. There are several squares 
 in the city, but they all seem public property 
 and have a very ' unkempt ' appearance com- 
 pared with ours. The Central Park is 
 beautifully laid out and planted, and is more 
 like the Bois de Boulogne than Hyde Park ; 
 in the evening it is crowded with carriages ; 
 but there are very few riders, and horseman 
 ship is evidently not a favourite art with 
 Americans. 
 
 The shops or stores are like those of 
 London or Paris, but there must be a greater 
 number of large ones than in either of those 
 cities. The book-stores struck me as very 
 fine ; they have excellent reprints of all the 
 best English works, and regular importations 
 of English books as well. All the leading 
 
 magazines and reviews are regularly received, 
 
 c 2
 
 2O AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 also ' Punch,' the ' Saturday Review,' ' Illus- 
 trated News,' and a few other weeklies. 
 
 Prices are everywhere very high : heavy 
 duties have been imposed since the War in 
 order to pay off the National Debt, and the 
 cost of everything has been raised in propor- 
 tion. Articles of clothing are double or 
 triple the English price ; books are dearer ; 
 meat and bread about the same as in 
 London. 
 
 If I were asked what first struck me when 
 I landed in New York, I should say it was 
 the feeling of surprise, which I scarcely liked 
 to own to myself, at finding so large and sub- 
 stantial a copy of London, 3,000 miles across 
 the ocean ; and this feeling continued to 
 increase as I visited the great cities of the 
 West. It is doubtless an absurd confession 
 to have to make, but knowing, as one does, 
 the youthfulness of these great towns, one 
 has a vague idea that they cannot but 
 be flimsy affairs after all wooden or lath 
 and plaster houses, and a new-country look 
 about the whole thing. But a very short 
 inspection is enough to show the falseness of 
 such an idea ; the splendid edifices of granite 
 and marble which everywhere abound, and
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 21 
 
 the substantial character of the streets and 
 houses and stores gave me the first insight 
 into the energy and force of the American 
 character. It is that energy which has 
 almost rebuilt Chicago in a year after the 
 greatest fire of modern times, and which 
 commenced to clear away the ruins in Boston 
 while the fire was still smoking. It is the 
 same energy which has covered the country 
 with railroads, which are pushed into the 
 heart of the most thinly settled districts, at 
 once attracting settlers and paying for their 
 cost by the sale of the lands opened up, and 
 which, in a hundred ways, forcibly impresses 
 the traveller with the conviction that he is 
 amongst the same race that has conquered 
 India and colonised two great continents. 
 
 As I sat at dinner the first day of my 
 arrival, at one of the largest hotels in New 
 York, and studied the countenances of the 
 four or five hundred men at table who 
 swiftly and silently despatched their dinner 
 and then glided rapidly and gravely from the 
 room, I instinctively felt that I was amongst 
 a strong, earnest, resolute people, whom one 
 would rather have as friends than foes. 
 They were not at all English-looking ; they 
 are, as a rule, darker and sallower than our-
 
 22 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 selves ; the face is longer and leaner, and the 
 almost universal practice of shaving the 
 whiskers and growing a beard, tends still 
 more to give them a foreign look. Of course 
 New York has a large foreign population in 
 it, and the feeling I have mentioned faded 
 somewhat as I went West ; but I have a 
 strong belief in the value of first impressions, 
 and am inclined to think that on the whole 
 mine were correct. 
 
 The foreign immigration into America is 
 so great that it seems to me one of the 
 strongest points of the American institutions 
 that these foreign elements are so quickly 
 assimilated, and that after the lapse of 
 a single generation, Irishmen, Germans, 
 Swedes, Italians, and others, are all turned 
 into American citizens with a distinct nation- 
 ality about them. Of late years, I am told, 
 this assimilating process does not go on 
 so fast as it ought ; both the Irish and Ger- 
 man elements are yearly becoming stronger 
 and more separated from the mass of the 
 population. Fortunately, I think, these two 
 important elements are radically opposed to 
 each other in character, religion, and politics, 
 and thus may neutralise each other. It is 
 also said, and I believe with some truth, that
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 23 
 
 there is a want of vitality in the original 
 Anglo-American stock. Whether the Anglo- 
 Saxon race will not bear transplanting with- 
 out degenerating, or whether there are other 
 reasons, it is asserted that but for the con- 
 stant importation and admixture of foreign 
 blood, the original race would soon die out. 
 Such an opinion can of course be nothing but 
 a theory ; at any rate the original stock gives 
 the tone and colouring to all the rest, and I 
 believe it is strong enough to assimilate them 
 all in time. 
 
 The Americans struck me generally as a 
 silent people ; though the very contrary idea 
 is prevalent in England, I know not on what 
 grounds. But they certainly seemed to me 
 more taciturn and reserved than ourselves, 
 and I think most travellers will confirm the 
 remark. In the dining-rooms of the large 
 hotels, in the railway cars and elsewhere, they 
 made less noise than half the number of 
 English would have done ; there was but 
 little conversation even amongst those 
 acquainted with each other, and those who 
 were unacquainted never spoke at all. In the 
 whole course of my travels, I don't think I 
 was ever addressed in the first instance ; I 
 always received perfectly civil replies to my
 
 24 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 questions and had many pleasant conversa- 
 tions with strangers on the steam-boats, rail- 
 ways, and other public places, but there was 
 always a certain amount of ice to be broken 
 through first 
 
 No one can deny them the faculty of wit, 
 or at least an extravagant humour which is 
 characteristically American, yet you rarely 
 hear jokes or a hearty laugh amongst them ; 
 there seems a total absence of jollity or jovi- 
 ality in all classes, a tendency rather to gravity 
 or even melancholy, 1 and an American owned 
 to me, half-seriously, that he thought there was 
 something of the Red Indian reticence and 
 gravity appearing in the national character. 
 
 I am inclined to think that this tristesse, as 
 the French would call it, arises from the 
 general absorption of all classes in business 
 and money-making ; no one is idle, no one 
 loafs, and nobody seems to have time for 
 enjoyment or pleasure. It is the same charge 
 that other nations make against the English, 
 and with a certain amount of truth, that we 
 take our pleasures sadly, which means, partly, 
 that we work hard at our pleasures, carrying 
 the same seriousness into them as into our 
 
 1 The almost invariable habit of wearing black cloths 
 probably adds to this impression of the men.
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 25 
 
 business, but which also, I think, arises from 
 the greater manliness of the English character, 
 that prevents our finding pleasure or relaxa- 
 tion in the same childish amusements as the 
 French or Italians. In America, this national 
 trait has been reproduced, and is intensified 
 by the simple fact that there is no idle class 
 there ; no class, as with us (though of course 
 there are individuals), which is exempt from 
 the necessity of working for a living. I never 
 fully appreciated the value of this class at 
 home before ; now that I have been to 
 America, (and I make the remark in all sin- 
 cerity), I recognise it fully. Such a class, 
 removed from the anxieties inseparable from 
 the conduct of business or the practice of a 
 profession, has leisure not only for the cultiva- 
 tion of the taste, the pursuit of art, science 
 and literature, and for studying the amenities 
 of social intercourse, but also for the not less 
 valuable art of pleasure-seeking generally, 
 and of carrying manliness and refinement into 
 our sports and amusements. To the value of 
 such a class in politics I shall allude further 
 on.
 
 26 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 AMERICAN SOCIETY SPEECH HOSPITALITY ABSENCE OB' 
 PAUPERISM AND DRUNKENNESS TOBACCO-CHEWING 
 VANITY INFERIOR EDUCATION LOW TONE OF THE 
 PRESS AMERICAN PATIENCE GENEROSITY RELIGIOUS 
 FEELING. 
 
 OF American society I scarcely saw enough 
 to enable me to say much about it. So far as 
 I could judge, good society in America, i.e. 
 the society of well-educated men and women 
 in easy circumstances, is much the same as 
 in our own country ; but I am disposed to 
 think that it is inferior to the very best 
 English society ; or, rather, that there 
 is nothing in America corresponding to 
 the latter, partly from the general abstinence 
 of the upper classes of Americans from 
 politics, and partly from an inferiority in the 
 highest kind of education, of both of which I 
 shall speak presently. The travelled Ameri- 
 can is as superior to his untravelled compatriot 
 as is the travelled Englishman, and if there
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 27 
 
 are but too many amongst them who have 
 seen every country in the world except their 
 own, it is not for us to find fault with them 
 on that account. Few Englishmen know 
 anything of our own great Colonies, and many 
 of those who flock annually to Switzerland, 
 the Rhine, or the Italian lakes, are utterly 
 ignorant of the scenery of the United King- 
 dom. 
 
 I have often been asked whether what is 
 generally termed ' the American accent ' is as 
 common as is generally supposed. Amongst 
 the educated classes, I think the only differ- 
 ence from the English accent generally 
 noticeable is a slight raising of the voice at 
 the end of the sentence, or what is commonly 
 called a sing-song intonation ; and even this is 
 by no means universal. With other classes, 
 the nasal twang is often very strong in some ; 
 in others it is less, or even not at all, percep- 
 tible. At any rate, the very broadest Yankee 
 accent or provincialism is more easily under- 
 stood, and not more offensive to the educated 
 ear, than that of the Yorkshire ' tyke ' or 
 Glasgow ' body.' As to the use, or misuse, of 
 English words, many Americanisms are well 
 known ; but there are very few used by the 
 best classes. ' I guess ' is common enough,
 
 28 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 and certain strange verbs such as ' collided,' 
 ' loaned,' and a few others ; also the use of 
 ' some ' and ' any ' adverbially ; as ' Did you 
 sleep any last night ? ' A shop is always 
 called a ' store ; ' a railway station is a ' depot.' 
 ' Quite a number ' means a great number. 
 Amongst other classes, ' Say ' is constantly 
 used for, I say ; ' Mister ' for Sir ; ' On time ' 
 for in time. ' Donated,' ' interviewed ' and 
 ' excursed ' are also strange verbs to English 
 ears. ' Stranger ' I never heard used ; and 
 ' You bet ' and ' I want to know,' as expressions 
 of assent and incredulity, are provincialisms, 
 even in America. 
 
 I have already noticed in passing the 
 peculiarity of American humour its extrava- 
 gance, and I may add its grimness both of 
 which seem to characterise it specially. Mark 
 Twain and Bret Harte, both well known to 
 English readers, appear to me to stand at the 
 head of the list ; the former especially, in ' The 
 Innocents Abroad ' and ' The New Pilgrim's 
 Progress,' seems to me to have produced the 
 best and most original book of travels that 
 we have had for several years ; while his 
 'Roughing it' is scarcely inferior. The illustra- 
 tions of all three in the American editions are 
 nearly as good as the letterpress, and I am
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 2Q 
 
 surprised that they have not been reproduced 
 in England. 
 
 Of American hospitality, I had heard a good 
 
 deal and was rather disappointed with it. The 
 
 reserve and coldness of which I have already 
 
 spoken require so much time to break through, 
 
 that a mere passing traveller is apt to be 
 
 chilled by the want of warmth in his reception. 
 
 In India, if you are the bearer of a letter of 
 
 introduction to a resident, he throws open his 
 
 house to you and expects you to be his guest 
 
 for as long as you choose to stay. In England, 
 
 such a letter at least insures you an invitation 
 
 to dinner. In America it may or may not 
 
 do so ; I found often that a man thought he 
 
 had done all that civility required by leaving 
 
 his card on me at the hotel. In one case, 
 
 while at Boston, I called upon one of the 
 
 leading merchants to whom I had a letter, and 
 
 not finding him at home left the letter and 
 
 my card. He called three times upon me at 
 
 my hotel, finding me out each time, but did 
 
 not invite me to his house, delaying to do so, 
 
 I presume, until he could first see me to 
 
 make sure that I was worthy of the honour. 
 
 From other people, however, and in many 
 
 cases of chance acquaintanceship by the way, 
 
 I received great kindness and a cordial wel-
 
 3O AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 come, and regretted only that I could not stay 
 longer to know more of them. 
 
 If I were asked what struck me most 
 agreeably during my visit to America, I should 
 say it was the general absence of the pauper 
 class of the population, to whose presence we 
 are unfortunately but too much accustomed 
 at home ; there is nothing of that squalid 
 misery, or abject poverty, which forms so 
 painful a contrast to the luxury and refinement 
 of London and other European cities. In the 
 two months of my travels I was only twice 
 accosted by beggars, and of those one was 
 blind and the other lame. This happy state 
 of things of course arises from the fact that 
 the country, so far from being crowded, is 
 still eagerly demanding all kinds of manual 
 labour. Vast provinces are awaiting the 
 advent of the farmer and labourer to break 
 their virgin soil ; new railways are every year 
 projected ; new towns are everywhere being 
 built ; new mines are being discovered and 
 worked. While I was at Chicago, bricklayers 
 were getting four dollars and a half (about 
 eighteen shillings) a day, for twelve hours' 
 work ; and 5,000 of them were on strike for a 
 reduction to eight hours on four dollars. All 
 over the West, common labourers were in
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 31 
 
 demand at from eight to ten shillings, and 
 carpenters and mechanics at from twelve to 
 twenty-five shillings a day. Miners in Colo- 
 rado were getting seven dollars in gold, 
 equivalent to nearly thirty shillings, a day. 
 And in the West, meat is sixpence a pound 
 and other things in proportion, except clothing 
 which was a good deal dearer than in England. 
 
 I have no doubt there is a pauper class in 
 the back slums of New York and possibly 
 elsewhere, but every great city, especially if 
 a sea-port, collects a certain population of 
 this sort who prefer the life of the streets to 
 life elsewhere under healthier conditions ; 
 there is always ample means of escape from 
 such a state to the newly settled towns and 
 vast plains of the West. 
 
 Nothing perhaps can better illustrate this 
 ready absorption of labour in America than 
 the quiet subsidence of the great armies 
 raised during the Civil War, after the struggle 
 was over. In no country in Europe could 
 half a million of men, who had been with- 
 drawn from civil life for military duties, have 
 been safely disbanded at once ; their former 
 places would have been filled up and they 
 would have found themselves adrift on the 
 world, a mob of disciplined men, bound
 
 Z2 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 J 
 
 together by military habits and instincts, and 
 dangerous to the community they had saved. 
 In the States, fortunately, the War did not 
 last long enough to give the citizen soldiers 
 a distaste for their civil work ; no leader of 
 commanding genius arose (on the Federal 
 side at least) to attach his men to him, by 
 strong personal ties, and the whole army was 
 absorbed so rapidly and quietly into the civil 
 population that the event scarcely excited 
 remark. 
 
 Another point that struck me everywhere 
 as an agreeable feature was the absence of 
 drunkenness. I should have set down the 
 whole population as singularly temperate, 
 had I not been assured by many Americans 
 that I was giving them more credit than they 
 deserved, and that there is a good deal of 
 hard drinking amongst many classes. It may 
 be so ; I can only say I did not see it. I 
 scarcely ever met a drunken man, and the 
 streets at night, in all the cities I visited, 
 certainly presented a favourable contrast to 
 those of English towns. I believe, however, 
 that there is a good deal of whisky and 
 brandy drunk at the hotel bars and drinking 
 saloons, and abominable stuff it is. No good 
 ale is made in the country, I don't know why ;
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 33 
 
 the German Lager beer is the best. There 
 seems no reason whatever why a good and 
 cheap light wine might not be produced in 
 most of the vine-growing States, but the 
 native wine usually sold is as dear as that 
 imported from Europe. As men of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race will drink, it seems really 
 an important matter to provide them with 
 a cheap and wholesome beverage that may 
 save them from the pernicious vice of dram- 
 drinking. 
 
 In the vicinity of New York is one of the 
 Asylums for the Inebriate (as they are 
 elegantly termed), of which I understand 
 there are several in the States ; in which 
 people of the respectable classes who have 
 become drunkards are confined, at their own 
 request, until they are discharged as cured. 
 In thus treating drunkenness as a disease, 
 the Americans, I believe, show more sense 
 than ourselves, who are accustomed to look 
 upon it simply as a vice. There is no doubt 
 it may be treated as a vice in its early stages, 
 but as to the confirmed drunkard, it is about 
 as useful to preach to him to abstain as it 
 would be to implore him not to catch the 
 small-pox the vice has become a disease in 
 his case and he must be treated accordingly, 
 
 D
 
 34 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 though of course it is not the only disease 
 which has commenced in vice. The best 
 chance of cure is total abstinence and the 
 entire removal of temptation ; and this should 
 be the aim, as it is the true defence, of all 
 legislation on the subject. It may be per- 
 fectly true that you cannot make men moral 
 by Act of Parliament, but you can to a great 
 extent protect them from disease ; and in this 
 sense, by diminishing the temptation to drink, 
 there can be no doubt that you can diminish 
 the habit of drunkenness. 
 
 If I have praised the Americans for their 
 comparative freedom from drunkenness, I 
 cannot help expressing disgust at the general 
 frequency of the habit of tobacco-chewing, 
 and the consequent hawking and spitting 
 that go on incessantly. The entrance halls 
 of every hotel in the country are liberally 
 furnished with spittoons, but are also stained 
 all over with discoloured spittle. It is the 
 same in the railway cars, in almost every 
 public place, and on the staircases and in the 
 lobbies of the Houses of Congress. I do not 
 believe that gentlemen in good society in- 
 dulge in the filthy habit, but everyone else 
 does, and the effect on the Englishman is 
 simply disgusting. It is an unpleasant sub-
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 35 
 
 ject to allude to, but the practice is so 
 general everywhere that it is impossible to 
 pass it over in silence. 
 
 The trait of character, however, that strikes 
 one most forcibly _and disagreeably, is their 
 national vanity and egotism. That they 
 have much to be vain of is undeniable ; they 
 feel how much they have done in a short 
 time, how much they are still doing, and 
 what a great future lies before them. But 
 their conceit of themselves and their own 
 achievements is perpetually displayed in a 
 manner that would be irritating if it were not 
 amusing. They are not even satisfied by 
 your admiration unless you admire exactly 
 what they do, and their admiration is often 
 bestowed on objects which do not seem to 
 you admirable simply because you look, at 
 them from a different point of view and 
 measure them by other standards. It was 
 not enough that I praised the Niagara Falls 
 and the scenery of the Hudson and St. 
 Lawrence, as beautiful in themselves and 
 differing from anything I had yet seen ; I 
 must also praise the scenery of Lakes George 
 and Champlain as being far superior to any 
 lake scenery in Europe which they are not ; 
 I must admire the prairies simply because 
 
 D 2
 
 36 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 they are so vast, and the Mississippi because 
 it is the biggest river in the world. Indeed, 
 size is evidently their great criterion of 
 beauty, and I suspect they are disappointed 
 that the Rocky Mountains are not as high 
 as the Himalayas. I could admire New 
 York in all honesty, with its noble harbour, 
 its crowds of shipping, and its beautiful 
 suburbs, though I could not admit that the 
 Fifth Avenue quarter was as fine as Bel- 
 gravia, or the city itself is as large as London 
 or as handsome as Paris. But the town that 
 I was always called upon to admire was 
 Chicago, for no other reason but that it had 
 sprung up so rapidly into existence, and after 
 being half burnt down, was so quickly being 
 built up again. As, however, Chicago is a 
 mere mass of streets and houses erected on a 
 perfectly flat piece of ground, as the ravages 
 of the great fire were still everywhere visible, 
 and the town was in all the discomfort inci- 
 dental to workmen, stone, and mortar, all 
 that could properly call forth a stranger's 
 admiration had really to be taken on trust. 
 
 It is the same with other things. Ameri- 
 can oysters I was told were very superior to 
 English oysters ; if I did not think so, it was 
 because I missed the ' coppery ' taste in the
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 37 
 
 latter (whatever that may mean), at any rate 
 they were bigger. American peaches were 
 better than English peaches at any rate 
 they were more numerous and cheaper. 
 American hotels, with their noisy, spitting 
 crowds and bad cookery, were superior to 
 the quiet comfortable English hotels, or the 
 brilliant, well-furnished French hotels with 
 their perfect cookery and cheerful tables- 
 d'Jwte at any rate they could accommodate 
 twice as many people. 
 
 I think they like Englishmen to praise 
 their country, but I doubt if they care very 
 much about it ; the mass of the people seem 
 to take very little interest in any other 
 country except their own, and are, on the 
 whole, very self-sufficient and too self-satis- 
 fied to care about the good opinion of other 
 nations, or indeed to waste much thought or 
 attention on other parts of the world. The 
 brief notices of foreign affairs contained in 
 the American papers generally appeared to 
 me to be drawn up in a tone of good- 
 natured contempt, as if America was rather 
 amused than otherwise at witnessing the vain 
 struggles of Europe to imitate her greatness, 
 and preserve itself from ruin and revolution ! 
 
 A good deal of this conceit of course arises
 
 38 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 from the youth of the nation ; it is the natural 
 arrogance of a young man who has had his 
 head turned by success, and who does not 
 yet foresee the rocks and shoals of life that 
 are ahead. But much of it also arises from 
 their narrow education. I had expected to 
 find this very much the reverse as compared 
 with England ; and undoubtedly education is 
 more widely diffused in the States, and the 
 lower classes are better instructed than our 
 own. But it is certainly not the case with 
 the middle classes, i.e. the mass of the nation ; 
 they have less information, are narrower in 
 their views, and less capable of generalising. 
 There are plenty of schools and colleges, no 
 doubt, but very few with any high standard 
 of scholarship ; the education given is too 
 utilitarian and the pupils leave too early. 
 Moreover, they miss the education which an 
 Englishman insensibly gets by living in 
 Europe, and being perpetually interested in 
 other politics besides his own. 
 
 What I have asserted is, of course, a 
 matter of opinion and hardly susceptible of 
 direct proof, but I think the difference in the 
 tone of the Press of the two countries goes 
 
 o 
 
 far to corroborate my views. There are 
 more newspapers in the States than in Eng-
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 39 
 
 land, because education, as I have allowed, is 
 more diffused in the former ; they are inferior 
 in tone and character, because the education of 
 their readers is so too. It is impossible to sup- 
 pose, if there existed a demand for a superior 
 class of journals, that in such a country as 
 America, there would not be at once an 
 adequate supply. If any one doubts the in- 
 feriority of which I have spoken, let him 
 compare a number of ' The Times,' or ' The 
 Daily News,' or ' The Standard' with 'The 
 New York Times,' or ' Tribune,' or ' Herald.' 
 The leading articles of the latter are simply 
 beneath criticism ; their regular or special 
 correspondence and critical notices are poor 
 and meagre, while their columns of intelli- 
 gence are sensationalised in headings, style 
 and contents, in a way that would disgrace a 
 penny-a-liner. As to such papers as the 
 1 Saturday Review ' or ' Spectator,' with their 
 brilliant criticism and scholarly information, 
 there are none like them in the States ; they 
 would not be appreciated if there were. 
 
 While travelling in America, you appear to 
 be altogether cut off from the European world 
 of politics and news, so meagre is the flippant 
 summary put before you in the American 
 papers, and so shallow and ignorant are their
 
 4O AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 comments on the scanty scraps of news they 
 furnish. Doubtless it is a good thing for 
 America in many ways that she should be 
 self-reliant, and even all-sufficient to herself in 
 most things ; but so long as she has to import 
 so largely from Europe her literature, science 
 and art, she should interest herself more in 
 that current literature and that political life 
 from which, in truth, the others all really 
 spring. 
 
 Lest it may be thought that in my delinea 
 tion of the American character I have dwelt 
 too much on the blemishes, let me hasten to 
 express my admiration of other features in it, 
 one of which I may call their patience ; they 
 have the good temper and forbearance of a 
 strong race, which are the more to be com- 
 mended as their great energy might fairly be 
 expected to produce impatience and irrita- 
 bility. So far from this, you rarely hear 
 quarrelling, or bad language, even amongst the 
 lowest classes ; and there is a singular quiet 
 ness and patience shown everywhere, which 
 are a pleasant contrast to the grumbling of an 
 Englishman. I never heard a dispute about 
 a fare, in omnibus or railway ; a complaint 
 about a dinner ; or a threat of an appeal to 
 the Press or to superior authority. In fact,
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 4! 
 
 anyone in authority appears to be deferred to 
 at once, for, after all, he is their servant ; and 
 the principle of self-government is carried out 
 fully and effectually. Its abuses, of which I 
 shall speak presently, arise from mistakes and 
 excrescences which in no way affect the main 
 principle. Thus, a disorderly mob is a rare 
 thing in America ; I was there during the 
 height of the presidential contest and on 
 the day of the election. Not a day passed 
 without party processions and political meet- 
 ings where the speeches were often of a 
 virulently personal character, yet I do not 
 remember a single instance of a row, or that 
 the militia were once called out, or that a 
 single extra policeman was sworn in. The 
 public-houses are closed everywhere on 
 election day by universal consent, the whole 
 thing passed off quietly and good-humouredly 
 and impressed me forcibly with an idea of 
 the self-restraint and self-respect of the people. 
 Let me also add that I never was treated 
 otherwise than with perfect courtesy by every 
 official with whom I came in contact, and that 
 I never asked a question or enquired my road 
 from anyone, without the greatest pains being 
 taken to give me the desired information. 
 Another point too I may honestly praise,
 
 42 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 and that is their generosity and liberality, or 
 at least their want of pettiness or meanness. 
 You are not subjected to irritating exactions 
 either at hotels or elsewhere, and men are 
 not always touching their hats and expecting 
 you to tip them for doing some act of 
 common civility. If the Americans make 
 money fast, they spend it freely and gener- 
 ously, and I cannot imagine such a being as 
 a Yankee miser. Large sums are easily 
 raised by subscription for any religious or 
 charitable purpose. Mr. Henry Ward- 
 Beecher raises annually, I am told, from 
 5o,ooo/. to ioo,ooo/. for the support of his 
 church and different institutions connected 
 therewith. After the Boston fire, Chicago 
 sent the sufferers 4O,ooo/. as a free gift ; it 
 was declined, as also aid from other places, 
 on the ground that the Bostonians were 
 wealthy and could afford the loss, and were 
 too proud to let their poor be aided by other 
 cities. 
 
 Let me add too, that although there is no 
 established church, the religious sentiment is 
 generally strong everywhere, at any rate in 
 those States which I visited. I never sat 
 down to the simplest meal in a private house 
 without grace being said, and in a reverent
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 43 
 
 manner very different from the mode in 
 which it is often slurred over amongst our- 
 selves. There is no town or village without 
 several churches or chapels, and Sunday is 
 generally pretty strictly observed, except in 
 those towns which contain a large foreign 
 population, as Chicago for instance. The 
 Houses of Congress and of the various State 
 Legislatures and even the Courts of Law 
 are, I believe, opened with prayer. The 
 Monday newspapers always contain long 
 abstracts of the Sermons delivered the pre- 
 vious day, and the excellent institution of 
 Thanksgiving Day, appointed by the Gover- 
 nors of the States, on which the people are 
 enjoined by proclamation to repair to their 
 several places of worship and thank God for 
 the good harvest and the various blessings 
 of the past year, is universally observed and 
 might with advantage be copied by ourselves. 
 I have no religious statistics to inflict upon 
 the reader, but I believe all the leading 
 Protestant sects are well represented all over 
 the country, and the Roman Catholic Church 
 is of course strong amongst the Irish and 
 their descendants. The Episcopal Church of 
 the U.S. uses our prayer-book with a few 
 unimportant alterations, has its High and
 
 44 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 Low Church divisions, and I should say 
 generally includes the bulk of the upper 
 classes in its communion. In the New England 
 States, once the great home of Puritanism, 
 I understand that Unitarianism has greatly 
 increased and Evangelical principles have 
 proportionally declined ; the former I should 
 say numbers among its votaries the majority 
 of the most intellectual men in the States. 
 Though my own prepossessions are strongly 
 in favour of an Established Church, I cannot 
 say that I observed any ill consequences 
 resulting from the want of it in the States, 
 but it is not a subject on which the opinion 
 of a passing traveller is worth much. It is 
 perhaps in small scattered communities such 
 as we have in India, that an established form 
 of prayer has always seemed to me to meet 
 a definite want ; without such a form, such 
 communities, of which there must be many 
 in the new settlements of America, are apt 
 to fall into strange religious vagaries. Au- 
 thorized forms of prayer in such cases become 
 bonds of nationality rather than of religious 
 doctrine, and in a small community dwelling 
 amongst non-Christians in a strange land, 
 the forms and words which have so often
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 45 
 
 been followed and heard at home, with no 
 particular reverence perhaps, acquire a new 
 meaning and interest in our eyes. It is, how- 
 ever, too extensive a subject to be discussed 
 here.
 
 46 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AMERICAN POLITICS AMERICAN AND ENGLISH SOCIAL 
 SYSTEMS CONTRASTED POLITICAL QUESTIONS. 
 
 THE curse of the country seems to be Poli- 
 tics the perpetual electioneering and voting 
 that are always going on, and the low tone 
 of politics and political morality generally. 
 Perhaps I saw the very worst of it, as the 
 time of my visit was that of the Presidential 
 election ; but more or less of the same kind 
 of thing must be generally going on, owing 
 to the short tenure of the various offices. 
 The President, as I have said, is elected 
 every four years, the Senators of Congress 
 every six years, the House of Representa- 
 tives every two years. The Legislatures of 
 the several States have different rules, but 
 generally the members of the Lower House 
 are chosen annually. Then there are the 
 States' Governors, the Mayors and Aldermen 
 of the towns, the States' Attorneys-General,
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 47 
 
 Coroners, Auditors, Presidential Electors and 
 a host of other functionaries, including even 
 the District Judges, who are all changed or 
 liable to be changed so frequently, that the 
 country is kept in a perpetual turmoil and 
 excitement. Not only are all these offices 
 paid, but there are thousands of placemen 
 who are, as a matter of course, removed if 
 the opposition party comes into power, and 
 that too just as they have begun to learn 
 their work, while the struggle for an office of 
 any kind under Government is as keen as in 
 France. Moreover, it is so generally as 
 serted, that the assertion may be assumed to 
 have considerable truth in it, that most 
 public men, to use a vulgar expression, 
 ' feather their nests ' pretty comfortably 
 during their tenure of office, and that public 
 corruption is the rule and not the exception. 
 The tone of the Press on this point is per- 
 fectly amazing to an Englishman ; the most 
 scandalous charges are every day coolly 
 made against the politicians of the opposite 
 side, which, if only a tenth part were true, 
 would render such men infamous in England. 
 No doubt there is but little truth in them, 
 but the effect of such language must be to 
 lower the whole tone of politics throughout the
 
 48 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 country, and no one who has travelled in the 
 States can deny that the tone is very low 
 indeed. 
 
 One effect of this has been to degrade the 
 business of politics to such a level in the 
 public estimation that the best and highest 
 classes of the country keep altogether aloof 
 from it, and it is given over entirely to second- 
 rate men and the lower classes generally ; the 
 leading politicians are as a rule successful 
 journalists or sharp lawyers. The race of 
 statesmen does not exist, and as is well 
 known, in late years at any rate, none of the 
 really great men of America have ever been 
 chosen as President. 
 
 It is not too much to say that the contro- 
 versy on the Alabama question is a proof of 
 this. Our negotiators were statesmen and 
 gentlemen ; those on the other side were 
 politicians, who thought that the art of 
 statesmanship consisted in chicanery, and 
 that a question of national law between two 
 great countries was to be determined on the 
 same principles as a petty case in some in- 
 ferior law court. I have more than once 
 heard the remark made by Canadians that 
 so long as England continues to send such 
 men as she usually sends to negotiate treaties
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 49 
 
 with America, she is certain to be over- 
 reached in every transaction, and that if 
 Canadians had been employed who under- 
 stood the nature of the American politician, 
 the Alabama and San Juan questions would 
 have terminated very differently. 
 
 For the state of things that I have been 
 describing, Universal Suffrage has been 
 largely to blame. The swarms of uneducated 
 Irishmen and others, and now the newly- 
 enfranchised negroes, simply swamp the re- 
 spectable voters who have a real stake in the 
 maintenance of order and good government, 
 fall into the hands of designing and unscru- 
 pulous politicians, and are, it is generally 
 understood, bought wholesale ; while it is 
 constantly asserted that thousands of them 
 are transferred from one State to another on 
 purpose to vote, and often vote many times 
 over. I conversed on the subject with many 
 Americans, and I never met one who did not 
 condemn Universal Suffrage, and I never 
 found one Canadian who did not thank his 
 stars that they were not cursed with it. If I 
 am rightly informed, the same evils are show- 
 ing themselves in the Australian legislatures. 
 They are due to the same cause, and I fear 
 the States have not seen the worst of them. 
 
 E
 
 5<D AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 The consequence of the highest classes 
 keeping aloof from politics is that the Press 
 does not address itself to them : hence the 
 very men most fitted to give the Press a 
 proper tone have no connection with it, and it 
 naturally panders to the passions and preju- 
 dices of its supporters. When such journals 
 contain bitter attacks on England, as they 
 often do, you are generally told by respectable 
 Americans that such articles do not really 
 represent the American sentiment ; but the 
 answer naturally is, that although that may 
 be true so far as regards the respectable 
 minority, that class as a rule does not in- 
 fluence the politics of the country, and that 
 the papers are not likely to write what would 
 be displeasing to the great majority of their 
 subscribers, who unfortunately do influence 
 politics very materially. It is these violent 
 and ignorant men who may any day plunge 
 the two countries into war, which none would 
 regret more than the respectable Americans 
 themselves, though unhappily it would then 
 be too late. 
 
 It is a curious fact that Anglo-Indians, on 
 returning home, are as a rule decidedly radi- 
 cal in their political tendencies, perhaps from 
 a species of re-action after living so long
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 51 
 
 under a (virtually) despotic government. I 
 should certainly call myself an advanced 
 Liberal as regards English politics ; but my 
 visit to America has decidedly had a strong 
 tendency to make me a Conservative. ' Take 
 warning by us,' said an American gentleman 
 to me at Cincinnati, ' I see with regret that 
 the republican feeling is spreading in 
 England ; you don't know when you are well 
 off For God's sake beware of Universal 
 Suffrage or anything approaching to it : you 
 have made a downward step by adopting the 
 Ballot.' I told him, what I sincerely believe, 
 that the general feeling of the English people 
 is still healthily Conservative ; that they are 
 warmly attached to the Monarchy, and feel 
 that they have everything that is really good 
 in a Republic already ; that there is nothing 
 to prevent a man rising in England out of 
 the ranks of the people into the upper ranks ; 
 that there is no aristocracy so democratic as 
 ours, and no people so aristocratic in its 
 instincts, and that I had been long enough 
 in America to see the advantages of an 
 aristocratic class, so long as it is not separated 
 by any broad line of demarcation from the 
 people. 
 
 A man in England rises out of the lower 
 
 E 2
 
 52 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 orders and accumulates a fortune in trade. 
 Neither his education nor his habits fit him 
 for the society of the upper classes, and he 
 feels no grudge at not being admitted amongst 
 them on the strength of his money alone ; but 
 his great ambition is to make his son a 
 gentleman, and to be the founder of a family 
 that shall take its place amongst the gentry of 
 the land. So he buys an estate, sends his son 
 to Oxford and looks forward to the time when 
 he may possibly represent the borough, or 
 even the county, in the House of Commons. 
 Surely this is an honest and healthy ambition, 
 even if it has to be gratified to some extent 
 at the expense of his younger children. The 
 old man's fortune divided amongst all his 
 sons might make them all comfortably off, 
 but they would all be freed from the neces- 
 sity of working, without any sentiment of 
 duty or responsibility being aroused in any 
 of them, and would probably dissipate the 
 money faster than it had been earned. 
 Whereas, in the other case, the eldest son 
 naturally feels a duty towards his family as 
 the head of it, towards his dead father to 
 whom he owes so much, and towards his 
 country as one of the magnates of the land. 
 And these sentiments are fostered at his
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 53 
 
 public school and university, by the example 
 of hundreds of others, many of whom repre- 
 sent families founded like his own. By such 
 a state of things we get the very best kind 
 of aristocracy men well educated, of good 
 means, with leisure to cultivate or foster art, 
 science or literature and those refinements 
 and graces of life which constitute the great 
 charm of good society, and animated by a 
 sense of responsibility which is recognised 
 and encouraged by the full strength of public 
 opinion. Above all, we get a class which has 
 not merely leisure for the business of politics, 
 but whose highest ambition is to serve their 
 country in this way, without fee or reward, 
 and simply for the honour of the thing. It 
 is in this way that in England politics become 
 respectable and honourable ; our politicians 
 are clean-handed, and a political career is at 
 least unsullied by even the suspicion of cor- 
 ruption. And it is their instinctive liking for 
 men of this stamp who have so large a stake 
 in the country, that makes the English people 
 very shy of spouting demagogues and politi- 
 cal adventurers generally. 
 
 Now, see what happens in America. A 
 man makes a large fortune, and spends it in 
 building a marble palace in town ; for the race
 
 54 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 of country gentlemen is unknown. His son 
 succeeds to his wealth, but neither by educa- 
 tion, habit, or association, has he imbibed any 
 of those feelings or tastes which would lead 
 him to recognise the responsibility attached 
 to the possession of wealth. Of the healthy 
 country life of his English cousin he knows 
 nothing ; as to politics, he knows it is con- 
 sidered a dirty calling unworthy the attention 
 of a gentleman ; the only social position or 
 influence he can acquire depends on the 
 amount of money he has to spend. Without 
 recognised position, duties or responsibility, 
 without ambition or a career to animate him, 
 what wonder that he spends recklessly and 
 extravagantly ? if he does not, probably his 
 son will after him, for there is no law of entail 
 by which he can save for future generations 
 what has been so hardly earned. 
 
 I do not think I am exaggerating this 
 contrast. This class of young Americans 
 seems to me much inferior to the correspond- 
 ing class at home ; they are more like 
 Parisians, with few manly tastes, and none of 
 those high-bred manners and instincts which 
 we are accustomed to associate with the term 
 gentleman. It is this class which forms the 
 true aristocracy of England an aristocracy
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 55 
 
 not of birth, or rank, or talent, or money ; 
 but formed by associations and circumstances 
 which are the out-growth and product of our 
 national life and political institutions, and the 
 absence of which and of a consequent high 
 standard of refinement, lowers the tone of 
 American society and Vulgarises it in contrast 
 with that of England. 
 
 I should be ashamed of descanting in this 
 manner on first principles, were it not that 
 I think we are too apt to forget what we owe 
 to the present constitution of English society, 
 and too eager to spy out its defects and 
 blemishes. I am fully aware that the sketch 
 I have drawn is, in many cases, not borne 
 out by facts, and may be laughed at as too 
 ideal that many of the class of our young 
 ' parvenus ' fall painfully short of a high 
 standard, and that even those who have the 
 traditions and fame of a long ancestry to 
 keep up, often sacrifice them recklessly and 
 selfishly ; but I am talking of the tendency of 
 our institutions in general, and of their effect 
 on the great majority, and I maintain that it 
 is, on the whole, such as I have described, 
 and affords a healthy stimulus to the great 
 body of the people, giving them worthy 
 objects to pursue which ennoble mere money-
 
 56 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 making, and go far to prevent its demoralising 
 influences. 
 
 I may be told that what I have said above 
 applies only to the upper classes of the 
 population, and that the absence of a superior 
 standard of ' gentility' in America is more than 
 compensated by the absence of pauperism. 
 Granted most fully. I have already admitted 
 this immense advantage that they possess, 
 as well as the greater diffusion of education, 
 of our short-comings in which respect we 
 ought indeed to be thoroughly ashamed, and 
 which we are I hope now in real earnest to 
 remedy. But the difference between the 
 two countries as regards the lower classes is 
 easily accounted for by the difference in each 
 case between the area and the population. 
 I can see nothing in their respective social 
 or political systems to which it can be attri- 
 buted, and the only remedy for our own case 
 I believe to be in education, which will result, 
 first, in increased emigration until labour in 
 England commands a fair price ; secondly, in 
 the correction of those improvident and help- 
 less habits which so often defeat all efforts to 
 assist the English working classes. It 
 certainly appears to me that, at the present 
 time, the class most requiring help in our own
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 57 
 
 community is that large section of the middle 
 class which so often finds itself struggling to 
 maintain its position on insufficient means, for 
 whom the avenues to respectable employment 
 are yearly becoming more crowded, and which 
 is prevented, by the force of opinion and other 
 circumstances, from descending into a lower 
 social stratum in order to earn the means of 
 an honest livelihood. I have referred to this 
 question further on. 
 
 I see no reason why what I have com- 
 plained of in America should not be remedied 
 without any radical change, if only the upper 
 classes recognised their duty of asserting and 
 maintaining their legitimate influence in the 
 state the influence due to intellect and 
 fortune, as opposed to mere numbers ; but it 
 can only be by adding the weight that is 
 always gained by integrity and public spirit. 
 They can then rescue politics out of the 
 hands into which it is fallen, and would them- 
 selves form an aristocracy in all essentials 
 like our own. I am not foolish enough to 
 propose transplanting English institutions, 
 which have been the growth of centuries, to 
 a country x whose circumstances differ so widely 
 from those of England. 
 
 In contrasting England with America in
 
 58 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 this and other respects, I am perfectly aware 
 that ' comparisons are odious,' and that no sane 
 man would desire to see a dreary uniformity 
 of national character and institutions all over 
 the world, even if it could be produced by 
 any possible combination of circumstances. 
 But there is a large class of Americans who 
 are always making such comparisons, and 
 such an increasing class amongst ourselves 
 who appear to take it for granted that 
 England is verging towards Republicanism, 
 and that this is a step in the right direction, that 
 I cannot help bearing my weak testimony to 
 the contrary, and asserting that, in all the 
 essentials of good government, we English- 
 men have a decided advantage over our 
 Trans-Atlantic cousins, and that even with 
 the present defects in our social condition, we 
 have no reason for envying theirs. 
 
 The reader is probably aware that the 
 terms applied to the two great political parties 
 in the States, Republicans and Democrats, 
 would be more correctly designated as the 
 constitutional and aristocratic parties respec- 
 tively. The former include all the New 
 England States and the Middle States also, 
 with the exception of New York City ; they 
 may also claim the majority of the Western
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 59 
 
 States. The Democrats had, and still have 
 their strength in the South ; and though 
 always inferior in numbers and resources to 
 the Republicans, made up for that deficiency 
 by a compactness of organisation and a 
 singleness of aim which, for many years, gave 
 them a strong preponderance in the govern- 
 ment. The North and West, which together 
 were irresistible, were for years in antagonism 
 on questions of tariff, and the Southern 
 politicians pulling together and possessing 
 great influence in society by the charm of 
 their manners, aided by the fascinations of 
 their women, who took a keen interest in 
 politics, returned president after president, 
 monopolised many of the great offices of 
 state, and filled the army and navy with 
 Southern officers. Then came the determined 
 attempt of the South to extend slavery into 
 the newly settled Western territory ; the 
 Northerners got alarmed and returned Mr. 
 Lincoln as president, and the Southerners, 
 who had for years been preparing for the 
 crisis, at once declared for secession, a step 
 followed by the great Civil War. 
 
 In that war, for a long time the South had 
 the advantage naturally accruing from unity 
 of purpose, a superior organisation, and
 
 6O AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 greater military skill. No general on the 
 Northern side possessed the talent or com- 
 manding influence of Robert Lee, and both 
 his authority and that of Jefferson Davis 
 were unquestioned from first to last. We in 
 England, misled by those early successes of 
 the South, utterly ignorant of the difference in 
 numbers and resources of the two belligerents, 
 and understanding so little of the question at 
 issue that we thought it was a struggle for 
 freedom, and not for the extension of slavery, 
 sympathised strongly with the Southern side, 
 not so much perhaps because we wished them 
 well, as because the tone of the Northern 
 press had been so long offensively hostile to 
 England. Remembering what one does, of 
 the general opinion expressed in all classes 
 of English society in 1 860-61 as to the 
 results of the struggle, and the terrible 
 suffering caused in England by the absence 
 of the usual supply of American cotton, it is 
 impossible not to do justice to the loyalty of 
 the English Government in turning a deaf 
 ear to all suggestions made to them to recog- 
 nise the South as an independent Confeder- 
 acy and to break the blockade of the Southern 
 ports. 
 
 Most people indeed thought that the result
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 6 1 
 
 of the struggle was practically decided in 
 favour of the South, and that though the 
 North might sullenly refuse to acknowledge 
 it, the independence of the rebels was as vir- 
 tually secured as that of the thirteen States 
 was after July 4,- 1775. But none who really 
 knew the North made that mistake ; we 
 forgot that they were of the same stock as 
 ourselves, slow to be roused to war, clumsy in 
 first attempts, and requiring time to organise 
 their resources ; but that the dogged Anglo- 
 Saxon resolution lay beneath, and even sup- 
 posing it had been shared equally by the 
 opposite side, that the superior numbers and 
 resources of the North and West together 
 must make them irresistible. So the event 
 proved ; the South was beaten by sheer ex- 
 haustion, and so utterly crushed that the most 
 sanguine partisans of the cause have never 
 made a struggle since. To the honour of the 
 North be it remembered that, although 
 passion had run high throughout the struggle, 
 victory was unmarked by a single political 
 execution, or even any wholesale confiscation. 
 A certain number of the most prominent men 
 were simply disfranchised and declared in- 
 capable of holding office, and that was all. 
 But mourning was in every household
 
 62 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 throughout the land ; the great Southern 
 families were ruined, ladies bred up in 
 affluence and luxury had literally to beg 
 their bread, and the negro slaves were not 
 merely freed but invested with the privilege 
 of the franchise. For some time a reign of 
 terror was established, not by the conquerors, 
 but by the ' mean whites ' of the South, who, 
 under the name of the Kuklux Klan, formed 
 themselves into bands ostensibly to intimidate 
 the blacks from voting at elections, but really 
 quite as much for marauding purposes. A 
 judicious mixture of firmness and armed force 
 has put all this down and the South is now 
 fast recovering, though much of the property 
 has changed hands since the war. 
 
 That a very bitter feeling should still 
 remain on the part of many of the sufferers 
 is but natural, but I do not think there is any 
 chance of the struggle being renewed ; the 
 Southern cause, as it existed, is indeed 
 extinct. The Western States, whose soldiers 
 mainly decided the struggle, and whose politi- 
 cal relations with the North and East were 
 for a long time not very cordial, would be 
 much more likely to become antagonistic to 
 the dominant party, but that their growing 
 wealth and population and the quiet agencies
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 63 
 
 of the railway and telegraph tend daily to 
 create a fusion of interests between them. 
 The most likely ' split ' in the lifetime of the 
 next generation would be that of the Pacific 
 States, which, separated from the others by a 
 chain of mountains, with vast agricultural and 
 mineral resources, and a sea-board of their 
 own which makes them independent of 
 outlets on the Atlantic, give them a feeling of 
 independence that may one day involve im- 
 portant results in the future political history 
 of America. 
 
 The late Presidential election was invested 
 with a certain significance, because Mr. 
 Greeley's avowed object was to restore the 
 disenfranchised ex-rebels of the South, and it 
 was therefore looked upon as a virtual attempt 
 to resuscitate the Southern party. His over- 
 whelming defeat virtually disposes of that 
 question ; henceforth the leading political 
 questions of the day appear to be the reform 
 of the civil service, and the question of pro- 
 tective tariffs. Of the necessity of the former 
 I have already spoken ; the attempt to effect 
 it will arouse a storm of opposition amongst 
 the large class of hungry place-hunters, but it 
 will meet with the cordial approval of every
 
 64 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 honest man in the country, and General 
 Grant has pledged himself to the task. 
 
 The tariff question is a more serious affair. 
 It is curious, in a progressive country like the 
 States, to find the ghost of protection re- 
 vived, and to hear the old threadbare argu- 
 ments against free-trade, which have long 
 been abandoned in England, seriously 
 brought forward and defended by specious 
 reasoning. The result of the attempt to 
 protect native industry and to foster native 
 manufactures appears to the unprejudiced 
 traveller to be to saddle the general public 
 with bad and dear articles for the benefit of 
 a small class, to prevent that healthy compe- 
 tition which alone produces superiority by 
 fostering enterprise, and, amongst other re- 
 sults, to have ruined the American mercantile 
 marine. 
 
 I wish I could see any prospect of a restric- 
 tion of the franchise, which the best friends of 
 America ought most earnestly to desire ; but 
 of that there is no hope. The theory of our 
 constitution is that the franchise is a privi- 
 lege to be exercised as a trust ; in America, it 
 is regarded as a right, and appears to involve 
 no idea of duty. Unless the modern doc- 
 trine of the representation of minorities can
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 65 
 
 be made to work, all that remains is to 
 diffuse education as widely as possible, and 
 to raise the educational standard higher than 
 it is at present. There is an amount of good 
 sense and religious feeling in the country 
 that goes far to keep things straight and to 
 rectify the extravagancies of an ignorant 
 democracy, if only they are not swamped by 
 the intrusion of foreign elements such as the 
 Irish and the Negro, which are less sus- 
 ceptible of those influences than the original 
 Anglo-Saxon race. 
 
 And here I am tempted to make a digres- 
 sion on the tendency of political writers to 
 over-estimate the advantages of representa- 
 tive government, or rather to take for 
 granted that it is the best kind of govern- 
 ment for every race, simply because under it 
 we have become a great and prosperous 
 nation. I might point out that even with us 
 it has certain inherent defects, some of which 
 are even now only beginning to be felt that 
 its inevitable tendency is to rate the talkers 
 above the thinkers or the doers to bring 
 into undue prominence the men of ready 
 speech, rather than the men of profound 
 thought or of prompt action, and hence to 
 produce a slowness and cumbrousness in the 
 
 F
 
 66 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 executive functions of Government which in 
 times of national danger are often painfully 
 felt, and have even led to wild proposals of 
 decentralisation as a possible remedy for its 
 defects. But granting that those defects are 
 far outweighed by its advantages, the ques- 
 tion remains, is it applicable to men of other 
 races who differ widely from us in character 
 and temperament ? Does it not pre-suppose 
 the existence of a degree of self-restraint in 
 the national character of a phlegmatic and 
 cautious temperament, which is almost pecu- 
 liar to the Anglo-Saxon alone ? I cannot 
 help fancying that the characteristics of the 
 Celtic races (for instance) are really inconsis- 
 tent at present with the possession of repre- 
 sentative institutions and even a perfectly 
 free press. The hot temper, the quick 
 sensibility, and the poetical imagination that 
 can be roused to enthusiasm or lashed into 
 fury by an eloquent speech or a sensational 
 newspaper article, until reason is lost sight of 
 and prudence is thrown to the winds, appear 
 to me quite antagonistic to those principles 
 by which alone popular institutions have 
 been found to succeed. France and Ireland 
 may be educated up to such institutions in 
 time, but Frenchmen and Irishmen seem
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 67 
 
 to me hardly fit to be trusted with such 
 dangerous weapons at present. 
 
 I should like to say something of the 
 Negro question, but as I did not go further 
 south than Washington, what I can say can 
 hardly be of much value. I have lived for 
 so many years amongst Asiatics that I cer- 
 tainly have no inherent antipathy to the 
 mere colour of a man's skin, but the exces- 
 sive ugliness of the Negroes certainly struck 
 me as very repulsive. It is not merely the 
 thick blubber lips and the woolly hair, but the 
 monkey-like conformation of the skull that 
 is so disagreeable to European eyes, though 
 possibly habit might reconcile one to these 
 peculiarities. I came across some specimens 
 of the third of the great human families, in 
 the shape of some of the Japanese youths 
 who are being educated in the States, and 
 certainly their physiognomy struck me as 
 little less ugly than that of the Negro. 
 Is there really a totally different standard of 
 beauty amongst the three great races of the 
 earth, or would the Caucasian standard be 
 admitted to be superior by the Negro and 
 the Mongol ? 
 
 The Negro is essentially imitative, and 
 does his best to copy his white fellow-citizen, 
 
 F 2
 
 68 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 while the Hindoo (for instance), and the 
 Asiatic generally in fact, though of the same 
 parent race, makes little or no attempt at such 
 imitation, and preserves throughout his own 
 dress, manners, and religion. If this imita- 
 tive faculty is a virtual admission of his 
 inferiority, at least the Negro imitates to 
 some purpose, and it seems to give him 
 every chance of progressive development. 
 The Negroes are said to be keenly desirous 
 of knowledge, and I heard of numerous 
 instances of intellectual progress amongst 
 them, even of a very high order. Whether 
 they are increasing or diminishing in num- 
 bers since the War I could not ascertain, but 
 I understand they are taking heartily to free 
 labour, and are generally contented and pros- 
 perous.
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 69 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 AMERICAN TRAVELLING RAILROADS STEAM BOATS 
 
 HOTELS. 
 
 THE Americans deserve great credit for 
 having so early and clearly recognised the 
 immense importance to the country of good 
 means of communication, as absolutely essen- 
 tial to open up the newly-settled States and 
 develop their agricultural and mineral re- 
 sources. Instead of looking on railways, as 
 we long did in India, as expensive luxuries, 
 only to be provided as money could be saved 
 to make them, they have regarded them as 
 the very first essentials of civilisation. In no 
 country has the railway system been so 
 rapidly and completely developed in no 
 other country has a wise and liberal policy 
 been so splendidly rewarded. The system 
 of making grants of land for some miles on 
 each side of the line to the Railway Com- 
 panies has enabled them to construct their
 
 7O AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 roads with a very moderate expenditure of 
 capital. Money, too, has not been squan- 
 dered in costly buildings and in attempting 
 too great a perfection of roadway ; many of 
 the lines are of the rough-and-ready style of 
 construction. But on all those on which I 
 travelled, the pace was fair and the arrange- 
 ments sufficient for safety and comfort, while 
 the older railways I thought quite as good in 
 every respect as the English lines. 
 
 The carriages (or cars, as they are always 
 termed) are fifty or sixty feet long, open at 
 both ends, and hold fifty or sixty passengers, 
 who sit facing the engine in pairs on each 
 side, leaving a passage down the middle. 
 The cars have a stove at each end, a w.c., 
 and are also provided with drinking water, 
 iced in the summer. There is a railed space 
 outside the doors at each end and across the 
 connecting platforms, so that it is easy to 
 pass from one car to another even on a dark 
 night with the train going at full speed, and 
 this counts for something on a long journey. 
 
 Nominally there is only one class of cars ; 
 but there are drawing-room cars attached to 
 all through trains on the main lines, in which 
 by paying an extra dollar for about every 200 
 miles, you can have a seat in a luxurious
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 71 
 
 saloon, with sofas, arm-chairs, mirrors, and 
 washing-rooms besides the inevitable spit- 
 toons. At the ends of these cars are a few 
 small rooms holding two passengers each, for 
 those who wish to be quite private. 
 
 Besides these, there are the sleeping cars for 
 night journeys, the drawing-room cars being 
 often convertible thereinto. In these, you 
 can have a comfortable sleeping berth for two 
 dollars, larger, than those on board a steamer, 
 with clean sheets, pillows and blankets, and 
 curtains all round, in which you can sleep 
 comfortably enough and can even have your 
 boots blacked in the morning ! There are 
 also dining cars on some of the long lines, in 
 which you can dine very well and as mode- 
 rately as at an hotel. 
 
 These Pullman or Wagner cars are run 
 by their own proprietors on the lines, for the 
 sake of the extra payments made by those 
 who desire the extra accommodation, and 
 which are collected by the conductors of the 
 cars. The railway company charges nothing 
 for the haulage, as of course the presence of 
 such cars is an inducement to travellers to use 
 the lines ; the system appears to work well. 
 
 Another special feature of American 
 railway travelling is their ticket system. You
 
 72 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 can buy your ticket, as with us if you 
 choose, at the station before starting, but you 
 can also buy it at any of the general ticket 
 offices, of which there are several in every 
 town, and one at each of the large hotels, and 
 you can purchase it there at exactly the same 
 price as at the station, and a week before- 
 hand if you like. The comfort of this 
 arrangement is indescribable, and why on 
 earth our conservative railway companies do 
 not adopt it, except on special occasions, such 
 as the Derby or Ascot cup days, no reason- 
 able being can understand. The tickets for 
 long journeys are issued in coupons, and you 
 can break your journey where you choose. 
 
 The American ticket system would be 
 specially useful in India, as it would protect 
 the natives from imposition by the subordi- 
 nate railway officials, who, there is good 
 reason to believe, often defraud travellers in 
 the hurry and confusion which always prevail 
 at a large railway station under the present 
 system, previous to a train starting. But I 
 should like to see an attempt at some uniform 
 classification of fares on the principle of the 
 penny postage ; by which tickets might be 
 bought by the dozen, (if necessary), to be 
 used on any railway, at any time, for any
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 73 
 
 distance, not exceeding, (say) 100 miles. 
 And if the mileage classification corresponded 
 to a particular coloured ticket for every 100 
 miles, great simplicity would be attained, and 
 perhaps as much uniformity as could be ex- 
 pected in our long Indian distances at 
 present. In England, where the distances are 
 short, I believe if the railways were all brought 
 Bunder Government control, we might safely 
 establish a uniform rate of say one shilling per 
 journey, provided only that the lines could 
 carry the traffic. 
 
 Equally good are the American luggage 
 arrangements ; by the bye, luggage is always 
 called ' baggage/ and a station is always a 
 ' depot.' You take your boxes to the baggage 
 room at the depot, mention its destination, and 
 a brass label with a number on it is forthwith 
 strapped on each piece of baggage, duplicate 
 labels being handed to you. On arrival at your 
 destination, you can claim your baggage 
 yourself if you wish, by producing the brass 
 checks, or you can make these over to the 
 hotel porter or to the agent of one of the 
 express companies, who is waiting at the 
 station, and he will procure it for you and 
 forward it without further trouble. If you 
 wish to stop at any intermediate station, you
 
 74 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 can let the baggage go on if you like ; it will 
 be safely cared for in the baggage room, and 
 the company is responsible so long as you 
 retain the brass checks. 
 
 There is great competition amongst the 
 rival lines for carrying passengers, and special 
 time tables are to be had gratis at all the 
 hotels and ticket offices, issued by the various 
 companies, with a map of the railway, (occa- 
 sionally distorted to show that their line is 
 the shortest), and often with lithographs of 
 the scenery along the road. One I have by 
 me of the Union Pacific line shows the train 
 charging through a herd of bison on the 
 prairies, while the travellers are knocking 
 them over with revolvers from the windows 
 of the cars ! 
 
 The locomotives are very shiny and glit- 
 tering, and are provided with a bell which is 
 sounded all the time that they are running 
 through a town, as the trains often do, or 
 over the level crossings of roads, which are 
 seldom protected by gates, but merely by a 
 notice board, with ' Look out for the Loco- 
 motive ' painted thereon. 
 
 One feature of an American train consists 
 in the boys who traverse the whole of the 
 cars at intervals with stores of books, papers,
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 75 
 
 fruit and lollipops for sale, whereof the main 
 stock is kept in the baggage waggon. 
 
 The general rate of travelling is slower 
 than with us, from twenty to twenty-five 
 miles an hour including stoppages. The cost 
 is two to three cents per mile, except on the 
 Pacific Railway, which being the only one 
 yet completed across the Continent, charges 
 higher fares. This line runs from Omaha 
 400 miles west of Chicago, on the Missouri, 
 across the States of Nebraska and Wyoming, 
 in the latter of which it crosses the Rocky 
 Mountains, the highest station on the line, 
 and indeed in the world, being Sherman, 
 which is 8,235 feet above the sea-level. 
 After descending to the plains, it passes 
 within thirty-six miles of Salt Lake City, the 
 home of the Mormons, with which it is con- 
 nected by a branch, and then crosses the 
 States of Nevada and California to San 
 Francisco, passing over the range of the 
 Sierra Nevadas by an extensive series of 
 tunnels, high trestle bridges, snow-galleries 
 and other engineering works, through some 
 of the finest scenery in the world. The 
 summit level of this portion is 7,041 feet 
 above the sea, the track going west descend- 
 ing 6,000 feet in seventy-five miles, and that
 
 76 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 in the opposite direction descending 2,500 
 feet in fifty miles. The whole distance from 
 Omaha to San Francisco is 1,914 miles, 
 owned by the Union Pacific, Central Pacific 
 and Western Pacific companies. Many of 
 the works are said to be still very incom- 
 plete, the trestle bridges especially being in 
 several places in a very shaky condition. 
 However, the daily service appears to be 
 performed regularly enough, and I have not 
 heard of any serious accidents. 
 
 No country in the world has been so well 
 provided with natural facilities for internal 
 navigation as America, in the great lakes and 
 by such rivers as the Mississippi, St. Law- 
 rence, Ohio, Missouri, Hudson and others. 
 All these are navigated by hundreds of 
 steamers carrying passengers and cargo, and 
 admirably adapted in their construction to 
 the special requirements of each stream. 
 The finest of these boats are those plying 
 between New York and Boston, by the Long 
 Island Sound, and those on the Hudson and 
 St. Lawrence. They have three decks, of 
 which the lowest is devoted to cargo, and to 
 the use of the crew and officers of the boat. 
 On the middle deck is a splendid saloon, 
 luxuriously furnished, with most comfortable
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 77 
 
 sleeping cabins on both sides, which, by the 
 way, are always called ' State-rooms.' The 
 upper deck is used as a promenade. Many 
 of these boats are used as floating hotels by 
 people who desire fresh air, change of 
 scene and pleasant company for days to- 
 gether ; newly married couples are especially 
 addicted, it is said, to this kind of life. The 
 charges on all these boats appeared to me 
 very moderate, and the style of accommo- 
 dation is certainly very superior to anything 
 I have ever seen in Europe on the Rhine, 
 or the Swiss or Italian lakes, for instance. 
 
 The American telegraphs are not under 
 the control of the Government as with us, 
 and though there is a uniform postage rate of 
 three cents throughout the States, I was as- 
 tonished to find in such a progressive coun- 
 try that there was no uniform telegraph rate, 
 so that telegraphing is there a very expen- 
 sive luxury. 
 
 Under the head of travelling, it is proper 
 to say something of the American Hotels, 
 of which I had heard much and was greatly 
 disappointed. They are huge establish- 
 ments, often holding from 500 to 1,000 
 guests; indeed the 'Union 'at Saratoga can 
 accommodate 1,800 ; but both in cookery and
 
 78 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 general comfort are inferior to the best Euro- 
 pean hotels. They are all on the same 
 general plan; a large entrance hall contains 
 the office-counter, where rooms are allotted 
 and bills made out, a railway ticket office, a 
 letter and post-office, a telegraph office, and 
 a book stall. Leading out from the hall are 
 generally a barber's shop, lavatories, a writing 
 room, reading room, and a smoking room 
 with a bar, also billiard rooms. On the first 
 floor are the dining rooms, ladies drawing 
 rooms and private sitting rooms ; on the 
 other floors are the bed rooms, plainly but 
 neatly furnished. 
 
 The usual hours for meals are breakfast 
 from 7 to 1 1 ; early dinner or lunch from I 
 to 3 ; late dinner from 5 to 7 ; tea from 7 to 
 9 ; supper from 9 to 12. You pay four 
 and a half dollars per day (about 1 8 shillings) 
 which includes everything except wine and 
 beer, and can eat as many meals as you like. 
 Between the above hours, an extensive bill 
 of fare is provided, from wHich you choose 
 what you like and have it brought to you in 
 portions, and you are generally expected to 
 order everything you want at once, the result 
 of which is that while you are eating one dish, 
 the others, which are ranged in front of you
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 79 
 
 in a semi-circle, are getting cold. It is a 
 barbarous and uncomfortable fashion of din- 
 ing, but few Americans would sit out a long 
 dinner at a table d'hote. The bills of fare are 
 comprehensive enough ; indeed, a great deal 
 too much so, for if there were fewer dishes 
 provided, there would be more chance of 
 getting them well cooked and served hot ; and 
 the worst is that all the hotels at the several 
 towns in the West are as ambitious in their 
 aims as those in New York, charging exactly 
 the same, while you can seldom find anything 
 fit to eat. The meat in the West is lean, 
 tough and tasteless ; little wonder in that when 
 stall-feeding is rarely practised and the cattle 
 are fed on nothing but coarse prairie grass. 
 The poultry too is very inferior and the game 
 always roasted to death. The pastry as a 
 rule is excellent, so are the soups. Ice cream 
 is always given at dessert and is generally 
 good. I never saw a good floury potato, 
 but the sweet potato is very fair, also stewed 
 tomatoes, spinach, cauliflowers, lima beans, and 
 above all, the boiled ears of green corn, eaten 
 with butter, pepper and salt. Fish is of course 
 scarce and bad a thousand miles from the 
 ocean ; on the Atlantic sea-board you get cod, 
 salmon (pretty good), ' sheep's head ' (excel-
 
 8o AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 lent) and quantities of oysters. These are 
 greatly inferior in flavour to our natives, and 
 their size takes one somewhat aback at first ; 
 but they are cheap and plentiful, and good 
 when fried, stewed or roasted. 
 
 The bread is generally good and made in 
 great variety, white bread, brown bread, corn 
 bread (i.e. Indian corn), buckwheat cakes, 
 which are like small pan-cakes and eaten hot 
 with butter and maple syrup. But there is 
 nothing so good as our French roll, muffin, 
 crumpet or tea cake. Butter is generally fair, 
 cheese is rarely eaten, milk always good. 
 
 The fruits I saw were peaches (cheap, but 
 generally unripe and very inferior to ours) ; 
 pears (excellent but dear) ; apples of many 
 kinds, all good and cheap ; grapes of the 
 scented kind ; musk melons very good ; and 
 that nasty, tasteless fruit, the water melon. 
 
 With regard to the beverages, beer is made 
 in several places, but is always thick muddy 
 stuff. English draught ale is sold at seven- 
 pence half-penny a glass and two shillings the 
 pint bottle. Wine is extravagantly dear also, a 
 pint bottle of St. Julien Claret costing three 
 or four shillings, a bottle of Sherry twelve to 
 sixteen shillings, and others in proportion. 
 The American wines, such as still and spark-
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 8 1 
 
 ling Catawba, are very fair, but cost from six 
 to ten shillings a bottle. Iced water, iced 
 milk, and iced green tea are constantly drunk 
 at all meals, as also tea and coffee made in the 
 usual manner, which, as in most hotels, are 
 generally bad. A variety of drinks are sold at 
 the hotel bars, generally of bad whiskey, rum 
 or brandy, with water, sugar, and mint or 
 other flavours ; also sweet soda-water, and 
 syrups of various kinds. 
 
 Ice is cheap and plentiful everywhere, and 
 everyone has it at every meal, both in winter 
 and summer ; the usual way is to pay so much 
 a month and the ice cart calls and deposits a 
 lump of from ten to thirty pounds weight on 
 the pavement in front of the door, daily or 
 every other day. 
 
 It may be useful to other travellers if 
 I state that the cost of my tour, including 
 travelling, hotel-charges and all etceteras, was 
 eight dollars or about thirty-two shillings per 
 day, exclusive of the cost of the voyage out 
 and home, which amounted to thirty guineas. 
 
 G
 
 82 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE HUDSON WEST POINT LAKES GEORGE AND CHAMP - 
 LAIN NIAGARA DETROIT CHICAGO THE MISSISSIPPI 
 ST. JOSEPH THE MISSOURI THE EMIGRATION 
 QUESTION. 
 
 ON a fine morning in September, I left New 
 York by steamer to go up the Hudson River. 
 The navigable length of this river is about 
 150 miles, up to Albany, the capital of New 
 York State, and for 1 20 miles it has sufficient 
 depth of water for vessels of the largest class. 
 The scenery throughout is very fine, and 
 much resembles a chain of the English lakes ; 
 steep cliffs, wooded heights and picturesque 
 towns, villages and villa residences, are found 
 on both banks ; and as we proceed upwards, 
 the imposing background formed by the 
 Kaatskill Mountains heightens the effect of 
 the scenery above anything of the same kind 
 that I have witnessed in Europe. It is the 
 fashion to compare this river with the Rhine ; 
 but they are in truth very unlike each other.
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 83 
 
 The prevailing colour of the scenery of the 
 latter is brown, on the Hudson it is green, 
 except when the changing tints of the autum- 
 nal foliage produce a brilliant variety of red 
 and yellow. The Hudson has no mediaeval 
 castles, and few legendary tales but those pre- 
 served or created by the charming fancy of 
 Washington Irving, but it has beauties of its 
 own quite as admirable as those of the more 
 historical river. 
 
 Fifty miles up, we come to the buildings of 
 West Point, the famous military school of the 
 States, where I landed in order to visit a 
 place of which I had heard so much. I was 
 received very kindly by General Ruger the 
 Governor, and Colonel Upton the Comman- 
 dant, who showed me over the whole place. 
 
 The Academy was founded in 1802 for the 
 education of officers for the United States 
 Army, and comprises the barracks with accom- 
 modation for 250 cadets, a riding school, 
 laboratory, observatory, chapel, hospital and 
 quarters for officers. The nominations are 
 made by the House of Representatives, the 
 candidates having only to pass an easy 
 qualifying examination. But during the 
 course of study, which lasts for four years and 
 is very complete and severe, about two-thirds 
 
 G 2
 
 84 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 of those entering are gradually eliminated, 
 the remainder being recommended to Con- 
 gress for commissions in the Engineers, 
 Artillery, Cavalry or Infantry. The cadets 
 wear a neat grey uniform, and the discipline is 
 very strict and even severe. The value of 
 the training received here was remarkably 
 shown in the great Civil War, when the 
 West Point men came signally to the front, 
 and scarcely a single man rose to distinction 
 throughout the war who had not been trained 
 at West Point. Grant, Lee, Sherman, 
 McClellan, Beauregard and Meade were all 
 graduates of the academy ; Sheridan was, I 
 think, the only man of note who was an 
 outsider. Many of the graduates stay but a 
 short time in the service and afterwards 
 betake themselves to the more lucrative 
 occupations of civil life; for, in the United 
 States, as in England, the pay of the officers 
 is but small. 
 
 The United States Engineers have for 
 many years borne a high reputation all over 
 the world for their scientific attainments, and 
 in the American war showed that such 
 acquirements certainly did not disqualify them 
 for high military commands, as it was the 
 fashion to imagine in England up to very
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 85 
 
 recent times. Nearly all the best generals on 
 both sides had been in fact Engineer graduates, 
 and to the names already mentioned may be 
 added those of Humphreys and Abbott, 
 whose work on the physics and hydraulics 
 of the Mississippi is the most valuable con- 
 tribution of modern times to the science of 
 Hydraulics ; Gillmorewell known for his writ- 
 ings on Limes and Cements ; Cullum for his 
 work on Military Bridges ; Newton for the 
 extensive and original Blasting operations 
 executed by him ; Merrill, Gillespie and 
 others, all alike distinguished in peace as in 
 war. I had the pleasure of meeting many of 
 these officers, from whom I received a very 
 cordial welcome and much personal kindness, 
 which I am sure my brother officers of the 
 corps in England and India will reciprocate 
 if they have the opportunity. The United 
 States Engineer officers are employed simi- 
 larly to our own ; besides the care of all 
 forts, and river, coast and lake defences, they 
 have charge of all works for the improvement 
 of river navigation and of harbours generally, 
 which are carried on by appropriations made 
 annually by Congress for the purpose. 
 
 I left West Point after a very agreeable 
 visit and proceeded up the Hudson to Rhine-
 
 86 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 beck, whence I took the train to Saratoga. 
 This is the well known fashionable watering- 
 place where people meet in the summer 
 months to drink the waters all day and dance 
 all the night. It was, however, nearly empty 
 at the time of my visit, and I travelled on 
 to Lake George, the scenery and islands of 
 which are very beautiful, though inferior I 
 think to the Scottish lakes from the absence of 
 any high mountains in the immediate vicinity. 
 A steamer carries you up the lake, and a short 
 coach ride over an abominable road takes 
 you to Ti landing on Lake Champlain. 
 This is a much larger body of water than the 
 other, but the surrounding hills are low, and 
 the scenery inferior. Another steam voyage 
 of several hours lands you at Rouse's Point, 
 near the Canadian frontier, whence the train 
 carries you to Montreal over the great 
 Victoria Bridge. 
 
 From Montreal I made a short tour 
 through Canada, but will reserve what I have 
 to say of the Dominion to a subsequent 
 chapter. 
 
 I re-entered the United States at the 
 famous Falls of Niagara. What can I say of 
 these that has not already been said ? I sup- 
 pose all the world knows that the Falls are on
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 87 
 
 the Niagara River, which drains off the 
 surplus waters from Lake Erie into Lake 
 Ontario, the difference of level between the 
 two lakes being 334 feet, whereof about 190 
 feet are absorbed in the Falls, and the re- 
 mainder in the Rapids. Goat Island, in the 
 middle of the river, divides the Fall into two, 
 which are known, respectively, as the Ameri- 
 can, and the Canadian or Horse-Shoe, Fall, 
 from its curved shape ; the latter is three- 
 quarters of a mile in length along the crest, 
 the former about 500 yards. By far the 
 finest view is to be obtained from the Ca- 
 nadian side of the river, whence a front view 
 can be had of the American, and a three- 
 quarter view of the Canadian, Fall. There 
 are also several other points of view, from the 
 top and bottom of each, and from the central 
 tower at the end of Goat Island, and you can 
 also pass behind the Falls between them and 
 the rock if you don't mind getting wet. 
 
 In mere height, the falls are surpassed by 
 many others in the world ; it is in their great 
 breadth, in the enormous mass of water that 
 they momentarily precipitate, in the clouds of 
 spray that are sent up and which are visible 
 for miles, in the mighty rush and roar of such 
 a stupendous volume, that the peculiar 
 beauty of the spectacle consists.
 
 88 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 Goat Island, which is approached by a 
 bridge, is well wooded, and prettily laid out 
 with walks and drives, and the rapids above 
 the island are well worth a visit. By a sen- 
 sible arrangement, the guides are prohibited 
 from troubling visitors with their officious 
 attentions, and as their services are really not 
 needed, you can explore the place in peace, 
 and enjoy the different views of this great 
 wonder of Nature by yourself. 
 
 Niagara ! what language can express 
 
 The sense of thy majestic loveliness 
 
 That fills us as with silent awe we gaze. 
 
 In those primseval days 
 
 Ere yet these forests had their birth, 
 
 When man as yet trod not upon this earth, 
 
 The roaring of thy waters then resounded, 
 
 Thy clouds of spray aye heavenward then rebounded. 
 
 Thou, mighty cataract ! still poured'st down thy flood, 
 
 And thunderd'st forth the praises of thy God ! 
 
 I looked on great Niagara, 'neath its silvery arch I stood, 
 And the mighty torrent above me poured down its terrible 
 
 flood. 
 
 The awful rush of its waters enthralled me as with a spell, 
 And the smoke of that seething cauldron seemed the smoke 
 
 of the nethermost hell. 
 
 But a softer feeling came o'er me as that snow-white mist 
 
 arose, 
 
 And the sunset's dying glory spoke peace and calm repose : 
 And as the glittering rainbow across the waters strode, 
 I thought of the incense of faithful prayers rising up to the 
 
 throne of God !
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 89 
 
 From Niagara I went by train to Detroit, 
 crossing the famous railway suspension 
 bridge, and passing chiefly through Canadian 
 territory, along the north shore of Lake Erie. 
 The country is pretty and undulating, and 
 as we passed London, Paris, Chatham, and 
 Windsor, in the course of the day, it was 
 rather an extensive journey ! Detroit is the 
 principal town of the State of Michigan, and 
 contains a good many German inhabitants ; 
 but except that it has some nice clean streets, 
 with good wooden pavements, one or two 
 pretty avenues bordered with trees, handsome 
 stone houses, and a fine monument to its 
 citizens who fell in the War, I do not know 
 that there is anything remarkable about it. 
 
 Another day's journey through Michigan, 
 carried me into Illinois, (pronounced Illinoy'] 
 to Chicago, situated at the southern extremity 
 of Lake Michigan. The country is flat and 
 open, and a curious formation of white sand- 
 hills, which I was told extended for many 
 miles, made me almost fancy myself in the 
 plains of the Punjab. 
 
 Illinois is a great corn-growing State, and 
 it is in this staple, as well as wheat, cattle, 
 pigs, and lumber, that Chicago does such a 
 thriving trade, as the centre of a great system
 
 9O AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 of railways, and as a port on a large navig- 
 able lake. Its growth, as is well known, has 
 been prodigiously rapid : though scarcely 
 forty years old, it has a population of nearly 
 300,000, and though its prosperity was 
 momentarily checked by the great fire of 
 September 1871, it has been rebuilt with 
 marvellous energy and rapidity, and abounds 
 in substantial and handsome buildings of 
 granite and marble. The Sherman hotel, 
 where I stopped, was in temporary premises, 
 and the guests had to sleep four in a room, 
 and sometimes two in a bed, so thinking it 
 possible that I might have some one thrust 
 into my bed, I left rather earlier than I had 
 intended. Through the kindness of Mr. 
 Chesbrough the city engineer, I was shown 
 over the great water-works of the place, and 
 other lions, and by the courtesy of Mr. Hjorts- 
 berg the chief engineer of the Chicago, 
 Burlington, and Quincy Railway, I was pre- 
 sented with a free pass on the line and had 
 my further journey westward pleasantly 
 smoothed for me. 
 
 From Chicago to Burlington on the Mis- 
 sissippi, the road lies through the flat prairies 
 of Illinois to the edge of the neighbouring 
 state of Iowa. I came down the Mississippi,
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 9 1 
 
 from Burlington to Quincy, in a steamer, but 
 the water was low, and the scenery of the 
 banks, though pretty enough in its way, was 
 not remarkable after the Hudson and St. 
 Lawrence. The water was very muddy, and 
 the river nearly at its lowest. The naviga- 
 tion is very intricate, but the pilots are skilful 
 and steer the boats, from the high wheel- 
 house above the upper deck, chiefly by 
 marking the colour of the water. These 
 boats are all high pressure, to economize 
 weight, and draw only about thirty inches. 
 
 From Quincy, I struck off again westward 
 across the state of Missouri to St. Joseph on 
 the Missouri River, chiefly for the sake of 
 inspecting some engineering works of interest. 
 Missouri is another of the great agricultural 
 States of the West, but the character of the 
 prairies is here rolling or undulating. The 
 river is a sluggish, muddy stream, very like 
 those of the Punjab, the channel winding 
 and ever shifting, and exceedingly difficult 
 of navigation in the dry season. 
 
 St. Joseph (or St. Joe, as it is usually called) 
 was my farthest point westward. I was 
 some 1,500 miles from the Atlantic, and still 
 2,000 miles from the Pacific. I should much 
 have liked to take the rail onwards, to have
 
 Q2 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 seen something of the great mining states 
 intersected by the Rocky Mountains, and 
 especially the grand scenery of the Sierra 
 Nevadas and the Yosemite valley in the great 
 rising State of California. But time did not 
 permit, and I reluctantly turned my steps 
 eastwards, travelling via Kansas City, and 
 recrossing the state of Missouri to the city 
 of St. Louis. 
 
 Before quitting the West, I may as well say 
 what I have to say on the subject of Emigra- 
 tion, for it is to these great Western States 
 that emigrants chiefly resort. I talked with 
 many of all classes in the course of my 
 travels ; I came across more than one of the ac- 
 tive emigration agents, and obtained papers 
 from them, and information from other sources, 
 which I think justify me in offering an opinion 
 on the subject. 
 
 As to the classes who ought to emigrate 
 it is as well to remember that, although 
 numbers do well and are thriving, there are 
 many who do not, but return to Europe dis- 
 gusted. For gentlemen's sons who are on 
 the look-out for clerkships, for professional 
 men, and for all those classes generally who 
 work with their heads rather than their hands,
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 93 
 
 there is no room in America. A vacant 
 situation in a banker's or merchant's counting- 
 house in New York or Boston calls forth 
 almost as many eager applicants as in London, 
 and the remuneration is nearly as poor. 
 
 Even agricultural settlers, for whom there 
 is of course plenty of room in the unoccupied 
 lands of the West, should not go off there 
 without careful enquiry, and a full knowledge 
 of what lies before them. Since the War, I 
 am told that many good farms in Virginia 
 have been purchased and occupied by English 
 settlers at very moderate prices, and Virginia 
 has the advantages of a fine climate, a fertile 
 soil and easy access to good markets ; but 
 this is an exceptional case, caused by an 
 exceptional state of affairs. There is also 
 quite an English colony of respectable tenant 
 farmers with small capital, chiefly, I believe, 
 from the west of England, in the state of 
 Nebraska. Others choose Kansas or Min- 
 nesota. In all three States, land is to be pro- 
 cured on very easy terms, the soil is good and 
 there is railway communication with the older 
 States. The lowest price of Government 
 lands is a dollar and a quarter (say five 
 shillings) an acre. On the North Missouri 
 and other railways, the land has been granted
 
 94 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 to the railway companies for twenty miles on 
 each side of the line, in alternate lengths of 
 one mile with the Government, and these 
 companies are always prepared to sell their 
 lots at low rates and on easy terms of payment, 
 looking to a return from the increased traffic 
 on their lines rather than making much profit 
 by the land itself. 1 The drawbacks are the 
 dearness of labour for clearing, breaking up 
 and fencing the land ; the hard life and absence 
 of home comforts ; and the trying climate, 
 which is subject to great extremes of heat and 
 cold, and to sudden and violent changes. 
 But many men of small capital who are pre- 
 pared to work hard do well here, and the 
 interest of money is so high that simply by 
 lending it on good security, a return of fifteen 
 to twenty-five per cent, may be realised. 
 California is another very promising State in 
 this respect, with a finer and more enjoyable 
 climate and great richness of soil. Cattle- 
 farming also pays well in Kansas, Texas, and 
 other States, and large sums are constantly 
 given for imported stock for breeding pur- 
 poses from England or Canada. Agricultural 
 exhibitions are annually held in most of the 
 
 1 See Appendix.
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 95 
 
 States ; there was one at St. Louis while I 
 was there, and the very fine specimens of 
 grain, vegetables and fruits exhibited from 
 nearly all the Western States, showed how 
 admirably adapted they all are by soil and 
 climate for agricultural purposes. The great 
 space devoted in the grounds of this exhibition 
 to farming implements of the best and latest 
 designs, and the quantity of steam-driven 
 machinery, showed how important an item in 
 Western farming is the economy of manual 
 labour. 
 
 For the emigrant with no capital, he must 
 make up his mind to manual labour, and if 
 indisposed for that, he had much better 
 remain at home. A good mechanic, trained 
 in any of our great machine shops, can always 
 command from three to six dollars a day all 
 over the States. In England, such a man 
 would probably have to pay a heavy premium 
 to be taught his work, and for some time would 
 get no wages at all. In America, however, his 
 unskilled labour would always have a certain 
 value, even at the outset, and he would pro- 
 bably receive about a dollar per day, besides 
 learning his work for nothing. A good car- 
 penter or blacksmith will earn nearly as 
 much as a mechanic all over the West.
 
 96 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 Dock labourers were actually getting four 
 dollars a day when I left New York, but there 
 prices are exceptionally high, and the cost 
 of living is in proportion. But able-bodied 
 labourers in the West, either on farms or 
 railway works, can earn from two to three 
 dollars a day anywhere ; and there meat is 
 sixpence a pound, and other things in propor- 
 tion except beer and clothing. While tra- 
 velling between Chicago and Burlington, a 
 mechanic in the train told me he was getting 
 three and a half dollars per day, and after 
 supporting his wife and family was putting by 
 fifty dollars a month. 
 
 Of course, amongst this class of men, there 
 are numbers who like the dissipation and 
 excitement of a large town life, and for these, 
 life in the thinly populated States will have 
 few charms. It may also perhaps be said 
 that the steady, industrious, self-denying 
 man who really does well as an emigrant, 
 would succeed in his own country. On the 
 other hand, for such men there is doubtless a 
 wider field in a new territory, and if he can 
 make up his mind to forego the attractions 
 of town life, he is pretty sure to do well. 
 
 What I have said above is of course 
 equally applicable to most of the British
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 97 
 
 Colonies, as well as the Western States of 
 America, and I should be the last to per- 
 suade any Englishman to seek his fortune 
 under any other flag than his own, so long 
 as his prospects in either case were even 
 moderately balanced. I have referred spe- 
 cially to the States simply because I am now 
 writing about them. Of Canada, I will 
 speak presently. 
 
 It appears to me that with the increasing 
 difficulty yearly felt in England by us of the 
 middle class in providing careers for our 
 sons, we should seriously ask ourselves the 
 question, whether it is not better to revise in 
 toto our ideas of what constitutes a gentle- 
 man, and see if in new countries, such as 
 America, or our own Colonies, we cannot find 
 openings for our sons without any other 
 capital than such an education as may fit 
 them to earn their living by their own exer- 
 tions. When we know, as unfortunately we 
 do know but too well, how many gentlemen's 
 sons are earning a bare subsistence at home 
 on from ioo/. to 2OO/. a year, as clerks, with 
 but slow prospects of promotion, no hope of 
 marriage, and all the heart-burning struggles 
 caused by having to maintain a good appear- 
 ance on insufficient means, it seems worthy 
 
 H
 
 98 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 of consideration whether we should not give 
 up the common idea that manual occupations 
 are beneath the dignity of a gentleman. In 
 Germany, I believe, at one time, it was the 
 custom to have every nobleman's son taught 
 some trade or handicraft, by which he could 
 always earn his bread, if misfortune overtook 
 his family. Why should we not do so too ? 
 An eminent Peer, now in the Cabinet, has 
 shown by example that he does not think 
 commerce a degrading pursuit for the sons of 
 a great nobleman. Why cannot we who are 
 one step lower in the social scale, let our 
 sons take a similar step to the next lowest ? 
 
 I make bold to say that a man who has 
 been thoroughly well trained as a practical 
 mechanic is really better educated, in the 
 proper sense of the word, than one who has 
 merely learned what are termed ' the usual 
 branches of a gentleman's education,' 
 although there is no reason why these should 
 not be superadded to the other, or why a 
 man should drop the refinements of social 
 life because he has charge of a steam-engine 
 instead of a set of banker's books. If 
 gentlemanly habits and instincts are as valu- 
 able as we all believe them to be, they will 
 be not less valuable because the gentleman
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 99 
 
 has been taught a trade or calling which in 
 itself is almost a liberal education, developing 
 as it does the faculties of intelligence and 
 invention, far more than copying law papers 
 or transcribing accounts. In fact, such 
 habits when once formed by early training 
 and home associations, should be indepen- 
 dent of a man's daily work or occupation, 
 provided only that such work is honest and 
 not in its nature degrading. As there are 
 many men pursuing what are called gentle- 
 manly occupations who, even in the common 
 sense of the term, are not gentlemen, so I 
 maintain that the real gentleman will not 
 cease to be so because he is splitting rails or 
 working at a forge, instead of sitting at a 
 desk. 
 
 The one drawback to what I have been 
 urging is no doubt that the gentleman who 
 turned workman would have to associate 
 with so many who are workmen and not 
 gentlemen. Doubtless he would have to 
 pay the penalty always devolving on those 
 who are bold enough to disregard conven- 
 tionalities and strike out a new path for 
 themselves ; but I do not think that such a 
 man would long remain in the mere rank and 
 file of working men. Moreover, we must 
 
 H 2
 
 IOO AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 remember that in new countries there is not 
 the same prejudice against manual occupa- 
 tions that exists with ourselves ; there is 
 greater respect paid to the dignity of labour ; 
 and after all, the one drawback seems to me 
 more than counterbalanced by the certain 
 advantages. 
 
 There are hundreds of young men at home, 
 as we know, whose talents for book-learning 
 are not brilliant and who have an instinctive 
 antipathy to desk work, who yet are most 
 willing to work, and who are shut out from 
 doing the very work for which they are best 
 adapted by that foolish pride which teaches 
 them that manual labour is degrading. Is it 
 not far better that their superabundant energy 
 and bodily activity, which seek relief from the 
 drudgery of the counting-house in climbing 
 mountains or playing cricket, should be turned 
 to profitable account in forest clearing, in 
 ploughing land, or at the carpenter's bench ? 
 Are they more likely to grow up true gentle- 
 men (not to say Christians) amidst the temp- 
 tations of a large city after daily drudgery 
 which they hate, than they would be in a new 
 country with healthy and intelligent occupa- 
 tion in which they took a real interest, and 
 with a career before them depending, not upon
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. IQI 
 
 the interests of friends, but on their own 
 steadiness, energy and talent ? I earnestly 
 commend these questions to the attention of 
 the many fathers and sons in England for 
 whom the subject has a real and pressing 
 interest.
 
 IO2 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ST. LOUIS CINCINNATI PITTSBURG WASHINGTON 
 
 PklLADELPHIA BOSTON THE GREAT FIRE HARVARD 
 UNIVERSITY AMERICAN TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 
 
 ST. Louis, the capital of the West, and the 
 largest town in the State of Missouri, con- 
 tains more than 300,000 inhabitants and is 
 situated on the Mississippi, about eighty miles 
 above the junction of that river with the Ohio. 
 It has some fine streets and buildings, but I 
 do not know that there is anything particular 
 to be said about them. I travelled hence to 
 Cincinnati, the chief city of Ohio, passing 
 through the States of Illinois and Indiana, 
 through an undulating country which appeared 
 to be well wooded and cultivated. 
 
 Cincinnati is a large and populous city of 
 more than 200,000 inhabitants, which like 
 Chicago, does a great trade in pork and grain. 
 I here made the acquaintance of CoL Merrill 
 of the U.S. Engineers, in charge of the Ohio
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 1O3 
 
 Navigation works, who kindly showed me the 
 lions of the town, including the great suspen- 
 sion and railway bridges over the river, and 
 a bronze fountain erected by Mr. Tyler 
 Davidson, which is the most beautiful and 
 appropriate work of the kind that I ever 
 beheld. It came however from Munich, and 
 though it owes its existence to American 
 munificence, is not an example of American 
 art. 
 
 From Cincinnati, I journeyed to Spring- 
 field, to spend a pleasant day with a fellow 
 passenger across the Atlantic, a retired Judge 
 of the State, who had kindly invited me to his 
 house. I had left the prairies behind me, and 
 the pretty, hilly country reminded me of the 
 west of England. A long day's journey 
 carried me to Pittsburg in Pennsylvania, the 
 seat of extensive iron and glass works and 
 the head-quarters of the great mineral wealth 
 of the Quaker State. It also does a large 
 trade in coal and petroleum. In spite of 
 these mineral resources, however, there is 
 a considerable importation of English iron 
 into the country for important engineering 
 structures, and a large quantity of cannel- 
 coal was even imported until very lately 
 for the use of the American gas-corn-
 
 IO4 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 panics. On the other hand, owing to the late 
 excessive rise in prices at home, many orders 
 for coal at foreign ports were being executed 
 from American mines at the time of my 
 visit. 
 
 From Pittsburg to Harrisburg, my way lay 
 along the Pennsylvanian Central Railway, one 
 of the finest roads in the States, which crosses 
 the Alleghanies by a series of steep gradients 
 and sharp curves through some of the finest 
 scenery in America ; from Harrisburg, I 
 travelled through Baltimore to Washington, 
 passing the beautiful Susquehanna River and 
 its lovely islands. 
 
 Washington, as everybody knows, is the 
 political capital of the States, of no importance 
 in a commercial point of view, very busy 
 during the annual session of Congress in the 
 winter, and rather empty and uninteresting at 
 all other times. It is, however, well laid out, 
 and has some fine streets and avenues, besides 
 some very beautiful public buildings. The 
 U. S. Treasury, the Post Office and the 
 Patent Office are all built of white marble and 
 are worthy of a great country. 
 
 The Capitol, which contains the two Houses 
 of Congress and the necessary Offices, is also 
 of white marble, and is one of the largest and
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 1 05 
 
 handsomest buildings in the world. It stands 
 on a very commanding site, and its splendid 
 dome is visible for many miles in the flat 
 country around. The Senate Chamber and 
 the Hall of Representatives are handsome 
 and convenient structures, but not particularly 
 striking. They have however ample accom- 
 modation for the public in the galleries, a large 
 portion of which is reserved for ladies, the 
 whole arrangement contrasting favourably 
 with the niggardly accommodation provided 
 in our own Houses. 
 
 In the Rotunda beneath the dome, are 
 eight interesting historical paintings, depicting 
 various scenes in early American history, 
 notably the signing of the famous Declaration 
 of Independence, and the surrender of Lord 
 Cornwallis to Washington at Yorktown which 
 virtually ended the war. I confess I regarded 
 these pictures with feelings of as deep an 
 interest as if I had been an American. Every 
 Englishman now-a-days must sympathise with 
 that gallant resistance to tyranny and success- 
 ful struggle for freedom, and do full justice 
 to the patriotism and virtues of Washington 
 and his contemporaries in the difficult task 
 that lay before them. After all, they were 
 our own countrymen who dealt us this heavy
 
 1O6 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 blow, and what Englishman is there that looks 
 on the great empire they have reared in the 
 west on the basis of English laws, customs, 
 religious and political ideas, who does not feel 
 that he too has a share in that goodly herit- 
 age ? and that the two great branches of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race, in spite of local differences 
 and petty jealousies, are virtually one family, 
 with a common religion, literature, civilisation 
 and even history, and foremost always in the 
 march of intellect and freedom ? 
 
 The President's mansion, the ' White 
 House ' as it is often termed, is an unpre- 
 tending-looking dwelling, whose not very 
 spacious rooms must be inconveniently 
 crowded at his regular receptions. I had 
 the honour of a private interview with 
 General Grant a short time previous to his re- 
 election, being presented to him by Professor 
 Henry of the Smithsonian Institution. An 
 usher took in our cards, and we found the 
 President seated at his writing-table in a 
 plainly furnished room. He is rather below 
 the middle height, squarely and powerfully 
 built, and apparently about forty-five years of 
 age. He was very civil, but as usual exces- 
 sively silent and reserved. He is no doubt 
 a man of considerable power and force of
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 1 07 
 
 character, and his remarkable talent for 
 silence amongst the crowd of blatant, speech- 
 making politicians that abound in America, 
 probably causes him to be credited with 
 more power than he really possesses. If the 
 Americans are silent as a nation, or in gene- 
 ral conversation, their politicians make up 
 for it, to some extent, by their amazing gifts 
 of stump-oratory. 
 
 I had also the pleasure of an introduction 
 to our Ambassador at Washington, in whom 
 the country possesses one of the best speci- 
 mens of the modern diplomatic school, which 
 has a good deal more to do in these days 
 than to play a courtly part in salons, turn 
 elegant phrases and complimentary speeches 
 on State occasions, and carry on a system of 
 political intrigue with favourites and minis- 
 ters which qualifications at one time were 
 supposed to constitute the whole art of 
 diplomacy. Ambassadors now-a-days are 
 hard-worked officials, who are expected to be 
 posted up in statistics of all kinds, and to 
 furnish to their Government reports on all 
 manner of subjects ; and as to their special 
 function of representing and upholding the 
 interest and dignity of their country, that 
 must be anything but a sinecure in these
 
 IO8 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 peace-at-any-price days, and amongst a set of 
 men like the present race of American poli- 
 ticians. 
 
 I spent a very agreeable day at the Smith- 
 sonian Institution, which is located in a 
 fine pile of buildings close to Washington, 
 standing in some acres of ornamental 
 grounds. This institution was founded by 
 Mr. Jas. Smithson, an Englishman, ' for the 
 increase and diffusion of knowledge among 
 men,' which object is chiefly carried out by 
 scientific explorations and investigations, 
 accounts of which are annually published 
 and exchanged with other learned societies 
 all over the world. The Secretary and 
 general Superintendent is Professor Henry, 
 a man well known for his high scientific 
 attainments, and who shares with Professors 
 Cooke, Wheatstone, and Morse, the honour 
 of the invention of the Electric Telegraph. 
 Besides a museum of natural history, a 
 good library, and other objects of interest, I 
 was shown a remarkable and valuable ethno- 
 logical collection, comprising numerous speci- 
 mens of the stone and bronze implements, 
 now so well known as representing the 
 earliest traces of man on the earth, and a 
 large number of other objects of later date,
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 1 09 
 
 illustrative of the manners, customs, and 
 religious ideas of the primitive inhabitants of 
 America, especially those of Mexico and 
 Central America, and of the North- Western 
 territories. 
 
 Washington was my farthest point South, 
 so that I saw nothing of the Southern States, 
 much to my regret. I proceeded, via Balti- 
 more, to Philadelphia, where I stayed about 
 a week. This fine city is the second in the 
 States in point of population, and is said to 
 cover more ground than New York. The 
 only interesting building to a stranger is the 
 old State Hall in Chestnut Street, where the 
 famous Declaration of Independence was 
 originally drawn up and signed by the 
 delegates of the thirteen revolted States. In 
 the room is shown the arm-chair in which 
 sat the President, John Hancock, and the 
 original writing-table used on that great 
 occasion ; also part of the stone step on 
 which John Nixon stood when the Declara- 
 tion was read to the assembled crowd out- 
 side. Truly those brave men must have 
 given their heads an extra shake that day, to 
 make sure that they were still safe on their 
 shoulders, and could they have foreseen the 
 seven years' struggle that was to ensue
 
 IIO AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 before that independence would be acknow- 
 ledged by the mother country, the feelings of 
 passion and meanness that would be aroused, 
 and the jealousies and littleness that had 
 to be overcome before success could be 
 achieved, they might have hesitated from 
 taking the pen in their hands on that memor- 
 able day. 
 
 I spent a very pleasant evening at the 
 Philadelphia Saturday Club, a social gather- 
 ing where I met about a hundred of the 
 leading gentlemen of the place, including the 
 newly elected Governor of the State, Mr. 
 Hartrant. I had also an agreeable evening 
 at the house of Mr. Carey, well known as a 
 leading political economist in America, and 
 a determined advocate of those protectionist 
 theories which, though as extinct as the 
 Megatherium in England, still nourish among 
 a large party in the States. I had also 
 the pleasure of an introduction to the 
 Rev. W. H. Furness, an eminent Unitarian 
 preacher and writer, and to his son Mr. 
 Horace Furness, well known to Shakespeare 
 commentators, and look back on the evening 
 I spent in the house of the latter as one of 
 the most agreeable of all my American re- 
 miniscences. Truly it is one of the greatest
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. I I I 
 
 drawbacks to the pleasures of travel that 
 one so often makes acquaintances, perhaps 
 friends, from whom it is a sincere regret to 
 part, knowing that in all probability one 
 may never meet them again. 
 
 Philadelphia, like New York, possesses 
 its park, and Fairmount, like the Central 
 Park, is as ^-central as possible ; it is how- 
 ever very tastefully laid out and it is possible 
 that the city may grow round it in time. 
 Perhaps I may tell the English reader that 
 America possesses no city answering to the 
 position occupied by London, as at once the 
 political, commercial and social capital of the 
 whole country. Washington is only the 
 political capital, and its society is as migratory 
 as that of a watering-place. New York is, 
 perhaps, the commercial capital, but its claims 
 to social superiority would not be admitted 
 for a moment by Boston or Philadelphia. 
 Even the various State capitals are not the 
 principal towns in the States, as a rule, but 
 have been chosen with reference to their 
 central position. I think it not unlikely 
 that the great men who founded the Re- 
 public had a wise prevision of the dangers of 
 centralisation by which all other republics 
 have been shipwrecked hitherto, and were
 
 112 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 determined to guard against it if possible. 
 In this respect, I think, the Americans are 
 more fortunate than we are ; for it is impossi- 
 ble for us not to regret the manner in which, 
 since the introduction of railways, London 
 has swallowed up and virtually extinguished 
 the life of the great provincial cities, such as 
 Edinburgh, Dublin, York and others. Such 
 an amalgamation cannot but tend to create a 
 sameness and monotony in the tone of society 
 which are greatly to be deprecated. Of 
 course, variety may and does exist in the 
 numerous circles of London social life, but 
 still the tendency of this centralising process 
 is towards monotony, and the cosmopolitan 
 traveller, at any rate, appreciates the local 
 colouring of different societies as that which 
 gives them their greatest charm. 
 
 From Philadelphia I returned to New 
 York and took up my old quarters at the 
 St. Nicholas Hotel. The following Sunday 
 I spent at a charming country residence on 
 the Hudson, close to the house which 
 Washington Irving inhabited for many years, 
 and in the society of kind friends from whom 
 I parted with regret. 
 
 The next day I left for Boston, travelling 
 via Newhaven, New London and Providence.
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 113 
 
 Boston, the capital of the Old Bay State, as 
 they call Massachusetts, is one of the oldest 
 of American towns, and the older part of the 
 town with its crooked streets has a very 
 English look about it. Boston Common is 
 laid out like a park and is surrounded by the 
 best houses like our own parks. From the 
 top of the dome of the State House, a fine 
 view is obtained of the town and the harbour, 
 memorable in history for the destruction of 
 certain chests of tea, which was the precursor 
 of the battle on the neighbouring heights of 
 Bunker's Hill, and the virtual beginning of 
 the Revolutionary War. 
 
 Being the day of the Presidential election, 
 I repaired to the old Faneuil Hall, where the 
 voting was going on for Ward Number Four of 
 the city. Everything was conducted in a most 
 quiet and orderly manner, and while the votes 
 were being taken, I stood by the returning 
 officer who courteously explained the mode 
 of proceeding. The names of the candidates 
 for the various offices, from President down- 
 wards, are settled by the political conventions 
 of the different parties, and printed in a list 
 on paper, thus constituting the Republican or 
 Democratic ' ticket.' The voter can alter 
 these as he likes by striking out some names 
 
 i
 
 114 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 or inserting others ; he then comes to the 
 table, gives in his name, which is checked 
 from a printed list of the registered voters of 
 the ward, and deposits his ' ticket ' in one or 
 other of the ballot boxes on the table. The 
 tickets were given in open, to prevent two 
 being folded together, so that there was no 
 secrecy in the matter. Nor was there any 
 apparent check against fraudulent impersona- 
 tion, though, of course, if a man not entitled 
 to vote had given in a wrong name, he might 
 have been detected by a bystander. I 
 mention these points, as it is the fashion to 
 vaunt the American system of voting as se- 
 curing secrecy and preventing fraud, whereas, 
 so far as I could judge, it did neither. 
 
 In the evening, I attended a meeting of 
 the Republican party at Faneuil Hall, where 
 I heard some very fair speaking. I believe 
 the Americans decidedly excel us in this 
 respect, and considering how much of this kind 
 of thing goes on in England, it seems strange 
 there should be so much wretched after-dinner 
 oratory, and such miserable stammering and 
 stuttering. For worn-out platitudes and 
 vapid commonplaces, the unfortunate listener 
 is of course prepared ; nine people out of 
 ten are commonplace by nature and taste,
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. I 1 5 
 
 and are not at all grateful for originality, 
 which always gives them the trouble of 
 thinking, and costs them an effort to under- 
 stand, even if it does not shock their sense of 
 propriety ; but fluency at any rate one would 
 think might be acquired by practice and 
 study. 
 
 I was at Boston during the time of the 
 Great Fire, which broke out on the evening 
 of Saturday, November 9, and lasted till 
 Monday morning. It was a terrible sight, 
 and the more so because the night was calm ; 
 the fire broke out early, and there had 
 been heavy rain only two days before, 
 yet, from the first, the firemen seemed quite 
 unable to grapple with the flames. The chief 
 reason of this was, undoubtedly, the high 
 Mansard wooden roofs on the top of the lofty 
 granite buildings, by which the fire was com- 
 municated rapidly from block to block, and 
 which could not be reached by the hoses. 
 But there was also great want of organisation 
 and ' head ;' the police were insufficient to 
 keep the streets clear, and it was said that a 
 great deal of plundering went on. 
 
 I spent two very pleasant days at Cam- 
 bridge, three miles from Boston, in visiting 
 the Harvard University, the leading educa- 
 
 I 2
 
 Il6 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 tional institution of America, where I was 
 most, kindly welcomed and entertained by 
 General Eustis, the professor of Engineering, 
 formerly a graduate of West Point. Harvard 
 is more than two centuries old, a venerable 
 antiquity for an American institution, and con- 
 tains some 600 undergraduates. The build- 
 ings are chiefly of red brick, and not remarkable 
 for beauty ; but a fine Memorial Hall is being 
 erected as a Senate House, which will add 
 considerably to the architectural appearance 
 of the place. The buildings contain a library, 
 chapel, laboratories, museums, and various 
 dormitories. I visited two of the latter and 
 found the undergraduates' rooms very comfort- 
 able, and handsomely furnished, and the occu- 
 pants thereof very gentlemanly young men, 
 much resembling the average of our own great 
 Universities. There is a sort of private dining 
 club at which some 400 of the students take 
 their meals, but nothing answering to our 
 College Halls. The system at Harvard is more 
 stringent than our own as regards work, less 
 so in respect to discipline. No student can 
 take even an ordinary degree without a good 
 deal of hard reading and the possession of 
 considerable attainments ; on the other hand, 
 when once released from the class-room, he
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. I I / 
 
 can go where he choses, and do pretty much 
 as he likes there is no ' gateing ; ' in fact, 
 such a restriction would not commend itself 
 to those ideas of freedom and self-government 
 which are everywhere current in America. 
 
 The curriculum of instruction at Harvard 
 is much the same as at Oxford, but there is 
 a separate school attached to the University, 
 called the Lawrence Scientific School, for the 
 more special pursuit of mixed mathematics 
 and the applied sciences, and for instruction 
 in chemistry, natural history, philosophy, and 
 engineering, which are to a certain extent 
 embraced in the general University curricu- 
 lum. 
 
 Harvard is not richly endowed, and has no 
 pretensions to exercise that commanding in- 
 fluence over the general educational tone of 
 the country which Oxford and Cambridge 
 assume and possess in England, and which 
 is, to some extent, due to the splendid prizes 
 they have at their disposal. The absence of 
 this influence in the case of Harvard is per- 
 haps the less to be regretted as that Univer- 
 sity seemed to me rather an English exotic 
 than a healthy plant of American growth. 
 Doubtless, American colleges and schools 
 generally have been based too much on
 
 Il8 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 modern utilitarian views of education, and 
 though I have a strong opinion that our 
 English educational system is grievously 
 hampered by over-adherence to traditional 
 classical studies, I think in America such 
 studies are to be encouraged, if only because 
 they serve to correct that utilitarianism and 
 to create a reverence for the past, greatly 
 wanting in Americans generally. But I 
 think if Harvard, while declining to abandon 
 those classical studies consecrated by long 
 traditional usage, as well as by the deliberate 
 judgment of many eminent men even of the 
 present day, had devoted its chief efforts to 
 be the first scientific school of the country, 
 such a position, aided by its ancient prestige, 
 would have given it a more commanding 
 influence than it now exercises. It is, how- 
 ever, no light thing for America, amidst the 
 utilitarian views which have so much stunted 
 its educational growth, to have at least one 
 University where the object of education is 
 held to be the training of the mind and not 
 the cramming of the memory. 
 
 The undergraduates are generally drawn 
 from the wealthy and higher classes, and 
 their general tone is as gentlemanly as could 
 be desired. In athletic exercises, which play
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. IIQ 
 
 so prominent a part in our older Universities, 
 Harvard also excels ; it has its boats on the 
 Charles River, and, as will be remembered, 
 sent over a crew to do battle with an Oxford 
 crew a few years ago. ' Base-ball ' takes the 
 place of cricket, and is indeed becoming quite 
 a national game in the States, where cricket 
 is still an exotic. I do not know the rules of 
 the game, and never even saw it played, but 
 I understand it to be a modification of our 
 old school game of ' rounders.' 
 
 Harvard enjoys a very pleasant society of 
 its own, numbering among its members 
 Longfellow the poet, who resides here, and 
 Agassiz the great naturalist, who is perma- 
 nently attached to the University. I had 
 the pleasure of meeting many of the most 
 distinguished Professors, whom my host very 
 kindly invited to his house one evening, in- 
 cluding Mr. Eliot the President, and Pro- 
 fessors Lovering, Trowbridge, Bartlett, 
 Cooke, Torrey, and others. I have a most 
 agreeable recollection of clever men and 
 charming women that evening, which was 
 only too short, and which is marked in my 
 memory with a white stone. I remember a 
 similar evening at our own Cambridge, where 
 I had the honour of meeting several men
 
 I2O AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 whose names I had known for years on the 
 backs of certain mathematical books, and of 
 which I also cherish a grateful remembrance. 
 It is the fashion to talk of University society 
 as ' shoppy ; ' doubtless it is so to a certain 
 extent, like that of any other body of men 
 associated together for a particular purpose. 
 But there is shop and shop ; and some 
 difference, I trow, between the conversa- 
 tion of men whose daily occupation brings 
 them into contact with the great minds of all 
 ages, or the study of the great secrets of 
 nature, and those whose intellects are con- 
 stantly employed in the ordinary avocations 
 of trade or commerce, or even the quibblings 
 and subterfuges of the law-courts. 
 
 Yale College, at New Haven, is the only 
 rival of Harvard in general estimation, but I 
 had not an opportunity of visiting it. Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall was lecturing there while I 
 was at Boston, having lately quitted the 
 latter place, where Mr. Froude the his- 
 torian was delivering his course of lectures 
 on the relations between England and 
 Ireland. The Americans are very fond of 
 lectures ; almost every town having one or 
 more convenient lecture halls, where courses
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 121 
 
 of lectures are given during the winter on an 
 endless variety of subjects. 
 
 While at Boston, I also visited the Massa- 
 chusetts Institute of Technology, interesting 
 to me as a specimen of a peculiar class of 
 schools which, so far as I am aware, have no 
 exact counterpart in England. They are, 
 in fact, based on the Technical Schools of 
 France and Germany, and are intended 
 specially for instruction in applied science, 
 and for granting degrees to civil, mechanical, 
 and mining engineers and others. There are 
 several of these schools in the States, among 
 which I also visited the Steevens' Insti- 
 tute of Technology at Hoboken, New York, 
 presided over by Professor Mor.ton, and 
 made some enquiries about that at Troy, 
 which is said to be the best civil engineering 
 school in the States. Having been the head 
 of a similar establishment in India for some 
 years, (the Government Civil Engineering Col- 
 lege at Roorkee), l I was naturally specially 
 interested in these institutions. The students 
 are generally admitted at the age of sixteen, 
 and stay four years ; the qualifications for 
 
 1 I had the pleasure (natural to an author) of finding our 
 Roorkee books on Engineering well known and appreciated 
 at these schools, and by many American engineers.
 
 122 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 admission are very low, and much time is 
 therefore consumed in teaching subjects 
 which could be equally well taught at an 
 ordinary school, and ought not to take up 
 time at a technical college. Instruction is 
 given in pure and mixed mathematics ; in 
 chemistry and natural philosophy, including 
 laboratory practice ; in drawing and sur- 
 veying ; and, generally, in modern languages 
 and English composition as well. The 
 laboratory instruction, both at Boston and 
 Hoboken, appeared to be very complete 
 and extensive, involving both quantitative 
 and qualitative analysis ; and the collection 
 of models and philosophical apparatus was 
 very extensive. The method of tuition is 
 by lectures and recitations, the latter term 
 signifying that the student recites in class, or 
 explains on the black board, what he has 
 previously been desired to prepare. 
 
 Excellent as the instruction undoubtedly 
 is, the question still remains, which has been 
 so often debated in England, whether such 
 very practical subjects as the various 
 branches of engineering can be satisfactorily 
 taught apart from regular workshops and 
 actual practice. The English Engineers, 
 who have certainly taken the lead in these
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 123 
 
 modern professions, have never encouraged 
 institutions of this kind, maintaining that a 
 college education unfits men for working 
 with their hands, and that the only valuable 
 engineers are those who have risen from the 
 ranks and been trained in the shops as prac- 
 tical mechanics. One consequence of this 
 neglect of technical education by the profes- 
 sion has been that the Government of India 
 has been forced to establish a College of its 
 own in England for training young engineers 
 for the Indian Public Works Department. 
 Of course, if technical schools pretended to 
 turn out efficient engineers, the pretension 
 would be absurd ; the art can only be 
 learned by practice. But they do nothing of 
 the kind ; they only profess to give such a 
 training as will enable a young man to enter 
 on his practical work well prepared and not 
 forced to work by ' rule of thumb.' In the par- 
 ticular case of Mechanical Engineering, I 
 believe a certain amount of training in the 
 shops to be indispensable, and the difficulty 
 is to combine this with the theoretical in- 
 struction, as both should be acquired when 
 young. At Hoboken, they are attempting 
 to dispense with it altogether, but I doubt if 
 the experiment will be successful.
 
 124 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 I visited the Free Library at Boston and 
 found it used extensively by all classes ; 
 books are freely lent out to residents of any 
 class, and the librarian informed me that the 
 average annual loss was one in 9,000 ! 
 
 I walked one day from Harvard to the 
 famous cemetery at Mount Auburn, some 
 four miles from Boston. A more lovely 
 resting-place for the dead I never beheld, 
 and the view of the surrounding country 
 from the tower overlooking the cemetery, 
 with Boston and the sea in the distance, and 
 a charming English landscape of woods and 
 hills around, has left me one of my p leasant- 
 est reminiscences of American scenery. 
 
 Sweet Auburn ! loveliest village of the dead, 
 Whose ashes round my feet lie thickly spread 
 Warriors and statesmen, whose unfaltering hands 
 Reared Freedom's banner in these Western lands, 
 Accept this tribute from an E.nglish heart. 
 May I in life as nobly bear my part, 
 And when death comes, in some such lovely dell, 
 After life's fitful fever sleep as well.
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 125 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CANADA MONTREAL QUEBEC OTTAWA THE COLONIAL 
 
 QUESTION TORONTO. 
 
 FEW Englishmen are, I think, aware that 
 Her Majesty's possessions in North America 
 are greater in area than those of the United 
 States. Yet such is the fact ; and though 
 their value, in agricultural and other re- 
 sources, is very inferior, and the population 
 very much less, yet the progress of the more 
 favoured portions during the last few years 
 has been nearly as rapid as that of the best 
 parts of the States. Much of the northern 
 territory is, however, very unproductive, 
 owing to the long and severe winter, and, 
 with the exception of Halifax, there is not 
 a port on the Atlantic sea-board that is open 
 during the winter months. 
 
 The Dominion of Canada includes the 
 six provinces of Quebec, Ontario, Nova 
 Scotia, New Brunswick, British Columbia,
 
 126 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 and Manitoba. Newfoundland and Prince 
 Edward's Island have as yet declined to join 
 the Dominion, but will doubtless do so before 
 long. The six provinces above mentioned 
 return Senators and Members to the Houses 
 of Parliament at Ottawa, the capital of the 
 Dominion, and have also local legislatures of 
 their own ; the suffrage is restricted by a 
 small property qualification. The Governor- 
 General is appointed by the Queen, and the 
 Ministry is dependent on Parliamentary 
 support as at home. There are no regular 
 troops except at Halifax, but the Canadian 
 Militia is excellently organised and could be 
 mobilised rapidly. Of the provinces above 
 named, that of Manitoba, formerly known as 
 the Red River Settlement, has only been 
 lately constituted and is still scarcely ex- 
 plored. It is said, however, to be an enor- 
 mous territory, of great fertility and extensive 
 resources, capable alone of sustaining a 
 population of at least 50,000,000 ! yet even 
 its name is scarcely known to the majority of 
 Englishmen. A great railway is now pro- 
 jected to connect Canada West with British 
 Columbia, which will traverse this territory ; 
 it may give some idea of the area of these 
 unoccupied countries when I mention that
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 
 
 the railway company is to receive a subsidy 
 from the Government for the construction of 
 the line of 30,000,000 dollars and 50,000,000 
 acres ! 
 
 I reached Montreal, as already recorded, 
 from New York via the Hudson and Lake 
 Champlain. It is the largest and most 
 thriving city in the Dominion ; and has a 
 considerable commerce, both up and down 
 the St. Lawrence and with the States, by 
 the Great Western Railway, which crosses 
 the river by the noble (but excessively ugly) 
 Victoria Bridge. Indeed, in the winter, the 
 river navigation is completely suspended by 
 ice ; and but for the bridge, Montreal would 
 be nowhere. The city has many good 
 streets and public buildings, and the finest 
 quays of any town in America. I took a 
 drive round the mountain which overlooks 
 the city, and found some pretty suburbs and 
 handsome villas, that of Sir Hugh Allan 
 being especially noticeable. 
 
 Here, as well as everywhere throughout 
 the States, I noticed the absence of flower- 
 gardens. In Canada, perhaps, the winter 
 is too severe for very successful horticulture ; 
 but in the milder climate of the States, there 
 can be no reason for the neglect of orna-
 
 128 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 mental gardening, save the want of taste for 
 one of the natural elegancies of life. 
 
 From Montreal, I proceeded down the St. 
 Lawrence to Quebec, by one of the fine river 
 steamers which regularly ply, and which are 
 similar to those on the Hudson. The St. 
 Lawrence, one of the noblest streams in the 
 world, is navigable from Montreal to the 
 sea (600 miles) for vessels of 600 tons. 
 Above Montreal there are several rapids, 
 round which canals have been constructed, 
 but down which the steamers shoot except 
 in the very dry season. Navigation is thus 
 secured up to Lake Ontario, 750 miles from 
 the ocean. 
 
 Leaving Montreal in the evening, I reached 
 Quebec early next morning, and took a drive 
 to the famous Plains of Abraham, and 
 through the old town to the Montmorenci 
 Falls, nine miles distant. Very beautiful 
 indeed they are ; the height is greater than 
 that of Niagara, and though the length along 
 the crest is only some 400 yards, yet I had not 
 seen the greater wonder, and these noble 
 falls with the grand river rolling at my feet, 
 the beautiful wooded heights on the opposite 
 bank, and the fair city of Quebec in the
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 1 29 
 
 distance with its noble cliffs, formed one of 
 the loveliest landscapes I ever beheld. 
 
 I stood beside the Falls of Montmorenci, 
 
 As its waters rushed in torrents towards the sea, 
 
 No such fairy vision ever charmed my fancy, 
 
 And I thought no brighter landscape there could be. 
 
 Fair Quebec the stately queen of the Atlantic, 
 Where Montcalm and Wolfe had met in glorious fight, 
 Smiled upon me from its dizzy cliffs romantic, 
 Proud St. Lawrence rolled beneath me in its might. 
 
 And I thought of that cold, grey September morning, 
 When the English boats were stealing o'er the wave, 
 And in Wolfe's brave heart the thought came softly dawning 
 That ' the path of glory leads but to the grave.' ' 
 
 Ere once more that autumn sun should rise in glory, , 
 The star of France would set in silent gloom ; 
 Those green heights would ever live in English story, 
 And both leaders find that day a soldier's tomb. 
 
 Quebec has a quaint and ancient look, 
 very different from the bustling liveliness 1 of 
 Montreal ; the aspect of the population, and 
 the names over the shops, show that we are 
 in Lower Canada, whose inhabitants are 
 nearly all descendants of the old French 
 
 1 As the boats with the English troops on board were 
 rowing up the river previous to the attack, General Wolfe 
 was heard repeating in a low tone Gray's Elegy in a Country 
 Churchyard. When he came to the line ' The path of glory 
 leads but to the grave/ ' I would rather be the author of that 
 poem,' said he, ' than the conqueror of Quebec.' 
 
 K
 
 I3O AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 settlers, and who still retain their old lan- 
 guage, religion, and customs. These people 
 were once very hostile to the English rule, 
 but are loyal enough now ; they are, however, 
 indolent and slow of progress, and there is a 
 marked difference in the aspect of town and 
 country as you pass from the French to the 
 English province. They are never recruited 
 from France, and their French would hardly 
 pass muster in Paris, but, like the people of 
 the Channel Islands, they pride themselves 
 on the excessive purity of their diction and 
 accent. 
 
 The banks of the St. Lawrence are very 
 beautiful for some distance above and below 
 Quebec, but as you approach Montreal they 
 are low and flat, and the scenery is uninterest- 
 ing. After returning to the latter town, I 
 took the steamer up the Ottawa River to the 
 town of the same name, the political capital 
 of the Dominion. This stream runs through 
 a thickly wooded country, with some very 
 primitive-looking settlements on the banks, 
 including several extensive saw-mills for the 
 conversion of the fir-timber into lumber, i.e., 
 planks of various thicknesses. As you 
 approach Ottawa, the water is literally 
 covered with a thick layer of sawdust, and
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 
 
 the whole atmosphere is impregnated with 
 the turpentine odour. 
 
 Ottawa is a second-rate town, which 
 appears to live on the lumber trade, and 
 which has the vilest roads I ever saw. But 
 on a height overlooking the river, rises the 
 grandest pile of buildings in America, or 
 rather three piles round an open quadrangle, 
 containing the Houses of Parliament and 
 public offices of the Dominion. The Co- 
 lonial officials are most admirably accommo- 
 dated in these buildings ; and as to the 
 Senate and House of Commons, though of 
 course not so pretentiously lodged as their 
 prototypes in London, I declare I thought 
 the chambers both handsomer and more con- 
 venient. The Houses were not sitting at the 
 time of my visit, the annual session being 
 held in the winter. Portraits of the former 
 speakers are on the walls of the corridors, 
 and there is an excellent library attached. 
 
 As I stood in the empty Senate and saw 
 the Queen's statue facing the Speaker's chair, 
 and busts of the Prince and Princess of Wales 
 on each side, as I observed the care that 
 had been taken to preserve the old forms, 
 names and usages of the mother country, con- 
 secrated by the history of a thousand years, I
 
 132 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 felt that it was something to have come so 
 far to find this attachment to old associations, 
 this care to link the present with the past, and 
 this pride in the name and connection with 
 England. When I further reflected that the 
 same feelings were cherished on the other 
 side of the world, in that great Australian 
 Empire now rising so rapidly into importance, 
 in New Zealand in South Africa and in 
 that great Asiatic dependency in which my 
 own lot had been more especially cast, I 
 understood something of the feeling that was 
 embodied in the words, ' Civis Romanus 
 sum ' and I felt it was something to be able 
 to say in my turn, ' I, too, am an Englishman.' 
 And then I asked myself the question, Is this 
 feeling to be estimated in value by so many 
 pounds, shillings, and pence ; or rather, am I 
 not willing to pay something, even in hard 
 cash, for the privilege of that feeling ? Would 
 it compensate me to forego that privilege to 
 know that England had given up her Colonies 
 and had sunk to the level of Holland that 
 she had become simply a densely populated 
 shop and manufactory for the whole world, 
 rich in money, and poor in everything besides 
 if, in return, I should get my tea and sugar 
 a little cheaper, and pay a penny in the pound
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 133 
 
 less of Income Tax ? If her riches tempted 
 her continental neighbours to combine against 
 her : if perhaps, her hour of humiliation should 
 come as it had come to many before her : if 
 those great Colonies, now so proud of calling 
 themselves parts of the British Empire, were 
 turned, by her wilful neglect or cold indiffer- 
 ence, into rival nations like the United States, 
 and, instead of rushing to her defence, chuckled 
 at her downfall as that of a rich and successful 
 competitor would cheapness of food and 
 reduction of taxation compensate me for that ? 
 Is everything, in fact, to be reduced to a money 
 standard ? and are those feelings of our nature 
 of which Englishmen were once so proud to 
 be weighed and measured like sacks of flour, 
 or yards of cloth ? 
 
 It would really seem childish to ask such 
 questions as these, were it not certain that 
 there is a section of the community which 
 maintains that our Colonies are really a source 
 of weakness to us, and that if we threw them 
 off to-morrow, we should be stronger and 
 greater that is, richer ; for such people are 
 unable to comprehend any other kind of great- 
 ness except material wealth, and will not read 
 history aright which shows how often riches 
 and weakness have been allied, or how often
 
 134 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 the countries poorest in material wealth have 
 been strongest in all the most valuable 
 qualities of a nation. These are the people 
 who are always infatuated about a coming 
 millennium of peace, and who would virtually 
 disarm the country to-morrow if they could, 
 because, forsooth, soldiers and sailors repre- 
 sent so much unproductive capital ! It is 
 saddening and humiliating to hear such talk ; 
 it is almost as bad when so many of our 
 statesmen and writers parley with such people 
 and parry their arguments as they do, instead 
 of meeting them boldly, bidding them read 
 history aright, and warning them that all are 
 not like themselves, ready to sneer at senti- 
 ment and count nothing as valuable that 
 cannot be paid for over a counter. 
 
 In travelling through Canada, I found, as 
 every one finds, a strong sentiment of loyalty 
 to the mother country everywhere expressed ; 
 and an indignant repudiation of any desire for 
 a union with the States. They dislike the 
 American swagger, have a horror of uni- 
 versal suffrage, and of being swamped by 
 Irish and Negro voters, have no fancy what- 
 ever for paying heavy taxes to clear off the 
 American war debt, and are, perhaps, not a 
 little envious of the superior advantages in
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 135 
 
 soil and climate possessed by their neigh- 
 bours. But Canadians complain, and I think 
 with reason, that with all their loyalty and 
 attachment to the mother country, they should 
 be. so often coolly told by the English press 
 that they are a source of weakness instead of 
 strength, that the advantage of the connection 
 is all on their side, and that if they like to sever 
 that connection, England will be only too glad. 
 The fact is, we have rushed from one extreme 
 to the other in the course of the last hundred 
 years. We gripped the States so tightly that 
 they struggled and kicked themselves free ; 
 we now hold our colonies so loosely that it 
 is plain to them, at any rate, how little value 
 we set upon the connection. I cannot help 
 thinking that there is a medium course which 
 is both more dignified and safer in every 
 respect ; and that if we consulted the true 
 interests of both parties, we should do all in 
 our power to unite our colonies to us by the 
 closest possible ties, until they really felt 
 themselves to be regarded by us as an integral 
 portion of the Empire. I am quite aware 
 that there are difficulties in the way of such 
 a course, but I do not think they would be 
 insurmountable if an earnest attempt were 
 made to overcome them, and if the mere
 
 136 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 direct pecuniary aspect of the question were 
 clearly recognised to be of secondary im 
 portance. 
 
 What is chiefly required appears to be 
 some ready means of getting accurate in- 
 formation in London of the real wants and 
 resources of the colonies ; it is the ignorance 
 on those points at home, even in the highest 
 places, which is at the root of that indifference 
 of which the colonists complain, as it was for 
 some years of those acts of mal-administration 
 which at one time threatened a violent sever- 
 ance of the connection. Then came a re- 
 action, and English statesmen, seeing how 
 ignorant they were of colonial wants and 
 wishes, thrust upon the colonists self-govern- 
 ment, in many cases before they wanted it or 
 were ready for it ; for in every new country, 
 the best class of men, who are alone fit to be 
 its legislators and politicians, are really too 
 much occupied to have time for parliamentary 
 or official duties, and there are no men of 
 leisure, fortune and education, as with us, to 
 undertake this kind of work. 
 
 In the case of India, the difficulty of 
 supplying the necessary information to the 
 responsible minister was felt to be so great, 
 and the danger of leaving him without it so
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 137 
 
 alarming, that, as is well known, a special 
 Council was created for that purpose when 
 the government of the country passed to the 
 Crown, and in spite of some complaints, the 
 arrangement has worked well. I cannot but 
 think that some similar Council might be 
 devised to represent Colonial interests at 
 home, not of course with any executive power, 
 but simply as an advising body ; at any 
 rate, that some method should be devised for 
 rewarding and honouring eminent colonists, 
 and for letting them feel that they were 
 trusted dignitaries of the Empire. It is the 
 feeling of most Englishmen who serve their 
 country in any of her dependencies, either 
 as members of the public services or as 
 private individuals acting in a public capacity, 
 that such good service is often unknown and 
 overlooked ; and that a third-rate politician 
 or a second-rate soldier or lawyer at home 
 has more chance of rising to distinction than 
 the most eminent public servant in India or 
 the Colonies. Amongst any other people 
 but Englishmen, such a feeling would simply 
 kill all public spirit ; and it is greatly to the 
 credit of our countrymen that, acting as they 
 do from a high sense of duty and an English- 
 man's natural love of work, so much excellent
 
 138 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 service is daily done for the Government and 
 the public by men who are condemned to 
 obscurity and neglect. 
 
 While in Canada, I often heard the entire 
 withdrawal of our regular troops from the 
 country commented on and lamented. How- 
 ever sound the reasons for their withdrawal, 
 their presence certainly produced a certain 
 diffusion of information about the country 
 and an interest in its welfare, through the 
 officers who used to be quartered there, who 
 were always coming and going, and many 
 of whom married Canadian ladies. Their 
 absence is, however, I think, to be regretted 
 on wider grounds than these. In the event 
 of war between England and the States, and 
 the invasion of Canada by the latter, is it to 
 be supposed for a moment that we should 
 leave the colonists to fight it out alone ? for 
 fight I am sure they would. I am certain 
 that the public sentiment of England would 
 be too strong to permit of such a policy being 
 tolerated by any Ministry for even a day. 
 Our troops would be sent across fast enough, 
 to fight side by side with the Canadian 
 Militia ; but the disadvantage of having no nu- 
 cleus of regulars in the field at the commence- 
 ment of the struggle is too great to require
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 139 
 
 pointing out. Quebec, Montreal, Kingston 
 and Toronto might be seized before we could 
 get an army into the field, and with the four 
 principal towns of Canada gone, there would 
 be little tangible to fight for. The loss of 
 Quebec would be almost irreparable, as com- 
 manding the navigation of the St. Lawrence, 
 and that of Montreal with the Victoria Bridge, 
 hardly less so. I believe that a complete 
 system of fortifications for both places was 
 designed some years ago by an eminent 
 Royal Engineer officer, but has not yet been 
 carried out. 
 
 No one can deny, perhaps, that in the 
 question of retaining or withdrawing the 
 Queen's troops from the Colonies, the de- 
 cision of the Home Government was based 
 on very logical reasoning ; the worst is that 
 in the event of war, which in itself is a very 
 //logical proceeding, logical reasoning is very- 
 apt to be thrown to the winds when a great 
 and high-spirited people like the English are 
 appealed to for protection by their own 
 countrymen, and I very much mistake the 
 temper of the British nation if it would not 
 be so in the case of Canada. As to the 
 result of a war between England and the 
 United States, God forbid that such a fratri-
 
 I4O AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 cidal struggle should ever be entered upon, 
 but England has no reason to fear it, with 
 her great superiority both in her Navy and 
 mercantile marine. It is always a possible 
 event in the present constitution of American 
 politics, and I believe the best chance of 
 averting it will be a determination on our 
 part to uphold our national dignity and not 
 to permit any invasion of our just rights. 
 
 I left Ottawa for Prescott, on the St. 
 Lawrence, by train, travelling through un- 
 cleared or partially cleared forest, and then 
 going on board the steamer, went up the 
 river to Kingston, passing through the 
 famous scenery of the Thousand Islands. 
 For forty miles the boat threaded its way 
 amongst these beautifully wooded islets of 
 every shape and size, and as the evening 
 was lovely and the autumnal tints were 
 already on the foliage, I thoroughly enjoyed 
 the voyage. At Kingston the river ends in, 
 or rather emerges from, Lake Ontario, and 
 all that night we were speeding across this 
 great body of water, 240 miles long and 500 
 feet deep. The weather was rough, the 
 waves rose to a considerable height, and it 
 was easy to fancy one's self on the ocean.
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 141 
 
 At one P.M. we reached Toronto on the north 
 shore of the lake. 
 
 Toronto, the chief town of Canada West, 
 as this part of the country used to be called, 
 is a very English-looking and thriving town, 
 of 60,000 inhabitants. It was decorated with 
 triumphal arches and banners to celebrate 
 the arrival of Lord Dufferin, the new Go- 
 vernor-General, who had just paid his first 
 visit, and seems deservedly popular. 
 
 From Toronto, I crossed the lake to 
 Niagara on the opposite shore, and steaming 
 up the pretty Niagara river, and taking the 
 train at Lewiston, found myself at the famous 
 Falls, as elsewhere recorded, thus finishing my 
 tour in Canada.
 
 142 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 AMERICAN ENGINEERING RAILROADS CHICAGO WATER- 
 WORKS ST. JOSEPH BRIDGE THE MISSOURI ST. LOUIS 
 BRIDGE EAST RIVER BRIDGE TORPEDOES HELLGATE 
 RIVER WORKS. 
 
 ALTHOUGH I did not go to America with any 
 settled purpose of visiting Engineering 
 works, in which I was naturally specially in- 
 terested, I took advantage of several oppor- 
 tunities that presented themselves on the 
 road to study some of the specialities of 
 American Engineering, and offer these notes 
 on the subject for the benefit of those in- 
 terested in the same pursuits as myself. 
 
 I have already said something regarding 
 the peculiarities of American Railroads. 
 The Permanent Way is noticeable for the 
 universal adoption of the light flat-bottomed 
 steel rail, weighing only 67 Ibs. to the 
 yard ; chairs are dispensed with, the rail 
 being spiked down to the sleepers, which are
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 143 
 
 about two feet apart ; the 4 feet 8J inches 
 gauge seems to be everywhere adopted. 
 
 The long passenger cars are supported at 
 each end on 'bogeys,' or pivoted trucks, 
 carried on four or six small wheels, which 
 are convenient for the sharp curves prevalent 
 on most of the lines. The cars are coupled 
 together by the Miller coupler and buffer in 
 one, but the springs of the latter seem 
 generally too weak ; by the use of this 
 coupler a car can be immediately detached 
 from the train. The Westinghouse air brake 
 has been adopted on most of the lines, and 
 seems very efficient. A cylinder of com- 
 pressed air is fixed under each car, the con- 
 nection between the cylinders being by elastic 
 tubes. A larger cylinder is affixed to the 
 engine or tender, and by the aid of a lever, 
 the whole of this compressed force is brought 
 under the control of the driver who can bring 
 it to act on the brake levers by a simple 
 movement of his hand. 
 
 The locomotives are generally provided 
 with spark-bafflers to the funnels ; also with 
 cow- catchers in front, and with very complete 
 glazed shelter for the men. Coal, coke, 
 wood, and occasionally peat are used as fuel. 
 The engines have generally two pairs of
 
 144 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 driving wheels, with a four-wheeled bogey in 
 front. 
 
 At Chicago I inspected the Water-works, 
 of which the only peculiarity is a tunnel 
 under the lake, from which the supply is 
 drawn, made for the purpose of securing 
 purer water than that found near the shore, 
 which is rendered injurious by the town 
 sewage and the drainage of distilleries and 
 manufactories. This tunnel is of brickwork, 
 two miles long, with a shaft at each end ; the 
 lake end being protected by a massive crib 
 or hollow pentagonal breakwater, from 
 storms, vessels, and ice. The diameter of 
 the tunnel is five feet, which is sufficient to 
 deliver a supply for 1,000,000 of inhabitants 
 at the rate of 50 gallons a day for each 
 person. The excavation of this tunnel was 
 generally through stiff blue clay, and the 
 only serious difficulty encountered was from 
 the presence of inflammable and explosive gas, 
 which had not been foreseen. Ventilation 
 was effected by the aid of tin pipes, through 
 which the foul air was drawn out and fresh 
 air drawn in through the main opening. 
 
 The Crib for the lake shaft was fifty-eight 
 feet in length on each side of the pentagon, and 
 forty feet high, constructed of white pine timber,
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 145 
 
 the flooring and walls of which were made 
 water-tight by calking. It was floated to its 
 position, and then sunk to the bottom by admit- 
 ting the water through sluices in the floor, 
 when the interior of the walls was filled with 
 loose rubble. A temporary wooden covering 
 was then erected over it, with a lighthouse 
 on top, and rooms above and below for the 
 accommodation of the workmen. The work 
 was then commenced from the lake end by 
 sinking a cast-iron shaft, 9 feet in diameter, 
 and 63 feet long, and 2^ thick, which 
 was made in seven separate pieces. The 
 tunneling was then carried on from the 
 bottom of the lake shaft, and continued 
 until it met that from the shore end, which 
 it did very exactly. The average rate of pro- 
 gress was about 9 feet per day in length. 
 
 The whole work was completed in three 
 years, without any serious accident, on March 
 25, 1867 ; and since then there has been no 
 cessation in the supply except a stoppage for 
 a few hours on three occasions, caused by ice. 
 The cost was about 9O,ooo/. 
 
 Plate girders and other forms of rivetted 
 structures for Bridges, are not in favour with 
 American engineers ; the cost of the rivet- 
 ting is a serious item where labour is so ex- 
 
 L
 
 146 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 pensive ; and trussed girders are preferred, 
 which, being made up in the factory, and then 
 taken to pieces for transport, can be easily 
 put together by unskilled men. I brought 
 away some drawings of those in most general 
 use, of which I saw several specimens from 
 150 to 400 feet span, the latter being over 
 the Ohio at Cincinnati. The Keystone 
 Bridge Company, at Pittsburg, whose works 
 I visited, supplied me with these drawings, 
 and state their cost to be as follows : For a 
 single track bridge of 100 feet span to carry 
 a variable or moving load of 3,000 Ibs. 
 per foot run, 65 dollars (i3/.) per lineal 
 foot delivered at New York harbour. For 
 200 feet spans, 146 dollars (2Q/.) ; the prices 
 covering only the iron-work of the trusses, 
 lateral bracing and wrought-iron cross floor- 
 beams ; but stringers for supporting the rails 
 are not included. 
 
 At St. Joseph, the Railway Bridge which I 
 saw under construction over the Missouri, 
 will have a superstructure of this kind. It 
 consists of one pivot draw-span of 400 feet 
 in length and three fixed spans of 300 feet, 
 each span being measured from centre to 
 centre of the piers. The height of the 
 girders is 27 feet for the smaller spans
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 147 
 
 which are 285 feet long in the clear, and 
 27 feet at the ends and 40 feet in the centre 
 for the draw-span. Clear width of bridge, 
 1 8 feet. The girders are to be built of cast 
 and wrought iron ; the cast-iron parts of the 
 fixed spans being the upper chords, caps 
 and pedestals of posts, also the bed plates 
 and washers of the draw-span and a few 
 other pieces in the bridge. All other parts 
 to be of wrought iron, tested to a break- 
 ing strain of 50,000 Ibs. to the square 
 inch. 
 
 The Piers are of stone, built on timber 
 caissons made of four thicknesses of whole 
 timbers in four rows, vertical and horizontal 
 alternately. There is a cutting shoe of 
 wrought iron below, and the top of the 
 caisson is a timber grillage trussed from 
 below, the triangular spaces between the 
 sides and the diagonal supports being filled 
 with concrete. A flooring of concrete is also 
 laid inside, when the caisson has reached the 
 firm bottom below, the rest being filled up 
 with sand. The caissons are sunk by the 
 pneumatic process. Compressed air is 
 driven in by a condensing pump worked 
 from a barge, and a stream of water is forced 
 in through a nozzle under a pressure of 150 
 
 L 2
 
 148 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 Ibs. to the square inch by a Cameron's force- 
 pump ; this powerful stream liquefies the 
 sand, which is then pumped up in a semi- 
 fluid state by a steam-pump outside. Even 
 clay is broken up by the strength of the in- 
 jected water, and small stones are sucked up 
 with the sand. Large stones, or pieces of 
 timber, which are often found below, are 
 broken or sawn up, and then lifted up 
 through the chamber. This sand-pump was 
 invented by Captain Eads, the engineer of 
 the great bridge at St. Louis. Average 
 rate of sinking in sand, 6 feet per day. 
 
 I descended into the caisson, by an iron 
 ladder in the large iron tube which com- 
 municates with the air 
 chamber below. On reach- 
 ing the air chamber d, the 
 valve a was closed by the 
 
 \ 
 
 b c hand and held up until 
 the compressed air in the 
 caisson c (which was ad- 
 mitted through a stop-cock) was sufficient 
 to hold up a by force ; the valve b was then 
 opened and we entered the caisson. The 
 sensation experienced on the drum of the ear 
 by the pressure of the condensed air was 
 very painful at first ; it is alleviated by
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 149 
 
 opening a stop-cock, which permits the 
 escape of a portion of the compressed air so 
 as to accustom the ear gradually to the 
 stronger pressure. No great inconvenience 
 has been felt by the workmen at this bridge, 
 as the depth of working is not very great ; 
 but in the bridge over the East River at 
 New York, where a depth of 100 feet 
 was attained, the injury to health was very 
 serious and the men could not work in 
 the caissons more than two hours at a time ; 
 the pain was chiefly felt on emerging from 
 the caisson, caused, I presume, by the unequal 
 tension of the air in the lungs and pores of 
 the body which had been breathed in the 
 caisson, from that of the normal atmosphere. 
 The Missouri River, where I saw it at 
 St. Joseph, was exactly similar to the Chenab, 
 or Sutlej, in Upper India. It has a bed of pure 
 sand with a fall of 9 inches per mile, and the 
 water was heavily charged with silt. I saw 
 a large Spur which had been built to divert 
 the stream under the bridge, and which I will 
 describe as a useful specimen of this class of 
 work. It was 2,100 feet long, 60 feet wide 
 at the base, 30 feet at medium high water, 
 and contained 56,000 cubic yards of brush- 
 wood, timber and sand, after being weighted
 
 I5O AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 with ' rip-rap ' (broken stone) laid 1 2 feet 
 wide and 3 feet high. At the point 
 where this work was begun, the river was 
 cutting away the shore rapidly. The 
 channel at low water was 500 feet wide 
 and 20 feet deep, and the velocity of the 
 current was four miles an hour. The brush 
 and timber were kept in position until sunk 
 to the bottom by piles about 10, feet apart, 
 well driven by a steam pile-driver. More 
 than 700 piles were used in building the 
 foundations. When the work had pro- 
 gressed so as to materially contract the 
 channel, the current scoured the bottom to a 
 depth of 26 feet, and in order to divert 
 the current from the long Spur, or at 
 least to reduce its volume, a temporary Spur 
 800 feet long was built a short distance 
 above, of cotton-wood, willow brush and 
 sand, with small piles driven by hand. The 
 channel even here was 8 to 1 1 feet deep 
 and moderately swift, but the Spur stood 
 well, the brushwood and sand sinking 
 down as the piles began to be scoured and 
 being replaced by fresh material. In ten 
 days' time it entirely diverted the low water 
 channel of the river. The success of the 
 whole plan was complete and the main body
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 151 
 
 of the river formed a channel 1,000 feet 
 distant from its old bed. 
 
 The cost of the work was 60,000 dollars 
 (i2,ooo/.) The river works, as well as the 
 bridge, have been designed and carried out 
 by Colonel Mason, the engineer of the railway 
 company, who very kindly took me over all 
 the works and presented me with drawings 
 and descriptions of them. 
 
 The ' bottom ' lands, on this river as well 
 as the Mississippi, are equivalent to what are 
 called 'khadir' lands in India; the bluffs 
 dividing them from the ' bangur ' or high 
 land, and forming the boundaries of the true 
 valley, are well marked in both rivers. At 
 St. Joseph, this valley was four to six miles 
 wide. The Mississippi is similar to the 
 Missouri in this part of its course, but has a 
 somewhat greater fall of bed and is there- 
 fore not so troublesome to navigate or regu- 
 late. It is highest in June, and lowest 
 in September or October, when the deep 
 channel of the Upper Mississippi has only 
 about 3 feet of water. 
 
 The St. Louis Railway Bridge over the 
 Mississippi, now under construction, consists 
 of three arches, the centre of 520 feet, the 
 others of 502 feet span, supported on abut-
 
 152 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 ments and piers of solid limestone faced with 
 granite, the foundations being on timber 
 caissons sunk to the solid rock below, in one 
 case to the depth of 110 feet. The Ap- 
 proaches consist of a series of masonry 
 arches adjoining the abutments on both 
 sides, terminating at the one end in a tunnel 
 3,000 feet long ; at the other in a series of 
 iron trestles, carried out till the roadway 
 meets the surface. 
 
 The Arches will consist of four ribs each ; 
 each rib consisting of two steel tubes, 1 2 feet 
 apart, one over the other, braced together 
 with diagonal bars. The tubes will be of 1 8 
 inches diameter throughout, and each com- 
 posed of forty-three pieces fitting into each 
 other with sockets and clamping pieces, and 
 varying in thickness according to their posi- 
 tion in the arch. The skewbacks are of cast- 
 iron and weigh four tons each ; the end 
 pieces of the tubes are screwed into the skew- 
 backs, and the mass, weighing seven tons, 
 raised into its place and fixed by bolts 
 passing through the piers or abutments. 
 
 As no scaffolding could be erected for 
 several reasons, the ribs will be built out 
 from each side fo 1 * one-third of their length, 
 and the projecting parts will be used as canti-
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 153 
 
 levers to hoist and fix the remaining third of 
 each tube. The iron work is being made at 
 the Keystone Bridge Company's works at 
 Pittsburg, where I witnessed the construc- 
 tion of one of the tube portions. Into the 
 outer envelope or cylinder of steel, 12 feet 
 long and J inch thick, seven steel segments are 
 slid one by one, the last being steadily forced 
 in by hydraulic pressure after being well 
 greased. The cylinder portions are made 
 by bending round a steel plate between 
 rollers until the two edges meet ; these are 
 then rivetted together and covered by a 
 rivetted lap-joint. 
 
 The superstructure will carry a double 
 roadway ; that for carriages being on the top 
 of the upper rib, that for the rail-track some 
 20 feet below. The arches are the largest 
 yet constructed or designed. 
 
 Much thought was required as to the effect 
 of changes of temperature on so large an 
 arch of metal, the extreme range allowed for 
 being 160, which would produce a change in 
 form of 9 inches at the crown. The strains 
 thus produced were very complicated and 
 difficult to calculate. 
 
 The total cost of the bridge will be about 
 8,000,000 dollars (i,6oo,ooo/.)
 
 TOUR IN 
 
 The Suspension Bridge at Cincinnati, over 
 the Ohio, is 1,010 feet in the clear, and the 
 largest in the world yet constructed. It 
 carries a central footway, two ordinary carriage 
 tracks, and two railed tracks for horse cars. 
 There is only one suspending cable on each 
 side a massive bundle of steel wires laid 
 side by side and bound together (not twisted) 
 from which run a series of vertical suspenders 
 carrying the roadway. Oblique stays run 
 from the towers to stiffen and support the 
 roadway for about one-fourth of the total 
 length at each end ; and girders are carried 
 through from end to end to distribute the 
 weight. There is a considerable rise in the 
 centre of the roadway, which slopes down 
 towards each end in a flat segmental curve. 
 There is also an arrangement of horizontal 
 lateral bracing to prevent lateral oscillation, 
 but no under-bracing, as in the old Niagara 
 railway bridge. 
 
 The new Niagara suspension bridge is on 
 the same principle as the above and about 
 the same span, but has only two foot-paths 
 and an ordinary carriage-way. 
 
 Both these were designed and constructed 
 by the same engineer, Mr. Roebling, and are 
 perfect models of grace, lightness and stiffness.
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 155 
 
 The Victoria Bridge at Montreal, over the 
 St. Lawrence, is 9,194 feet long, and consists 
 of a series of wrought-iron tubes, similar to 
 those of the famous Britannia Bridge, resting 
 on twenty-four piers and two abutments of 
 solid masonry, the central tube being 330 feet 
 in clear length, 22 feet high, and 16 feet wide. 
 The cost of the bridge was i,3oo,ooo/. From 
 its great length and low, uniform elevation, it 
 is anything but a handsome structure. I was 
 told, on good authority, of a peculiar effect 
 not foreseen by the engineers, which has 
 occurred owing to the sides of the bridge 
 facing east and west. The expansion and 
 contraction caused by the extreme daily 
 variations of heat and cold, have resulted in a 
 continual loosening of many of the rivets, 
 which necessitates the constant employment 
 of a number of rivetters to tighten them up 
 again, but I had not an opportunity of verify- 
 ing the statement. If it is true, it is of 
 course an additional objection to the employ- 
 ment of rivetted structures in such a climate, 
 or at least in such a position. 
 
 There are numerous Wooden Bridges of 
 large span on the various American rail- 
 roads ; the favourite form is the Howe truss, 
 with double or triple vertical wrought-iron
 
 156 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 ties, the diagonals being also double or triple 
 according to their position ; in the latter case, 
 one strut passing between the other two 
 and a simple bolt passing through the junc- 
 tion. In the case of very large spans, a 
 stiffening arch of timber is carried through 
 the truss. These bridges are generally 
 covered in from the weather. 
 
 The Suspension Bridge over the East River 
 at New York, now under construction by 
 Col. Roebling, the son of the engineer men- 
 tioned above, will be of not less than 1,600 
 feet in length between the towers, which are 
 nearly completed. These are of granite, 
 founded on caissons, sunk through sand and 
 boulders, in removing which much blasting 
 was necessary. The drop of the catenary 
 will be i : 12.^ ; width of roadway, 85 feet. 
 There will be four steel chains, similar to 
 those of the Cincinnati bridge, and the 
 general construction will be the same as 
 in that structure ; there will be six stiffening 
 girders, the two central ones 1 2 feet deep, the 
 others 8 feet. This depth is fixed with refer- 
 ence to the calculated lengths of the waves of 
 oscillation, which will be 100 feet to 120 feet. 
 The contraction and expansion will cause 
 a rise and fall in the main cables, and the
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 157 
 
 longitudinal girders have slotted joints to 
 provide for that. 
 
 At Willefs Point, near New York, the 
 Americans have a small establishment, similar 
 to our Engineering School at Chatham, which 
 I visited. General Abbott of the Engineers 
 is carrying on Torpedo experiments there 
 and had arranged some large explosions out at 
 sea for my edification, but the day was too rough 
 for the boats to go out. He showed me, how- 
 ever, some small explosions from the end of the 
 pier, to enable me to see the mode of estimat- 
 ing the force of different charges. A large 
 iron ring is used which can be lowered verti- 
 cally into the water from the end of a crane ; 
 the charge is placed at the centre ; and in the 
 periphery of the ring are a number of small 
 cylinders in which are pistons, which being 
 driven outwards by the force of the explosion 
 are pressed upon small tubes of lead inside 
 the cylinders. Of course the degree of com- 
 pression of the leaden tubes is an empirical 
 measure of the force of the explosion. For 
 larger blasts, a similar apparatus is employed, 
 made on a very much larger scale and like a 
 huge rectangular cage of bar iron. The 
 charges are fired by a frictional machine which 
 General Abbott praised highly. It is Dr.
 
 158 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 Julius Smith's pattern, made by George 
 Lincoln, 32 Summer Street, Boston, price 
 75 dollars. Theroare two sizes, 6 inches and 
 1 2 inches, but the former is only fit for the 
 laboratory. General Abbott has tried all kinds 
 of explosives, and at present seems to prefer 
 Dynamite. I saw several of the Torpedo cases 
 and Circuit closers, which are similar to our 
 own. 
 
 I visited the Hellgate Works at Astoria on 
 the East River, New York, which are for the 
 purpose of clearing away the rocky obstruc- 
 tions in the channel and opening up this 
 passage to the ocean for first-class vessels. 
 These works are under the charge of General 
 Newton of the United States Engineers, one 
 of the ablest of that distinguished corps, who 
 has himself designed and superintended the 
 works, and who very kindly accompanied me 
 on my visit. The principal work now being 
 done is at Hallett's Point, where a huge mass 
 of gneiss projects from the shore 300 feet into 
 the channel, causing a fall of 18 inches in the 
 tideway which here runs like a mill-sluice, 
 forming a most formidable obstruction to 
 navigation. 
 
 To remove this huge mass of rock, a 
 large open air shaft, 32 feet deep, has
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA." 159 
 
 been dug at the shore end, whence a 
 series of sixteen radiating galleries has been 
 blasted through the rock to a length of from 
 200 to 400 feet, driven so as to leave a thick- 
 ness of about 1,0 feet of rock overhead, and 
 a minimum depth of 32 feet of water when the 
 rock is eventually removed. Through these 
 radiating galleries, which spread out from the 
 shaft like the leaves of a fan, another series of 
 concentric galleries are now being blasted, so 
 as to leave a number of square pillars of rock 
 about ten feet in length and breadth to support 
 the roof. When these galleries are completed, 
 heavy charges will be placed in all these 
 pillars and connected together in the usual 
 manner ; the water will then be admitted into 
 all the galleries, and the charges fired simul- 
 taneously so as to clear away the whole 
 obstruction. 
 
 The rock is excessively hard and the strati- 
 fication very irregular ; considerable judgment 
 has therefore been required in fixing the sizes 
 of the different galleries, and in their deviation 
 where necessary from the normal plan. The 
 blasting is done by drills moved by compressed 
 air, similar to the method employed in the 
 Mont Cenis tunnel, the compressed air being 
 also used for ventilation purposes. The
 
 I6O AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 galleries are drained by iron pipes leading 
 back into a cistern at the bottom of the 
 shaft, whence it is pumped up into the river. 
 
 Some trouble has been caused by leakage ; 
 when occurring in the horizontal strata, leaks 
 are stopped by driving in wedges of dry wood ; 
 vertical fissures are closed with clay thrown 
 in at low water over the seam. But in one 
 of the galleries, it was requisite to construct a 
 strong shield fitted to the opening, in which 
 3 cwt. of oakum were driven and backed with 
 ten barrels of cement. 
 
 The work goes on day and night ; the miners 
 being divided into three shifts of 8 hours each. 
 Good wages are paid, and when hand drilling 
 was employed, miners using one-hand tools, 
 i.e. holding the drill bar in one hand and 
 striking with the other, were expected to do 
 five feet in length per shift in average rock. 
 
 The explosive used is Nitro-glycerine, which 
 is most extensively employed for blasting in 
 the States ; the works have been in progress 
 for two and a half years, and 15,000 Ibs. of 
 nitro-glycerine have been expended without 
 a single accident! General Newton, however, 
 seems to prefer Dynamite, which he considers 
 by far the best and safest explosive yet 
 invented. The nitro-glycerine is bought in
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. l6l 
 
 the market, and the preference given to that 
 which is quite clear and freshly made. The 
 General does not consider it to be more 
 dangerous when frozen ; indeed it is often 
 transported in that state and in common 
 country carts over very bad roads. At the 
 Hellgate works, it is stored on one of the 
 rocky islands in the channel, but about 50 
 or 100 Ibs. are kept at a time in the 
 place where the cartridges are made up a 
 slight wooden shed about 100 yards from the 
 works. The cartridges hold from six to 
 twelve ounces generally, and they are fired 
 by Bickford's fuze, generally twice a day, 
 when the men knock off work the priming 
 used being the ordinary chlorate of potash. 
 The effect of nitro-glycerine, as compared with 
 gunpowder, is to smash the rock to pieces, 
 instead of breaking it up into masses. 
 
 The Dynamite sold in the States is usually 
 called Giant powder (the powder used for 
 large guns, and corresponding to our pebble 
 powder, is known as Mammoth powder). The 
 giant powder is of two kinds ; No. i. contain- 
 ing 75 per cent of nitro-glycerine, and No. 2. 
 only 35 per cent. General Newton told me 
 there was no risk whatever in tamping this, 
 with ordinary precautions. He had seen a 
 
 M
 
 1 62 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 charge inserted in a tree, a charge of rifle 
 powder put over it, and a fuze driven tightly 
 in on top ; on igniting the fuze, the powder 
 exploded, and the dynamite did not, though 
 it was separately exploded afterwards with 
 full effect. Whether dynamite deteriorates or 
 not by keeping he could not tell. 
 
 Besides the Hallett's Point Rock, there are 
 several isolated rocks in the channel known 
 as the Frying-pan, the Gridiron, the Pot 
 Rock, and others. Several attempts at the 
 removal of these had been made by previous 
 engineers with but slight success, owing 
 chiefly to the great strength of the tidal current 
 which runs at from six to nine miles an hour. 
 At length General Newton devised a large 
 Scow or barge with a hollow space in the 
 middle, in which is a moveable cast-iron 
 hemispherical dome, 30 feet in diameter, 
 which can be raised or lowered at pleasure by 
 men working on the scow. Thus, the scow 
 being securely moored over the rock to be 
 operated upon, the dome is lowered until it 
 rests on the rock, any irregularity of surface 
 in the latter being compensated by adjustable 
 iron feet which are fitted at the bottom of 
 the dome. In the surface of the dome are 
 fixed a^ series of nineteen tubes, in each of
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 163 
 
 which works a vertical drill which is raised 
 from above by steam power, and falls by its 
 own weight. Any number of these drills can 
 be worked simultaneously, but as a rule about 
 seven are used at the same time, and the 
 holes are drilled at the rate of 10 to 20 
 feet in a day, their diameter being about 4 
 inches ; the stuff is raised out by the action 
 of the drill. As each hole is made, it is 
 plugged to keep out the silt, and to the cords 
 connecting the plugs a line is attached to 
 serve as a guide to their position. 
 
 When a number of holes are ready, the 
 scow is removed to a safe distance by 
 warping, and the holes are charged, during 
 the short time of slackwater, from a boat 
 specially employed for the purpose. A 
 long tin tube, just like an elongated plan 
 case, is filled with nitro-glycerine (about sixty 
 pounds in each charge) ; a priming of rifle 
 powder in a corked glass bottle with an 
 electric fuze is put inside the tube about half- 
 way down ; and the cartridge is lowered by a 
 diver into the hole ready to receive it ; when 
 all are filled, the battery boat is brought up, 
 the connected wires are led to it, and the 
 charges fired through the platinum fuzes. If 
 it is found afterwards by the divers that a 
 
 M 2
 
 164 AN AUTUMN TOUR IN THE 
 
 charge has not exploded, a smaller cartridge 
 is fired over it, but misfires are rare, and there 
 have been no accidents hitherto. The charges 
 are always filled in during slack water. 
 
 The Scow has been found to work very 
 efficiently ; their only trouble has been from 
 collisions with passing vessels, and this has 
 been a source of great inconvenience, delay 
 and damage. A few days previous to my 
 visit, in fact, the whole top hamper of the 
 Scow had been carried away by the paddle of 
 a large steamer, and all the working arrange- 
 ments were in consequence of a temporary 
 and makeshift character. 
 
 I should mention that a huge Rake forms 
 part of the apparatus, which can be dragged 
 over the rock to rake off loose stones into 
 deep water, or they can be grappled by 
 another machine and lifted on board. 
 
 The cost of removing a cubic yard on Pot 
 Rock will be 200 dollars ; for the Hellgate 
 clearances generally, about 20 dollars. 
 
 I think a similar arrangement to that of 
 the dome might be very useful in getting in 
 the foundations of a bridge or other work in 
 a rapid current ; it is not necessary that the 
 hemispherical shape should be adhered to. 
 
 General Newton does not approve of
 
 UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 165 
 
 frictional electricity being used for firing 
 mines, as the atmosphere may be in a highly 
 electrical state when the charges are con- 
 nected up and spontaneous explosion may 
 occur. An accident in the Hoosac tunnel, 
 which resulted in the death of several men, 
 was attributed to this. All such danger is 
 obviated by the use of the platinum wire 
 fuze. 
 
 Here end my engineering experiences in 
 America, which I would gladly have extended 
 if time had permitted. I met several of the 
 Civil Engineers, and they all struck me as 
 remarkably able men, not merely of great 
 practical talent, of which of course I had little 
 opportunity of judging, but as men of con- 
 siderable scientific attainments, quite as much 
 at home in the theory as in the practice of 
 their profession. 
 
 Here also I bring to a close my American 
 experiences. I left New York on November 
 1 6th, exactly two months after my arrival, 
 and after a 'stormy passage in the ' City of 
 Paris ' arrived safely at Liverpool. 
 
 In setting down these brief notes of what 
 to me was a most interesting tour, I do not 
 think I can give serious offence to any but
 
 1 66 TOUR IN UNITED STATES AND CANADA. 
 
 those very thin-skinned individuals who 
 think no foreigner should presume to speak 
 of their country except in terms of unqualified 
 praise. If I have extenuated nothing, I have 
 most certainly not set down aught in malice, 
 and so far from depreciating America, have 
 no hesitation in saying that were I not an 
 Englishman I should be proud to be an 
 American citizen.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 EXTRACT FROM A PAMPHLET BY THE BURLINGTON 
 AND MISSOURI RIVER RAILROAD COMPANY LAND 
 DEPARTMENT. 
 
 MILLIONS of acres comprising many of the best 
 prairie lands in Iowa and Nebraska, are for sale by 
 the Burlington and Missouri River R. R. Co., on 
 ten years' credit, at six per cent, interest. 
 
 No part of principal due for two years from pur- 
 chase, and afterwards only one-ninth yearly. 
 
 Products will pay for Land and Improvements. 
 
 The prices of these lands are low, ranging gene- 
 rally in Iowa, from $5 to $16 per acre, and in Ne- 
 braska, from $4 to $12 per acre, with some less and 
 some more. 
 
 They vary according to soil, location, water sup- 
 ply, timber and other advantages, in precisely the 
 same manner as do other lands. 
 
 These Iowa and Nebraska Lands are located 
 principally in the south-westerly part of Iowa, and 
 the southerly portion of Nebraska, along the Platte,
 
 1 68 APPENDIX. 
 
 Big Blue and other valleys. They are not exceeded 
 in fertility, beauty, and all the attractions and ad- 
 vantages of locality and soil, which are essential, in 
 the estimation of farmers, by any region in the 
 world ; while trade, manufactures, arts, science, 
 and all the attendants of refinement and luxury, 
 which enterprise can introduce and thrift maintain, 
 are following 'rapidly the march of settlement. 
 
 The Railroad lands already sold have been 
 wonderfully improved, and the increase in their 
 value is large in many cases almost incredible. 
 
 Much equally good lands remain unsold, can be 
 purchased at low rates, on the same easy terms 
 of payment, and with equally good prospects of 
 steady and large increase in value. 
 
 The soil of this region is of exuberant fertility, 
 and easily cultivated ; the climate is healthful, 
 winters short and mild, with very little snow, the 
 stock subsisting principally out of doors, and feed- 
 ing upon the dried grasses of the prairies, in pre- 
 ference to hay. Crops are large, markets good, 
 taxes low, and education is free to all. 
 
 The Burlington and Missouri River Railroad was 
 completed to Lincoln, Neb., in July, 1870. Its 
 lands in both States came into market in April of 
 that year. 
 
 At the end of twenty-seven months from that 
 time, June 30, 1872, the sales had been : 
 
 In Iowa . . . 169,550 Acres for $1,989,324 46 
 In Nebraska. . 229,963 ,, $1,952,54680 
 
 Total . . 399,513 $3-941,871 26
 
 APPENDIX. 169 
 
 Nearly all these sales are made to actual settlers, 
 on a credit of ten years, at six per cent, interest. 
 
 How is a Buyer to Select Lands ? 
 
 All the lands the Railroad Company offer for sale, 
 have been thoroughly explored and examined, and 
 in the offices of the Land Commissioner, at Burling- 
 ton, Iowa, and at Lincoln, Nebraska, are elaborate 
 and carefully prepared plans and descriptions of 
 every lot, which are freely opened to the inspection 
 of all inquirers, with explanations by experienced 
 men in the offices, who are personally familiar with 
 the lands. 
 
 The only sure and satisfactory course for pur- 
 chasers is to come and see for themselves. 
 
 After obtaining, at one or the other of these 
 offices, all needed information to direct him on his 
 way, the person in pursuit of land generally finds 
 it convenient to go directly to some one of our 
 local agents, who are to be found at various points 
 along the line. 
 
 These agents are reliable men, thoroughly fa- 
 miliar with all the lands in their vicinity, and will 
 cheerfully afford all reasonable aid in selecting and 
 examining the lands for sale. 
 
 They are also authorised to receive applications 
 for the lands selected, and to prepare and execute 
 the preliminary papers necessary to consummate 
 the purchase and secure the lands selected. 
 
 Subsequent payments are to be made, for Iowa 
 lands, at Burlington, and for Nebraska lands, at
 
 1 7O APPENDIX. 
 
 Lincoln. Our system is extremely simple, and 
 perfectly intelligible to all. 
 
 A list of our Local Agents along the line, is fur- 
 nished to each explorer, so that they may know 
 on whom to call, wherever they stop ; and as a 
 general rule, all others should be avoided, for there 
 are Land Sharks as well as Land Agents. 
 
 In order to pre-empt Government or Homestead 
 lands, it is needful to settle on the land immedi- 
 ately, or within six months ; on Railroad lands 
 more time and accommodation can be had. 
 
 Terms of Sale. 
 
 The purchaser can pay cash, or divide the 
 amount into three equal parts, paying one-third 
 down, one-third in one year, and one-third in two 
 years, with interest at ten per cent, annually, or 
 he can have TEN YEARS' time in which to make up 
 the sum by small annual payments at six per cent, 
 interest. 
 
 Most buy on this latter plan of ten years' credit, 
 in which case the purchaser pays at the outset 
 one year's interest, at six per cent., on the value of 
 his land : at the end of a year he makes another 
 similar payment of six per cent. only. 
 
 At the end of the second year, he makes pay- 
 ment of one-ninth of the principal of the purchase 
 money and one year's interest, at six per cent., on 
 the remainder, and the same at the end of each 
 successive year thereafter, until all has been paid. 
 
 If he chooses to pay cash down, or one-third
 
 APPENDIX. 171 
 
 cash, and the balance in one and two years, with 
 interest at ten per cent, annually, he is allowed 
 an outright discount of twenty per cent., or one- 
 fifth from the ten-year price of the land. 
 
 Parties who purchase for Cash, receive a Certifi- 
 cate of Purchase, and a Warranty Deed as soon as 
 it can be executed. 
 
 If purchased either on Short Credit or Long 
 Credit, a Contract or a Bond for a Deed is executed, 
 and, so soon as all the payments are made, a War- 
 ranty Deed, free from any incumbrance, is given, 
 precisely as in the case of land purchased for cash 
 down. 
 
 It is expected that those who are accommodated 
 on long credit, will have improved at least three- 
 tenths of the land bought, within three years from 
 the date of purchase ; but of those who buy for 
 Cash or on Short Credit, no requirement of this 
 character is made. 
 
 Advantages of Long Credit. 
 
 Our ten years' credit is practically a loan of so 
 much money. It gives the man of limited 
 means an equal chance with men of property, 
 and helps him to compete with such men. 
 
 The Railroad Company require of the purchaser 
 no other security than the land sold. That is 
 ample for us. 
 
 Enterprising men can secure farms and homes 
 by our long credit terms, greatly to their advan- 
 tage. Before the ten years of credit expire, the
 
 172 APPENDIX. 
 
 farm can be paid for from the productions of the 
 land. Improvements can also be made, and the 
 family supported. Let a man be of the right 
 stamp, a good manager and worker, and he cannot 
 fail of success. 
 
 He should have a few hundred dollars to start 
 with, sufficient to meet the expense of putting up, 
 at first, a low cost-house, to purchase a pair of 
 horses, a wagon, cow, pigs, tools, etc., and such 
 outfit as is needful for a beginner and his family. 
 
 Of sales thus far amounting to nearly 
 $4,000,000 by far the greatest portion have been 
 made on ten years' credit, though lands are offered 
 twenty per cent, cheaper either for cash or on two 
 years' time. Buyers spend their money in break- 
 ing prairie, stocking farms, and building houses. 
 
 In case of unexpected reverses or disappoint- 
 ments, a reasonable indulgence can always be ob- 
 tained by making a frank and honest statement of 
 facts. 
 
 No speculator can be so much interested as the 
 R. R. Co. is in the prosperity of the settlers along 
 its line. It grows with their growth and strength- 
 ens with their strength. Local traffic is its life. 
 Its policy and disposition is to help and encourage 
 those who are seeking to help themselves. 
 
 Advantages of our System of Sales. 
 
 The Railroad Company allow the purchaser to 
 enter upon, cultivate and improve the land he may 
 select, and use and realise for the crops, for two
 
 APPENDIX. 173 
 
 years, demanding no other payment or compensa- 
 tion than a simple interest or rent, amounting to 
 the small sum of six per cent, per year on the value 
 of the land for this term of two years. 
 
 At the expiration of the two years his land will 
 have advanced in value, and he makes his first 
 payment of principal, feeling that his land is cJuap. 
 
 It will readily be seen that this provision enables 
 many to secure land and enter upon and realise 
 from it, who, under any ordinary system of pay- 
 ment as adopted by individuals, would be entirely 
 unable so to do. 
 
 Most of these lands are sold on a credit of ten 
 years, thus enabling the poor man to get along 
 with ease, or the man who has money can retain 
 the use of most of it for the improvement of his 
 farm, the purchase of stock, and that endless va- 
 riety of uses for which ready money is always 
 useful and profitable ; so that as a general thing 
 those who have purchased these lands may be 
 rated as in easy and thrifty circumstances. 
 
 The opportunities afforded by our system of 
 sales are not excelled, and rarely, if ever, equalled, 
 and are plainly of great advantage to every one, 
 
 whether possessed of little money or much. 
 
 / 
 
 Suggestions to Land Buyers and Otliers. 
 
 Before coming to purchase lands, see to it that 
 you have the necessary means, and make careful 
 consideration as to their expenditure. None should
 
 1 74 APPENDIX. 
 
 come without proper forethought and needful capi- 
 tal ; but with these the way is open and the pros- 
 pects are bright 
 
 It is difficult to make progress anywhere without 
 capital, and nowhere is the need of money more 
 keenly felt than in a new settlement. 
 
 You will require money for the expenses of 
 travel and transportation for yourself and family 
 and such household goods and stock as you may 
 determine to bring ; for the first small payment of 
 interest on the land purchased ; for buildings and 
 other improvements ; for farming tools and needful 
 provisions until you can make and sell a crop. 
 
 Business openings of all kinds are frequent, and 
 labour and clerical assistance are required to a 
 limited extent ; but those coming without means 
 and dependent entirely upon employment, must 
 take their chances. 
 
 In selecting a farm you will have regard to the 
 character of the soil, the location as relates to the 
 facilities for getting to market, prospective as well 
 as present, and the advantages for your family as 
 relating to social, religious, and educational privi- 
 leges. 
 
 It is not advisable to transport heavy or bulky 
 material any great distance. Farming tools, agri- 
 cultural implements adapted to the soil of the 
 region, and household goods in all their variety, 
 can be purchased here as cheaply as in the Eastern 
 and Middle States, after adding the cost of trans- 
 portation. Cattle and horses should not be brought
 
 APPENDIX. 1 75 
 
 unless of superior class, as ordinary breeds can be 
 purchased for much less than they could be landed 
 here. 
 
 Iowa. 
 
 The State of Iowa is shaped like a brick, or an 
 oblong block. From east to west is three hundred 
 miles long, and two hundred from north to south. 
 Its area is 55,045 square miles. 
 
 The latitude of the southern boundary, dividing 
 it from Missouri, is nearly identical with that of 
 New York city, and the northern line, where it 
 joins Minnesota, is one degree north of Chicago. 
 
 It lies between the Mississippi and Missouri 
 rivers, and stretches along each well-nigh mid- 
 way between its mouth and the head of navigation. 
 
 The wheat crop of 1870 was nearly 30,000.000 
 bushels, Indian corn 69,000,000, and other crops 
 abundant. Manufactures also amounted to many 
 millions of dollars. 
 
 No State in the Union has made so rapid pro- 
 gress during the last ten years as this, either in 
 population, railroad, agricultural or other improve- 
 ments, and none has a better prospect for the 
 future: 
 
 Nebraska. 
 
 It lies directly west of Iowa, the dividing line 
 being the Missouri river. 
 
 It is the thirty-seventh, and the youngest among
 
 1 76 APPENDIX. 
 
 the United States, but in June, 1870, it already 
 had a population of 122,993, and has room for 
 twenty times as many. 
 
 Those thousands have resorted to it, most of 
 them within the last three years, because of its 
 position, healthfulness, beauty, and productive- 
 ness. 
 
 The valuation of property for taxation in 1869 
 was forty-two millions ; in 1870 it was fifty-three, 
 showing an increase of twenty- five per cent, in 
 twelve months. It has no public debt. 
 
 Its position is the most central in the Union. 
 The longitudinal line, running midway between 
 Washington and San Francisco, cuts it into two 
 parts, almost equal. It also lies midway between 
 the mouth of the Mississippi and the head of navi- 
 gation on the Missouri. As to latitude, one-fourth 
 of it lies south and three-fourths north of New 
 York city. 
 
 Extending from the Missouri River, westward, 
 nearly to the Rocky Mountains, it has an extreme 
 length of about 400, by a width of about 200 miles, 
 and a total area of about 76,000 square miles, or 
 about 50,000,000 acres of the best agricultural 
 lands on the American continent. 
 
 THE CLIMATE is temperate, healthful, above 
 most regions on the continent ; epidemics are un- 
 heard of, winters are short and mild. 
 
 SOIL. The general character of the country is 
 broad, undulating and rolling prairie, of rich loam, 
 varying in depth from one to six feet or more, ab-
 
 APPENDIX. 177 
 
 solutely free from stones and stumps, and perfectly 
 adapted for cultivation and grazing. 
 
 WOOD is sufficient for all present requirements 
 for fuel, and as civilisation progresses and prairie 
 fires are stayed, its growth will be rapid. Farmers 
 who have cleared wood-lands and prepared them 
 for cultivation in other States, assert, in the most 
 unqualified terms, that it is much easier to plant 
 and raise a forest than to get rid of one. 
 
 COAL, of good quality, is mined in both Iowa 
 and Wyoming, and easily transported to all points 
 along the line of the B. & M. R. R. 
 
 PlNE LUMBER for building, etc., is supplied in 
 abundant quantities from the timber regions of 
 Wisconsin and Minnesota, on rafts down the Mis- 
 sissippi to Burlington, and thence transported to 
 all points along the line, at low cost. 
 
 STONE. Ledges of limestone are numerous, 
 adapted both for building purposes and for burning 
 into lime. Sandstone occurs occasionally. 
 
 THE CROPS are principally corn, wheat, rye, 
 oats, barley, sorghum, broom, corn, and flax, all of 
 which yield bountifully. Root crops, melons, 
 grapes, fruits, and vegetables, in great variety, are 
 of the most prolific order. For wheat, Iowa stands 
 prominent, and Nebraska is unquestionably the 
 Banner State. The statement is made by the U. S. 
 Land Commissioner, that the average yield of 
 wheat in Nebraska is greater than any other State. 
 
 FRUITS. At the meeting of the American 
 Pomological Society, held at Richmond, Va., in 
 
 Bf
 
 I 78 APPENDIX. 
 
 September, 1871, Iowa exhibited 118 distinct 
 varieties of apples, and took the second largest 
 premium, while ' Nebraska astonished every one,' 
 exhibiting 176 varieties, 146 of which were apples, 
 and bore off the highest premium of all. 
 
 STOCK-RAISING is a prominent feature through 
 these States. Cattle, principally from Texas, are 
 bought at very low rates, fed, cared for, and fat- 
 tened at small cost, transported to market readily, 
 and yield very profitable returns. 
 
 Cattle will live on the prairies, as buffaloes did 
 before them, unfed and unsheltered ; but shelter 
 and care yield good returns. 
 
 Wild hay, more fattening than tame grass, is 
 free to all, either for pasturage or fodder. 
 
 Bunch grass dries as it stands, but does not rot, 
 and when thus self-cured, is preferred by cattle to 
 hay from the stack. 
 
 HOGS are raised and transported with even less 
 care and expense, and are always sure of sale at a 
 profit. 
 
 SHEEP are raised, thus far, only to a limited 
 extent, but the entire region is favourable to 
 the growth of the healthiest sheep and the most 
 valuable fibres of wool ; indeed there is not 
 on the globe a finer section of country for this 
 purpose. 
 
 HORSES AND MULES are aised at small cost 
 and great profit. 
 
 EDUCATION is FREE TO ALL. The School 
 Fund is large. The grant of public lands for this
 
 APPENDIX. 1 79 
 
 purpose, to each State, is ample and constantly 
 increasing in value. 
 
 The late Superintendent of Public Instruction of 
 Iowa, reports for 1871 : 7,823 schools ; 14,070 
 teachers, and 7,594 school-houses. Whole number 
 of scholars, 341,938; average attendance, 211,561 ; 
 salaries paid to teachers, $1,900,893,54 ; value of 
 school buildings, $6,754,551,28. 
 
 In Nebraska the school lands embrace one- 
 eighteenth part of the entire public domain 1,280 
 acres in each township. There were last year up- 
 wards of 32,000 scholars. 
 
 Universities and normal schools are established 
 in both States, and a fine agricultural college in 
 Iowa. 
 
 TOWNS AND VILLAGES are springing up in all 
 localities, and churches, school-houses, post-offices, 
 stores and mills, and manufacturing establishments, 
 are rising as rapidly as necessity demands. 
 
 PRICES. Oxen, $40 to $60 ; cows, $25 to $50 ; 
 a mule or horse, $100 to $150. 
 
 Plows, $15 to $33; cultivator, $20 to $40; 
 mower and reaper, $200 to $250 ; wagon, $95 ; 
 harness, $35. 
 
 Hardware, groceries, dry goods, clothing, boots, 
 shoes, drugs, medicines, books, furniture, stoves, 
 and cooking utensils, crockery, glass, tin, iron, 
 copper, and wooden ware, cordage, pumps, nails, 
 iron and steel, tools of all kinds, wagons, agricul- 
 tural implements in great variety indeed, every 
 article required for household, building and farm
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 purposes, may be had as freely in the numerous 
 towns and cities of these States as in the older 
 towns and cities of the East, and at moderate 
 cost. 
 
 RAILROADS traversing these States afford am- 
 ple market facilities. They are as well built and 
 amply equipped, both for freight and passenger 
 service, as any in the Union, \vhile the numerous 
 branches which are being rapidly constructed, even 
 in advance of settlements, will traverse and cross 
 the States in all directions. 
 
 THE HOMESTEAD LAW permits anyone to 
 occupy eighty acres of public lands within Railroad 
 grants, on payment of $14 in fees. Soldiers alone 
 are entitled to 1 60 acres, within the limits of 
 Railroad grants, or twice as much as any others. 
 
 The number who had filed claims in the Lincoln 
 office alone, (which is only one of the six Govern- 
 ment Land Offices in the State) up to January i, 
 1872, was 9,822. Nearly 500 of these were women, 
 and the number who have entered during the pre- 
 sent year is very large. 
 
 The number of pre-emptors to same date was 
 11,907. 
 
 Of these new settlers, upwards of 5,000 came 
 within the year 1871. 
 
 
 LONDON I PRINTED BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW -STREET SQUARE 
 AND PARLIAMENT STREET
 
 WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 A Years Campaigning in India. 
 
 From March 1857 to March 1858, including an Account of the 
 Expedition against the Boydars on the N.-W. Frontier of the 
 Punjab, the Siege of Delhi, the final Siege of Lucknow, and Sir 
 Thos." Seaton's Campaign in the Doab. With Plans. 
 
 Lectures 
 
 Delivered at the Thomson College, Roorkee, India. 
 Subjects : The Soldiers and Armies of Ancient Times The Sol- 
 diers and Armies of Modern Times English Literature (from 
 Chaucer to Addison) The Great Indian Meeting. 
 
 Modern Rational Christianity : 
 
 A CREED. 
 
 India and Indian Engineering. 
 
 Three Lectures, delivered at the Royal Engineer Institute, Chatham, 
 in July 1872. 
 
 EDITED BY THE SAME. 
 
 Professional Papers on Indian 
 Engineering. 
 
 First Series. Vols. I. to VII. Comprising more than 300 separate 
 
 papers, original or compiled, on various Engineering subjects. 
 
 Each volume contains over 400 pages, royal 8vo. with numerous 
 
 Plates.
 
 TT1IWAUV 
 
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 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library 
 
 from which it was borrowed.
 
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