,-5tfEER% *~r% itwavwn-i^ fJSpl 1 1 % r>vil i 1 ? 1 it-* %U3NV n = ^l-UBR/ u? \Qm A-OF-CAL iOV %JQMNfl-3tf 5X\EIW \JZ 1 I i^ %i i I *.-'! 1.1 ^vt-UBR/ ij ^SIOJIIV AOF-CAl >&Aava 1 ^\\lfW LIFE AND LIBERTY AMERICA: OR, SKETCHES OF A TOUR IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA, IN 1857-8. CHAKLES MACKAY, LLJX, F.S.A. IN TWO VOLUMES. WITH TEX ILLUSTRATIONS. I VOL. I. LONDON: SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL. 1859. [/"Ac right of translation is reserved."} PEEFACE, ll! IN pursuance of a long-cherished desire, the author 3 of the following pages left London in October, 1857, for a tour in the United States and Canada. He traversed the Union from Boston to New Orleans, by > St. Louis and the Mississippi, and returned to New York by land, through the Slave States. He after- . wards visited Canada; and published, from time to ^ time, in the Illustrated London News, a few of the > results of his observations, under the title of " TRANS- t ! ATLANTIC SKETCHES." These sketches, after having Li received careful revision, have been included in the present work, and form about one third of its bulk. The remaining portions are now published for the 459973 iv PREFACE. first time, and include not only the chapters on the great social and political questions, which more than any mere records of travel are of interest to the lovers of human liberty and progress ; but nearly the whole of the Canadian tour. It is not to be expected that in a residence of less than a twelvemonth in America, the author can have acquired a thorough acquaintance with the institutions of the country, or with the operations of social causes, which the Americans themselves do not always comprehend. He makes no pretence at being oracular, but has contented himself with describing "LiFE" as he saw it, and "LIBERTY" as he studied it, to the extent of his opportunities, both in the North and in the South. He went to America, neither to carp, to sneer, nor to caricature, but with an honest love of liberty, and a sincere desire to judge for himself, and to tell the truth, as to the results of the great experiment in self-government, which the Anglo- Saxon and Anglo-Celtic races are making in America, under the most favourable circumstances, and with nothing, not springing from themselves, to impede or fetter their progress. He returned from America PREFACE. V with a greater respect for the people than when he first set foot upon the soil. And if with his Euro- pean notions that a man's colour makes no difference in his natural rights, he has come to the same con- clusion as previous travellers, that " Liberty " in the New World is not yet exactly what the founders of the Union intended it to be, he trusts that he has expressed his opinions without bitterness, and that while he can admire the political virtues of the Re- public, he is not obliged to shut his eyes to its defects or its vices. It is on American soil that the highest destinies of civilization will be wrought out to their conclusions, and the record of what is there doing, however often the story may be told, will be always interesting and novel. Progress crawls in Europe, but gallops in America. The record of European travel may be fresh ten or twenty years after it is written, but that of America becomes obsolete in four or five. It took our England nearly a thousand years, from the days of the Heptarchy to those of William III., to become of as much account in the world as the United States have become in the lifetime of old men who still linger vi PREFACE. amongst us. Those who bear this fact in mind will not concur in the opinion that books of Ame- rican travel are likely to lose their interest even amid the turmoil of European wars, and the com- plications created by the selfish ambition of rulers, whose pretensions and titles are alike anachronisms in the nineteenth century. London, May 1859. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. THE VOYAGE OUT . . . | II. NEW YOBK . . . . . . 12 III. BEOADWAY BY NIGHT . .' . . .24 IV. HOTEL LIFE . . . ... 37 'V. AMEEICAN FIREMEN t . . . .47 VI. FROM NEW YORK TO BOSTON . . 56 VII. To THE FALLS OF NIAGARA . . ' . 69 VIII. NIAGARA ., * .... ./ . * ; -. . .- . : . 79 IX. NEWPORT AND RHODE ISLAND . . ( .100 X. PHILADELPHIA . . . . . Ill XI. WASHINGTON . . . .122 XII. INTERVIEW OF INDIANS WITH THEIR "GREAT FATHER" ,. .. .... . ... . . 133 XIII. AMERICANISMS AND AMERICAN SLANG . .154 XIV. THE IRISH IN AMERICA '.'',.. . .175 XV. FROM WASHINGTON TO CINCINNATI . .184 XVI. THE QUEEN CITY OF THE WEST . . . 197 XVII. ST. Louis, MISSOURI . ...,,. .216 XVIII. THE MORMONS . . ... 233 XLX. FROM ST. Louis TO NEW ORLEANS . .240 XX. " THE CRESCENT CITY " . . . ' . 254 XXI. FROM LOUISIANA TO ALABAMA . . . 278 XXII. SOUTH CAROLINA . , . . . 293 XXIII. SOUTH CAROLINA continued . . . 303 XXIV. A EICE PLANTATION . . . . 315 XXV. SAVANNAH AND THE SEA ISLANDS . 331 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. VOL. PAGE THE LEVEE AT NEW ORLEANS (Frontispiece of VOL. I.) TORCH-LIGHT PROCESSION OF FIREMEN AT NEW YORK i. 28 AMERICAN INDIANS WAITING FOR THE PRESIDENT . 133 THE BANKS OF THE OHIO. MR. LONGWORTH'S VINE- YARDS . . . . . . '. 208 THE MISSISSIPPI STEAM-BOAT "PHILADELPHIA." 4 . 240 THE CEMETERY OF BONAVENTURA, SAVANNAH . . 337 THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON (Frontispiece of VOL. n.) BREAK-UP OF THE ICE ON THE ST. LAWRENCE . . n. 201 THE VICTORIA TUBULAR BRIDGE, MONTREAL . . 208 TORONTO, CANADA WEST . . . .. . 266 LIFE AND LIBERTY IN AMERICA. CHAPTER I. THE VOYAGE OUT. AT ten o'clock on the morning of Saturday the 3rd of October, 1857, the fine steamship Asia, Captain Lott, bearing the mails and about 150 passengers, left Liverpool for New York. The weather was the reverse of cheering. The rain fell, the wind blew, the Mersey showed its white teeth, and every- thing betokened a rough voyage, and a vigorous demand for the steward's basin. The passengers were mostly Americans. Planters, cotton-brokers, and bankers from the South ; merchants and manu- facturers from the New England States; Ameri- cans from Virginia, South Carolina, and Alabama, who used the word "Yankee " as a term, if not of TOL. i. B 2 THE VOYAGE OUT. contempt, of depreciation, as we sometimes use it in England ; and Americans from Connecticut, Massa- chusetts, and Vermont, who gloried in the appellation as the highest compliment that could be bestowed upon them ; courtly gentlemen who would have graced any society in the world; and rough tykes and horsedealers from the Far West ; with about forty ladies and children, and five Englishmen, three of whom crossed the Atlantic for the first time ; formed our company. It was not until the second day, when we were steaming along the southern shores of Ireland, that we began to grow social, to learn each other's names, to form ourselves into little cliques, coteries, and gossiping parties, and to receive and communicate information upon the pleasures and the perils of the Atlantic, upon the state of Europe and of America, upon the probable effects of the great Indian mutiny on the cotton trade of Charles- ton, Mobile, and New Orleans, upon the great com- mercial crash and panic at New York, upon the feelings of Englishmen towards Americans and of Americans towards Englishmen, or, in one phrase, " upon things in general." The weather suddenly became mild and genial, and on Sunday morning, as we skirted the coast of Waterford and Cork, there was scarcely more motion THE VOYAGE OUT. 3 in the sea or in our ship than if we had been steam- ing from London to Greenwich, or threading our way amid the beautiful lochs of the Caledonian Canal. The breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, and supper tables were regularly crowded; there was not a single absentee from the five too frequent and too copious meals provided for us by our bountiful and urbane chief steward. The monotony of a long sea voyage is such that people eat for pastime. The sound of the bell for luncheon is an event ; and dinner is a consummation of good things, as well AS a consumption of them, to which all who are not smitten by sea-sickness look forward as the very crown and climax of the day, which the gour- mand and the gourmet alike contemplate with pleasur- able anticipations, and which nothing can impair but a stiff breeze. And such a breeze sprung up on the second day. Experienced travellers who had crossed the Atlantic scores of times who spoke jauntily of our noble ship as a ferry-boat, and of the mighty Atlantic as " the Ferry," no larger, in their magnilo- quence, than that from Liverpool to Birkenhead bade us " look out for squalls," and for the swell and roll of the ocean, as soon as we should pass Cape Clear and the Fassnett Lighthouse. They proved themselves true prophets. We had not left the B 2 4 THE VOYAGE OUT. rugged shores of the county of Kerry half an hour behind us before we made a most unpleasant ac- quaintanceship with the heaving billows of the Atlantic, and felt the Asia pitching in a heavy sea, with her bowsprit one moment running atilt at the clouds, and the next sinking as if it would poke a hole through the bottom of the ocean. In a few minutes our decks were cleared of all the fairer portion of the passengers ; the crinolines disappeared; and for seven long and weary days the ruder and stronger half of creation were left in undisturbed but melancholy possession of the decks and the dining- tables. Nor did the greater number of the gentle- men fare, for a day or two, much better than the ladies. On the wings of the gale there rode a fiend the fiercest, most unrelenting demon ever imagined, invented, or depicted the arch-fiend Sea-Sickness, in whose unwelcome presence life, nature, and humanity lose then' charm "the sun's eye hath a sickly glare " and death itself seems among the most trivial of the afflictions that can befall us. One of our English friends from Manchester, who was very sick and utterly miserable, created some amusement among those less miserable than himself. There was but one place on deck which afforded shelter from the beating rain and the spray that washed THE VOYAGE OUT. 5 over us in plenteous cataracts. This place was the general resort not only of the smokers, but of all those sufficiently convalescent to loathe and abhor the confined air of their state-rooms. The name originally given to this resort was the Gridiron, but the more significant application of the Spit was applied to it by a " Britisher" whom modesty forbids me to name, who detested tobacco and the streams of saliva which, whether "chawed" or smoked, it incited some portion of the Yankee passengers, and more espe- cially a long, lean, leathery, unhealthy boy from Philadelphia, to discharge upon the floor. Seated in the " Spit " was our Manchester friend as comfort- less and as hopeless as man could look. We had been five days out, and it was impossible to walk the deck for the heavy seas and blinding spray that at every pitch or roll of the vessel came spouting over us. To eat was perilous, to drink was to invite sickness, to read was impossible, to talk was but vanity and vexation of spirit; and the sole resource was to woo the slumber which would not come, or to form deep though unspoken vows never again to cross the ocean in the expecta- tion of deriving either pleasure or comfort from the trip. The vessel rolled heavily ; and a " sea " burst- ing over the bulwarks deluged the " Spit " and all 6 THE VOYAGE OUT. within it till we stood six inches deep in water. " I'll be hanged," said the man of Manchester, " if I'll stand this any longer ! Steward, call a cab ! " We all smiled; and doubtless our smiles were ghastly enough, at the earnest jocosity of our friend's misery. It had, however, a good effect homoeopathi- cally; it made us forget our sea-sickness for the better part of five minutes. On the eighth night it blew a gale of wind, an indubitable storm, about which there could be no mistake. Our average rate of speed against the strong head wind since leaving Liverpool had been upwards of eight knots an hour ; but on that fear- ful night we did not exceed two and a half. The vessel groaned and creaked through all her timbers. The dull, heavy " thuds " or thumps of the roar- ing, raging seas staggered the Asia through the whole of her sturdy framework. It seemed at times as if, endowed with reason, she had made up her mind to resist the cruel aggression of the billows, and had stopped in mid career to deliberate in what manner she should, with the most power and dig- nity, show her sense of the insult ; and then, as if learning wisdom in adversity, she resolved to hold on her course and show herself superior to the buffetings of fortune. To me, as to others, THE VOYAGE OUT. 7 every minute of that night appeared to be as long as a day, and every hour was an age of suffering. To sleep in such a conflict of the elements was impossible. Even to remain in the berth, without being pitched head foremost out of it on to the cabin floor, and running the risk of broken limbs, was a matter of the utmost difficulty, and only to be accomplished by main strength and fruitful ingenuity of invention, and of adaptation to the unusual circumstances. Feet and hands were alike in requisition, and a hard grip of the sides of the berth was scarcely sufficient for security, unless aided by the knees and the elbows, and by a con- stant agony of watchfulness, lest a sudden sea should take the vessel unawares and spill the hapless traveller, like a potato out of a sack. And amid the riot of the winds and waves there was ever and anon a sound more fearful and distressing to hear the moan of a sick lady, and the loud and querulous cry of a young child that refused to be comforted. For twelve unhappy and most doleful hours we ploughed our way through the storm, praying for the daylight and the calm. At the first blink of morning, every one capable of the exertion was dressed and upon deck, exchanging condolences with his fellow-travellers on the miseries 8 THE VOYAGE OUT. of the night, or inquiring of the officers on watch what hopes there were of the moderating of the gale. For six-and-twenty hours the storm raged, and for twelve hours after its cessation the ocean, with its long uneasy swell, bore traces on its white crested waves of the perturbation that had been caused in it. On the tenth and eleventh days the sea was calm enough to admit of sports upon the lower deck, and several matches were made at shuffle-board, the marine substitute for the game of skittles. It was played with the greatest spirit, sometimes Ohio being matched against Kentucky, sometimes Charleston against New York, and fre- quently England against America. And, while this was the amusement on deck, cards, back- gammon, and chess afforded relaxation to those who took no pleasure in robuster sport. Among other pastimes, a kind of masquerade was got up by the sailors, two of whom made a very respect- able elephant between them, and one a very supe- rior shaggy bear. On the back of the elephant rode the boatswain. The first part of the fun was that the elephant should continually throw him; and the second part was, that he should continually remount -per fas aut nefas ; all of which was effected according to the programme, and to the THE VOYAGE OUT. 9 great amusement of the passengers, and especially of one little boy, eight years old, who laughed so immoderately as to suggest a fear that his mirth would end in convulsions. The bear also contributed his due share to the frolic ; and the broad farce created as much hilarity among our hundred and fifty travellers as ever was excited on the London boards by Buckstone or Harley in the present day, or by Listen and John Reeve in the days of old. At the conclusion of the performances two of the passengers volunteered to go round with the hat, and nearly five pounds were the result of their solicitations. But the chief amusements of the younger and "faster" voyagers smoking always excepted were bets and lotteries. How many knots we should run in the next twenty-four hours ; what latitude and longitude we should be in when our excellent captain made his noonday observa- tion; with what letter of the alphabet would com- mence the name of the pilot whom he should take on board on approaching New York ; and how many miles, or scores of miles, we should be from shore when the pilot-boat first made its appearance were but a few of the subjects of speculation on which ingenuity was displayed to kill time and to have something to think of. Ten to one was offered 10 THE VOYAGE OUT. that on a certain day we should run 258 miles or upwards. We ran 257 by the captain's calculation : and an amount of money changed hands on this question which was variously estimated in the ship at from 1501. to 200Z. It soon became evident that the adverse winds and rough weather would make our passage a longer one than the average, and that we should not reach New York under fourteen days. We passed over 1,500 miles of ocean without having seen a sail but our own ; affording no opportunity for the old maritime joke always palmed off upon landsmen, " sometimes we ship a sea and sometimes we see a ship." After the twelfth day sailing-vessels and steam-ships were frequently met with, and we had abundant proofs that we were on the great high- way of the nations, and in the most crowded part of the " Ferry." On Friday, the 16th, at eight o'clock in the morn- ing, a pilot, who had been on the look-out for us for four days, came on board, and informed us that we were 180 miles from land. He brought at the same time the news, distressing to very many of our company, that the commercial panic in New York had increased in intensity; that nearly if not all the banks had suspended payment; and that there never THE VOYAGE OUT. 11 had been a financial crisis of such severity in the whole history of the United States. At ten o'clock that night, we were off Sandy Hook. The naviga- tion being intricate, our entrance into the harbour was deferred until daylight ; and at seven in the morning of Saturday, the 17th, having nearly com- pleted our fourteenth day, we steamed for eighteen miles into the beautiful bay at the end of which stands New York, the Queen of the Western World, with New Jersey on the one side, and Brooklyn on the other. The three form but one city in fact, though differing in name, like London and West- minster, and occupy a situation worthy in every respect of a metropolis that has no commercial rival or superior in the world except London. 12 CHAPTER II. NEW YOKK. New York, Nov. 25th, 1857. IN one of his famous letters to the Pennsylvanians the late Rev. Sydney Smith accused the whole American people of pride, conceit, and presumption. Smarting under a sense of injuries inflicted upon him, not by the State or City of New York, which had not the remotest connection with his grievances, real or supposed, he hurled this sweeping denun- ciation against all the States declaring, among other odd things, in his own odd way, " that this new and vain people could never forgive England because Broadway was inferior to Bond Street." It is four- teen years since the Rev. Sydney Smith thus dis- burdened his mind prompted to do so by the fact, disagreeable to him that his pockets had been pre- viously disburdened by his own desire of making more than five per cent, by the transatlantic invest- ment of his money. The lapse of years has made a great difference in the aspect of Broadway, as BROADWAY. 13 well as in that of New York generally. But, what- ever may have been the appearance of this great artery of New York in that remote period of its history a period when, as travellers told us, pigs prowled about the principal thoroughfares, and lay down at night on the marble door-steps of marble palaces in snug and affectionate familiarity with Irish immigrants Sydney Smith's assertion of the infe- riority of Broadway to Bond Street is ludicrously , untrue at the present time. Bond Street ! quotha ? Bond Street is no more to be compared to Broad- way for beauty, extent, life, bustle, and wealth, than a dingy old farthing of the reign of George III. to a bright new sovereign of the days of Queen Victoria. There is no street in London that can be declared superior or even equal, all things considered, to Broadway. It is a street sui generis, combining in itself the characteristics of the Boulevard des Italiens at Paris, and of Cheapside or Fleet Street in London, with here and there a dash of Whitechapel or the Minories ; and here and there a dash of Liverpool and Dublin. It is longer, more crowded, and fuller of fine buildings than the Boulevard des Italiens ; it is as bustling as Cheapside ; and, more than all, it has a sky above it as bright as the sky of Venice. Its aspect is thoroughly Parisian. Were it not for the 14 BROADWAY. old familiar names of Smith, Jones, and Brown over the doors of the stores and warehouses, and the Eng- lish placards and advertisements that everywhere meet the eye, the stranger might fancy himself under the maximized government and iron grip of Napo- leon III., instead of being under that of the minim- ized and mild government of an American Republic a government so infinitesimally light in its weight, and carried on by persons so little known, that strangers in this, the " Empire State," as it is called, and even the citizens themselves, are scarcely more cognisant of the name of the Governor, than a Lon- doner is of the name of the High Sheriff of Flintshire or of the Lord Lieutenant of Merioneth. England has given names to the people in Broad- way, but France and Continental Europe seem to have given them their manners. Flagstaff's on the roof of every third or fourth house, banners flaunt- ing from the windows, a constant rat-tat-too of drums as detachments of the militia regiments (and very fine regiments they are, and very splendidly ac- coutred,) pass to and fro, all add to the illusion; and it is only the well-known vernacular of the city of St. Paul's, spiced occasionally with the still more piquant vernacular of the city of St Patrick's, that bring the cheated fancy back to the reality, and BROADWAY. 15 prove to the Englishman that he is among his own people. Were there anything like uniformity in the design of its long lines of buildings, Broadway would be one of the three or four most magnificent streets in the world. Even without any general design for each man builds exactly as he pleases the street, in its details, surpasses any single street that Eng- land or the British Isles can show. From the Battery facing the sea, where Broadway has a very ignoble commencement, to Trinity Church, there is nothing remarkable about it ; but from Trinity Church, of brown stone, with its elegant spire, to Grace Church, built entirely of white marble, a distance in a straight line of nearly three miles, and thence on to Union-square and the statue of Washington, Broadway offers one grand succession of commercial palaces. Formerly, and perhaps when Sydney Smith wrote the houses were for the most part of brick gaily coloured, with here and there a house of brown stone or granite. But the brick is in gradual process of extirpation; and white marble pure, glittering, brilliant, with- out speck or flaw is rapidly taking its place. The St. Nicholas Hotel, one of the most sump- tuous buildings in New York, is a palace of white 16 BROADWAY. marble, with upwards of one hundred windows fronting Broadway. To the right, and to the left, and in front, are other palaces of the same material, pure as Parian larger than the largest warehouse in St. Paul's Churchyard, and devoted to the same or similiar purposes ; some for the wholesale, but the great majority for the retail, trade. " Dry goods " or linendrapers' stores compete with each other in the use of this costly stone ; and such has been, and is, the rage for it, that in a few years hence a house of any other material than marble, granite, or iron will be the exception to the rule in Broadway and in the main thoroughfares leading from it to the east and the west. Most of these buildings, taken separately, are fine specimens of architecture, but the general effect is not striking, from the total absence of plan and method, already alluded to, and which seems to be inevitable in a country where every man is a portion of the Government and of the Sovereignty, and considers himself bound to consult nobody's taste but his own. But this pecu- liarity is not confined to America, or St. Paul's Churchyard would not be what it is, and the noble proportions of the Cathedral would not be marred as they are by the too close proximity of the hideous warehouses that have been gradually piled up around BROADWAY HOTELS. 17 it monuments alike of commercial pride and bad taste. Brown stone edifices rank next in size and number to the marble palaces ; and a few of cast iron, with elegant Corinthian pillars, add to the variety of architecture in the Broadway. Conspi- cuous among the edifices that give its most impos- ing character to this busy and beautiful street are Stewart's dry-goods store, the iron palace of Messrs. Haughwoot and Co., such hotels as the St. Nicholas, the Metropolitan, the Laffarge House, the St. Denis, the Clarendon, the New York, and the Astor House. The-last mentioned was some years ago the boast and pride of New York, and the wonder of strangers ; but the city has outgrown its southern limits, and stretched itself far away into the north and north- west, and new hotels like the St. Nicholas and the Metropolitan have dwarfed the Astor House in size and eclipsed it in splendour. The St. Nicholas makes up from 500 to 700 beds, and the Metro- politan nearly as many. Both of these, as well as the others mentioned, represent the magnificent scale on which the New Yorkers do business, as well as the more than Parisian publicity with which families eat and drink and pass the day. Enough for the present on the street architecture of Broadway. A few words on its physical and TOL. I. C 18 BROADWAY. moral aspects are necessary to complete the picture. On each side of the street are rows of American elm, with here and there a willow, or a mountain ash. At this date all the trees are leafless, except the willows, which still droop in green beauty, though somewhat shrivelled in their leaves by the frosts of the last three nights. The roadway is excellently paved with granite, and the foot pave- ments are equally good. But let not the traveller be deceived into the idea that the part is a specimen of the whole. Broadway monopolises nearly all the good pavement as well as cleanliness of New York ; and the streets that branch off from it on each side are uneven, dirty, and full of deep holes and ruts, through which carriage-driving is far from being agreeable. If there be any exception it is in the Fifth Avenue the Tyburnia, or Belgravia of New York where the richest people live, in marble and stone palaces, not quite so large as the business palaces of Broadway, but sufficiently luxurious and imposing. The street swarms with omnibuses, some- what smaller and more inconvenient than the omni- buses of London. Nearly the whole of them are painted white. No one rides outside, for the satis- factory reason that there are no seats. They have no conductors. The passenger, on entering, is BROADWAY OMNIBUSES. 19 expected to pay his fare to the driver through a hole in the roof; and, if he neglect to do so, the driver begins to drum with his fist on the top, to attract attention, and forthwith pokes his hand through the aforesaid hole for the money, with an objurgation against the passenger more emphatic than polite, and often in the choicest brogue of the county of Cork. When the passenger wants to descend he pulls a cord, the vehicle stops, and he opens the door for himself, and goes about his business. The New Yorkers consider themselves, and are considered by others, to be a fast people ; but they have no Hansom and, indeed, no cabs of any description. They have not yet advanced beyond the lumbering old hackney- coach with two horses, which disappeared from the streets of London more than five-and-twenty years ago. A few cabs, it appears, were recently intro- duced, but Cabbie, being in a free country, where municipalities make good laws, but are not strong enough to enforce them, insisted upon fixing the fares himself, at something like a dollar a mile. As might have been predicted, the scheme did not work, and Cabbie, instead of lowering his price, dis- appeared altogether, and betook himself to other schemes and projects for making an easy living, or emigrated to the Far West. The hackney-coaches c 2 20 HACKNEY-COACHES. with two horses are conducted upon such a system of extortion that one job per diem may be considered tolerably good pay. Let not the stranger who comes to New York for the first time imagine that there is any law for him if he have a dispute with the hack- driver. The New York Jehu, who is generally an Irishman, charges what he pleases, and I, and doubtless many others, before and since, had to pay two dollars (eight shillings and fourpence) for a drive of less than two miles, and there was no redress for the griev- ance, nor anything but submission. Had a bargain been made beforehand one dollar would doubtless have been accepted ; but a hackney-coach is, at the best of times, and in all circumstances, such an expensive and litigious luxury in New York that few people except newly arrived strangers think of using one. The great Avenues that run parallel with Broadway are provided with lines of rail, on which numbers of very excellent cars, each capable of accommodating, with perfect ease and comfort, from twenty to thirty passengers, are drawn by horses an arrangement which might be introduced into some of the main thoroughfares of London with much advantage. Broadway is the fashionable promenade the Regent-street and Hyde-park, as well as the Cheap- CRINOLINE. 21 side and Fleet-street, of New York. Let us take a look at the people. A few carriages several of them with coronets upon the panels, though on what principle no one can tell mingle among the white omnibuses ; and here the negro coachmen come into competition with the Irish. The ladies of New York who go shopping in Broadway are evidently fond of dress. Let them not be blamed ; for what lady is not ? Some of the journals have been un- gallant enough to attribute the late commercial panic almost exclusively to the extravagance in personal adornment of the fair sex; but, without joining in this silly assertion, or saying one word in disparagement of that charming and better portion of humankind, truth compels me to state that, as regards the mere volume and circumference of hoop or crinoline, the ladies of London and Paris are, to those of new York, but as butterflies compared with canary birds. The caricatures of the crinoline mania which the world owes to its excellent friend PuncJi, if exaggerations of English fashions, are no exagge- rations of those of New York ; and to get along Broadway, where there is no tacitly understood and acknowledged law of the pavement as in England, and where every one takes the wall as it pleases him or her, is no easy matter. Even without these 22 NEGRESSES IN CKINOLINE. abominable hoops, it would be difficult for an Eng- lishman, accustomed to have the wall at his right hand, to make any progress, unless by a series of provoking zigzags; but, hustled by crinolines, the best thing for the gallant man who is in a hurry is to step off the pavement into the road. Nor have the fair ladies all the hoops to themselves. The dark ladies share with them the passion, or the sentiment of the monstrosity, and innate their garments to the most ridiculous proportions. Little negro girls of fourteen or fifteen years of age, with bright-coloured parasols, bright cotton and silk dresses of a width surpassing any credence but that of the eyes of the beholder, flounder awkwardly to and fro ; and aged negresses, equally splendid and equally rotund, waddle like hippopotami among their Anglo-Saxon and Celtic fellow-creatures, as if they had been rigged out maliciously by some hater of crinoline and launched into the street to convert their fairer sisters to the use of a more elegant form of dress, upon the same principle as the ancients inculcated sobriety by the spectacle of their drunken slaves. There is not only a craze for crinoline here, but crinoline itself is crazy huge, unwieldy, preposter- ous, and in every way offensive. Another feature of Broadway is the number of IRISH NEWSBOYS. 23 Irish and Germans who swarm in it, on it, and round about it. The Irish seem to have the news trade to themselves; and the newsboys and news- girls, selling the cheap daily newspapers, are to be met with at every corner, and blockade the entrances to all the principal hotels. Ragged, barefooted, and pertinacious, they are to be found in the streets from dawn till past the dark, crying out "The glorious news of the fall of Delhi!" The last " terrible explosion on the Ohio one hundred lives lost ! " or the last " Attempted assassination in a Lager beer-cellar ! " They recall the memories of the old country by their garb, appearance, and accent, if not by their profession ; while their staid elders, male and female, who monopolize the apple- stalls, look far sleeker and more comfortable than their compeers do at home, and show by their cozy appearance that they have prospered in the New Land. The Germans are more quiet, and pursue more responsible callings. 24 CHAPTER III. BROADWAY BY NIGHT. New York, Dec. 1, 1857. " I ENVY you your trip to America," said mine urbane and friendly host of the Waterloo Hotel, at Liverpool, as, two months ago, he took leave of me at his door, and wished me a safe and speedy passage across the Atlantic. There seemed to be nothing very enviable in the matter, for the wind had been howling all the night, the mercury in the glass was falling, the rain was beating against the windows, and the prospects of the voyage, all things considered, seemed the reverse of agreeable. " And why ? " said I, with a faint and, doubtless, unsuccessful attempt to look comfortable and happy. " Because," replied he, his joyous features beam- ing out into a still greater refulgence of smiles than they had previously worn, " you will get such delicious oysters! New York beats all creation for oysters." Mine host spoke the truth. There is no place NEW YORK OYSTERS. 25 in the world where there are such fine oysters as in New York, and the seaboard cities of Ame- rica; fine in flavour, and of a size unparalleled in the oyster-beds of Whitstable, Ostend, or the once celebrated Rocher de Cancale. Nor has the gift of oysters been bestowed upon an ungrateful people. If one may judge from appearances, the delicacy is highly relished and esteemed by all classes, from the millionaire in the Fifth Avenue to the "Boy" in the Bowery, and the German and Irish emigrants in their own peculiar quarters of the city, which (soit dit en passant) seem to mono- polize all the filth to be found in Manhattan. In walking up Broadway by day or by night but more especially by night the stranger cannot but remark the great number of " Oyster Saloons," "Oyster and Coffee Saloons," and "Oyster and Lager Beer Saloons," which solicit him at every turn to stop and taste. These saloons many of them very handsomely fitted up are, like the drinking saloons in Germany, situated in vaults or cellars, with steps from the street ; but, unlike their German models, they occupy the underground stories of the most stately commercial palaces of that city. In these, as in the hotels, oysters as large as a lady's hand are to be had at all hours, 26 NEW YORK OYSTERS. either from the shell, as they are commonly eaten in England, or cooked in twenty, or, perhaps in forty or a hundred, different ways. Oysters pickled, stewed, baked, roasted, fried, and scolloped ; oysters made into soups, patties, and puddings ; oysters with condiments and without condiments ; oysters for breakfast, dinner, and supper ; oysters without stint or limit fresh as the fresh air, and almost as abun- dant are daily offered to the palates of the Man- hattanese, and appreciated with all the gratitude which such a bounty of nature ought to inspire. The shore of Long Island, fronting the Long Island Sound, for one hundred and fifteen miles, is one long succession of oyster-beds. Southwards, -along the coast of New Jersey, and down to Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and northwards and east- wards to Rhode Island and Massachusetts, the same delicacies abound, and foster a large and very lucra- tive commerce. In City Island, the whole popula- tion, consisting of 400 persons, is employed in the cultivation of oysters. The City Islanders are represented as a very honest, peculiar, and primitive community, who intermarry entirely among them- selves, and drive a very flourishing business. The oyster which they rear is a particular favourite. Other esteemed varieties come from Shrewsbury, NEW YOEK OYSTERS. 27 Cow Bay, Oyster Bay, Rock Bay, Saddle Rock, Virginia Bay, and Spuyten Duyvel. It is related of an amiable English Earl, who a few years ago, paid a visit to the United States, that his great delight was to wander up and down Broadway at night, and visit the principal oyster saloons in succession, regaling himself upon fried oysters at one place, upon stewed oysters at another, upon roasted oysters at a third, and winding up the evening by a dish of oysters a VAnglaise. On leaving New York to return to England, he mis- calculated the time of sailing of the steamer, and found that he had an hour and a half upon his hands. " What shall we do ? " said the American friend, who had come to see him off. " Return to Broadway," said his lordship, " and have some more oysters." As nearly all the theatres are in Broadway, the Broadway oyster saloons command at night a traffic even larger than by day. " Fruges consumere nati " may designate humanity elsewhere, but here the quo- tation may be out of place, for man seems born to consume " oysters." Seated in one of these saloons, and amused at the satisfaction with which a company of Germans were 28 NEW YOKE FIKEMEN. consuming pickled oysters, and inhaling the Lager bier, which the United States owe to the German immigration, I heard a sudden rush and rumble in Broadway. " What is the matter ? " said I. " Only a fire," replied an American friend ; " but don't move. Nobody thinks anything about fires here. Fires are familiar incidents. They are an institution of the country ; we are proud of them. Besides we do not believe all the alarms of fire that are raised ; for the ' boys ' like to have a run. If your own walls are heated by a conflagration next door you may bestir yourself but not till then." " But I have heard much of the firemen and should like to see some of them." " They also are 'an ' institution ' in America, and if you have not seen them we will go round to their bunk-rooms." "Bunk-rooms?" I inquired, suggestively, for the word was new. " Yes, bunk-rooms ; where they bunk together." "Bunk together?" " Yes ; bunk, sleep, chum, live together." We emerged into Broadway. But there was no fire. It was only a procession of firemen, with their NEW YOEK FIREMEN. 29 engines (or en-gines as the word is generally pro- nounced in America), their ladders, and their hooks. Thousands of people lined both sides of Broadway. It was a lovely night, clear, crisp, and cold, and the rays of the moon fell upon the marble edifices with a brilliancy as if they had fallen upon icebergs or the snowy summits of hills. Every object was sharp and distinct ; and the white spire of Grace Church, more than a mile distant, stood out in bold relief against the blue sky, as well defined in all its elegant tracery as if it had not been more than a hundred yards off. It was a grand " turn out " of the firemen. Each company had its favourite engine, of which it is as fond as a captain is of his ship, gaily ornamented with ribbons, flags, streamers, and flowers, and preceded by a band of music. Each engine was dragged along the streets by the firemen in their peculiar costume dark pantaloons, with leathern belt around the waist, large boots, a thick red shirt, with no coat or vest, and the ordinary fireman's helmet. Each man held the rope of the engine in one hand, and a blazing torch in the other. The sight was peculiarly impressive and picturesque. I counted no less than twenty different companies, twenty engines, and twenty bands of music the whole procession taking upwards of an hour to pass 30 BEOADWAY BY NIGHT. the point at which I stood. The occasion of the gathering was to receive a fire company on its return from a complimentary visit to another fire company in the adjoining Commonwealth of Rhode Island, a hundred miles off. Such interchanges of civility and courtesy are common among the " boys," who incur very considerable expense in making them, the various companies presenting each other with testi- monials of regard and esteem, in the shape of silver claret-jugs, candelabra, tea services, &c. But the peculiarities of the firemen, the constitution of their companies, the life they lead, and their influ- ence in the local politics and government of the great cities of the Union, are quite a feature in American civic life, totally different from anything we have in England, and so curious in every way as to deserve the more elaborate consideration which I propose to give them hereafter. My present purpose is with the night aspects of Broadway a street that quite as much as any street in London or Paris affords materials for the study of life and character. In one respect it is superior to the streets of London. Being the main artery of a great and populous capital, it may be supposed that vice reigns rampant within it as soon as night has darkened. But, whatever may be the amount BROADWAY BY NIGHT. 31 of licentiousness in the city, it does not expose itself to public view in the open, glaring, unblushing, brazen, and disgusting manner in which Londoners behold it in the Haymarket, Piccadilly, Regent- street, and the Strand. I do not speak of hidden im- morality; but, as regards the public exhibition of vice, New York is infinitely more modest than Lon- don, and almost as modest as Paris. We know, however, that the outside appearance of Paris is but hypocrisy, and a cloak to vice more shameless or shameful than anything of which London has ever been guilty ; and perhaps the same may be said of New York. However, upon this point I forbear to dwell. I simply record the fact that, to all out- ward appearance, New York is much more decent and decorous than London. A few nights after the torchlight procession of the firemen, when making my way from the Astor House to the St. Nicholas, in the midst of a thick drizzling rain, I was somewhat surprised to see a shower of rockets and blue lights blazing^from the middle of the street, and to hear a confused war of shouting voices, the blast of trumpets, and the beat of drums. But the majestic roar of the multi- tude the grandest sound in nature predominated above all other noises. Broadway was impassable. 32 A POPULAR MEETING. All the omnibuses had turned out of their usual track, and were making their way by the back streets and parallel avenues to their several points ' of arrival and departure. Had such a gathering- been permitted in the streets of London by night, there might have been fears for the safety of the Bank of England and the Mint ; and had it occurred in the streets of Paris, the Empire of the third Napoleon would have stood a chance of once more giving way to a Republic or some other form of government; but in New York where there is scarcely a policeman to be seen it seemed to ex- cite no alarm, but considerable curiosity. As I pushed, or insinuated myself as well as I could through the dense mass, the rockets kept pouring up to the sky in more rapid succession ; the uproar of the people's voices swelled louder and louder; and when I came within one hundred yards of the St. Nicholas I found that that building was the very point of attraction, and that an excited orator was addressing a still more excited auditory from the balcony. Thickly scattered among the multi- tude were grimy fellows in their shirt-sleeves, who held aloft blazing torches, and, at each rounded period of the orator's address, waved them in the air, and signalled the crowd to cheer, shout, and A TOECHLIGHT MEETING. 33 huzza. I could not obtain admission into my own abode for the pressure of the multitude, but, after a quarter of an hour, succeeded in getting ingress by the back door. Making my way to the balcony, I discovered that the speaker was the Mayor of New York, elected by universal suffrage, who was addressing his constituents at that late hour nearly eleven o'clock and soliciting at their hands the honour of re-election to the mayoralty. That up- turned sea of human faces, heedless of the rain that beat down iipon them, eagerly intent upon the hard words that the Mayor was launching against his political opponents the moving, excited, surging, roaring mass, irradiated as it swayed to and fro by the gleam and glare of hundreds of torches wildly waved in the air formed a most picturesque spectacle. The Mayor, brother of the theatrical speculator, to whom the world owes the nuisance and the slang of the so-called "negro" minstrelsy, had been accused by his opponents hi the press, and at public meetings, of every crime, public and private, which it was possible for a man to commit short of murder, and in terms so gross and open that the horsehair wig of any judge in England might have stood on end with surprise 'at the audacity of the libels, if brought VOL. I. D 34 LAW IN NEW YORK. under his cognisance for trial. But the Mayor, unabashed and undismayed, seemed to consider the charges against his character to be quite consistent with the ordinary tactics of party strife, and con- tented himself with simple retaliation, and the use of the broadest, most vernacular tu quoque which it was possible to apply. It was difficult to avoid feeling some alarm that, if the police were not requisite in such a meeting, the firemen speedily would be, either from the effects of the rockets and Roman candles, or from those of the torches. But no harm came of the demonstration; and a dozen or twenty similar meetings by torchlight have since been held by the Mayor, and his rivals, in other parts of the city. Surely a popula- tion amongst whom such nightly saturnalia are possible without a general assault upon all the shops and stores in the city has an innate respect for the laws of meum and tuum ? But politics are the life of this people. Every man is a voter ; and every officer, general or local, President, Governor, Mayor, Alderman, City or State Treasurer, the officers of the Militia, even the Firemen, are elected by uni- versal suffrage and the ballot-box. But with all this respect for property if these midnight and torchlight meetings of an excited LAW IN NEW YORK. 35 multitude in one of the richest streets in the world prove, as they seem to do, the inherent peace- ableness and respect for law of citizens New York is not a city where either life or property is very secure. The daily journals teem with ac- counts of murder, robbery, and outrage; and this morning one of the most influential papers asserts in its most prominent leading article that during the past three years New York has been sinking in the scale of public respectability; that citizens resort to the expedients of border life, and assume the habits of a semi-barbarous society, for the pre- servation of their property and the safety of their persons; that ladies are stopped and robbed in the broad light of day ; that murderous affrays take place with practical impunity to the perpetrators within reach of the public offices and under the very eye of the chief magistrate of the city; and that decent people go about their daily business armed as if an enemy lurked in every lane and gateway of the streets. This, it is to be hoped, is an exaggeration, in the interest of the rival candidate for the office of Mayor; but there can, unfortunately, be no doubt that the police of New York is not equal to its duties, and that robberies, accompanied with D 2 36 LAW IN NEW YORK. violence and murder, are of more frequent occur- rence here than in any other city in the world of the same size and population. Whether the citizens of New York relish the prospect or not, they will have, ere many years, to increase their taxes and their police force, and regulate it more stringently, and by some more efficacious mode than by uni- versal suffrage, and by the votes of the very " rowdies" and blackguards they wish to repress, if they will not resort, in the last extremity of desperation, to the Californian substitution of a Vigilance Committee. 37 CHAPTER IY. HOTEL LIFE. New York, Dec, 9, 1857. PBAISE the cities of America, admire the greatness and wealth of the country, extol the enterprise and " go-ahead-ativeness " of the people, or expatiate on the glorious future before the Republic, and there is a class of persons in this city who reply to your en- thusiasm with a sneer, and assert that they have "heard all that sort of thing before," and "can stand a great deal of it" without evil consequences to their health or digestion. But if, on the other hand, the stranger, in the exercise of his independent judgment, presume to disapprove or condemn any- thing in the manners of the people, or hint a doubt as to the perfect wisdom of any one of their social or political institutions, the porcupines of the press raise their quills, and grow exceedingly angry. To them optimism or pessimism, or the medium between the two, is equally distasteful. No matter how honest may be the praise or how gentle the expression 459973 38 HOTEL LIFE. of disapproval, they do not like it. They seem to suspect all praise to be a sham or a mockery, and to feel all dispraise to be an insult and an outrage. In these respects they differ from English- men, all of whom can bear with the most patient equanimity the rubs that would almost drive such sensitive Americans out of their wits. It must be confessed, however, that the more reflective among the Americans, who have seen the world and are more assured of the strength and position of their mighty Republic, take things more easily; accept praise as their due, in the same generous spirit in which it is offered ; and endeavour to learn wisdom from the criticism of people who cross the Atlantic to see, hear, and judge for themselves. Even if they do not agree with the adverse criticism, they have philosophy and common sense enough to be undis- turbed by it, even when it seems to be hostile. It is a pity, however, that such gentlemen and philosophers are not more common both in the press and in society. In describing the aspects of hotel life in New York and in the other great cities of America, as they have impressed me, it is possible that I may incur the displeasure of those who hold that the "things of America" should, like the " cosas de Es- pana? be kept sacred from all foreigners, as things HOTEL LIFE. 39 which they cannot understand, and which they must not touch upon except under the penalty of ridicule or misinterpretation of motives. Never- theless, if my judgment be imperfect, it shall at all events be honest : and, as regards this particular question of hotel life, there are many thousands of estimable and reflecting men and women in America who, I feel confident, will agree in the estimate I form of it. The hotels in the great cities of America in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, New Orleans, Chicago, Boston, &c. are conducted on a peculiar system, and in a style of much magnificence. The British Isles possess no such caravanserais. Even the monster Hotel du Louvre in Paris is scarcely to be compared with sucV establishments as the St. Nicholas, the Metro- politan, the Astor House, and many others in New York. Some of them make up from five hundred to a thousand beds ; and others from two to five hundred. The country is so immense, the distances from point to point are so great such as from New Orleans to Boston, or from New York to Chicago, Detroit, and the Far West; the activity of commerce is so incessant, and its ramifications so extensive, that a much larger class of people 40 HOTEL LIFE. than with us, is compelled by business, public and private, to be continually upon the move. In England, hotels are conducted in a style suitable to the days of solitary horsemen, gigs, and the mail coach, and moulded upon such limited necessities as then existed ; but in America the hotels and the rail- ways grew together, and have been made to fit into each other. Large hotels are of positive necessity; and, were they solely confined to travellers, would deserve the praise of being, what they really are, the finest, most convenient, and best administered establishments in the world. It is not their fault that they have, in the course of time, and by the force of circumstances, been devoted to other uses, and that they have become the permanent homes of families, instead of remaining the temporary resi- dences of strangers. For a fixed charge of two dollars and a half a day (about ten and sixpence English) the traveller has a comfortable bed-room, the use of a drawing-room, dining-room, reading-room, and smoking-room, and the full enjoyment of a liberal tariff, or bill of fare, for breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, and supper. The two dollars and a half include all charges for servants, and every charge whatever that can be fairly included under the head of board and lodging, HOTEL LIFE. 41 except wine, beer, and spirits. There is no charge for wax-lights that flaring pretext for extortion in England. The cookery is in general excellent. The breakfast is bounteous, and at the leading hotels is spread from eight o'clock till twelve, between which hours fish, flesh, and fowl, fresh meat and salt meat, eggs, omelettes, wheaten bread, rye bread, corn bread, corn cakes, rice cakes, and buckwheat cakes (the last- mentioned a greater delicacy than England can show), are liberally distributed. From twelve o'clock till two the luncheon is spread with equal profusion ; and from two to six there is a succession of din- ners, the getting up of which, at the St. Nicholas, the Metropolitan, or the New York, would do credit to the Reform Club and its excellent chef de cuisine. As soon as dinner is over, tea commences, and as soon as tea is cleared away the cloths are laid for supper, so that from eight in the morning till midnight there is one continual succession of feasts, at which Governors of States, members of Congress, Judges, Generals, ex-Presidents of the Republic, the magnates of commerce and the law, and all the mis- cellaneous and less distinguished public, male and female, sit down. Whether the traveller do or do not partake, it is the same to the landlord. He may eat once, twice, thrice, or all clay long, if he pleases. 42 HOTEL LIFE. The price is two dollars and a half, even should lie be a popular celebrity have many friends and take all his meals abroad. If ladies and families prefer to have apartments of their own, the price for lodging varies from three to five or ten dollars a day, according to the extent or elegance of accommoda- tion required. In like manner, the board of each individual, supplied in a private apartment, is raised from two and a half to four dollars per diem. The consequence is that very few people board in their private rooms, and that nearly all breakfast, dine, and sup in public, except the very young children, for whose convenience there is a separate table d'hote. It will thus be seen that for the travelling com- munity these hotels are very comfortable, very luxu- rious, very cheap, and very lively. In consequence of the great difficulty which private families experi- ence in procuring cooks and housemaids in a country where menial service is considered beneath the dignity of a native-born American, where service is called " help," to avoid wounding the susceptibility of free citizens, and left almost exclusively to negroes and the newly-imported Irish, who too commonly, more especially the female portion of them, know nothing whatever of any household duties, and HOTEL LIFE. 43 whose skill in cookery scarcely extends to the boiling of a potato, the mistresses of families keep- ing house on their own account lead but an un- comfortable life. In England the newly married couple take a house, furnish it, and live quietly at home. In the cities of America for the rule does not apply to the rural districts they too commonly take apartments at the hotel, and live in public, glad to take advantage of the ready means which it affords of escape from the nuisances attendant upon inefficient, incomplete, and insolent service. The young wife finds herself relieved from the miseries and responsibilities of housekeeping, and has nothing to think of but dress, visiting, reading, and amuse- ment. Brides who begin married life in hotels often continue in them from youth to maturity, without possessing the inestimable advantage and privilege of any more secluded home. To those who know nothing of domestic affairs, and to those who are willing to attend to them, but cannot procure proper " help " in their household, the hotel system is equally well adapted. It saves trouble, annoyance, and ex- pense but at what a cost of the domestic amenities ! Perhaps not above one-half of the people who daily sit down to dinner in these superb establishments are travellers. The remainder are permanent resi- 44 HOTEL LIFE. dents husbands, wives, and children. To eat in public now and then may be desirable; but for ladies to take all their meals every day, and all the year round, in the full glare of publicity; to be always full dressed ; to associate daily almost hourly with strangers from every part of America and of the world ; to be, if young and handsome, the cynosure of all idle and vagrant eyes, either at the table d'hote or in the public drawing-room; these are certainly not the conditions which to an Englishman's mind are conducive to the true happi- ness and charm of wedded life. And it is not only the influence of this state of things upon the husband and wife to which an Englishman objects, but its influence upon the young children, who play about the corridors and halls of such mansions, and become prematurely old for want of fresh air and exercise, and overknowing from the experiences they acquire and the acquaintances they contract. Perhaps "fast" people may consider such objections to savour of " old-fogyism." But reasonable people will not. The system is peculiar to America, and, therefore, strikes the attention more forcibly than if it were common to the civilized world. It is, doubtless, more the misfortune than the fault of American families that they live so much in this HOTEL LIFE. 45 style; for, without good servants who know their duty, and are not too supercilious and saucy to per- form it, it is impossible for a lady, without shorten- ing her life and making herself worse than a slave, to have a comfortable and happy home, or to govern it with pleasure or advantage either to herself or her family. Recently the New York and Phila- delphia newspapers have been filled with the details of two scandalous cases one ending in a tragedy of which a New York and a Philadelphia hotel were the scenes ; and in both of which the fair fame of ladies was sacrificed. To these painful exposures it is not necessary to make further allusion ; but they are so fresh in the public recollection that they cannot be passed over, even in this cursory glance at some of the evils attendant upon the undue pub- licity of female life in such monster hotels as I have endeavoured to describe. To all the hotels is attached an establishment known as the "bar," where spirituous liquors are retailed under a nomenclature that puzzles the stranger, and takes a long acquaintanceship with American life and manners to become familiar with. Gin-sling, brandy-smash, whisky-skin, streak of lightning, cock-tail, and rum-salad, are but a few of the names of the drinks which are consumed at 46 HOTEL LIFE. the bar, morning, noon, and night, by persons who in a similar rank of life in England would no more think of going into a gin-shop than of robbing the Bank. Fancy a gin-palace under the roof of, and attached to, the Reform or the Carlton Club, and free not only to the members but to the world without, and both classes largely availing them- selves of it to drink and smoke, both by day and by night, and you will be able to form some con- ception of the " bar " of an American hotel, and of the class of people who frequent it. But can such a system conduce to any virtuous development of young men in this republic ? The question admits of many replies, and without presuming on so short an acquaintance with the country to speak with autho- rity, I leave it for the consideration of those who desire that America should be as wise and happy in the private relations of her citizens as she is free and independent in her relations to the great comity of the world. 47 CHAPTER V. AMERICAN FIREMEN. New York, Dec. 21, 1857. WHATEVER the Americans are proud of whatever they consider to be peculiarly good, useful, brilliant, or characteristic of themselves or their climate they designate, half in jest, though scarcely half in earnest, as an " institution." Thus the memory of General Washington or " Saint " Washington, as he might be called, considering the homage paid to him is an institution : the Falls of Niagara are an institution; the Plymouth Rock, on which the Pilgrim Fathers first set foot, is an institution ; as much so as the Blarney Stone in Ireland, to which an eloquent Irish orator, at a public dinner, com- pared it, amid great applause, by affirming that the Plymouth Rock was the "Blarney Stone of New England." " Sweet potatoes " are an institution, and pumpkin (or punkin} pie is an institution ; 48 AMERICAN FIREMEN. canvas-back ducks are an institution; squash is an institution ; Bunker's Hill is an institution ; and the firemen of New York, a great institution. The fire system, in nearly all the principal cities of the Union, is a peculiarity of American life. Nothing like it exists in any European commu- nity. As yet the city of Boston appears to be the only one that has had the sense and the courage to organize the fire brigades on a healthier plan, and bring them under the direct guidance and control of the municipality. Everywhere else the firemen are a power in the State, wielding con- siderable political influence, and uncontrolled by any authority but such as they elect by their own free votes. They are formidable by their num- bers, dangerous by their organization, and in many cities, are principally composed of young men at the most reckless and excitable age of life, who glory in a fire as soldiers do in a battle, and who are quite as ready to fight with their fellow-creatures as with the fire which it is more particularly their province to subdue. In New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other large cities, the fire service is entirely voluntary, and is rendered for " the love of the thing," or for " the fun of the thing," whichever it may be. The motto AMERICAN FIREMEN. 49 of one fire company, at New York, inscribed on their banner, is . " Firemen with pleasure, Soldiers at leisure ; " a couplet which characterizes the whole spirit of their organization. The firemen are mostly youths engaged during the day in various handicrafts and mechanical trades, with a sprinkling of clerks and shopmen. In New York each candidate for ad- mission into the force must be balloted for, like a member of the London clubs. If elected, he has to serve for five years, during which he is exempt from jury and militia duty. The fire- men elect their own superintendents and other officers, by ballot, as they were themselves elected ; and are divided into engine companies, hook and ladder companies, and hose companies. The engine and accessories are provided by the municipality; but the firemen are seldom contented with them in the useful but unadorned state in which they receive them, but lavish upon them an amount of ornament, in the shape of painted panels, silver plating, and other finery, more than sufficient to prove their liberality, and the pride they take in their business. The service is entirely voluntary and gratuitous, having no advantages to recommend it but those of exemption from the jury and the YOL. I. E 50 AMEKICAN FIEEMEN. militia, and leads those who devote themselves to it not only into great hardship and imminent danger, but into an amount of expenditure which is not the least surprising part of the " institution." The men or " boys," as they are more commonly called not only buy their own costume and accou- trements, and spend large sums in the ornamentation of their favourite engines, or hydrants, as already mentioned, but in the furnishing of their bunk-rooms and parlours at the fire-stations. The bunk or sleeping rooms, in which the unmarried, and some- times the married, members pass the night, to be ready for duty on the first alarm of fire, are plainly and comfortably furnished; but the parlours are fitted up with a degree of luxury equal to that of the public rooms of the most celebrated hotels. At one of the central stations, which I visited in com- pany with an editor of a New York journal, the walls were hung with portraits of Washington, Frank- lin, Jefferson, Mason, and other founders of the Republic ; the floor was covered with velvet-pile carpeting, a noble chandelier hung from the centre, the crimson curtains were rich and heavy, while the sideboard was spread with silver claret-jugs and pieces of plate, presented by citizens whose houses and property had been preserved from fire by the exer- FIRE TELEGRAPHS. 51 tions of the brigade; or by the fire companies of other cities, in testimony of their admiration for some particular act of gallantry or heroism which the newspapers had recorded. If the firemen be an "institution," Fire itself is an institution in most American cities. Whether it be carelessness, or the habitual overheating of all .houses, public and private, by the system of flues, furnaces, and stoves which are in ordinary use ; or the combustibility of the materials of which houses are built ; or a combination of all these causes, and perhaps many others, it is certain that fires are much more common in America than they are in Europe. Into whatever city the traveller goes, he sees the traces of recent conflagration; sometimes whole blocks, or often whole streets or parishes levelled to the ground, or presenting nothing but bare and blackened walls. So constant appears to be the danger that the streets of New York, Boston, and other cities, are traversed in all directions by telegraphic wires, which centre invari- ably at the City Hall, and convey instantaneously to head-quarters, day or night, the slightest alarm of fire. By an ingenious system, due to the scientific sagacity of Mr. Moses G. Farmer and Dr. W. F. Charming, of Boston, and brought to its present per- E 2 52 FIRE TELEGRAPHS. fection in 1852, the alarm is rapidly transmitted from any part of the circumference to the centre, and from the centre back again, through an almost countless number of radii, to the whole circumference of the city. In a lecture delivered before the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, Dr. Channing explained the fire organization of a city by stating that " from the central station, at the City Hall, go out wires over the house-tops, visiting every part of the city and returning again. These are the signal circuits, by which the existence of a fire is signalized from any part of the city to the centre. Strung on these circuits, or connected with them, are numerous signal boxes, or signalizing points, of which there may be one at the corner of every square. These are cast-iron, cottage-shaped boxes, attached to the sides of the houses, communicating, by means of wires inclosed in a wrought-iron gas-pipe, with the signal circuit overhead. On the door of each signal box the number of the fire district, and also the number of the box or station itself, in its district, are marked ; and the place in the neigh- bourhood where the key-holder may be found is also prominently notified. On opening the door of the signal box a crank is seen. When this is turned it communicates to the centre the number of the FIRE TELEGRAPHS. 53 fire district and of the box, and nothing else. Repeated turns give a repetition of the same signal. By this means any child or ignorant person who can turn a coffee-mill can signalize an alarm from his own neighbourhood with unerring certainty. Connected with the signal circuits at the central office, where they all converge, are a little alarm- bell, and a register, which notifies and records the alarm received from the signal box. The galvanic battery which supplies all the signal circuits is also placed at the central station. If a fire occurs near signal box or station 5, in district 3, and the crank of that box is turned, the watchman or opera- tor at the central station will immediately be notified by the little bell, and will read at once on his register the telegraphic characters which signify district 3, station 5. Having traced the alarm of a fire from a signal box into the central station, the next question is, how shall the alarm be given from that centre to the public ? From the central station proceed also several circuits of wires, called alarm circuits, which go to the various fire-bells throughout the city, and which are connected with striking machines similar in character to the striking machinery of a clock, but liberated by telegraph. The operator at the central station is enabled, by 54 FIKE TELEGEAPHS. the mere touch of his finger upon a key, to throw all the striking machines into simultaneous action, and thus give instantaneous public alarm." It is certainly a triumph of science to be enabled by means of one instrument to ring simultaneously all the alarm-bells in every steeple and tower of a great and populous city, and call out the fire com- panies with their engines, ladders, ropes, hooks, and hose, and designate to each of them at the same moment the particular spot in the city which is threatened with devastation; although the very completeness of the arrangement, and the ne- cessities which called it into existence, are suffi- cient to prove that there is something wrong either in the house-building or the house-heating of America, or in the absence of the careful attention which in other parts of the world renders fire less frequent. The assertion is frequently made by Americans whenever the subject of fires is mentioned that many fires are purposely caused by the "boys" for the sake of a frolic, or a run, or in a spirit of rivalry between two or more companies, who desire to com- pete with each other in the performance of deeds of daring, or who long, as they sometimes do 3 for a street fight to wipe out some ancient grudge NEW YORK FIKEMEN. 55 which had its origin at a fire. The statement is repeated on American authority, and must go for what it is worth as something which may be false, but which is believed by many estimable citizens of the Republic to be true. In Philadelphia and Baltimore alarms of fire are regularly expected on Saturday nights, when the "boys" have received their week's wages, and are ripe for mischief. In Boston, where the firemen are paid by the city, and where they are entirely under the control of the municipality, fires are less frequent than else- where, and fights among the firemen are entirely unknown. New York and the other great American cities must ultimately resort to the same system, or continue to pay the penalty not only of constant loss of life and property, but of the preponderance of a very unruly and dangerous class in the lower strata of their population. The firemen throughout the Union have a news- paper of their own, devoted exclusively to their interests, and to the promulgation of facts and opinions relating to the fraternity. 56 CHAPTER VI. FROM NEW YORK TO BOSTON. October, 1857. IN fine weather or perhaps in any weather the pleasantest mode of travelling between New York and Boston is by steam-boat through the Long Island Sound to Fall River a distance of upwards of 200 miles; and from Fall River by railway to Boston, 54 miles. Railway travelling in the United States is not agreeable. Such easy luxury as that of a first-class carriage in England or in France is not to be obtained for love or money. In a land of social equality every one except the negro travels in the first class. The servant and the mis- tress, the navvie, the pedlar, the farmer, the mer- chant, the general, the lawyer, the senator, the judge, and the governor of the State, with their wives, their sons, and their daughters, and even the Irish bogtrotter, who before he left Ireland would as soon have thought of taking the chair from the Viceroy, or the pulpit from the Roman Catholic EAILWAY CARS. 57 Archbishop of Dublin, as of travelling in a first-class carriage, but who in this country handles more money in a day than he saw in the old country in a month, and who waxes saucy in proportion to his cash; all mingle together in one long car, by no means so comfortable as a second-class carriage on any of the principal lines in Great Britain. These cars accommodate each from sixty to eighty travellers, and in the winter are warmed by stoves, burning anthracite coal, which stoves and which coal are among the greatest afflictions and miseries of the country. Every place to which an un- fortunate stranger can resort is overheated by these abominable contrivances. They burn out all the elasticity and moisture of the atmosphere : they quicken the pulse, inflame the skin, and parch the tongue. Hotels, private houses, railway cars, all are alike rendered intolerable by their heat, until, oppressed by the sulphury and palpitating hotness, depressed in spirit, weakened in body, and well- nigh suffocated, the stranger accustomed to the wholesome fresh air rushes out to get a gulp of it, and takes cold by the suddenness of the transition. Perhaps the universal use of these stoves may account for the sallowness of so many of the Ame- rican people, which contrasts so remarkably with the 58 STEAMERS IN THE SOUND. ruddy freshness of the English. An equal freshness is seldom to be seen here, except in young children and among new-comers. He who would avoid this nuisance, as well as such other discomforts of the rail as the want of all support for the back or the head in long journeys, rendering sleep an almost unattainable blessing, should travel by the steam- boats whenever he has a chance. Against the steam- boats the only objection is that they sometimes blow up or take fire. But these are rare occurrences ; and no man of ordinary nerve and courage who is compelled to travel, need alarm himself unduly by the anticipation of such catastrophes. As every man believes all men to be mortal except himself, so most travellers believe that every boat may ex- plode, or burn, or be wrecked, except the particular boat by which they happen to take their passage. Were it not so, who would travel, unless from the direst necessity? The steamers that ply in the Long Island Sound are, as regards all their interior arrangements, as handsome and luxurious as the railway cars are the reverse. For a slight extra charge, only amounting to one dollar in the distance between New York and Boston, a private state-room or cabin can be obtained, fitted up with every comfort and convenience. Why similar STEAMERS IN THE SOUND. 59 privacy and comfort are not obtainable on the railways it is difficult to say. Though huge, un- wieldy, and ungraceful when seen from the outside, with their machinery working on the top, the river and long-shore steam-boats when examined from within, are worthy of the name of floating palaces. The saloons, three deep, one above the other, and affording a promenade the whole length of the vessel, are large and airy, richly carpeted, and decorated with velvet and gold, with easy chairs, fauteuils, and sofas, and all appliances either for waking or for sleeping. Some of them make up from 600 to 800 berths, in addition to the private state-rooms. The tables are bountifully spread for meals, and the negro stewards and waiters, who are the best servants procurable in the United States, and far superior to the Irish, their only com- petitors in this line of business, are attentive and obliging. Expecting to dine on board, I took no dinner in New York ; but found at six o'clock that tea only was provided. The tea, however, had all the bounteousness of a dinner fish, flesh, fowl, pastry and dessert ; everything except beer or wine. See- ing this, I asked the jet-black negro who waited on me to bring me some Lager beer. 60 A TEMPERANCE BOAT. " Can't do it, sar," said he, with a grin ; " it 's against the rules, sar." "What rules?" " The rules of the ship. Ours is a temperance boat, sar." " Then why don't you advertise it as a temperance boat, that people may take their choice ?" " All the same, sar," said the negro, " 'zackly the same. Can't let you have beer or wine at the table ; but you go on, sar, to the barber's shop, and thar you '11 get everything you want, sar whisky, rum, brandy, wine all sorts thar, sar." It was even so. In each steamer is a barber's shop, handsomely fitted up, and where the traveller can have his hair cut, or cleaned, or washed, or where he may be shaved by a black barber, and where, whether the boat be a temperance boat, or a boat for the moderate enjoyment and use of the liquid blessings of life, he can obtain gin-slings, and cock-tails, and whisky-skins, and all the multifarious spirituous drinks of America. The only interference with his personal liberty in the matter is that he must take his drink in the barber's sanctum, and cannot have it served to him in any other part of the ship. I mention this fact for the edification of Exeter Hall, and of those who would introduce BOSTON. 61 the Maine Liquor Law, or something like it, into England, as one out of many proofs which might be adduced to show how great a "sham" is the operation of that prohibitive and tyrannical measure in the country which gave it birth. Boston, the capital of the small but ancient, wealthy, and intelligent commonwealth of Massachusetts, the model and most conservative State of the Union, is one of the most picturesque as well as important cities of America. The original Indian name of the small peninsula on which it is built was " Shawmut," or the " Living Fountains." From the three hills on which it stands, which have now been partly levelled, it obtained from the early settlers the name of Tremont, or Trimountain a name still given to it by poets and orators when they strive to be particu- larly eloquent. In compliment to the Rev. John Cotton, the Vicar of Boston, in Lincolnshire, who emigrated here for conscience sake, with the other hardy and honest Englishmen, who have obtained the honourable name of the " Pilgrim Fathers," it received from the early settlers the name of Boston. Since that day it has grown to be a city of 180,000 inhabitants, and the nucleus of quite a congeries of other cities almost as important as itself. These stretch around it on every side, but 62 BOSTON. are divided from it either by the arms of the sea or by the pleasant waters of the Charles river. Charles- town., Cambridge, Roxbury, Brighton, Brookline,' and Chelsea, are so closely united to Boston, as virtually to form part of it on the map, although most of them are independent cities, governed by their own magistrates and municipalities. The total population of Boston and the outlying cities, towns, and villages is upwards of 400,000. Boston city is divided into South Boston, East Boston, and Boston Proper. The old city, or Boston Proper, stands on a peninsula, surrounded by salt water on three sides, and on the fourth by the brackish water of the Charles river, which, at its confluence with the sea, spreads out like a small lake. It is connected by a narrow strip of land, not more than two feet above high water, and called the Neck, with the suburb or city of Roxbury. Bunker's or Bunker Hill so named according to some from Bunker's Hill in Lincolnshire, and according to others from Bunker's Hill in the town of Nottingham, is not in Boston, but in the adjoining city of Charlestown, with which it has communication by four bridges two for ordinary traffic, and two for the railways. The 750 acres of ground on which old Boston is built was occupied, in the year 1635, by the Rev. BOSTON. 63 John Blaekstone, the only inhabitant, as well as the sole owner of the soil. Mr. Blackstone sold the land for 30/. English money. There are now many sites in the city worth as much per square yard. Boston is very picturesque, very clean, and very English. It has not the French and foreign aspect of New York, but is altogether quieter and more sedate, and justifies, by its outward appearance, the character it has acquired of being the Athens of the New World, the mart of literature, and the most intellectual city in America. Not that this high character is willingly conceded to it by people who live beyond the limits of Charlestown, Roxbury, and Cambridge ; for the New Yorkers, the Philadel- phians, and many others, so far from taking the Bostonians at the Bostonian estimate of themselves, hold their high pretensions in scorn, and speak con- temptuously of them as utter " Yankees." There can, however, be no doubt, all jealousy and rivalries apart, that the society of Boston is highly cultivated and refined, and that, if it do not excel, it is not excelled by that of any city in the Union. The great charm of the scenery of Boston is its Common or Park a piece of ground covering about forty acres, and open on one side to the Charles River, over the estuary of which, and the heights 64 BOSTON COMMON. beyond, it commands from every part a series of extensive and beautiful views. The other sides of the Common are occupied by the residences of the principal inhabitants noble stone buildings most of them and representing a rental ranging from 300Z. to 8001 or 1,OOOZ. per annum. House-rent is ex- ceedingly high in all the great American cities, and is at least double that of houses of the corresponding style in London. In all distant views the State House dominates the city as the highest and most conspicuous object, around which everything else is concentrated. The view from the top of this edifice well repays the labour of the ascent, and affords an unrivalled panorama of the busy, populous, and thriving home which the descendants of the ancient English Puritans have made for themselves in the New World. In the Common, surrounded by a railing to protect it from injury, stands a venerable elm, with an inscription stating that it is believed to have been planted before the first settlement of Boston as a colony, and that it began to exhibit signs of old age a quarter of a century ago. Its boughs are inhabited by a colony of tame gray squirrels. To throw nuts to these graceful little creatures, and watch their gambols, is one of the principal amuse- ments of the nursemaids and children of Boston, as BOSTON COMMON. 65 well as of many older and wiser persons. There are similar colonies in the other elms in some of the principal streets. The squirrels are general favour- ites, and have no enemies except among the cats, which occasionally make an inroad upon them and diminish their numbers, to the great disgust and indignation of the well-minded population. It may be mentioned as an interesting fact in natural history that the elms in Boston planted by the English settlers from slips or seeds brought from England retain their leaves much later than the native American elms. At this advanced period of the year may be noticed, amid the leafless or the brown and yellow trees that grace the Common, seven elms of most luxuriant green foliage, which seem not to have lost a leaf, or to possess a leaf in the slightest degree discoloured. These are the Eng- lish elms, sturdy Britons, flourishing in a vigorous old age, while their Yankee brethren, seedy, sapless, and wobegone, look as sallow as if they, too, like their human compatriots, smoked immoderately, chewed tobacco, spat, lived in heated rooms, and, in their over-eagerness to get rich, did injustice to their physical nature. The principal street of Boston is Washington Street, a long and not very even thoroughfare, but TOL. I. F 66 MESSES. TICKNOR AND FIELDS. picturesque and English in its character, and con- taining some very handsome shops. The most in- teresting, if not the most prominent of them is the " book-store " of Messrs. Ticknor and Fields two associates who have published more poetry, and, if report speak truly, made more money by it, than any other publishers in America. Their store is the lounge and resort of all the literary celebrities of Boston and Harvard University. Here Longfellow, poet, scholar, and gentleman, looks in to have a chat. Here Professor Agassiz who has rendered himself doubly dear to Boston by refusing to leave it on the invitation of Napoleon III., and the offer of a large salary in Paris shows his genial and benevolent face, more contented to live humbly in a land of liberty, than ostentatiously and luxuriantly in a land of thraldom. Here Oliver W. Holmes, the " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," who ought to be well known in England, comes to give or receive the news of the day. Here the amiable Prescott, the historian, and one of the most estimable of men to have shaken whose hand is a privilege sometimes looks in at the door with a face like a ray of sunshine. Here poets, poetesses, lecturers, preachers, professors, and newspaper editors have combined, without premeditation, to establish a sort of Literary Exchange, where they may learn what LECTURES IN BOSTON. 67 new books are forthcoming, and talk together upon literature and criticism. Boston is the great metropolis! of lecturers, Unitarian preachers, and poets. Perhaps for poets, it would be better to say rhymers or versifiers; and I make the correction accordingly. The finest churches in the city with the tallest and hand- somest spires, and the most imposing fronts and porticos, belong to the Unitarians. Lecturers have been so richly endowed by the Lowell bequest, that the Bostonians, over-belectured, often experience a feeling of nausea at the very suggestion of a lecture, or worse still, of a series of them ; and as for poets and poetesses, or, as I should say, rhymers and versi- fiers, both male and female, their name is " legion upon legion." Jn walking along Washington Street, and meeting a gentlemanly-looking person with a decent coat and a clean shirt, the traveller may safely put him down as either a lecturer, a Unita- rian minister, or a poet ; possibly the man may be, Cerberus-like, all three at once. In Boston the onus lies upon every respectable person to prove that he has not written a sonnet, preached a sermon, or delivered a lecture ; and few there are above the station of the lowest kind of handicraftsmen who could lay their hands upon their hearts and plead Not guilty to one or the other of these charges. 68 HARVARD UNIVERSITY. Within an easy ride by rail from Boston, and almost near enough to form a suburb, is the city, of Cambridge, celebrated as the seat of the Harvard University, the most serviceable educational institu- tion in America. Harvard has no pretensions to rival its British namesake either in wealth or archi- tectural beauty, and is but a modest assemblage of unconnected and unattractive looking buildings. But it has turned out some of the best men in America, and to be its president is one of the greatest honours to which a citizen of Massachusetts can aspire. It is not any portion of the plan of this book to record private conversations or private hospitalities. If it were, much might be said of Cambridge and Harvard, and of the choice spirits whom it was my privilege to meet on my short but most pleasant visit to its classic purlieus. Let it suffice to say that in my remembrance it is sacred to the name and to the companionship of such men as Long- fellow, Agassiz, Lowell, and the excellent and venerable Josiah Quincy, long the president of the university. The last-named gentleman is one of the few survivors of the British era. He was born a British subject before the Declaration of Inde- pendence, and still servives in a green and illus- trious old age to shed honour upon American liberty. 69 CHAPTER VII. TO THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. Nov. 3rd, 1857. IT was a beautiful morning when I took the train from Boston for the Falls of Niagara. The foliage was not in the full bloom and flush of that autumnal glory which makes the month of October so lovely in America, but the trees were far from bare. The " pride of India," the celanthus, and the elm, were shorn of their splendours, and were all but leaf- less ; but the oaks, and, more especially, the maples, glittered in green, brown, and crimson magnificence. Nothing can surpass the beauty of the American maples at this season, when their leaves, turned to a blood-red colour by the first touch of the winter frosts, gleam, fairest of the fair, amid the yellowing foliage of oaks and beeches, the bright green of the fir-trees, and the more sombre verdure of the omnipresent pine. The sky was cloudless, and the atmosphere so transparent that remote objects were brought out sharply and distinctly, as if close to 70 TO NIAGAEA. the eye. To the mind of one accustomed to the English and Scottish landscape, there was one defect in the character of the scenery, and that was the absence of the green grass, earth's most beautiful adornment in the British Isles, but which is nowhere to be seen on the American continent after the early summer. The heat of July parches and withers it, and in autumn and winter there may be said to be no grass at all nothing but shrivelled her- bage, dry as stubble, and of the same colour. But otherwise the landscape was as fair as poet or painter could desire, and the delicious blue of the sky, and the hazy, dreamy stillness of the Indian summer, made amends even for the absence of grass. If Nature had not spread a carpet, she had certainly hung curtains and drapery of regal magnificence. Though I ardently desired, I yet dreaded, to see Niagara. Wordsworth at Yarrow " had a vision of his own," and was afraid lest he should undo it by making too close an acquaintanceship with the reality. Such were my feelings on drawing near to the Falls. Unlike a celebrated traveller from England, who had, very shortly before my visit, been at Buffalo within two hours' journey by railway, yet had never had the curiosity, or found the time, to look at Niagara face to face TO NIAGAEA. 71 I was positively pervaded, permeated, steeped, and bathed in a longing desire to behold it ; and my fears but arose from the excess of my love. The season was not the most favourable that could have been chosen ; but, as one who might never have another opportunity, I determined, whatever welcome the weather might give me whether amid rain, hail, or snow to gaze upon this wonder of creation while yet it was in my power, and to hear that great voice preaching in the wilderness, and singing for ever and ever the old and eternal anthem, " God is great ! " Our first resting-place of importance was at Albany, the political capital of the State of New York ; our next at Utica, ninety-five miles from Albany, where it was originally my intention to remain for two or three days, to visit the Trenton Falls, as beautiful, though not so grand, as Niagara, and by many travellers preferred to the more stupendous marvel of the two. But, on learning that the hotel, the only house in the place, had long been closed for the season, I held on my way. A sudden fall of snow, just as I was debating the question, was the last feather that broke the back of the camel of Doubt, and made me press on to my journey's end. From Utica a place of considerable trade, and with a population 72 TO NIAGARA. of upwards of 20,000 our train started to Rome, and from Rome to Syracuse. After leaving the last-mentioned place we lost sight for awhile of this classical nomenclature, and traversed a region where Asiatic names were in greater favour through Canton to Pekin leaving Delhi on the left. Thence we emerged into a district where the towns of ancient and modern Europe and Africa seemed to have had a stiff battle to perpetuate their names in the New World, and where Attica, Athens, Geneva, Palmyra, Hamburg, Carthage, Algiers, and Glasgow were scattered about in the most perplexing confusion. On either side of the way the stumps of trees that had been cut down by the pitiless axe of the settlers, and the black, charred, ghost-like stems of monarchs of the forest, which, to save labour, they had attempted to destroy by fire, stood in the utterness of their desolation. The swamps of dark moss-coloured water, amid which they rotted, reflected their melancholy grandeur, undisturbed by any ripple larger than had been occasioned by a falling leaf. The villages and towns, most of them aspiring to be called cities, presented invariably the same rude, unfinished appearance. Mingled amid the log-huts, the cabbage-gardens, and the squash-fields, were churches, chapels, hotels, IRISH AND GERMANS. 73 stores, banks, mills, and printing-offices, most of them incomplete at that time, but doubtless, ere this, in full activity of life and business. Irish and Germans seemed to form the bulk of the com- munity. "Gasthaus," in German characters, was a word that continually met the eye ; while the ubiquitous pig, and such names over the doors as O'Driscoll, Murphy, O'Brien, and O'Callaghan, unequivocally affirmed the fact that the Germans had not entirely monopolized the farms, the fields, the shanties, and the stores of the country. At Rome an old man got into our car, who did us the favour of remaining with us for upwards of fifty miles of our journey. He plied during the whole of the time a vigorous trade in some quack medicine of his own concoction, which he declared to be "good for fevers, agues, dyspepsias, rheumatisms, and colics." The price was a dollar a bottle ; and among the sixty persons in our car he succeeded in getting no less than nine customers by dint of the most impudent and vexatious pertinacity I ever beheld. But trade of every kind is so congenial with the spirit of the American people, that no display of it at any time, and under any circum- stances, seems to be offensive, but on the contrary to be admired as something " smart" and praise- 74 THE GENNESSEE. worthy. Having exhausted our car, and my patience, the pedlar disappeared into the car adjoining, where he no doubt carried on the same series of perform- ances. We were no sooner relieved of his presence than a book-hawker made his appearance, and left a prospectus with every traveller, to study or to cast upon the floor, and after a sufficient interval re- turned for orders. But the book trade did not appear to be very prosperous, and he gathered up his prospectuses to do service on a future occa- sion. Then, changing his literary business for that of a dealer in maple-candy, peppermint-drops, cakes, and apples, he allowed us no cessation from impor- tunity, until we arrived at the city of Rochester, where a new set of plagues of the same class took possession of us, and accompanied us the whole way to Niagara. At Rochester a city of nearly 50,000 inhabit- ants, seated upon the Gennessee river, whose magni- ficent falls give it an amount of water-power which any city in the world might envy the New York Central Railroad crosses the stream upon a bridge much more substantial than such structures usually are in the United States. But the bridge being within a hundred yards above the Fall, the passengers by rail cannot obtain even a glimpse of the cataract THE CITY OF THE FALLS. 75 as they pass. On a subsequent occasion I stopped a night at Rochester to view the Fall. When this part of the world was a wilderness the Gennessee must have been eminently grand and beautiful. Even now, when there is not a tree upon the banks, and when a succession of flour, paper, and other mills has monopolized all the available space on both banks, and filched from the great Fall itself a hundred little streams, that discharge their power over the wheels of as many mills and factories, the rush of the mighty river is a noble sight. Man. has disfigured the banks, but the stream itself is not only too unmanageable to be brought into subjection to his uses, but too vast in its loveliness and grandeur to be sensibly impaired, or made other than beautiful, whatever he may do to it. It had been dark for two hours before we reached Niagara city sometimes called "The City of the Falls ; " and when the train stopped I distinctly heard the dull, heavy roar of earth's most stupendous cata- ract. All the great hotels were closed for the season. The Cataract House, and the International, on the American side, and the Clifton House, on the Canadian shore, were alike deserted and sealed against the visitor. No place remained available for a nightly lodging but a third, or, I might say, 76 TO NIAGARA. a fifth rate hotel, considering the style of the accom- modation and the cookery; and thither I betook myself and engaged a bed. I had no sooner made all my arrangements for the night than I sallied out to take a glimpse at the moonlight glory of Niagara. I had some difficulty in finding my way. The guides had all departed weeks previously, and there was not even a stray inhabitant in the wide, muddy, un- finished streets of Niagara city. A few pigs still prowled about in the miry ways, a few German Gasthause were still open, but there were no other sounds or sights of life in all the melancholy place. The International Hotel, a huge block, about three times as large as the Reform Club had all its shutters up ; and the shops and stores of the Indian dealers in furs, mocassins, and stuffed birds were closed. At last, in my perplexity, I was constrained to enter a German beerhouse to ask my way to the Falls. The honest German to whom I put the question stared at me with genuine astonishment. He seemed to think that I had either lost my senses, or that I had never possessed any. "Do you want to cross to the other side?" he asked, in tolerably good English ; " because, if you do, it is late for the ferry, and I advise you to go to the Suspension-bridge." TO NIAGARA. 77 " How far is it ? " said I. " Two miles," he replied. " But I only want to take a look at the Falls," I rejoined. "To-night?" " Yes ! to-night why not ? " " To-night ! But why not wait till daylight? But I beg your pardon; you must surely be an Englishman ? Nobody else would be absurd enough to want to see the Falls at such a time, and risk his neck in the attempt. The ferryman lives on the Canadian side, and is not likely to come across for you, even if you can make him hear, which is doubtful." I thought so, too, considering the noise which Niagara made, and which I could hear as the bass to the shrill treble of the German's speech; but he kindly directed me to the Ferry House, with a shrug of pity, and the parting consolation that, if I failed to get across that night, I could see the Falls in the morning, which, in his opinion, would be quite soon enough for any rational being. The Ferry House was as deserted as the hotels. Its door was open, but the interior was almost pitch dark; and after groping about for some minutes, reluctant to return without a sight of the Falls, I 78 TO NIAGARA. discovered that the Ferry House was on the top of the high bank (about two hundred feet above the, level of the stream), and that passengers were let down by ropes in a car upon a sloping rail. Dread- ing to tumble down the incline, and meeting with no living creature to appeal to for aid or information, I made my way back to the " Clarendon," -the cheap- est and most uncomfortable of all American hotels ; got more than ankle-deep in mire ; met several pigs and one passenger ; and, for that evening, left the Falls unvisited. But I fell asleep with their mighty music ringing in my ears, and next morning was more than repaid for my disappointments by the sight of Niagara in all its glory. 79 CHAPTER VIII. NIAGAEA. No description that I had read of Niagara whether written by poet, romance-writer, geologist, or mere tourist and traveller conveyed to my mind any adequate idea of the reality. I had formed a Niagara in my mind; but it was another and a very different Niagara from that which my senses disclosed to me immensely higher, more noisy and more confused, and lacking the majestic regularity, order, and calm though stupendous power of the actual torrent which my eyes beheld. I was prepared to be astonished at its grandeur and magnificence ; but my feelings in gazing upon it, day after day and evening after evening, were not so much those of astonishment as of an overpowering sense of Law, mingled with a delicious pleasure, that filled my whole being, and made my brain dizzy with delight. That I may not be accused of an attempt at fine writing in my description of this wondrous waterfall, I shall exhaust all my adjectives at once. Having poured out my praises in one gush, I shall relapse into the soberest 80 THE FALLS OF NIAGAKA. description I can command of what I saw, and endeavour to present an unimpassioned narrative of its effects upon my mind. Any enthusiastic traveller, deeply impressed with the grace, the loveliness, and the sublimity of such a scene, will speedily reach the limit of his vocabulary. To him- self or, better still, to some congenial companion of either sex he can but repeat the old and well- worn epithets grand beautiful stupendous awful majestic and magnificent. This done, he must if he still feel resort to silence, as more demonstrative than speech. There are no more adjectives which he can use ; but he feels that there is an infinitude of unin vented words in the depths of his consciousness which, if he could but drag them into being, would serve to explain to others how keenly the spiritual beauty of Nature had wrought itself into the spiritual nature of man, and into every sense of his physical and material existence. But, as these words cannot be uttered, silence is the best relief and the only alternative. An English lady emphatically declared Niagara to be " sweetly pretty!" and an American lady declared it to be " handsome ! " Possibly the fair speakers exhausted in these epithets the whole wealth of their admira- tion; and yet, faulty as their language was, they THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 81 might have as thoroughly enjoyed the beauty of the cataract, and been as deeply impressed with its majesty, as travellers who made use of a more appropriate phraseology. There are minds which feel so acutely the overpowering loveli- ness of nature, and the imbecility 'of any language to express their sympathies and emotions, even the richest that ever grew and germinated into logic or poetry, that their enforced dumbness becomes ultimately so painful as to disturb the fine balances of Reason and put the Harp of Imagination out of tune. The well-known lines of Byron express this instinctive emotion, when, in speaking of another fall, less glorious than Niagara, he says " One can't gaze a minute Without an awful wish to plunge within it ! " Niagara has this fascination about it in a very high degree. The beautiful boa-constrictor, glaring with its bright and deadly eyes at a rabbit or a bird, has a similar power ; and the poor little quadruped or biped, fascinated, bewildered, undone, and wrought into a frenzy by the overwhelming glamour of the snake, rushes deliriously into perdition. Thus Niagara bewilders the senses of the too passionate admirers of its beauty. Many are the tragical stories which are recounted of the fair girls, the young VOL. I. G 82 THE FALLS OP NIAGARA. brides, and the poetic souls who have thrown them- selves into the torrent for the speechless love they bore it, and floated into death on its terrific but beautiful bosom. Before shifting my quarters from the desolate hostelry of the Clarendon at the City of the Falls, and repairing to the excellent accommodation of the Monteagle House, two miles distant, near the Sus- pension-bridge, I sallied out at dawn of day to the Ferry, and was rowed across the Niagara River, about half a mile below the Falls. From this point, amid the comparative quiet of the waters, the first glimpse of Niagara conveyed a feeling that partook of disappointment. I had expected the Falls to be much higher; and if the water had poured from a precipice a thousand feet above me I should not, perhaps, have considered that the guidebook-makers and the tourists had led me to expect too much. The eye was unfamiliar with the distance and with the grandeur of the surround- ing objects ; and, as the result of my experience, I advise the traveller not to take his first view of Niagara in this manner. The majesty is too far off to be appreciated. There is no measurement within reach by which the size can be tested ; and the noblest waterfall in the world suggests a weir, THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 83 no doubt above the average size of weirs, but a weir nevertheless. The eye too often makes fools of our other senses, until it is taught to know its own littleness and imperfection, and to be humble accordingly. In the summer season a little steam- boat, appropriately named the Maid of the Mist, runs up into the very spray of the Cataract. From its deck a magnificent spectacle is doubtless to be ob- tained ; but at the time of my visit tin's vessel had long ceased its excursions, and was safely moored for the winter at " Biddle Stairs." There were no tourists; and even the guides had taken their de- parture. No lingering remnant of that troublesome confraternity lay in wait for a stray traveller like myself, to tire his patience, disencumber him of his loose cash, and mar the whole effect of the scenery by his parrot-like repetition of the old story, from which all soul, freshness, and meaning had departed. Thus I had Niagara all to myself. It was my own dominion ; and I ruled over it un- advised, untroubled, and undirected. I discovered its beauties gradually as best I could, and made my way from place to place with as much of the true spirit of discovery and adventure, latent and stirred within me, as moved the first white man who ever gazed upon its marvels. And, instead G 2 84 THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. of narrating how and in what way. I saw them, let me, for the benefit of any future travellers who may read these lines, explain in what sequences of grandeur and beauty they should explore the stupendous scenery of the River, the Islands, and the Falls, so as to reach the climax where the climax should be naturally expected, and to go on, from good to better, and from better to best, in one grand and harmonious crescendo, and thus extract from it a music of the mind sufficient to make even the sublimest harmonies of Beethoven appear tame and commonplace. Proceeding, first, to the narrow and apparently frail bridge which connects the main land of the village, or "City," formerly called Manchester, with Bath Island, and thence with Goat Island lovely enough to deserve a more beautiful name the mind of the tra- veller will be impressed with a spectacle which to me, unprepared for it, seemed as grand as Niagara itself. Here is to be obtained the first glimpse of the Rapids, ere the whole overflow of the great lakes, Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie, covering a superficies of no less than 150,000 square miles a space large enough to contain England, Scotland, and Ireland, with room to spare discharge themselves over the precipice into the lower level of Lake Ontario. THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 85 In a distance of three-quarters of a mile the Niagara River gallops down an incline of fifty-one feet. Such a bubbling, boiling, frothing, foaming, raging, and roaring as occur in that magnificent panorama, it was never before my good .fortune to see or hear. Were there nothing but the sight of these Rapids to repay the traveller for his pains, it would be worth all the time and cost of the voyage across the Atlantic. It Avas like looking up a mountain of furious water to stand upon the bridge and gaze toward the torrent. I will not call it angry, though that is the epithet which first suggests itself. Anger is something sharp and short, but this eternal thunder is the voice of a willing obedience to unalterable Law. There is no caprice or rage about it ; nothing but the triumphant song of gravitation, that law of laws, which maintains the earth in perpetual harmony with heaven. On the side of the " City " were several mills for flour, corn, and paper, which had borrowed an exterior thread from the mighty web of waters to help in performing the operations of human industry. But these scarcely marred the effect of the scene, and were to some extent useful in affording a contrast of the littleness of man with the ineffable great- ness of Nature. The builders of the bridge, taking 86 THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. advantage of the havoc made by the waters in days gone by perhaps five hundred thousand years ago supported it partially on a great rock lifting its head a few feet above the foam; and, standing at this point, I counted the islets scat- tered on either side, and stretching downwards to the very brink of the Fall. Besides Goat Island, about a mile in circumference, which separates the American from the Canadian Fall, I made out nineteen isles and islets; some no larger than a dining-table, others twenty or a hundred times as large, and several of them supporting but a single tree, and others two or three trees, blooming and flourishing, amid the war of waters, and suggest- ing to the unpractised eye a fear that every moment would be the last both of them and their vegetation. There is a toll of twenty-five cents for passing over this bridge to Goat Island ; but the toll once paid frees the traveller for a year. It is calculated that forty thousand persons pass annually, yielding a handsome revenue to Mr. Porter, the proprietor of the island. The father or grandfather of this gentleman, a surveyor, is said to have procured Goat Island from the State of New York in part payment of his bill for surveying the Rapids and their neighbourhood. The Indian Emporium, pur- THE FALLS OF NIAGAKA. 87 porting to be kept by the descendants of the famous " Black Hawk," was still open on the occasion of my visit; and the fans, the mocassins, the purses, and all the little nidknacks which the Indians manufacture of moose-skins, beads, and birch-bark, were spread out for sale. Having paid tribute here, I passed on to the wilderness. Though Goat Island is laid out into carriage drives and by- paths, it exists otherwise in a state of nature. The trees are unpruned forest-trees, though marked occasionally by the busy knives of the ubiquitous Joneses and Smiths, who, though transplanted to new soil, are as deeply imbued with the traditional failing of their British ancestors for carving or scrawling their inillustrious names on trees and public monuments as their kindred in the "Old Country." In this lovely spot the undergrowth of fern and brushwood is wild and luxuriant in the extreme. The beauty and variety of the island sur- pass, I should think, that of any island in the world ; although, when contemplating the turbulence around, and the debris of past convulsions which strew the run of the river above and below, it is difficult to avoid a feeling that ere long Goat Island will be entirely swept away, or scattered into fragments at the foot of the Falls. 88 THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. To the left,, down a little bypath, there is a small cataract, perhaps about ten feet in width, separated by huge boulder stones from the main current, which, if it existed in Great Britain or in any other part of Europe, would attract admiring crowds from all quarters to behold it, but which here dwindles into comparative insignificance amid the mightier marvels that surround it. Lodore among the Eng- lish lakes, and Foyers in Inverness-shire, beautiful and even sublime as they may be, are but as ribbons to this. And this itself is but as a ribbon compared with Niagara. The next point is the American Fall, roaring down into the abyss, one hundred and sixty feet below, in one immense sheet of slaty-green water. Beautiful exceedingly! Vedi Napoli e poi mori! say the Italians; but to see this Fall is to reach a higher climax: and if Death be agreeable to have a greater motive for confessing that Life has nothing grander to show. The traveller can ap- proach to the very brink of the Fall, and if he pleases dabble his feet -in it, without danger; but let him wade two or three feet only, and he is gone down ! down ! like a speck, into Death and Eternity ! Looking over the avalanche of waters, where they roll smoothly and irresistibly as Fate, I beheld a THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 89 couple of hawks or other birds of prey hovering half-way down, fishing for the dead or stupified fish that are hurled through the boiling spray. Further down the Niagara stream white as cream at the foot of the precipice, but half a mile below as tran- quil apparently as if nothing had happened is seen, at a distance of two miles, the noble Suspension- bridge. Over its airy and seemingly perilous fabric passes the railway that connects the New York Central Railway, by the Great Western Railway of Canada, with Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the " Far West." And now for the culminating point at Prospect Tower, forty-five feet high, and built on the very edge of Goat Island between the two Falls. From the top of this edifice, amid the " hell of waters," is to be obtained the most magnificent view of the whole scenery of Niagara, above and below, and down the arrowy deeps of the ever-boiling cauldron. The Great Canadian or Horseshoe Fall is in reality Niagara itself. The American Fall, stupen- dous as it is, must be considered no more than an offshoot from the main cataract. " Oh, that Great Britain and the United States would go to war ! " said an enthusiastic American; "and that the United States might gain the day! We would 90 THE PALLS OF NIAGARA. stipulate for the annexation of the Great Horseshoe Fall as a sine qua non of peace, and after that we would be friends for ever ! " And no wonder that the Americans so love it, for the Horseshoe Fall is alike the greatest marvel and the principal beauty of the New World. Here, at all events, man and his works are impotent to mar or diminish the magnifi- cence of nature. No wheels of mills or factories can be set in motion by a cataract like this. It would dash into instant ruin the proudest pyramid, pa- lace, temple, or manufactory that imperial man ever erected since the world began. He who would utilise such a flood must be as cautious as a homoeopathist. To use more than an infinitesimal portion of its exuberant strength would be to court and to meet annihilation. The mass of water pours over the rocks in one lucent and unbroken depth of up- wards of twenty feet ; for although no magician and no plummet has ever sounded the dread profundity, even within a mile of the final leap, a condemned lake steamer, the Detroit, drawing eighteen feet of water, was carried over the Falls as lightly as a cork. She never touched the rocks with her keel until she was precipitated, still shapely and beautiful, a hundred and fifty feet below, and then down, down no one knows, or ever will know, how many fathoms, THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 91 into a lower deep, scooped out by the incessant action of the Falls in the very bowels of the earth, to reappear, a few minutes afterwards, a chaotic and unconnected mass of beams, spars, and floating timber. It is a long time before the finite senses of any human being can grasp the full glory of this spec- tacle. I cannot say that I ever reached a satisfactory comprehension of it. I only know that I gazed sorrowfully, and yet glad, and that I understood thoroughly what was meant by the ancient phrase of " spell-bound ; " that I knew what fascination, witch- craft, and glamour were; and that I made full allowances for the madness of any poor, weak, excited human creature who, in a moment of impulse or frenzy, had thrown him or herself headlong into that too beautiful and too entrancing abyss. When the first sensations of mingled awe and delight have been somewhat dulled by familiarity with the monotonous majesty, so suggestive of infinite power, and so like an emblem of eternity though impossible for man's art to picture it under such a symbol the eye takes pleasure in looking into the minutiae of the flood. The deep slaty-green colour of the river, curdled by the impetus of the Fall into masses of exquisite whiteness, is the first peculiarity 92 THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. that excites attention. Then the shapes assumed by the rushing waters shapes continually varying as each separate pulsation of the Rapids above produces a new embodiment in the descending stream charm the eye with fresh wonder. Sometimes an avalanche of water, striking on a partially hidden shelf or rock half-way down the precipice, makes a globular and mound-like surge of spray ; and, immediately after- wards, a similar downflow, beating on the very same point, is thrown upwards, almost to the level of the Upper Niagara, in one long, white, and perpendicular column. Gently, yet majestically, it reaches the lower level by its own independent im- petus, without being beholden to the gravity of the sympathetic stream from which it has been so rudely dissevered. And then the rainbows! No pen can do justice to their number and their loveliness. No simile but the exquisite one of Byron at the Italian waterfall which, compared with Niagara, is but a blade of grass to some oaken monarch of the woods can adequately render the idea of any spectator who has a soul for natural beauty as he gazes on the unparalleled spectacle of such an Iris as it was my good fortune to behold : " Love watching Madness with unalterable mien ! " But the sensations of one man are not the sensa- THE FALLS OF NIAGAKA. 93 tions of another. To one, Niagara breathes turbu- lence and unrest ; to another it whispers peace and hope. To one it speaks of Eternity; to another merely of Time. To the geologist it opens up the vista of millions of years ; while to him who knows nothing of, or cares nothing for, the marvels of that science it but sings in the wilderness a new song by a juvenile orator only six thousand years old. But to me, if I can epitomise my feelings in four words, Niagara spoke joy, peace, order, and eternity! To other minds dull, prosaic, and money-grubbing Niagara is but a great water-power gone to waste, and not to be compared, in grandeur of conception or execution, to the Suspension-bridge that crosses the river two miles below. " Niagara is a hand- some thing," said a guest at the Monteagle House to his neighbour ; " but what is it to the bridge ? The bridge ! why, I hold that to be the finest thing in all God's universe ! " It was no engineer who spake thus, but a man from a dry-goods store in Chicago, and doubtless a very worthy man too : though, if I could have had my will of him, he never should have had a vote for Congress, for the election of President, or even for the nomination of mayor or sheriff of Chicago. I would have inflicted summary justice upon him, and in the very scene 94 THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. and moment of his offence deprived him for ever of all the rights of citizenship. It was in traversing the ferry from time to time, and entering into conversation with the ferryman and the chance passengers in his boat, that I learned the minute and, to me, interesting particulars of what may be called the private history and romance of the Falls. Many were the sad stories told of wobegone and desperate creatures who had chosen the terrific platform of the Horseshoe Fall, or of the Tower at Goat Island, as the scenes of their violent exit from a world which they fancied had used them ungrate- fully ; of young brides who had come thither to rush out of an existence where they had staked all on the chance of domestic happiness and gained nothing but broken hearts ; of young and of old men (but never of old women), sick of the world, and of all its pleasures and sorrows, who had here taken the fearful leap from Time into Eternity. And how is it, O learned doctors of lunacy and mania, that old men commit suicide so frequently, and old women so seldom ? Many, too, were the stories told of Indians and others who, sailing peaceably and incautiously in their canoes or boats from Erie to Chippawa, had been sucked into the irresistible current and precipitated in the sight of agonized THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 95 spectators into the abyss below. The ferryman did not personally remember the catastrophe of the Caroline steamer cut adrift by the gallant Colonel (now Sir Allan) M'Nab in the Canadian rebellion, and sent blazing over the Falls ; but the incident will long be told in Canadian story and the annals of border warfare. The ferryman stated, as the result of his experience and that of all his predecessors, that the dead bodies washed ashore in the vicinity of the Ferry House were always found in a state of nudity, and that he never heard of an instance in which a corpse had been recovered with the slightest shred or vestige of a garment adhering to it. One tragedy was fresh in his recollection that of a young man who, about five months before the period of my visit, had called for and drunk off at a draught a bottle of champagne at the Clifton Hotel, then engaged and paid for a carriage to drive him to the Table Rock, and, in sight of the driver and of other people who never suspected his intent, had proceeded from the carriage to the edge of the Great Fall, coolly walked into deep water, and been washed over the precipice before even a voice could be raised to express the horror of the bystanders. His body was not found until several days afterwards, perfectly nude Niagara having, according to its wont, stripped 96 THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. him of all his valuables as well as of his life, and cast him upon mother earth as naked as he was at the moment he came into it. Many also, according to the ferryman, were the waifs and strays that fell to his share in his lonely vocation large fish, drawn into the current and precipitated over the Falls, quite dead : aquatic fowl, skimming too near the surface of the Rapids in search of prey, and caught by the descending waters ; and logs of timber and fragments of canoes and other small craft, which he collected on the shore to make his Christmas fire, and help to keep a merry blaze in the long and severe winters of the climate. Niagara, according to the testimony of all who dwell near it, is never more beautiful than in the cold midwinter, when no tourists visit it, and when the sides of the chasm are corrugated and adorned with pillars and stalactites of silvery frost ; and when huge blocks of ice from Lake Erie, weighing hundreds of tons, are hurled down the Rapids and over the Falls, as if they were of no greater specific gravity than feathers or human bodies, to reappear half a mile lower down the river, shivered into millions of fragments. It is a tradition of Niagara that, in 1822 or 1823, such a thick wall of ice was formed above Goat Island that no water flowed past for several hours, and that THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 97 in the interval the precipice at the Horseshoe Fall was perfectly bare and dry. A picture of the scene, painted at the time, is still in existence. What a pity that no geologist or poet was present, and that we have not his report upon the appearance of the rocks over which tumbles the eternal Cataract, that never, perhaps, at any previous period unveiled its flinty bosom to the gaze of the petty pigmies who wander on its shores, and call themselves the lords of the creation. But a small portion of the once widely-projecting Table Rock is now in existence, the remainder having suddenly given way four or five years ago. It seems to have been loosened in some of its internal crevices by the action of the frost. A horse and gig had been standing on the projection less than a minute before the rock gave way, and the action of their removal was perhaps the immediate cause of the catastrophe. But sufficient of the rock still remains to afford a footing whence a fine view of the whole Panorama of the Falls is attainable. In consequence of the absence of guides, and indeed of every person from whom I could obtain information, I did not penetrate, as I might have done, behind the Horseshoe Fall. The mighty Cascade, in pouring over the precipice its ninety VOL i. H 98 THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. millions of gallons of water per hour, curves out- wards, and leaves behind it a chamber which daring, travellers, determined to see everything, make it a point to visit. The feat is both painful and danger- ous, and was not to be thought of by a solitary way- farer like myself. "It may be supposed," says a well-known American writer who achieved it, " that every person who has been dragged through the column of water which obstructs the entrance to the cavern behind the Cataract has a pretty correct idea of the pains of drowning. It is difficult enough to breathe, but with a little self-control and manage- ment the nostrils may be guarded from the watery particles in the atmosphere, and then an impression is made upon the mind by the extraordinary pavilion above and around, which never loses its vividness. The natural bend of the Cataract, and the backward shelve of the precipice, form an immense area like the interior of a tent, but so pervaded by discharges of mist and spray that it is impossible to see far inward. Outward the light struggles brokenly through the crystal wall of the Cataract, and, when the sun shines directly on its face, it is a scene of unimaginable glory. The footing is rather un- steadfast a small shelf, composed of loose and slip- pery stones, and the abyss boiling below ; like THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 99 it is difficult to find a comparison. On the whole, the undertaking is rather pleasanter to remember than to achieve." For many days I lingered in the purlieus of Niagara. I often walked from the Suspension- bridge along the Canadian shore, getting at every turn a new glimpse of loveliness ; and on other occasions have sat for hours on Prospect Tower, with no companions but a favourite book, and the eternal music of the Falls. In storm, in shine, in moonlight, and in mist in all weathers and at all hours I have feasted on the beauty and tranquillity of the scene for, as soon as the ear becomes accus- tomed to the roar of the waters, they descend with a lulling and soothing sound. And when I was compelled to take my farewell look, and travel to new regions, I repeated to myself, neither for the first nor the last time, "I have lived, and loved, and seen Niagara." H 2 100 CHAPTER IX. NEWPOKT AND ERODE ISLAND. November 22, 1857. THE Governors of the several States of the Union have some, but not much, patronage. That their salaries are far from considerable may be inferred from the fact that one estimable gentleman of my acquaintance, who rules over a territory as large, and much more fertile, than England, enjoys the not very munificent allowance of 1500 dollars, or about 300. per annum, to support his dignity. But they have the power of life and death, or rather, the privilege to commute the punishment of death into imprisonment for life, or for a term of years ; and they have the quasi imperial or royal right to open the session of the Legislature by speech or address, and in some States, but not in all, to bring the session to a premature close. In the early times of the Republic, the Governors of the States thought it necessary to surround themselves with more splendour and ceremonial. John Hancock, the first Governor of Massachusetts after the Revolt!- AMERICAN GOVERNORS. 101 tion, rode about Boston in a gilt coach with four horses. A loyalist paper, published in New York a year prior to the recognition of American indepen- dence, stated of Hancock that he appeared in public " with all the pageantry of an oriental prince ; and thus he rode in an elegant carriage, attended by four servants, dressed in superb liveries, mounted on fine horses richly caparisoned, and escorted by fifty horsemen with drawn sabres the one half of whom preceded and the other half followed his carriage." But things have greatly changed since that day. The present Governor of Massachu- setts, a very eloquent and able man, formerly a working blacksmith, who was lately Speaker of the House of Representatives, and is now an aspirant for the Presidency, walks to the State House when he has to deliver a message to the Legislature, and boards at the public hotel, having no house of his own in the capital of the Commonwealth of which he is the chief magistrate. The same simpli- city prevails elsewhere. Among the few privileges not already mentioned, which the Governors still enjoy in New England and New York, and perhaps further south, is that of appointing, by their sole authority, a day of general thanksgiving or of humiliation. Thanksgiving-day is generally fixed in 102 THANKSGIVING-DAY. November ; and corresponds in its festive character to the celebration of Christmas in England. The people shut up their stores and places of business ; go to church, chapel, or conventicle, in the forenoon or afternoon, or both ; and devote the remainder of the day to such social pleasure and jollity as the custom of the place may sanction. The dinner, at which theptece de rigueur is roast turkey, is the great event of the day. As roast beef and plumpudding are upon Christmas-day in Old England, so is turkey upon Thanksgiving-day among the descendants of the Puritans in New England. Yesterday was Thanksgiving-day at Newport, in the little but prosperous Commonwealth of Rhode Island the smallest State in the Union ; but not the least proud, or wealthy. To borrow a description from the old popular ballad, "American Taxation," written by a New England patriot in 1765 : " It is a wealthy people Who sojourn in this land; Their churches all with steeples Most delicately stand: Their houses like the gilly Are painted white and gay ; They nourish like the lily In North Americay. " On turkeys, fowls, and fishes, Most frequently they dine ; With well replenished dishes Their tables always shine. NEWPORT. 103 They crown their feasts with butter, They eat, and rise to pray ; In silks their ladies flutter, In North Americay." Business and not pleasure brought me to Rhode Island; and to the fashionable, but at this season deserted watering-place of Newport. This elegant little town, or " city," is of easy access from New York or Boston, and during the summer months is crowded with visitors from all parts of the Union ; and where, strange anomaly in a country said to be so strict and prudish, the ladies and gentlemen bathe together, " the ladies," according to the unimpeachable authority of Belle Brittan, " swimming about in white trousers and red frocks a costume gayer than the chorus of an Italian opera," and the gentlemen, according to another authority, in a costume almost as decent, though by no means so picturesque. But the pleasure hotels were all shut up, and no place open but the excellent Aquidneck House, sufficiently large to accommodate all, and fifty times more than all, the travellers who at that season were likely to come to Newport on business. Newport consists principally of one long street on the shore of Narragansett Bay, and has an air of greater antiquity than is common among the towns of New England. It is a clean, white, 104 NEWPORT. quaint, and agreeable place ; but during the bathing season, all its life and bustle are transferred to the other side of the narrow island on which the town is built, and to the western shores of the Bay, known as the first, second, and third beaches. Newport is a place of historical note, having been held by the British forces during the Revolution, and almost destroyed by them, before the inde- pendence of the United States was officially recog- nised. They are said to have burnt 480 houses, to have battered down the lighthouse, broken up the wharves, used the churches for riding schools, and cut down all the fruit and ornamental trees, before taking their departure ; and by these, and the other more legitimate consequences of the warlike occu- pation of the place, to have reduced the popula- tion from 12,000 to 4,000. But if these barbarities were really committed, there seem to remain no traces of animosity on the part of the present generation ; and to be an Englishman is a passport to the kind offices of the principal inhabitants. An attempt to release Newport from British occupation was made in 1778, under the combined forces of Count L'Estaing, the French admiral, and General Sullivan, the United States commander, in which expedition Governor Hancock, of Massachusetts, NEWPOET. 105 and General Lafayette commanded divisions. The attempt was unsuccessful; and was commemorated in a loyalist ballad of the day, to the air of "Yankee Doodle:" " ' Begar ! ' said Monsieur, ' one grand coup You bientot shall behold, sir:' This was believed as gospel true, And Jonathan felt bold, sir. " So Yankee Doodle did forget The sound of British drum, sir, How oft it made him quake and sweat, In spite of Yankee rum, sir. " He took his wallet on his back, His rifle on his shoulder, And vowed Khode Island to attack, Before he was much older." There is an old building at Newport which stands in the public square in the upper town, of which the origin and the objects have excited considerable controversy. By some it is alleged to have been erected by the Norsemen in their pre-Columbite discovery of America, and by others it is alleged to be merely an old stone mill. But as architectural antiquities in any part of the American Continent north of Mexico are utterly unknown, or non- existing, it may be supposed that strenuous battle is done on behalf of the theory that this building is the remnant of a Norse tower ; and that the sup- 106 RHODE ISLAND. porters of the mill theory and of its modem erection receive but small toleration at the hands of the people of Newport. Professor Rafn, under date of 1839, affirms that the building was erected at a period decidedly not later than the 12th century, as there is no mistaking the style, which is that of the round-arch style : the same which in England is denominated Saxon, and sometimes Norman, archi- tecture. It is upon a legend brought into con- nection with this ruin that Longfellow has founded his poem of the " Skeleton in Armour." Among the pleasanter memories that attach to Newport is one which affirms that in a cottage near the second beach, beyond a place called Purgatory, Bishop Berkeley wrote several of the works which have handed his name down to posterity. Though I had no opportunity to visit Providence, the capital, or any of the other cities of Rhode Island, that small republic has so interesting a his- tory, both past and present, as to demand not only a re- cord from the pen, but the sympathetic appreciation of every passing stranger who has anything to say about the " cosas Americanas" It is distinguished, in the first place, as the smallest of the thirty-two States of the Union, being only about forty-seven miles long by thirty-seven broad. Though for the RHODE ISLAND. 107 most part continental, it derives its name from the little island in Narragansett Bay on which New- port is built, and contains a population of less than 150,000 souls. Its second and more admirable claim to distinction arises from the fact that while its people govern themselves at somewhat less than one dollar per head per annum, they pay nearly twice as much for public education as for all the other ex- penses of the State. The Governor's salary is 1,000 dollars (200/.) per annum; the civil, military, and miscellaneous expenses are 50,000 dollars (10,OOOZ.); while the direct grant from the State for educational purposes is 35,000 dollars (7,000?.), and the local expenses for the same object are 50,000 dollars (10,000/.) more or, in all, 85,000 dollars. Where is the other state, great or small, upon the globe, that can glorify itself by such a fact as this ? And in the last place, Rhode Island may lay greater claim to being the cradle of religous liberty, than any republic, kingdom, or empire in the world. The early Puritans and Pilgrim Fathers, who shook the dust of England from the soles of their feet, and sailed across the Atlantic to find a spot where they might worship God in their own way, without molestation from the strong arm of secular authority, did not always mete out to others the measure 108 KOGEK WILLIAMS. which they insisted upon for themselves. The Puritan settlers in Massachusetts became as into- - lerant of others, when settled in their new homes, as the religious oppressors in England from whose oppression they had escaped; and decreed the penalties of fine, imprisonment, and even death, against all who would not conform to the obser- vances and the doctrine of that sectarianism which they arrogantly considered as containing the whole and only truth of God. Among other staunch and uncompromising men to whom this Puritan intolerance was intolerable, was Roger Williams who boldly proclaimed in Massachusetts, to the scandal and alarm of the magistracy, that conscience was free, and that in a Christian and a free state no man ought to be troubled or called to account for his religious opinions whatever they might be. This was too bold for Massachusetts, and too wicked, in the opinion of the ruling classes, to be endured. Williams was warned of the danger of persisting in preaching such doctrines, but he would not flinch from his principles ; and, ultimately, after a series of sufferings in the wilderness, the history of which has lately been given to the world, he fled from the inhospitable soil in a canoe, with five companions, to seek amid the kinder savages a few ROGER WILLIAMS. 109 acres of land to cultivate, and a corner of the earth where he might pray to God in his own fashion. Sailing and rowing on this forlorn expedition, he arrived after many days at a little arm of the sea stretching inwards from the Bay of Narragansett. Here he saw an Indian standing upon a rock, who made friendly gestures, and called to him in English " What cheer ? " The words seemed of good omen ; Roger Williams landed ; was kindly received by the chiefs; fixed his abode on the adjoining land; re- ceived a large grant of territory, and gave it the name of Providence. Close to the spot where he landed is the site of the city of the same name, and capital of Rhode Island. In the course of time, other men and women flying from persecution, and being invited by Williams to join him in what he called his "place of shelter for persons distressed for conscience," gathered about him in considerable numbers. To the most able and enterprising of these Williams freely gave portions of the land which he had received from the Indians, and the colony in- creased and prospered. The words, " What cheer? " were adopted as the motto of the State thus singularly formed; and in 1644 Williams proceeded to Eng- land, and procured a charter from King Charles I., constituting his settlements into a colony under the 110 ROGER WILLIAMS. style and title of the "Plantations of Providence and Rhode Island." This charter requiring amend- ment and extension, Williams, then a venerable old man, paid a second visit to England in 1663, and obtained a new Charter from Charles II. By this charter, the citizens were empowered to elect their own Governor a greater degree of liberty than was accorded in those days to Massachusetts and other States, whose Governors were appointed by the Crown. Thanks to such men as Roger Williams, and to such also as William Penn in Pennsylvania, and Lord Baltimore in Maryland though the last two did not suffer in the cause as Williams did absolute religious toleration has become the law of the whole American Union; and Puritanism, while retaining its other features, has ceased to persecute. It is said that no stone or memorial marks the spot where this patriarch of liberty is buried. Memo- rials and monuments of Washington are to be found everywhere; but surely Rhode Island, and the friends of religious freedom in America, owe it to themselves to do honour to the dust of one quite as worthy of honour, in his own way, as Wash- J ngton himself. Ill CHAPTER X. PHILADELPHIA. Philadelphia, Dec. 19, 1857. RETURNING from the beautiful Niagara to Boston, and from Boston to New York, I thence proceeded to Philadelphia, the capital of Pennsylvania, the " Keystone State." Pennsylvania derives this title as being the " keystone " of American liberty, and the scene of the ever-memorable Declaration of Independence. The point of departure from New York is at Jersey city, over the Hudson or North River Ferry, and the point of arrival is at Camden, on the River Delaware, exactly opposite to the city of the Quakers, to which the passengers are conveyed by one of the monster steam ferry-boats common in all the rivers of the Union. The road passes the whole way through the flat alluvial districts of New Jersey a State which the New Yorkers declare to stand in the same anomalous relation to the Union as that occupied by the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed to the kingdoms of Great 112 PHILADELPHIA. Britain and Ireland. But New Jersey can afford to despise the joke if joke it be ; for, though one of the smallest, it is one of the most prosperous states of the Republic. Philadelphia, eighty-seven miles by rail from New York, is the second city of the Union, with a popu- lation of about 500,000 souls. It stands upon a level with the waters of the Delaware, and does not possess within its whole boundaries a natural eminence one-third of the height of Ludgate-hill. It contains a large number of churches and chapels, but none of them is distinguished for architectural beauty of dome, tower, or spire. The whole place is formal, precise, and unattractive, leaving no impression upon the mind of the traveller, but that of a weary sameness and provoking rec- tangularity. Except in Chestnut-street (the centre of business ) and Walnut -street ( the fashionable quarter), all the streets of the city are built on the same model. The same third-rate houses of the kind which the Englishman sees in Birming- ham and Manchester seem to rise on every side, all of one colour, and of one shape ; all with green Venetian blinds on the upper, and with white blinds on the lower, stories; all equally prim, dull, and respectable. The foot-pavements are of the "FIERY DRAB." 113 same colour as the houses, neither drab nor red, but a mixture of both, suggestive of the story of the English Quaker of the old school, to whom, as he sat behind his desk at his warehouse in Manchester, was delivered a packet, with a bill requesting payment. The old Quaker opened the packet, and found a red hunting-coat. "What is this?" he said to the messenger. " There is a mistake here, friend." " No," said the messenger ; " 'tis a coat for Mr. Thomas." " Thomas," said the father to the young Quaker, w\\o had become smitten with an unquakerly passion for hunting, " is this for thee?" " Yea, father," replied the son. " And what is it ?" rejoined the sire. " A coat," replied the son. " Yea, Thomas ; but what colour is it?" " Why," said Thomas, somewhat bewildered, and scratching his head to expedite the delivery of the tardy answer, " it 's a kind of fiery-drab." Such is the colour of Philadelphia Hhe Quaker city, the city of Brotherly Love, or, according to the disparaging assertion of New Yorkers, the city of " brotherly love and riots." It is fiery-drab wher- ever you turn fiery-drab houses, fiery-drab pave- TOL. i. I 114 "FIERY DRAB." ments, fiery-drab chapels, and fiery-drab churches. One peculiarity of Philadelphia, in addition to the unvarying rectangularity of its streets is, that the carriage-ways are always dirty and the foot-ways always clean. Nobody purifies, or cares to purify, the carriage-road ; but! everybody seems to be bent upon cleaning the fiery-drab pavements. Morning, noon, and night the work of ablution goes on. Negro men and women, with a fair admixture of Irish female " helps," are continually squirting water over the pavements from gutta-percha tubes, and twirling the moisture from their ever-busy mops over the lower garments of the wayfarers, till the streets run with water. The passing vehicles continually churn up the mud, and the road is never allowed to dry, unless under the irresistible compulsion of the thermometer below zero. The population of Philadelphia is not so largely imbued with the Quaker element as might be sup- , posed from its history and origin. Though William Penn was its founder, and is to some extent its patron saint, [the co-religionists of William Penn, so far from being in the majority, do not number above 30,000 out of 500,000 inhabitants. Scotch- men and descendants of Scotchmen are numerous ; Irish and descendants of Irish are also numerous; LAGER BIER. 115 and Germans and descendants of Germans more numerous still. To the Germans, Philadelphia owes the establishment within the last five years of several extensive breweries, and the introduction to every part of the Union of a taste for " Lager bier" an excellent beverage, well suited to the climate, and resembling the Bavarian beer of Europe, though by no means so strong or so aromatic as the Lager bier of Vienna, from which it derives its name. Prior to the introduction of this novelty, beer was very little known in America. English porter, stout, and ale, besides being exorbitantly dear, were not well suited to the climate, but Lager bier supplied the very article required. It was exactly to the taste of the Germans, and from them a love of it has gradually extended to all sections and races of the American people. The rich consume oysters and champagne ; the poorer classes consume oysters and Lager bier, and that is one of the principal social differences between the two sections of the com- munity. If Messrs. Bass or Allsopp ever had a chance of extending their trade into America, the Lager bier breweries of Philadelphia have sen* ously diminished it. What American will give thirty-seven cents (eighteenpence English) for a pint of English pale ale or porter, when he can I 2 116 MARBLE BOOK STEPS. procure a pint of home-brewed Lager for five cents ? There are some fine stores, banks, and warehouses in Chestnut-street, and some showy buildings of granite and white marble in course of construction. There are also some superior private houses of marble and granite in Walnut-street. It is one of the peculiarities of Philadelphia, that the door- steps of every house that has any pretensions to style are of white marble. At this season, however, the white marble of the door-steps is covered up with wood, and workmen are busily employed in the principal thoroughfares in encasing the steps in planks of deal in preparation for the frost; they would otherwise be so slippery as to be dangerous to life and limb ; so that the luxuriousness of a Philadelphian door-step is somewhat like that of a "dress poker" in England something for show rather than for use. There are but two public buildings in the city which will repay the visit of any traveller who is pressed for time; and these are the State House, or Independence Hall, in Chestnut-street the most venerable and the most venerated building in America and the Girard College, at the outskirts of the town. No stranger should omit visiting them both. INDEPENDENCE HALL. 117 The State House is illustrious as the place where the first American Congress held its sittings, and where, on the ever-memorable 4th of July, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted, and read to the assembled people, and publicly pro- claimed from the steps fronting the street. The building has been jealously preserved as it stood in that- day ; and the room in which the solemn con- clave was held now called the Hall of Independ- ence is adorned with the same internal fittings and decorations as on the day that made America a free and great nation. Cold is the heart, and stag- nant the fancy and imagination of any man, what- ever his nation or habits of thought, who can stand unmoved in this simple chamber, or be unimpressed by the noble thoughts and generous aspirations which its history excites. On every side are relics of the great departed portraits of the high-souled and fearless men who affixed their signatures to the document which severed their connection with the country of their birth and their ancestors. These men loved the old country, as a true son loves the unjust and hard-hearted father in spite of his in- justice and obstinacy, and with the yearning hope, strong as nature itself, that the father will relent, or, if he do not relent, acknowledge that age has 118 INDEPENDENCE HALL. its faults as well as youth, and that the duty of age is to be tolerant and forgiving. They entered upon a career which when they began it was rebel- lion, but which afterwards became revolution, with many forebodings, and with a deep, earnest, religious sense of the responsibility they had undertaken. Among other relics of the time and the men are the walking-stick of Washington and the writing- table of Benjamin Franklin. The table has a ticket upon it announcing it for sale, upon the condition that the purchaser do not remove the relic from Philadelphia, and that he allow the public to have access to it at stated times. The price is only 120 dollars, about 241 sterling; but the city of Philadelphia, according to the janitor of the hall, is too poor to purchase it being deeply involved in debt, without a cent which it can fairly call its own. Another relic, still more interesting than either of these, is the great bell which, on the 4th of July, 1776, rang to the people the joyous tidings of the Declaration of Independence, and which now bears, and bore long before its sonorous voice was called into requisition on that august occasion, the prophetic inscription, " Proclaim liberty throughout the lands, and to all the peoples thereof." This bell, a sacred one to all Americans, is now THE GIRAKD COLLEGE. 119 past service ; and having been accidentally cracked some years ago like Big Ben of Westminster was removed from the belfry to the hall, where it now stands surmounted by a stuffed eagle. Either the eagle is too small for the bell, or the bell is too large for the eagle a disparity which strikes all visitors. On mentioning my impression to the janitor, he admitted the fact, and stated that last year an American gentleman, who entertained the same idea, sent him a splendid eagle, nearly three times as large as the actual occupant of the place of honour. Unfortunately, however, the big eagle had but one wing; and, as a disabled eagle upon a cracked bell, would have afforded but too many opportunities to the jibers of jibes and the jokers of jokes, the gift was respectfully declined, and the little eagle, strong, compact, and without a flaw, holds his seat upon the relic, until some more ponderous and unexceptional bird shall be permitted to dethrone him. The Girard College is a noble building of white marble beyond all comparison the finest public monument on the North American continent. It is built on the model of a Grecian temple of the Corinthian order; is 218 feet long, 160 broad, and 97 high ; and closely resembles the beautiful Town- 120 THE GIRARD COLLEGE. hall of Birmingham ; the great difference between the two being the dazzling whiteness and more costly material of the Philadelphian edifice. The grounds of the main building and its four con- tiguous halls cover forty-five acres. Stephen Girard, the founder, originally a poor French emi- grant, came to Philadelphia at ten years of age, without a penny or a friend, and, as a merchant and banker in the city of his adoption, ac- cumulated a fortune of upwards of six millions of dollars, the greater portion of which he be- queathed to the college which bears his name. The college and grounds cost two millions of dollars, or 400,000. sterling, and their endowment about as much more. The institution is for the support and education of orphan boys, such as Girard him- self was when he first came to Philadelphia. The peculiarity of the institution is that no religious doctrine whatever is permitted to be taught within its walls. The Bible, without comment, is read night and morning to the boys ; but such a dislike had the founder to priests and clergymen of all denominations that no minister of religion is per- mitted even to enter within the walls of the college. The question is put to all visitors whether they are clergymen; and, if the reply be in the affir- THE GIRARD COLLEGE. 121 mative, they are refused admittance. Upon these, as well as upon the personal grounds of their own disinheritance, the will was contested by the numerous relations of Girard. The poor boy had no relations and no friends when he came to Philadelphia, but France produced a whole colony of relatives before and after his death. But in all countries rich men have, more cousins than they are aware of. After a long course of litigation the sanity of the testator, as well as the morality of the will, was established by the Courts, and upwards of three hundred boys are now receiving within the walls of the college a plain education to fit them for the duties of life. In the entrance-hall is a fine marble statue of Stephen Girard, surmounting a sarcophagus con- taining his remains for it was another command in his will that he should not be buried in con- secrated ground. In an upper chamber of the building are preserved his household furniture, his day-books and ledgers, his china, his pictures, and his wearing apparel. Among the latter is a pair of blue velvet knee-breeches which he wore at the time of his death very threadbare and shabby and adorned with several patches far more substan- tial than the garment whose deficiencies they attempted to hide. 122 CHAPTER XL WASHINGTON. Washington, Jan. 11, 1858. WASHINGTON, the official and political capital of the United States, is beautifully situated on the Poto- mac, a wide but not deep river, at a distance of upwards of 250 miles from the ocean. It is 226 miles from New York, 136 from Philadelphia, and 40 from Baltimore; and contains a population of upwards of 60,000 souls, of whom 8,000 are free blacks, and 2,000 slaves. The city is laid out into wide streets and avenues wider than Portland Place in London, or Sackville Street in Dublin. The avenues, as the principal thoroughfares are called, radiate from the Capitol, or Palace of the Legislature, as their centre; and are named after the thirteen original States of the Federation. Pennsylvania Avenue, leading direct from the Capi- tol to the White House, or mansion of the President, is about a mile in length, and of a noble width, but contains few buildings of a magnitude commensu- WASHINGTON. 123 rate with its own proportions. The houses on each side are for the most part of third-rate size and construction, and, in consequence of the spacious- ness of the roadway, look even meaner and smaller than they are. Washington, with a somewhat unsavoury addi- tion, which it would offend polite ears to repeat, was .called by a late celebrated senator the " city of magnificent distances," and well justifies the title. On every side the distances stretch out in apparently interminable lines, 'suggesting to the stranger who Walks through the city at night, when the gas lamps show their fairy radiance at long intervals, a population of at least a million of souls. But at daylight the illusion vanishes. The marks of good intention and noble design are eA r eryvvhere apparent; but those of fulfilment are nowhere to be found. All is inchoate, straggling, confused, heterogeneous, and incomplete. In the same street are to be found a splendid marble edifice of a magnitude such as would make it the orna- ment of any capital in the world; while opposite and on each side of it are low brick houses, crazy wooden sheds, and filthy pigsties, suggestive of the Milesian element in the population. Such a street is F Street, in which the Patent Office is situated, 124 STREET NOMENCLATURE. and such streets are H and I Streets, where many of the Diplomatic Corps and the fashion of Washington have taken up their residence. And here it may be mentioned that the founders of the city seem to have exhausted their inventive ingenuity when they named the principal streets after the States of the Union. Having taxed their imagination to this extent, or having no imagination at all, they resorted to the letters of the alphabet as a mode of nomenclature. When they had exhausted these an easy matter in a growing city they brought arithmetic to the rescue of their poverty, as was done in New York, Philadelphia, and other cities. Thus, in receiving cards and returning visits, the stranger may not un- frequently find that he has been called upon by Mr. Jones, of No. 99, Ninety-ninth Street ; or must visit Mr. Brown, at No. 3, Third Street ; or Mr. Smith, at No. 22, Twenty-second Street. The system has its advantages, no doubt, but is somewhat stiff and mathematical, and ignores a very cheap but very effective mode of rendering honour to the great men of the country, living or dead the giving of their names to the public thoroughfares. If Washington gave his name to the city, why should not the names of other great Americans be given to its streets ? Besides its noble Capitol, with its towering dome, PUBLIC BUILDINGS IN WASHINGTON. 125 Washington possesses many elegant public build- ings, such as the White House, or Executive Mansion ; the Treasury Buildings, the Patent Office, and the Post Office. Were these edifices, which are mostly of white marble, concentrated, as they might and ought to have been, in the great artery of Pennsylvania Avenue, instead of being scattered over .various portions of the city, Washington might have possessed at least one street to rival or surpass the Rue de Rivoli in Paris. But the opportunity has been lost, and can never again recur. Still, it is impossible not to believe that Washington will yet become one of the most splendid cities on this continent. It has all the elements of beauty as well as of greatness, both in itself and its imme- diate environs; and when it becomes as populous as New York, which it is likely to be in less than fifty years, unless the seat of government be trans- ferred in the interval to some such place as St. Lewis, nearer to the centre of the Republic, the inferior buildings that line its spacious streets will disappear, and its " magnificent distances " will be adorned with an architecture worthy of the capital of fifty, perhaps of a hundred, young and vigorous Republics. The site of Washington was chosen by George 126 THE CAPITOL. Washington himself, who laid the corner-stone of the Capitol on the 18th of September, 1793. At that time, and for some years afterwards, the sittings of the Legislature were held in Inde- pendence Hall, Philadelphia. The city stands in the district of Columbia, in territory ceded for the purpose by the Commonwealth of Virginia and Maryland, and covers an area of sixty square miles. Originally its measure was one hundred square miles; but, in 1846, forty square miles were restored to the Commonwealth. The design as well as the location of the city is due to the genius of Washington, under whose directions the plans were executed by Major L'Enfant. The limits extend from north-west to south-east about four miles and a half, and from east to south-west about two miles and a half. The circumference of the city is fourteen miles, and the aggregate length of the streets is computed at 199 miles, and of the avenues sixty-five miles. The average width of the principal thoroughfares is from seventy to one hundred and ten feet. The original Capitol was so much damaged by the British invading force in the unfortunate war of 1814, that in the following year it was found necessary to reconstruct it. In 1828 it was entirely THE CAPITOL. 127 repaired; and in 1851, being found insufficient for the increasing business of the nation, it was deter- mined to add two wings to it, which are at the present tune in process of construction, together with a new and lofty dome of iron, from the plans and under the superintendence of Captain Meigs, the architect. The Capitol contains the halls, or chambers, of the Senate, and the House of Representatives. The former numbers 64, and the latter about 250 members. It also contains the hall of the Supreme Court, where nine Judges, robed, but not bewigged and the only function- aries, except those of the Army and Navy, who wear an official costume sit to administer justice, and to control and regulate the whole action of the Government, in a manner quite unknown to the Con- stitution of Great Britain. The Capitol is built of white marble, and gleams in the sunshine of this beautiful climate in a manner trying to the eyes of an Englishman accustomed to the murky sombreness of the public monuments of London. The White .House, or President's mansion, is of freestone, painted white in imitation of marble. It is a plain but elegant building, befitting the un- pretending dignity of the popular chief magistrate of a country where government is minimized, and 128 THE WHITE HOUSE. where the trappings and paraphernalia of state and office are unknown or uncongenial. Here the President a man who possesses, during his term of office, a far greater amount of power and patron- age than the Sovereign of any State in Europe, except the Emperors of France, Russia, and Austria transacts, without any unnecessary forms, and with no formality or ceremony at all, the business of his great and growing dominion. Here he receives, at stated days and [periods, ladies or gentlemen who choose to call upon him, either for business or plea- sure, or from mere curiosity. Here he shakes hands with the courtly and urbane Ambassadors of Euro- pean Powers, or with the veriest "Rowdies" from New York, or "Plug-uglies" from Baltimore, who either have, or fancy they have, business with him and that, too, without the necessity of a personal introduction. There is no man in the United States who has such ["a quantity of hand-shaking to get through as the President. Throughout the whole country everybody shakes hands with everybody else, though the ladies are far more chary of the privilege than the ruder sex. If the gentlemen would but shake]. hands less, and the ladies would shake hands a little more, America would be per- fectly delightful to the man of many friends and INTERVIEW WITH THE PRESIDENT. 129 acquaintances. Perhaps the President, if not a happier, would be a better satisfied Chief Magistrate. Washington has no trade or commerce of its own, and is deserted for nearly half the year. It there- fore presents a greater number of the characteristics of a fashionable watering-place than of a capital city. But, as the country increases in wealth and population, Washington will increase with it, and will gradually lose the provincial appearance which it now presents, and assume the completeness to which its position as the seat of the Legislature and of all the departments of Government entitle it. Never was there a place in which office-hunters and place-seekers more assiduously congregate. The ante-chambers of the President are daily thronged with solicitants with men who think they helped to make the President, and who are consequently of opinion that the President should help to make them. I thought, when presented to Mr. Buchanan, that he seemed relieved to find that I was an Englishman, and had nothing to ask him for no little place for self, or cousin, or friend, or son, for which to beg his all-powerful patronage. " Gentlemen," he said, when the crowd was ushered pell-mell into his presence, without the intervention of any Stick (Gold or Silver) in Waiting, " I must take you by VOL. i. K 130 NEW YEAE'S DAY AT WASHINGTON. the miller's rule first come first served. Have the goodness to state your business as shortly as pos- sible, as I have much to do and little time to do it in." And so the crowd passed up, each man shaking hands, with the Chief Magistrate, and receiving a polite, and in many instances a cordial, reception. Whether they received anything else, at that or at any future time, or whether they still linger on, feeding upon hopes deferred, which make the heart sick, is best known to themselves ; but I saw enough to convince me that it is not an easy thing to be a popular President. I passed New Year's Day at Washington, and such a day I never passed before, or wish to pass again. With two Generals and a Colonel one of the Generals a Member of Congress for the City of New York, and the other an ex-member, and the whole three excellent, amiable, and accomplished gentlemen and having nothing military about them but their titles I was engaged from daylight till ten o'clock at night, in a constant whirl and chase of visiting and card-leaving. Engaging a hack carriage for the day for some exorbitant sum five if not ten tunes the usual charge we sallied forth, each armed with at least a couple of hundred cards, and drove to leave them at the places where eti- NEW YEAR'S DAY AT WASHINGTON. 131 quette and custom demanded. Let me attempt to give the list. First, there was the President upon whom and his fair niece everybody in Washington made it his or her business to call from the Ambas- sadors of Foreign Powers down to the book-keepers and clerks at the hotels, and the very rowdies of the streets. Next there were the Foreign Ministers, whose ladies remained at home for the especial pur- pose ; then came the married members of the Government, and the Members of Congress all of whom expected to receive the homage and the good wishes of their friends on New Year's Day ; and, lastly, every married lady in Washington with whom one had ever exchanged a word, or made an obeisance to. At nearly all of these places with the sole exception of the President's House the visitor was expected to partake of refreshments, or to pretend to do so. But my companions being old stagers at the business, reserved themselves for the best places ; and only on three occasions on that memorable day did our eating or drinking amount to more than the veriest and most barefaced sham. Washington was one scene of hurry-skurry from morning to night, and the penance done by the fair ladies in receiving such miscellaneous crowds must have been sorely trying to their physical if K 2 132 NEW YEAE'S DAY AT WASHINGTON. not to their mental comfort. But they bore it with good humour ; and if I had not had other reasons to carry away a vivid recollection of the beauty, grace, elegance, and unaffected amiability of the ladies of America, the experiences of that day of toil would have been more than sufficient to jus- tify such a remembrance in the case of the ladies of Washington. 133 CHAPTER XII. INTERVIEW OF INDIANS WITH THEIR "GREAT FATHER." Washington, Jan. 14, 1858. I WAS present a few days ago at a great ceremonial interview between the President of the United States and delegations from three tribes of Indians the Poncas, the Pawnees, and the Pottowattamies. Each delegation was totally unconnected with the other, and the Pawnees and Poncas were ancient and hereditary foes ; but being in the presence of their Great Father," as they termed the President, they looked upon each other with as much polite unconcern as the same number of civilised " swells," not formally introduced, might have displayed at a fashionable assembly in London or Paris. They did not appear to think of each other, but of their " Great Father," the splendour of his mansion, and the business which had brought some of them two thousand miles from their wilderness to the head- quarters of American civilization. The interview was highly picturesque; and, although in some 134 INDIANS AND THEIR "GREAT FATHER." respects it might seem to the careless observer to partake of the ludicrous, its predominant character was that of pathos, if not of solemnity. On one side was Civilization, represented by the venerable and urbane President, " with his head as white as snow," and surrounded by his secretaries and chiefs of departments, by the beauty and fashion of Wash- ington, by senators and members of the House of Representatives, and by the Ministers of Foreign Powers. On the other side was Barbarism, repre- sented by the hostile tribes, in their wild and striking costume their red and blue blankets wrapped closely around them ; their long, straight black locks stuck full of eagle plumes, bound together by uncouth head-gear of all shapes and colours and modes of manufacture; their ears laden and overladen with ponderous rings; their necks adorned with neck- laces of bears' claws, artistically wrought together ; their breasts and shoulders with the scalps which they had taken from their enemies ; their hands grasping the spear, the tomahawk, and the war- club; and their faces, and sometimes their hair, daubed over with masses of red, blue, green, and yellow paint, disposed in fantastic forms and patterns in accordance with the rules of the only heraldry for such it is to which they are accustomed, and INDIANS AT WASHINGTON. 135 as much subject to law and ordinance of hereditary descent as the heraldry of the griffins, boars' heads, lions rampant and couchant, bloody hands, and other insignia of the Heralds' Colleges of Europe. The interview took place by appointment in the great or east room of the Presidential mansion. By eleven o'clock a considerable number of spectators had assembled, and at half-past eleven the Indians made their appearance, each delegation being accom- panied by its interpreter. The Pawnees, sixteen in number, were first in the order of entrance a fine body of men, some of them naked to the waist, and some wearing buffalo robes or blankets, and all of them adorned with the full paraphernalia of paint and feathers which the red men like to display on great and solemn occasions. They were preceded by a little white lady of twelve or thirteen years of age, the daughter of an American gentleman, who had charge of the delegation on behalf of the Government. The Indians had adopted this little girl as the daughter of their tribe. A sort of fille du regiment, she seemed quite proud of her position as the pet of the savages, and accompanied them as part of the show in all their public appearances. Many remarks were made by the white spectators on the theatrical nature or bad taste of this display, 136 INDIANS AT WASHINGTON. not on the part of the Indians, but on that of the living parents of this child. Had she been a found- ling of the forest, the case would have had its noble and touching aspects ; but at her age, with a living father able to take care of her, the propriety of this companionship was held to be more than question- able. Next to the Pawnees followed the Poncas, six in number, similarly accoutred and bedizened fine, stalwart, but melancholy men, with a dignity impressed on their features and gleaming from their eyes, which even the grotesque eccentricities of red and blue paint were unable to impair. These, also, were accompanied by an interpreter a border trader of European blood who had picked up their language in a long career of commercial intercourse, perhaps in the exchange of fire-water for the spoils of the chase, or in other bargains as little to the advantage of the simple red men. Last of all came the Potto- wattamies, nine in number, dressed in shabby Euro- pean costume. This tribe claims to be wholly or half civilized ; but they seem to have received no- thing from civilization but its vices and defects, and to have lost the manly bearing, the stoical dignity, and the serene self-possession, as well as the costume and habits of other Indian tribes. They afforded a very marked contrast to the Pawnees and Poncas. INDIANS AT WASHINGTON. 137 They had an air of cunning, servility, and meanness in every lineament of their countenances and motion of their bodies, as well defined and unmistakeable as the seedy shabbiness and awkwardness of their costume. A little red and blue paint would have added a positive grace to their sallow, baboon-like faces, would have made them look real instead of unreal, and shown them to be the savages which they actually were. These poor Pottowattamies were somewhat out of favour. They had a special grievance and wrong to detail to the President ; but, having chosen to come to Washington without the permission of the official agent charged with the administration of Indian affairs, they were there at their own cost and risk. Not so the Pawnees and Poncas, who had been specially invited by the proper authorities, and whose expenses were paid by the Government from the day they had left their own hunting-grounds, and would be paid back to their own homes in the same way, after they had seen all the sights and partaken of all the gaieties of the capital. At twelve o'clock precisely the President entered the east room and took his position in the centre of a square, of which the Indians formed three sides and the spectators the fourth. The Indians, who till this 138 INDIANS AT WASHINGTON. time had been silent and wondering spectators of the rich carpet, the curtained windows, and gilded cornices of the reception-room no doubt the most magnificent specimens of the white man's wealth, power, and ingenuity, which their eyes had till that moment beheld turned their looks to the President, but made no motion or gesture, and uttered no sound, expressive either of their curiosity, or the respect which they evidently felt. The President's head leans slightly on his shoulder, and this little defect, added to his kindliness of expression and his venerable white hair, gives him the appearance of still greater benignity, and as if he were bending his head purposely to listen to the complaints, the requests, or the felicitations of those who have occasion to address him. The four chiefs of the Pawnees and the twelve men of the tribe were severally introduced. The President cordially shook hands with them, looking all the time as if he really felt that paternal interest in their character which his position commanded, but which he was not able to express to them in their own language. There was one Indian of this tribe a short but well-formed man, about fifty years of age, and deeply pitted with the small-pox, who wore human scalps after the fashion of epaulets, besides INDIANS AT WASHINGTON. 139 a whole breastplate of such ghastly adornments, and held in his hand a war-club thickly studded with brass nails, who was introduced by the in- terpreter as the bravest of his people the " plus brave des braves," the Marshal Ney of his race who had taken more scalps than any living Indian. Upon this individual the President seemed to look with more than common interest. Indeed the eyes of all present were directed towards this redoubtable chief; but there was nothing forbidding or ferocious in his appearance. His face and bearing expressed stoical endurance and resolute self-reliance, but neither cruelty nor cunning. The Poncas and their chief went through the same ceremony, and met the same reception; and even the unbidden Potto- wattamies were welcomed by their " Great Father " as kindly as if they had been regularly invited to his presence, Mr. Buchanan all the while wearing that good-humoured smile which seems natural to him. It was obvious that he was quite as much interested in his red children as they were in their white father, a feeling that none could help sharing who was a witness of the scene. The presentations over, the President made a short speech, welcoming the Indians to Washington, expressing his readiness to hear whatever they 140 INDIAN SPEECHES. might have to say, and to redress any real griev- ances of which they might have to complain, if they came within the scope of the Government to redress, and were not solely due to their own faults and mismanagement. This being three times translated by the three several interpreters for no one of the tribes understood the language of the other each tribe signified its approval : the Poncas by an emphatic guttural sound, not unlike the peculiar "Oich! oich!" of the Highlanders of Scotland; the Pawnees by the exclamation of " Lowar ! " and the Pottowattamies by a short " Ugh ! ugh ! " And now began the speech-making in reply to the President's invitation. The four chiefs of the Pawnees, one chief of the Poncas, and one of the Pottowattamies, expressed in succession the object of their journey to Washington. The Pawnees had come to ratify a treaty already made with the Government, to see their " Great Father," to learn from him how to grow rich like white men, and no longer to be " poor." The Poncas had come to make a treaty for the sale of their lands in Nebraska, to look with their own eyes upon their " Great Father," whom they judged by the splendour around him to be rich, and to be visibly favoured by the " Great Spirit." The Pottowattamies had come INDIAN SPEECHES. 141 unbidden to request that an allowance, paid to them semi-annually by treaty, should be paid annually, to save trouble. All the spokesmen dwelt upon their poverty and wretchedness. Some of them held up their arms and exposed their bosoms, to show that they were naked. They wanted to be taught how to be rich ; to earn, like the white man, the favour of the Great Spirit, and no longer to be poor. Poverty extreme poverty was the key-note of their lamen- tations, the mournful burden of their whole song. " We are," said one of them, looking right into the eye of the President, and approaching so near that his breath must have felt warm on Mr. Buchanan's cheek as he spoke, " the children of the Great Spirit as much as you are. We have travelled a long distance to see you. At first we travelled slowly. At every place we stopped we expected to find you. We inquired of the people, and they told us you were a long way off. We have found you at last, and we are glad. We see by these things " (pointing to the gilded walls, to the carpets, and the curtains) " that you are rich. We were rich in the days that are past. We were once the favourites of the Great Spirit. The very ground on which we now stand" (and the orator, for such he was, stamped significantly with his feet upon the carpet as he 142 INDIANS AT WASHINGTON. spoke) " once belonged to our fathers. Now we are p 00r we are very poor. We have nothing to shelter us from the cold. We are driven from our possessions ; and we are hungry. We have come to you to help us. The Great Spirit, through the mouth of the ' Great Father,' will speak to us, and tell us what we are to do. Let us be rich, like the white men, and be poor no longer." Such was their melancholy and invariable suppli- cation. At every repetition of the word " poor " when translated in the hardest, coldest, boldest manner by the interpreters there was a laugh among a portion of the white spectators, who should have known better a laugh that to me seemed grievously out of place, and which somewhat per- plexed the poor Indians, as- was evident by the surprise expressed upon their faces. To them their poverty was no laughing matter. They had come to Washington purposely to speak of it. In their simplicity of heart, they believed that the President had it in his power to remove it, and they had lost faith in their own customs, manners, and modes of life, to keep them on a level with the white men ; and why should they be laughed at ? The President gave them excellent advice. He told them that they always would be poor as long as A TEEATY OF PEACE. 143 they subsisted by the chase ; that the way to be wealthy was to imitate the industry of the white men to plough the laud, to learn the arts of the blacksmith, the carpenter, the builder, and the miller ; and, above all things, to cease their con- stant wars upon each other. " I learn," he added, te that the Pawnees and Poncas now present are deadly enemies. It is my wish, and that of the Great Spirit who implanted it in my breast, that they should be enemies no more ; that, in my pre- sence, they should shake hands in token of peace and friendship." This was explained to them by the interpreters. The enemies made no sign of assent or dissent, beyond the usual guttural expres- sion of their satisfaction. " I wish," said the Presi- dent, "to join your hands together, and that the peace between you should be perpetual." The chiefs of the hostile tribes advanced, and shook hands, first with the President, and then with each other. One man only gave the left hand to his former enemy ; but this was explained by the interpreter, who stated that the right hand was withheld by the Pawnee because it had slain the brother of the Ponca ; but that the new friendship between the two would be equally as sacred as if the right hand had affirmed it. 144 THE INDIANS IN AMERICA. " Will they keep the peace ? " inquired a gentle- man of the President. " I firmly believe they will," replied Mr. Buchanan. " A peace ratified in the presence of the ( Great Father' is more than usually sacred." And in this opinion he was corroborated by each of the three interpreters. And so ended the ceremony. I have seen much of the Indians during my stay in Washington seen them at the theatre, looking intently and inquiringly at the pirouettes of Signora Teresa Rolla, a cele- brated danseuse, now here seen them in the streets and thoroughfares looking vacantly around them, and seen them at the Arsenal, receiving from the hands of General Floyd, the Secretary at War, the riles and the muskets which are given to them as presents by the Government before they return to the wilderness. On each occasion I have been much impressed with the native dignity and intelligence of these poor people. But their doom is fixed. Between them and the whites there is no possible fraternization. The white men who act as the pioneers of civilization, and push their way into the far wilderness, are ruder, rougher, and more ferocious than the Indians. Between them there is constant animosity ; and the red men, being the THE INDIANS IN AMERICA. 145 weaker of the two, stand no chance with their white assailants, who shoot them ruthlessly down for small offences, punish slight robbery with death, and bring whisky and rum to the service of destruction when readier means are found to be unnattainable. The red men are fast disappearing: only 314,622 of them, little more than half the number of the popu- lation of Philadelphia, remain in the territories of the United States ; and these are rapidly diminish- ing from smallpox, internecine war, and the rifles and the whisky-bottles of the whites : " Slowly and sadly they climb the western mountains, And read their doom in the departing sun." In Mexico and in South America they still thrive, or increase, and amalgamate and intermarry with the European races ; but in the United States and Canada, where the Anglo-Saxon race predominates, they will in a few years disappear altogether from the land which was once their own, and leave no trace behind them but the names of a few rivers and mountains, and here and there of a State that takes an Indian appellation in default of an Anglo- Saxon one such as Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Their fate is inevitable, but is none the less sad. The ancient Britons sur- vive in their progeny ; but the aborigines of North VOL. I. L 146 A PONCA HEKO. America are dying out, and their blood will form no portion of that great Republic which is so rapidly rising to overshadow the world. During the stay of the Indians at Washington, public notification was made by bills and placards, and privately to the keepers of the hotels and spirit- shops, that no intoxicating liquors should be served to them; and that gentlemen would refrain from treating them. The notification was doubtless very necessary. In company with Mr. Charles Lanman of Georgetown, I paid the Poncas and the Pawnees a visit at their hotels. I was received on both occasions with much courtesy; the chiefs present- ing their hands in American fashion, and shaking mine very heartily. They seemed to pass their time in smoking, playing cards, or mending their leggings and mocassins. Wa-ga-suppe, or the Whip, the Ponca chief, gave us some particulars of his life, which were translated to us by the inter- preter. He said he was born on Middle River, in the territory of Nebraska, and was about fifty-six years of age. " The first creature he killed, when a mere child, was a ground squirrel, and he had killed, since that time, at least ten thousand buffaloes. He always aimed at the heart; frequently one arrow A PONCA HERO. 147 caused death, but he had often sent ten arrows into a buffalo without killing him. He had some- times sent an arrow right through a buffalo's neck. He once killed a perfectly white buffalo, and never saw but this one. He always hunted these animals on horseback. Once he and another man went after the same animal, because it was large and fat. He was ahead, but his companion shot and wounded the animal; he was angry, and in his desperation, took out his knife, and while on the run seized the animal's horns and cut its throat. On another occasion he had a horse killed under him by an angry bull, the body of the horse having been ripped open by one horn, while the other went through his own leg. At another time, when pursuing a buffalo towards a deep river, where the bank was twenty feet high and abrupt, the buffalo made a sudden turn, and at the very instant that he shot an arrow which killed it the horse which he rode, alarmed by the buffalo's roar, leaped into the river, and was drowned. He himself was not injured." But his exploits as a hunter were surpassed by his deeds as a horse thief. The people whom he chiefly robbed of their horses were Pawnees and Comanches. "He had travelled a thousand miles L 2 148 A PONCA HEKO. upon one of these expeditions, been gone a hundred and twenty days, and captured or stolen six hundred horses. He never sold a horse, but always made it a point to give them to the poor, the old, and the feeble of his tribe. It was his cunning in stealing horses, and his liberality in giving them away, that caused him to be elected chief. He and his party once travelled five hun- dred miles simply for the purpose of stealing a spotted horse of which he had heard, and he got the prize. He had had five wives : one died, he aban- doned three for their infidelity, and one he still che- rished. He had been the father of eleven children. The prairie was his home. The summer lodges of his tribe are made of buffalo skins, those which they inhabit in the winter are made of turf. He had never been sick a day. He had never been afraid to risk his life, but always disliked to kill human beings. He had never killed but one man, and the circumstances were these. He had been four days without food on a horse-stealing expedition when he came to a deserted Pawnee village. He was disgusted, and hunger filled him with hate and revenge. At that moment, he discovered a solitary Pawnee approaching the village. He shot him down, and after scalping him and break- A PAWNEE CHIEF. 149 ing his neck, out of pure wickedness, lie left him thus exposed, by way of letting the Pawnees know, on their return, that he had been there." On questioning him about his ideas of a future state, he said that he expected to go, after death, to the white man's heaven. " There was but one heaven for all men." The Pawnee chief, whom we visited at another part of the city, said his name was Ne-sharo-lad-a-lioo, or the Big Chief. " He did not know where he was born, but it was somewhere in the territory of Kansas. He was about sixty years old. He had never been much of a hunter his people called him too lazy and fat for a huntsman. He claimed to be very brave, however, and had devoted his whole life to horse-stealing ; had been twelve days without food, and the illness which followed that abstinence was very severe; he was delirious with hunger, and that was the only time he had known what it was to be sick. He had been the husband of four women, and the best of them all was one he had stolen. He had taken four scalps during his life. He once entered a Mexican encampment at night when all were asleep ; and 'just for the fun of it,' walked entirely through, and carried off thirty horses." When asked what he would have done if he had been 150 A PAWNEE CHIEF. discovered, he said " he would have put an arrow into every eye that opened." One of the scalps he had taken belonged to a Ponca, and the only brother of the man he had killed was one of those who stepped up and shook hands with him in the presence of the President. In speaking of his people, this man said that they had once been notorious for their cruelty. In illustration of this, he said, " When we took a handsome girl as prisoner, we kept her for a few weeks, and treated her well ; but after a certain time we tied her to a stake, had a great feast and much dancing, and then burnt her to death. Some of us cut off pieces of her flesh, and the boys of the tribe shot into her body little arrows made of prairie grass. But this was long ago, and it was very bad. Our people thought it would please the Great Spirit, but we are wiser now." The truth was, they were frightened out of this horrible practice, by being told that the smallpox by which they had once been scourged was sent by the Great Spirit, as a punishment for such wickedness. These people hardly know the use of a canoe, but journey exclusively on horseback. This man told us he had known several persons who had been scalped and yet survived. Such men, however, were always considered disgraced, INDIANS IN AMEKICA. 151 and they had a tradition that all such men congre- gated in some distant country and lived in caves. Like the Comanches and Blackfeet Indians, the Paw- nees have but few friends among the prairie tribes. The following official statement the latest pub- lished by the United States Government gives the names of all the Indian tribes left within the limits of the Union, their place of location, and their numbers, as estimated by the Indian agents and other officials: Name of Tribe. No. of Souls. Place of Residence. Apaches 7,000 New Mexico Territory Apaches Texas 320 3 360 800 do 3,000 Arkansas & Platte rivers Anadahkoes, Caddoes, & lonies Blackfeet 500 7 500 Texas. 17,530 West of Arkansas Cherokees 2,200 N Carolina Tennessee 16 000 Georgia, and Alabama. Choctaws 1 000 4 787 West of Arkansas Creeks . 25,000 do Creeks 100 Alabama Chippewas of Lake Superior j Chippewas of Lake Superior > Chippewas of Lake Superior ) Chippewas of the Mississippi ... Chippewas and Ottawas Chippewas of Saginaw 4,940 2,206 5,152 1,340 f Michigan. 1 Wisconsin. ( Minnesota Teritory. do. Michigan. do. Chippewas of Swan creek, &c. Chippewas of Swau creek, &c. Cayugas 138 33 143 do. Kansas Territory. New York Catawbas 200 North and South Caro- lina. 152 INDIANS IN AMERICA. Name of Tribe. No. of Souls. Place of Residence. 44 Crows 3,360 Upper Missouri river. Crees 800 do Caddoes Texas. 20 000 do 3 600 2 800 California tribes 33,539 California Delawares 902 Kansas Territory 750 Texas 433 Kansas Territory Kickapoos 344 do. Kickapoos Texas border Kioways Texas. 2 800 1 375 Keechies, Wacoes, and Towa- carros 300 Texas. Kaskaskias Kansas Territory Liipans 560 Texas. 207 Miamies 353 Indiana Mandans 250 Upper Missouri river Minatares 2,500 do. Menomonees 1,930 Wisconsin. Nebraska Territory Kansas Territory Kuscaleros, or Apaches Navajoes 400 7 500 Texas. New Mexico Territory Oneidas 249 New York. 978 470 New York. Ottawas .... Michigan. Ottawas 249 Kansas Territory. Omahas 800 Nebraska Territory. Ottoes and Missourias 600 do. O sages 4 098 West of Arkansas Oregon Territory tribes Poncas 13,000 700 Oregon Territory. Nebraska Territory. Pottawatomies 236 Michigan. Pottawatomies of Huron Pottawatomies 45 3 440 do. Kansas Territory. Pawnees 4,000 Nebraska Territory. Piankeshaws, Weas, Peorias, and Kaskaskias...., 220 Kansas Territory. INDIANS IN AMERICA. 153 Name of Tribe. No. of Souls. Place of Residence. 10,000 New Mexico Territory 314 West of Arkansas Stockbridges .. 13 Kansas Territory Stockbridges 240 Wisconsin Sioux of the Mississippi 6,383 15 440 Minnesota Territory. Sioux of the Plains 5 600 Platte & Arkansas rivers St. Regis Indians 450 New York Senecas 2,557 do. Senecas, (Snndusky) 180 West of Arkansas. Senecas and Shawnees, (Lewis- town) ... 271 do Shawnees .... 851 Kansas Territory Sacs and Foxes of Mississippi... Sacs and Foxes of Missouri 1,626 180 2 500 do. do. West of Arkansas Seminoles .. 500 Florida Tuscaroras 280 New York. Towaccaros Texas. Tonkawas 400 do. Utah Territory tribes 12,000 Utah Territory. Utahs ... 2,500 New Mexico Territory Wacoes . Texas Wichitas 950 do. Weas Kansas Territory. Winnebagoes 2,546 Minnesota Territory. 208 Kansas Territory Wyandots . 554 do. Washington Territory tribes ... Wandering Indians of Coman- ches, Cheyenne, and other tribes 14,000 17,000 Washington Territory. New Mexico Territory. Total number 314,622 154 CHAPTER XIII. AMERICANISMS AND AMERICAN SLANG. EVERY country has its own slang or " argot," though it is not every language that has a word to express this particular form of the ultra-vulgar vernacular. American slang is more interesting to an educated Englishman than the slang of France, Germany, or any other country. The slang of ancient Greece and Rome, with the exception of a very few words imperfectly understood, is lost to the moderns, or it might perhaps interest us as greatly as the classical speech which has come down to us, for the new light it might throw upon the manners, characteristics, and domestic life of the ancient peoples. But as this is no longer a possible subject of study for the learned or unlearned, and as slang at home is unhappily too familiar to be considered of any impor- tance, the peculiar idioms, perversions, and revivals of words, in common use amongst our American cousins, striking us by their novelty, acquire by that means a certain sort of dignity, and become valuable to the student both of history and literature. They AMERICANISMS OF SPEECH. 155 show the up-springings and germinations of lan- guage. They prove how much points of difference in national character, and even climate and acci- dental circumstances of politics or trade, can influ- ence and change the well-established words of the dictionary ; how a noun, verb, or adjective, without being in the least degree changed in its pronuncia tion, can insensibly glide into a meaning totally different from that with which it was originally associated ; and how new words are coined, and are always coinable, by and under new circumstances. In these respects, the study even of " slang " is profitable, whether the student be a philosopher in the largest sense of the word, or merely a philolo- gist. Etymology is a fiery and often unmanageable hobby-horse to ride, but those who ride it wisely may do good service. During my residence in America I noted down from day to day, not only the single words and forms of expression, but the phrases used both by educated and uneducated men with whom I held conversation, and also the idioms in books and newspapers which grated harshly or sounded strangely to my English ears. To these J added words which, if not ungraceful and vulgar in themselves, had a flavour of novelty and foreignness. A few of these words have been 156 AMERICANISMS OF SPEECH. introduced from America into England, and have a positive value for expressing tersely the com- plicated ideas which, without their aid, could not have been forcibly rendered in any other way. Others, again, derived from Dutch, German, or Spanish roots, although they have no individual merit to recommend them to the estimation of the English scholar, stand as simple Americanisms, with such justification as geography can afford them. And how much geographical distances, even small, can influence and change a noble language, we may see by the study of the varieties of English spoken in such slightly divergent localities as London, Corn- wall, Newcastle, Wales, Ireland, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen. The " Great West " of the United States the home of the hardiest and roughest population, and which contains the largest admixture of the foreign races of Europe is the birth-place of the greatest number of new words. But even here the new words are more commonly revivals of local and provincial Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian words, still in use in the rural districts of England, although they have dropped out of polite life and literature, than " annexations " from an entirely foreign source. When we see in our classical England itself where, AMERICANISMS OF SPEECH. 157 if anywhere, the best and purest English ought to be spoken the growth and acceptance of such a word as " starvation," and of another that has not an equal antiquity to recommend it the odious but fashionable word in Parliament and newspapers, " to f ventilate' a subject," we cannot be surprised that in the New World the old language should partake of the colours of the clime, and undergo transformations more or less decided. "Humbug" has become a good word by virtue of time and possession ; and for the same reason, "to Barnumize" may finally become naturalized on both sides of the Atlantic, and express the action of him who would resort to the ne plus ultra of all possible humbug for the filling of his pockets at the expense of the public. Valuable is any one word that can be made to express an idea so complicated. First of all, I cite a few words that have lost in America their original English meaning. To exercise, means to agitate, vex, or trouble. Thus it is said of a senator in Congress, that he is exercised by the great question he is about to bring forward, or that Mr. was much exercised by an attack upon him in a newspaper. Bright means " clever." A clever man, or a man of talent, would in America be called a "bright" man. 158 AMEEICANISMS OF SPEECH. Clever means " amiable and courteous." A "clever " captain is one who is friendly, attentive, and polite to his passengers. Among the recommen- dations sometimes advertised in the Mississippi and Ohio steam-boats is that the captain and clerk are the "cleverest" on the line, and for this reason agreeable to the ladies. Amiable means " stupid." A member of the House of Representatives, and a most worthy man, was highly offended at hearing his friend called "amiable " by an Englishman. He thought the phrase implied a reproach, or a sneer, and declared that the word "amiable" was synonymous with what in English slang is called " spooney." " You may call a woman ' amiable,' " said he, " but not a man." TJiin-skinned, which in England signifies "over- sensitive," in America means " stingy and parsi- monious." Smart means " sharp." A smart man is' one who would do a dishonest act in business, if he could manage to keep on the safe side, and avoid the law. Among the pure Americanisms may be cited the following : To honeyfugle, to gloze, flatter, bamboozle, or "take in." AMEEICANISMS OF SPEECH. 159 Higli falutin, or high verlooten, signifies high- flown, exaggerated, and bombastic in speech or writing. To loaf, to idle, or dawdle. A loafer, a dawdler, or idler. Splurge, a display, an outburst of expenditure, such as to create a sensation among the bystanders or witnesses. To make a splurge, may be rendered by the common English vulgarism, " to cut a dash." To cave in, to give way, to collapse. To stump, to address public meetings in the open air, a phrase derived from the fact that popular orators in most circumstances often stand on stumps of trees, as the most available platforms. To stump a State, to go on a tour of political agitation through a State. Platform, the recognised principles and creed of a political party. This phrase is of English origin, and is to be found in the political tracts and in the sermons of the days of Cromwell. A plank of the platform, one principle out of the many agreed upon by a party. Buncombe, or Bunkum. A diffuse and angry ora- tor having made a somewhat irrational and very unnecessary speech in the House of Representatives 160 AMERICANISMS OF SPEECH. at Washington, where nobody thought it worth while to contradict him, was afterwards asked by a friend who met him in Pennsylvania Avenue why he had made such a display ? " I was not speaking to the House," he replied; "I was speaking to Buncombe" a county or district by the majority of whose votes he had been elected. Hence Bun- combe or Bunkum has become a phrase in America and to some extent in England also to express that [extra parliamentary oratory which appeals to the passions or prejudices of the outside people, or sections of the people, and not to the reason and sound sense of a deliberative assembly. To vamose, to decamp, or vanish. Pile, a fortune. To make a pile, to make a fortune. Swanger, a dandy, or " swell." A muss, a slight quarrel, or disturbance. A cuss, a curse ; applied to a person. A mean cuss, a cursedly mean person. Mung, sham, false, pretended. Mung news, a fabrication. Bender, a spree. To go on the lender, to go on the spree. To fix, to dress, to adorn, to trim. The phrase is applied either to the human figure, as when a lady AMERICANISMS. 161 says she will "fix herself," or to an article of attire, as when she says, her cap, her bonnet, or dress has been " fixed," or ornamented ; or to a dish for the table, as to " fix " a steak with onions a chicken with mushrooms, &c. Fixings, trimmings, adornments. Caucus, a preliminary political meeting, and gathering together of the party, to decide upon ulterior movements. To lobby, to use private influence for the passing of bills through the legislature. Grit, the real grit, the true grit. These words or phrases are used to signify a person of superior worth, solidity, and genuineness, as distinguished from another who is inferior, or merely " chaff.' The miller is evidently the parent of this expression. Declension. " I have been writing," said a lady, " several declensions to dinners and balls." The word is equivalent to refusal, but it seems to mean refusal for reasons assigned a declinature. Bogus, false, or sham; said to be derived from the name of a man notorious for issuing counterfeit notes. Hence "bogus" news, a "bogus" meeting, a "bogus" baby, a "bogus" senator, a "bogus" con- vention. To foot a bill, to sign or accept a bill. VOL. I. M 162 AMERICANISMS. Whole-souled, a very common phrase in Ame- rica to express a hearty, enthusiastic person. In " Lloyd's Railway Guide," the Bradshaw of Ame- rica, it is stated of one of the hotels in a principal city, that (t Colonel , the proprietor, is a whole- souled landlord." Fits. To " give a man fits " is an expression con- tinually used, and seems to mean, to assault, or give a man a disagreeable surprise, either by words or by blows, or by a public exposure. Jesse. To " give Jesse " or " particular Jesse " are phrases equivalent to the preceding. Sim. Hit him bim in the eye i.e., right in the eye. Realize Realizing. It is a favourite pulpit phrase to say that a person has a " realizing sense of the goodness of God." Depot, a railway station. Fizzle, a slight quarrel or controversy. A stampede, a rush, a multitudinous exit. Socdologer, a knock-down blow. There is a species of fish-hook of this name. To overslaugh, a word apparently derived from the German or old English, like onslaught, and signi- fying to strike over. Rocks, money a Californian phrase. To squirm, to wriggle like a worm. AMERICANISMS. 163 To tote, to carry. Tote the plunder, a slang phrase for "cany the luggage." To wilt, to wither. Wilted, withered. Go-a-headitive, progressive, "fast." A dough face; a man easily moved to change his opinion ; a person to be wrought upon and modelled to any particular shape, like a piece of dough. Boss, a master : "a boss barber," "a boss butcher," are common expressions. Shyster, a blackguard. Cracker, a biscuit. Nut anvil, a nut-cracker. In all great American cities there are, as there are in the cities of Europe, rude youths, who vent the exuberance of their animal spirits in acts of daring that too often savour of what might not unjustly be called blackguardism. But in America such per- sons are of more importance in the social scale than they are with us, for they have votes, if they have reached the age of twenty-one, and they have aggre- gate political influence in addition, if they happen to be members of the fire companies, or to be other- wise enrolled and enregimented. The ruffians of this sort have names that differ in different cities. M 2 164 AMERICANISMS. In New York there are " Bowery boys," " Spiggots," "High-binders," and "Rowdies." The last word has already reached England, and threatens to become naturalized. In Washington they have "S wipers;"* in Philadelphia " Dead Rabbits ; " and in Baltimore " Plug-uglies," " Rosebuds," f and " Blood-tubs." In the New England States, where the municipal government is generally far more settled, and where a volunteer fire service is not the rule, but the exception, these Ishmaels are not to be found, and the order and regularity approach to, or equal that of the streets of London, where a " Plug-ugly," a " Dead Rabbit," or a " Blood-tub," would stand no chance against the police. * " Last night, at about half past eleven o'clock, another of those murders which have been so frequent of late in Washington, by the hands of Rowdies, was committed on the corner of Ninth-street, and New York Avenue. Marcellus Stoops, a quiet young man, a messenger in the Treasury Department, while walking leisurely along in company with another young man, was shot with a pistol. He died a few minutes afterwards, and before Dr. Duhamel, who was sent for, could reach the spot. Eight or ten men of the fighting club here, called " Swipers," have been arrested, and it is stated that one of the leaders, called Johnson, shot the unfortunate young man. Washington has become the most lawless place in the world." New York Herald, April 4, 1858. f " ' Democrat of the old school ' informs us that the ' Rosebuds,' charged with Rowdyism at the last Baltimore election, and ac- quitted in the Circuit Court of Baltimore on the 4th inst., were good Buchanan democrats, and were acquitted by a Know Nothing jury, because the evidence plainly showed the police to be in the wrong." New York Herald, February 14, 1859. AMERICANISMS. 165 Among other Americanisms that strike the atten- tion of a stranger, though doubtless they would not be noticed by a native-born American of the highest culture and refinement, simply from the fact of the familiarity, are such mispronunciations as " ben " for "been," "air" for "are," and "was" for "were;'* " ant-g?/e~slavery" for " anti-slavery," " Eye-taly" for " Italy," " Eye-talian " for " Italian," " dye-plomatic" for "diplomatic," and invariably "ra?/self" for the more subdued mode in which we in the " old country" pronounce these two egotistical syllables. " Engine" is generally " en-gine," though " machine " retains the English pronunciation. Among the idiomatic and proverbial expressions that differ from those of the mother country are such as the following : "I reckon," which is the distinc- tive mark of the Southerners, as " I guess," is of the people of the New England States and of the North generally. " All aboard," or " All aboord," is the invariable cry of the conductors and officials of the railway stations or depots, when they wish the passengers to take their seats. This is not the only nautical phrase in general use among the Americans. "Where do you hail from?" is often asked; and it is not uncommon to be told that Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so has been " hauled up " with a fever. 166 AMERICANISMS. To be "tinder the weather," is to suffer from cold. To " give a man hell," is to beat him, bully him, or, as our prize-fighters would say, " punish " him. To make a man " smell hell," is a phrase with a similar meaning. I remember hearing, in the par- liament of one of the Southern States, an angry orator declare, that if the gentleman from say, Buncombe, (not the honourable member for Buncombe, as with us,) dared to repeat out o the house what he had said in the house, he would make him " smell hell." A common expression in the Southern States to denote an ambuscade is that " there is a nigger in the fence." In the Northern States the same mean- ing is conveyed by the phrase, possibly English in its origin, " There's a cat in the meal tub." A man of great importance in his own estimation, or that of the world, is called a u big bug." Thus I Street in Washington, the residence of the foreign ambas- sadors, bankers, and other important persons, is said to be inhabited by the "big bugs." A person of note and great wealth is said to be ec some punkins," (or pumpkins.) And instead of the common English phrase, that " it is well to wash the dirty family linen at home," the Western people have the more strik- ing and significant phrase, that " every man should skin his own skunk." The skunk is fortunately A BUNCH OF SPKOUTS. 167 unknown in England ; but it is a little animal that smells ten thousand times worse than a polecat, and of which, if the least odour gets into the clothes or garments of man or woman, the only remedy is to burn them. "To play 'possum," is equivalent to the old London phrase of " shamming Abraham," the opossum having a trick of pretending to be dead when it finds that all other means of escape from its enemies are unavailing. A bunch of sprouts. An Englishman who had steamed down the Mississippi with a captain who was not " clever" in the American sense of the word, seeing on his arrival at New Orleans a great assemblage of people at the levee, and hearing a disturbance, asked the captain what was the matter. " Oh, nothing particular," said the captain. " It is only Jones, an editor, who has quarrelled with Smith, another editor, and given him a whole bunch of sprouts." " A * bunch of sprouts ! ' " inquired the English- man. " Yes, a bunch of sprouts," said the captain. "And what is a * bunch of sprouts?'" inquired John Bull, bewildered. " Don't you know ? " rejoined the captain. I don't," said John Bull. 168 A BUNCH OF SPROUTS. " Then more fool you," was the reply, on giving which the captain turned upon his heel, and walked away. The Englishman, not altogether discouraged, applied to the clerk for information. "Oh! editors are always quarrelling here," he replied. " It is but one editor who has given another a bunch of sprouts." " But what is a ' bunch of sprouts ?' " "Don't you know?" "Not I." " Why, what a fool you must be ! " The story is that the Englishman has asked the same question since that day, no one knows how many years ago, of thousands of people, but never obtained an answer ; that the idea has taken entire possession of his mind; and that he is wandering over the United States asking everyone he meets, "What is a * bunch of sprouts?'" Receiving no satisfactory reply, he hurries on from place to place, and from person to person, worn to a skeleton, the mere shadow of a man a kind of flying Dutchman a spectral presence a wandering Jew asking the old, eternal question, never to be answered on this side of the grave, " What is a 'bunch of sprouts?'" Should this unhappy citizen of our fortunate Isles ever read AMERICANISMS. 169 these pages, the spell that is upon him will be broken, and he will learn that a " bunch of sprouts " is a slang expression for the whole discharge of a revolver barrel after barrel. To attempt to make a vocabulary of the political slang words that every now and then arise in the United States, live their little day, and sink into ob- livion, but which while they last, sorely puzzle all who are not Americans, would be an endless and an un- satisfactory task. Such words and phrases as "hard shells," "soft shells," " locofocos," "know-nothings," and others, which float about on the stormy ocean of politics, until they are engulfed or rot away, are ephemeral by their very nature. Invented by newspapers or stump orators, they tickle the public fancy for a time. They enjoy considerable popu- larity while current, but they are so entirely local as scarcely to merit explanation beyond the limits of the country which produces them. A rich and fruitful source of slang, expressions is to be found in the names of drinks in such southern and western States as the agents of the Maine Liquor Law have hitherto assaulted in vain. " Ginsling," " brandy-smash," " a streak of lightning," "whisky-skin," "mint julep," "cocktail," "sherry cobbler," and others, are more or less known, both 170 AMEEICANISMS. by name and by nature, on this side of the Atlantic, and need not be further particularized. In the South and possibly the phrase extends northwards to New York, and westwards beyond Chicago, a dram, or small glass of spirits, is called a " smile." Let no American reader of these pages misin- terpret the motives which induce a traveller from the old country, that still presumes to be the home of the language, as well as of the race, to note the differences which climate and circumstances may make in such a familiar matter as the daily speech of the semi-educated or the wholly vulgar. In Eng- land, the changes which the spoken language under- goes from generation to generation are very many, and such is the ever increasing intercourse between the United States and the British Isles, that a word introduced in the one speedily becomes known in the other, and if it have any terseness or appo- siteness to recommend it, becomes naturalized in both countries. It takes a long time to secure even for a good and valuable word a place in the dignified niche of a dictionary; in which respect our dictionary- makers err on the side of undue conservatism. Man is not made for language, but language is made for man; and the English spoken at the time when Columbus discovered America is not the English THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 171 spoken either in England or America at the present time. Even the common talk of the fathers of the present generation differed in many respects from the common talk of the men of the year 1859, and the copiousness, if not the elegance, of the noblest tongue, all things considered, spoken in the present age of the world, is continually increased by inven- tions, revivals, and it may be said robberies or at the least appropriations and assimilations from other languages, less fortunate and wealthy. It were to be wished, however, that those who have the ear of their countrymen, either as great orators or great writers, would, instead of being led away, as they sometimes are, by a foolish fashion for a word as ladies are by a stupid fashion for red stockings or red petticoats, and other ebullitions of the scarlet fever bethink themselves how many excellent words have dropped out of use since the days of Chaucer or even more recently, since those of Shakespeare. Some of these words are of the highest value both to orators and poets and it would be much better to revive them than to coin other words out of foreign or vulgar materials, which do not and never can harmonise so thoroughly with the genius of our tongue, as the sturdy, pithy, able-bodied words of our Anglo-Saxon and Anglo- Scandinavian ancestors. The Scottish, and even 172 THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. the Northumbrian, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Suffolk, and Cornish dialects of the English language con- tain many excellent words that the greatest writers since the days of Pope and Addison have never thought of using, but by aid of which our litera- ture would be all the richer if men of influence with the pen would judiciously and cautiously endeavour to re-introduce them. Why, for instance, should we have " rather " and not " rathe," and " rathest ? " Why not naturalize the Scottish " gloaming," " glamour," "cannie," "douce," "bonnie," "cantie," "sonsie," " daft," " wud," " wowff," and many other honest words that have not their synonyms in English literature ? The archaeological dictionaries and glossaries of the British Isles contain mines of treasure, which, when we consider of what elements the population of the United States and Canada is mainly composed, lead us to hope that our language, like our race, may achieve new triumphs, and attain greater wealth and power in the new regions to which it has been transplanted than it ever attained in the original cradle of its birth and growth. If he who makes a blade of grass grow where grass never grew before, is to that extent a public bene- factor, is not he who coins a new word to express a new meaning, or an old meaning that could not ABBREVIATIONS. 173 be otherwise expressed without a periphrasis or a whole sentence to itself or, better still, who revives a good old word that ought never to have been allowed to die a public benefactor also? I think so ; and for that reason have dwelt at greater length upon the subject of Americanisms in speech than I should otherwise have considered myself justified in doing. In addition to these, there are Americanisms in writing which strike the traveller by their novelty. To an Englishman it would seem odd, if instead of Birmingham on the address of a letter there were simply " Bir.," or instead of London, "Lon.," or of Manchester, "Man." But such abbreviations are the rule and not the exception in America. Every State in the Union has its recognised abbreviation, which is always a monosyllable, wherever it is pos- sible so to make it. New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, North Carolina, and South Carolina, are the sole exceptions to the monosyllabic arrangement, and are commonly written and printed N.Y., N. J., N.H., R.I., N. Ca. and S. Ca. The other States are Maine . . .Me. Vermont . Vt. Massachusetts . Mass. Connecticut . Conn. Pennsylvania . Pa. Delaware . . Del. Maryland . . Ma.orMd. Virginia . . Va. 174 ABBREVIATIONS. Georgia Alabama . Ga. .1 . Ala. Michigan Indiana . Mich. . Ind. Mississippi . Missouri . . Miss. . Mo. Illinois Florida . 111. . Fla. Louisiana . . La. Texas . Tex. Arkansas . . Ark. Iowa . . lo. Tennessee . . Tenn. Wisconsin . . Wis. Kentucky . Ohio . Ky. . 0. California . Minnesota . . Cal. . Min. In like manner, the name of the City of Baltimore is abbreviated into Balto. A busy, "go-ahead" nation has not time to write the names of its States and cities in full. If this be not the reason, it is difficult to find another. 175 CHAPTER XIV. THE IRISH IN AMERICA. Washington, January 1857. STANDING at the bar of Willard's Hotel, in Washing- ton, in company with two distinguished senators, and three members of Congress, and taking, all of us, a slight noonday refection of crackers (biscuits) and lager beer, our conversation turned upon the great rebellion in India, and upon the indomitable " pluck" and energy displayed by the British soldiers and commanders, and especially by the gallant Have- lock, in confronting and subduing the mutineers. The execrations lavished upon the name o Nana Sahib, and the fervent praises showered upon that of Havelock by my American friends, could not have been surpassed for honest intensity in any circle in England. Every one of them seemed to feel proud that he was of the same blood and lineage as the conquerors of India, and, although the great struggle was far from concluded, each predicted that it could but have one result the 176 THE IRISH IN AMERICA. utter discomfiture of the foe, and the triumphant vindication of British supremacy in every portion of our Eastern Empire. " It is the blood, sir," said one of the senators, " the noblest and best blood in the world a blood that never was conquered, and never will be." At this moment, a person who had been hanging on, and listening to the conversation an Irishman by his accent, and who, as it afterwards appeared, had not been above five years in America burst in upon us with a volley of oaths so awful and so disgusting that no gentleman, or man of common decency, would whisper them, mucli more print them j and imprecated such wrath of heaven upon England and upon Englishmen, in India and at home, that I fairly lost breath in the excess of my surprise at hearing such abominable sentiments in the mouth of a human being. That every English man, woman, and child in India should be put to the sword, was but one of the hideous wishes which he formed ; and his whole speech, gesture, and demeanour suggested the idea that he was a maniac rather than a sane man. It did not appear, how- ever, that he was mad. He was a well-known " citizen," I was told, and much, respected ; and, though much more violent in his Anglophobia than THE IEISH IN AMERICA. 177 the Irish generally, he but expressed a feeling only too common among men of his race who have left Ireland for Great Britain's good, and brought their passions and their prejudices into the great arena of American politics. The incident suggested the propriety of making some inquiries into the condition of the Irish in the United States ; and to the sources of their con- tinually and openly avowed hatred towards England. It cannot be denied that the Irish immigration has been of incalculable service to the development of the resources of the United States, and more es- pecially of the North and West As servants, or "helps," instead of the negroes to the employment of whom many persons have an aversion and as strong, sturdy labourers doing all the rough work of the country, especially building and the making of canals and railroads, they have supplied a great public want, and aided immensely in the material progress of the country. The native-born American, of Anglo-Saxon descent, looks upon all rough labour, except that of the farm, as somewhat derogatory from his dignity. It is for him to labour with his brains, rather than with his thews and sinews ; to barter, not to dig and delve ; and to set others to hard work rather than do the hard work himself. And the VOL. I. N 178 THE 1EISH IN AMEEICA. able-bodied Irish supplied the very help he needed, and both parties to the bargain were satisfied , the Americans in getting the work done, and the Irishman in getting as much wages in one day as he could have got in Ireland, or in England, in a week. But here the satisfaction of the Americans came to an end. The new comer, though not en- titled to a vote until after a residence of a certain number of years in the country, either found means himself, or had them found for him by others, to claim the privilege before he had been a week on American soil. Instances have been known, during hot election contests in the State or the muni- cipality of New York, when the whole male immi- gration, landed in the morning from a Cork or Liverpool vessel, has voted ere the afternoon for one " ticket " or the other. This abuse, and the general dictatorialness of the Irish party, when, after due naturalization and long residence, they had acquired the legal right to vote, and had been marshalled by their ecclesiastical and lay leaders into one un- broken phalanx, led to the establishment of what is sometimes called the " Know-nothing," and some- times the " American " party. The main object of this organization whatever be its proper desig- nation was to prevent all but native-born Ameri- THE IEISH IN AMERICA. 179 cans from voting at elections ; and there can be little doubt, if they could have succeeded in this object, that the anti-British feeling which is so often fomented in the States for purposes wholly domestic and internal, would speedily diminish, if it did not die out altogether. And it is well that the British people should understand how it is that, from time to time, so much jealousy and ill-feeling are expressed towards England by speakers and writers in the United States. The most influential, if not the largest portion of the American people are the descendants of Englishmen and Scotchmen men who, when they speak from their hearts of Eng- land, her laws, her literature, and her example, might borrow the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and exclaim " Our little mother isle ! God bless her ! " The descendants of the French, the Germans, and the Norwegians, who form another large class in America, have no ill-feeling towards England. They are a patient, plodding, and industrious people, and if they do not love her, they certainly do not hate her. The party that hates England, and which it is sometimes expedient to propitiate even at the cost of reason, justice, and propriety, exists mainly in the N2 180 THE IRISH IN AMERICA. Irish immigration. The Hiberno-Americans, as a body, entertain a religious as well as a political hatred towards Great Britain, a hatred which would doubtless expire were it not fostered for pur- poses of ecclesiastical domination and influence, or encouraged for the selfish objects of ambitious dema- gogues, who strive to raise themselves into noto- riety and power by arts that in the old country have ceased to be profitable in ceasing to be dangerous. Parties in America are divided in reality into the Pro-slavery and the Anti-slavery parties, and with some minor shades of difference, that are as shifting as the glass beads and fragments in a kaleidoscope into the Republican and Democratic parties. These are the two great and essential divisions shift and change as they may ; and these, being pretty nearly balanced, the Irish party, well drilled and organised, and keeping aloof until victory must be declared on some one of the many issues that are continually raised, is able but too often to turn the scale. Hence the Hiberno- Americans are hated and yet courted by both ; and hence every now and then it is found that statesmen who have no sympathy for the Irish and the priests deem it necessary to angle for Irish votes by anti-English ora- tions, which it would greatly grieve these states- THE IEISH IN AMERICA. 181 men to be taken in England at their American value. Whenever the election for President draws near, and for at least eighteen months before the final decision of the struggle, it may be noticed that the American press, both of the North and the South, gets up a grievance against England. If it be not the right of search, or the enlistment question, or a disputed boundary in the far North West, or a fishing case in the Bay of Fundy, or the right of way across the Isthmus of Panama, or the Mosquitian protectorate, it will be something else ; perhaps something of no greater moment than a leading article in Tlie Times, or some other London journal of note or influence. Hard words will be used; much "bunkum" will be spoken; and from the press the vituperation will spread to the floor of Congress, until Englishmen, partly alarmed, and partly amused, are compelled to ask in genuine be- wilderment what it all means ? It means nothing, except that the two great American parties, opposing each other for some object, or to carry the election of some candidate for high office, and deeming every vote of importance in a contest too evenly balanced to be comfortable for either, desire to have the Irish on their side. And the straw with which the Irish 182 THE IRISH IN AMERICA. are most easily tickled is abuse of England. Predict that the sun of England's greatness is set for ever, and the Irishman will think you the pink of orators. Assert that Brother Jonathan will "lick" John Bull into immortal " smash," and all creation along with him, and Paddy O'Rourke will flourish his shillala, and vent his ecstacy in prolonged ululations. But the leading statesmen of America though they are condemned at times to use such agencies for the accomplishment of purposes which have not the remotest connection with English politics despise the tools with which they do the work ; and look with unfeigned alarm upon the prospect of any serious misunderstanding with Great Britain. It is not race or blood so much as religion, that creates the ill-feeling of Roman Catholic Irishmen towards Protestant England. And this animosity, which does not affect the German immigration, even when newly arrived, is found by experience to be greatly weakened in the second generation. The children born of Irish parents upon American soil, sent in ordinary course to the excellent schools so bountifully provided in all the States, are assimilated to the common American type ; and in their youth and maturity cease to look upon England with the vindictiveness of their progenitors. They cling THE IRISH IN AMERICA. 183 affectionately to the name and to the memory of the green isle ; but do not find it absolutely essen- tial to their love of Ireland that they should hate England. If a few of the fathers inveigh against the Sassenach with the bloodthirsty bitterness of the zealot whose exhibition of himself in the public room at Willard's has led to these observations, it is satisfactory to think that the virus is weakened in the children ; and that a cause so beneficent for the change is to be found in the operation of the school system, and the extension of education. 184 CHAPTER XV. FROM WASHINGTON TO CINCINNATI. Cincinnati, January 19, 1858. PKIOR to leaving Washington, my friends and among their names I might mention, if it were a portion of my design to detail private gossip, some of the most illustrious public men in America gave me a parting dinner at Gautier's well known re- staurant in Pennsylvania Avenue. It is not necessary to say more of this dinner than that it was as luxu- riously served, the cooking as scientific, and the wines as rare, as if the symposium had been in Paris, or London. Furthermore, it led to the production of the following lines, which the author recited in lieu of making a speech : "JOHN AND JONATHAN. i. " SAID brother Jonathan to John, 'You are the elder-born, And I can bear another's hate, But not your lightest scorn. You've lived a life of noble strife, You've made a world your own: Why, when I follow in your steps, Receive me with a groan? JOHN AND JONATHAN. 185 ' ' I feel the promptings of my youth, That urge me evermore To spread my fame, my race, my name From shore to furthest shore. I feel the lightnings in my blood, The thunders in my hand, And I must work my destiny, Whoever may withstand. 'And if you'd give me, brother John, The sympathy I crave, And stretch your warm fraternal hand Across the Atlantic wave, I'd give it such a cordial grasp That earth should start to see, And ancient crowns and sceptres shake, That fear both you and me.' ; Said brother John to Jonathan, 'You do my nature wrong; I never hated, never scorn'd, But loved you well and long. If, children of the self-same sire, We've quarrell'd now and then, 'Twas only in our early youth, And not since we were men. ; And if with cautious, cooler blood, Eesult of sufferings keen, I sometimes think you move too fast, Mistake not what I mean. I've felt the follies of my youth, The errors of my prime, And dream'd for you my father's son A future more sublime. 186 JOHN AND JONATHAN. VI. "'And here's my hand, 'tis freely given, I stretch it o'er the briae, And wish you from my heart of hearts A higher life than mine. Together let us rule the world, Together work and thrive; For if you're only twenty-one, I'm scarcely thirty-five. 'And I have strength for nobler work Than e'er my hand has done, And realms to rule and truths to plant Beyond the rising sun. Take you the West and I the East, We'll spread ourselves abroad, With Trade and Spade, and wholesome laws, And faith in Man and God. " ' Take you the West and I the East, We speak the self-same tongue That Milton wrote and Chatham spoke, And Burns and Shakspeare sung; And from our tongue, our hand, our heart, Shall countless blessings flow To light two darkened hemispheres That know not where they go. IX. '"Our Anglo-Saxon name and fame, Our Anglo-Saxon speech, Eeceived their mission straight from Heaven To civilize and teach- So here's my hand, I stretch it forth; Ye meaner lands look on ! From this day hence there's friendship firm 'Twixt Jonathan and John ! ' JOHN AND JONATHAN. 187 "They shook their hands this noble pair And o'er the ' electric chain ' Came daily messages of Peace And Love betwixt them twain. When other nations, sore oppress'd, Lie dark in Sorrow's night, They look to Jonathan and John, And hope for coming light." Leaving unvisited until another opportunity the large and flourishing city of Baltimore, we started from Washington for Cincinnati, by the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, at the early hour of four on a cold morning of January. The rain fell in torrents in drops larger than fall in England in the heaviest thunderstorms of July or August. The long wide avenues of the capital were silent and deserted ; and the few gas-lights threw a flickering radiance over the swollen gutters, that rolled along like mimic rivers, to join the neighbouring stream of the Potomac. I had made so many friends at Washington met so many of the most able, most eloquent, and most influential members of the House of Representatives and of the Senate been at so many balls, parties, and dinners, and seen so much of the beauty, fashion, elegance, and grace which centre at Washington during the full tide of legis- lative business that I left the city with regret. 188 THE OLD DOMINION. For the first thirty miles of the journey, and until the morning light streamed through the windows of the car, I was but half awake. I had confused visions of Presidents, Ambassadors, Governors, Generals, Colonels, Judges, members of Congress, Secretaries of State, editors of newspapers, beauti- ful women, and painted savages, tomahawks in hand, and scalps around their shoulders ; all mingling and mixing together in saturnalian dance, lingering at times to drink my health in bumpers of Catawba, and then all melting away into empty air. At last we stopped at the Relay House, and our engine letting off steam, banished from my hazy memory these dim and blurred recollections of the past. From Washington to the Relay House the road runs north-east, through a portion of Maryland. At this point, at a distance of nine miles from Baltimore, the rails from Washington and Baltimore unite. The road then strikes due west, to Harper's Ferry, where it enters the State of Virginia so named after Queen Elizabeth. In this land of newness, where even such modern antiquity is something to be proud of, the Virginians designate their Commonwealth by the pet name of " the old Dominion," and love to trace their descent from Englishmen of the days of Shakspeare and the THE ALLEGHANIES. 189 Stuarts. At Harper's Ferry tlie Shenandoah River unites with the Potomac, and the railway crosses the united stream by a fine bridge of nine hundred feet in length, and then runs through a picturesque mountain gorge for several miles, the Potomac foaming and flowing beneath, and steep, precipitous rocks rising grandly on either side. From this point to the little city of Cumberland famous for its productive coal-mines, and situated high amid the ridges of the Alleghany Mountains the scenery offers a constant succession of beauties and sublimities. The engineering difficulties that have been surmounted by the projectors and builders of this line are only equalled in Europe by the famous railway from Vienna to Trieste across the Simmer- ing Alps. But with the Austrian line the Balti- more and Ohio Railway may well stand compa- rison. The passage of the Alleghanies is as noble an exhibition of skill and enterprise as the passage of the Styrian Alps ; and the rapid descent of the mountain, within a few miles of Wheeling, 379 miles from Baltimore, is a much greater feat than anything of the kind attempted on any other railway in the United States. I was unfortunate enough to travel over the most sublime portion of the road in the night, and thus to lose the opportunity of de- 190 THE ALLEGHANIES. scribing from personal experience the scenery of the Alleghanies. From six in the morning until dark in the evening we made only 178 miles; and when we reached busy and smoky Cumberland, nestled amid the mountains, the sun was setting in such a blaze of glory as to prompt the desire to wait for his reappearance in the east ere we recommenced our journey. But this was not to be. It was dark night when we reached Altamont, forty-five miles further, and learned from the guide-book, and the not very communicative or urbane conductor of our train, that we were at the culminating point of the line, and at a height of 2,626 feet above tide water at Baltimore. From Altamont to Wheeling, on the River Ohio, a distance of 156 miles, the descent is not much less than 2,400 feet. The road crosses several rivers ; among others the rapid and rejoic- ing Youghiogheny ; the falls of Snowy Creek ; the Cheat River, 310 feet wide; the beautiful Monon- gahela (giving its name to some famous but very- bad whisky), which is crossed by a viaduct 650 feet long ; and the Fish Creek, a tortuous mountain stream which makes so many twists and windings ere it reaches the Ohio that the makers of the railway found it necessary to cross it no less than eight times on substantial bridges before they could WHEELING. 191 leave it behind them. As for the tunnels on this road, their name is legion one of them, the King- wood Tunnel, being a cut of 4,100 feet through the solid rock ; and the Welling Tunnel, 1,250 feet. But the rapid descent of the line from the lower summit of the Alleghany ridge to Benwood on the Ohio, four miles from Wheeling, is the most marvellous portion of the journey. The descent is effected by a series of zigzags, first down an inclined plane for several hundred yards; then back again down another inclined plane of equal or greater length; then forward once more on the same principle, then back again ; and so on until the base of the mountain is reached the locomotive and its train literally going down-stairs. Should any one who reads these pages ever travel on this line, let him travel by daylight, if he wishes to see this marvellous descent and some of the finest scenery in America. We arrived at the little dingy, dull city of Wheeling, in Western Virginia, before daylight, on Sunday morning, and found that we could get no further until Monday. Here we were saluted by the first snow of the season, and severally hastened to our beds to snatch the sleep which it is next to impossible to win, or even to woo, in a hot, frowsy, uncomfortable railway car, containing 192 THE OIUO. from fifty to sixty people and a demoniacal furnace burning anthracite coal. Without a proper place to stow away one's hat ; with no convenience even to repose the head or back, except to the ordinary height of a chair ; with a current of cold outer air, continually streaming in, and rendered necessary by the sulphurous heat of the furnace ; and with the constant slamming of the doors at either end of the car, as the conductor goes in and out, or some weary passenger steps on to the platform to have a smoke, the passenger must, indeed, be " dead beat " who can sleep or even doze in a railway car in America. For these reasons right glad were we to reach Wheeling, and for these reasons we postponed the pleasure of making any more intimate acquaintance with it than sheets and pillows would afford until the hour of noon. At length, refreshed by sleep, by ablution, and by breakfast, we sallied forth to look at the town, and at the Ohio. The town was covered with a dense smoke for it burns soft coal, and has several large manufactories of nails, screws, and other useful arti- cles of iron and some of its tall chimneys continue to vomit forth soot even on the day of rest. It is not to be inferred from this that work is done in Wheel- ing on the Sunday, but only that the fires are not THE OHIO. 193 extinguished. Perhaps this is only to save the trouble of rekindling on the Monday, for coal is so plentiful and cheap as to be retailed at one cent and a half (three farthings) a bushel. This cheap- ness, however, did not prevent our host at the hotel from putting down in the bill one dollar (four shillings and twopence) for the consumption in our room of less than half a bushel of the commodity, which dollar I paid, after being assured, in answer to a suggestion to that effect which I threw out for our host's consideration, that it was not a mis- take, but the regular charge. The Ohio River is a yellow and turbid stream, bearing down in its broad and rapid current count- less particles of fine yellow sand and clay which it washes daily, nightly, and hourly from its soft rich banks. It is crossed at Wheeling by a fine suspension-bridge erected on the site of one still finer, which was blown down by a hurricane two years ago. The immediate banks of the river at this point are not steep. Ranges of hills, crowned with wood, rise, on either side, within a short distance, to the height of several hundred feet, and suggest, with the sole exception that there are no ruined castles, the picturesque beauties of the Rhine. There is almost daily steam-boat communication VOL. i. o 194 THE OHIO. between Wheeling and Cincinnati, but, as the distance by water between the two points, in con- sequence of the many windings of the river, is about 600 miles, and that by railway only 240, most travellers who are pressed for time choose the latter and more expeditious route. As this was our condition, we started at eleven o'clock, on Monday morning, by the rail, and reached the Burnet House, Cincinnati, at ten at night. We found rooms prepared for our reception, fires lighted, supper ready, excellent Catawba, and a cordial welcome from Colonel Coleman, the land- lord of one of the largest, most noted, and most luxurious hotels in America. The suspension-bridge at Wheeling divides West- ern Virginia from the State of Ohio or the Buck- eye State. This name was given to it in derision, but was afterwards adopted by the people of Ohio, and changed from a phrase of contempt into one of endearment A citizen of Ohio is a Buckeye. Meeting an Englishman settled in Ohio, who pre- sented to me his three daughters, I inquired if they were English. " No," he replied ; " they are Buck- eyes." And what, it may be asked, is the mean- ing of the word? Buckeye is a \^c' of wild chesnut, which grows so plentifully in every part ot THE BUCKEYE STATE. 195 the State as to be its one pervading and prevailing tree. Its fruit bears a fancied resemblance to the eye of the buck or fawn, and hence its name. Both the leaves and the fruit are poisonous to cattle ; but in this respect, like the human creatures who love tobacco, and chew it, they persist in indulging themselves with what is not good for them, to such an extent that the farmers of Ohio detest the tree as a public nuisance, and would be glad if it could be totally extirpated, to make room for some other of greater utility and with fewer demerits. And doubtless the farmers will have their way, sooner or later. . The snow which had fallen during the night had all disappeared before we entered the State of Ohio. The day was mild and genial, and the sun shone brilliantly. The soil as far as Columbus, the capital, a distance of 120 miles, is one deep, rich, soft stratum of disintegrated limestone, so fertile that for forty years, without change of crop, or the use of the smallest particle of manure, it has continued to grow maize, or Indian corn, in such immense quantities, that the crops rot upon the earth for want of hands to gather in the harvest. In this month of January many t^ on.; ,7: ids of acres of produce are still un- harvested ; and the cattle, looking like pigmies amid o 2 196 THE BUCKEYE STATE, the lofty stalks of twelve or fourteen feet high, are turned in to feed at their leisure and their pleasure. The land rolls in beautifully swelling hills, fit for the cultivation of the vine, and already crowned with many noble vineyards. From Columbus to Cincin- nati another ride of 140 miles the country is of the same rich, fertile, and beautiful character so beautiful, so rich, so well calculated for the happy sustenance of twenty or thirty millions of the human race, instead of two millions only who now inhabit and endeavour to cultivate it, as to recall the saying of the Governor of the neighbouring State of In- diana, who declared, with a profanity which drew upon him a clerical rebuke, that " the Almighty must have been in a good humour when he created Indiana and Ohio." This Commonwealth is nearly as large as England, and has natural resources enabling it to feed as great a population as that of the British Isles. It is the favourite resort of the German immigration, and is estimated to number about 500,000 of that people, of whom about one-fourth are Jews. 197 CHAPTER XVI. "THE QUEEN CITY OF THE WEST." Cincinnati, Jan. 27, 1858. CINCINNATI is as yet the greatest city of the " Great West." How long it will remain so depends on the progress of population in Missouri, and in the city of St. Louis on the Mississippi, which many persons who fancy they look " ahead " much further than their neighbours, declare to be the central city of the Confederation, and the future capital of the United States. But a few years ago, Cincinnati was the Ultima Thule of civilization. All beyond it was wilderness and prairie. Behind it stretched the unbroken forest, where the Red Man prowled, tomahawk in hand or the illimitable plains, where roared and fed countless herds of scarcely more savage buffaloes. The man is yet living, in hale old age, who felled the first tree in Ohio, and helped to clear the ground on which now stands what its inhabitants call the "Queen City of the West." Cincinnati is estimated to have a population of nearly 198 CINCINNATI. 250,000 souls; contains miles of well-built and handsome streets, many stores, banks and ware- houses, public institutions, worthy by their architec- tural beauty to adorn any metropolis in the world, and about one hundred churches, chapels, and synagogues. Of the churches but two have any pretensions to elegance or splendour. One is the Episcopal church, as yet unfinished ; and the other the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Peter's, built of white freestone, and deserving to rank amongst the finest ecclesiastical edifices in America. The original name of Cincinnati is said by the original settlers and such of their descendants as can carry their memories back to such remote antiquity, to have been Losantiville. It was the intention of the first immigrants and back-woodsmen to build a city at North Bend, eighteen miles higher up the river. But Fate and Love (for there is a love-story in the history) willed it otherwise. The United States' officer in command at North Bend having become enamoured of the young wife of an old pioneer, the lady was removed by her husband to Fort Washington, where Cincinnati now stands. The gallant officer followed shortly afterwards, and reported officially that Fort Washington, and not North Bend, was the proper site for a military CINCINNATI. 199 station and city. His influence or his reasons prevailed. North Bend was abandoned, and Fort Washington became the site of the future city of Cincinnati, or, as the Americans generally pro- nounce it, Sinsnahta. The name was changed a short time after its foundation to that which it now bears, in honour of the society of "the Cincinnati." It is the sixth city of the Union for population, wealth, and commerce ranking immediately after New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, and New Orleans. It is crowned with a coronal of perpetual and very dense black smoke; so- black and dense as almost to hide it from the view of the spectator passing over in the ferry-boat to the Kentucky shore, or looking down upon it from the adjacent height of Mount Adams and the hill of the Observatory. Next to Manchester and the great manufacturing towns of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Staffordshire, it may be called the smokiest city in the world, and in this respect far murkier than London ; and far murkier than any city ought to be allowed to remain in a civilized country, and in an age of scientific progress and sanatory improvement, But, disagreeable as the smoke of Cincinnati may be, it affords an unmistak- able proof of its industrial and commercial activity. The city contains several large manufactories of 200 CINCINNATI. railway cars and locomotives; a distillery, which pro- duces whisky and alcohol at the rate of 2,500 barrels per week, a large proportion of which lately found its way to France, to aid in the manufacture of "native" cogniac ; two or three manufactories of household furniture for the supply of the "Far West;" and many minor establishments for the manufacture of agricultural implements and tools. But the chief wealth of Cincinnati is derived from the hogs raised in the rich agricultural districts of Ohio, and slaughtered here, to the number of about 600,000 annually. The slaughter-houses are the great curiosities of the place ; but, having a respect for hog as an article of diet, and relishing, at fitting seasons, both the ham and the rasher of bacon, I would not impair that respect, or diminish that relish, by witnessing the wholesale slaughter of the animal, however scientifically the slaughtering might be effected. I therefore left the slaughter-houses unvisited, contented to believe, upon hearsay, the marvellous tales which are related of the dexterity of the slaughterers, who, armed with heavy hammers, which they hold in both hands, are sometimes known to stun as many as sixty hogs in a minute, leaving them in that state to an assistant butcher, who with almost equal rapidity follows in the wake, and cuts CINCINNATI. 201 their throats before they have time to recover from the stunning blow and vent their alarm by a single shriek. The 600,000 hogs slaughtered in the city are converted into packed merchandise with less noise than often attends the killing of one porker in the farmsteads of England. From the moment when the hog received the first hammer-stroke until it was .-singed, cleaned, cut up, placed in brine, and packed in a cask for exportation, not more than two hours were formerly suffered to elapse. But this celerity, being unnatural, led to mischief. The pork, drowned in brine before it had time to become cold, caused a fermentation" in the pickle, and this fermentation in its turn caused a disease in the pork which was called measles, and which, whether deserving or not of this appellation, ren- dered it unwholesome. Much injury was thus done to the trade. The cause of the mischief was fully reported upon by the British Consul at New Orleans ; and the men of Cincinnati, made wise by experience, now stay their hands and allow the pork to cool before they pickle it. All Cincinnati is redolent of swine. Swine prowl about the streets and act the part of scavengers until they are ready to become merchandise and visit Europe. Swine are driven into it daily and 202 CINCINNATI. hourly by every avenue ; but not one of them ever goes out again alive. Barrels of them line all the- quays ; cartloads of their carcasses traverse the city at all seasons ; and palaces and villas are built, and vineyards and orchards cultivated, out of the pro- ceeds of their flesh, their bones, their lard, their bristles, and their feet. In the early days of the pork trade, the feet and entrails of the swine were cast as rubbish on to the quays and streets, or swept into the waters of the Ohio, to be thence transferred, via the Mississippi, into the Gulf of Mexico. But the Cincinnatians have learned more wisdom ; and not the smallest por- tion of the animal is now allowed to be wasted. The entrails are boiled into lard ; the feet are prepared as an article of food, or stewed into glue ; and the blood carefully collected is used for various chemical purposes, besides being employed in the manufacture of black-puddings for home consumption. The average value of the hog before he is slaughtered is about ten dollars, or 21. sterling, so that from this source alone one million and a quarter sterling is annually brought into the purses of the farmers and people of Ohio and of its chief commercial city of Cincinnati. So plentiful are swine in Ohio, so much more plentiful and cheap in some parts than THE VINE IN AMERICA. 203 coals, that ere now pork lias been burned instead of fuel to keep up the fires of steam-boats on the Ohio. Only three days ago I read a newspaper paragraph in reprobation of such cruel extravagance. Another source of wealth has recently been deve- loped in Ohio, chiefly by the skill, enterprise, and public spirit of one man, Mr. Nicholas Longworth, to whom America owes the introduction of the grape culture for the purpose of wine-making. With its endless varieties of soil, and with cli- mates of all degrees of heat and cold ; in some parts sunny as Naples, Spain, and Barbary, and in others as temperate as France and Germany it was to be expected that America possessed one or more indigenous grapes. Mr. Longworth of whom and of whose exertions in the cause of temperance and of good wine, I might say much more than space and time will allow has calculated that the varieties of grapes in America amount to no less than the almost incredible number of five thousand. But no one knew how to turn the boundless treasure to proper account, for the production of it lay upon the surface, but might as well have been like the pearls that Gray sings of perdu in the dark unfathomed caves of ocean, until Mr. Longworth appeared. And then the hills gushed into fertility, and the world received the gift of Catawba. 204 THE VINE IN AMERICA. The earliest mention of the vine in America dates as far back as 1564, when wines were made both in Florida and Louisiana. The Jesuits men with keen eyes to spy out the fatness of a land, and who in all countries have proved themselves skil- ful cultivators of the soil were among the first to appropriate good locations to themselves and to plant vineyards. Unluckily, the French Govern- ment of that day through a stupid feeling of jealousy ordered all the vineyards of Louisiana to be de- stroyed, lest American wines should compete inju- riously with those of France in the markets of the world. Were it not for this barbarous folly, the Southern States of the Union might long ago have produced wine as well as cotton, rice, and sugar. But in consequence of the absolute nature of the prohibition, the vineyards were abandoned, and the wild grapes of the North American Continent were left to their own vagrant fancies, to be eaten by the wolf and the fox, or the Red Indian, undisturbed by the care or the pruning-knife of the vintager. John Bull loves his beer, and cares but little for wine. When he can afford the juice of the grape he likes it strong. There was* a time, if we are to rely upon tradition and upon the evidence of old songs and ballads, when the favourite drink of the upper classes was Claret ; and next to Claret, CATAWBA WINE. 205 Burgundy. But the famous treaty concluded with Portugal in 1759, and known as the Methuen Treaty, introduced unsuspecting John to a new and more potent beverage called Port ; and vitiated the national taste. Most people remember the epi- gram as regards the effect which Port wine had upon the Scotch : " Firm and erect the Caledonian stood, His meat was mutton, and his claret good. ' Let him drink port ! ' the British statesman cried : He drank the poison, and his spirit died! " John Bull is now, unluckily, so accustomed to the full-bodied, brandied wines of Portugal and Spain, that he does not appreciate the light, harmless wines of France and Germany. As for the wines of Cincinnati scarcely one Englishman in ten thousand has ever heard of them. The late Duke of Wellington, who, if we are to believe some of his over-ardent admirers, knew everything, and was as universal a genius as Shakespeare, was in this respect in advance of his countrymen. He had tasted Catawba wine for when a gentleman from Cincinnati was introduced to him, two years before he died, he said, "Oh, I know Cincinnati. It is the residence of Miss Groesbeck, and is famous for Sparkling Catawba ; Catawba's a good wine ! " It was not until the year 1799 that the grape 206 ME. N. LONGWORTH. culture excited much attention in America. Shortly before that time the wild " sand " grape, that grew on the banks of the Ohio in great profusion, was sub- jected to the wine press by some French settlers in the Marietta District. This wine, even at that early period, was pronounced to be almost equal to Rhenish. The late Mr. John Dufour, one of the Swiss pioneers who emigrated to America in 1805, improved upon the efforts of his predecessor. But the progress of the new thing was slow ; and it was not till some years after the death of this gentleman that the real Bacchus of the West appeared in the person of Mr. Nicholas Longworth of Cincinnati a man whom the Greeks would have apotheosized; and who, if he had lived two thousand years ago, and done as much for his country and the world as he has done in our day, would have been ranked among heroes and demigods, and loomed largely on our imaginations through the haze and mist of antiquity. Like Bacchus of old, he has taught the people how to cultivate and press the grape, and to use it for health and strength and length of days. Mr. Longworth considering the variety of soil and climate in America, and the abundance of wild grapes that grew from Virginia south- wards and westwards, arrived at the conclusion MR. N. LONGWORTH. 207 which proved to be a sound one that if wine could be produced in the Old World, it could also be produced in the New. Thirty or forty years ago he made some experiments with French and German grapes, but they were failures as many great enterprises are at their commencement. In a letter to the Cincinnati Horticultural Society dated three years back, he says: "I have for thirty years experimented on the foreign grape, both for the table and for wine. In the acclimation of plants I do not believe ; for the White Sweet Water does not succeed as well with me as it did thirty years since. I obtained a large variety of French grapes from Mr. Loubat, many years since. They were from the vicinity of Paris and Bordeaux. From Madeira I obtained six thousand vines of their best wine grapes. Not one was found worthy of cultivation in this latitude, and all were rooted from the vineyards. As a last experiment I im- ported seven thousand vines from the mountains of Sura, in the vicinity of Salins, in France. At that point the vine region suddenly ends, and many vines are there cultivated on the north side of the mountain, where the ground is covered witli snow the whole winter long, from three to four feet deep. Nearly all lived, and embraced about twenty va 208 CATAWBA WINE. rieties of the most celebrated wine grapes of France. But after a trial of five years, I was obliged to, throw them all away. 'I also imported samples of wine made from all the grapes of Europe. One variety alone the celebrated Arbois wine, which partakes slightly of the champagne character, would compete with our Catawba." The results of Mr. Longworth's hopeful persever- ance, indomitable energy, and long experience, not only in his own city and neighbourhood of Cin- cinnati, but elsewhere on the American continent, were, that he abandoned the European grape, and selected out of the 5,000 indigenous varieties, eighty- three. From these eighty-three he again selected twelve as alone fit for the production of wine. These twelve w r ere the Catawba, the Cape, the Isabella, the Eland's Madeira, the Ohio, the Lenoir, the Missouri, the Norton's seedling, the Herbemont's Madeira, the Minor seedling, the White Catawba, and the Mammoth Catawba. Having resolved to concentrate his attention upon Catawba with its rich muscadine flavour, first found growing on the banks of the Catawba river in Caro- lina, he succeeded, about ten years ago, in producing out of it the Sparkling Catawba wine, which competent judges who have tasted all the wines of the world CATAWBA WINE. 209 declare to be equal to any sparkling wines which Europe can boast, whether they come from the Rhine or the Moselle, or from the Champagne dis- tricts of France. Perhaps these pages will be the first intimation that the English people will re- ceive of the existence of this bounty of nature ; but there is no risk of false prophecy in the prediction here -hazarded, that not many years will elapse before both the dry and the sparkling Catawba will be recognised in Europe, as they are in America, as among the purest of all wines, except Claret and Burgundy. No red wines of any great deli- cacy or value have been produced in Ohio, or any other State of the Union ; but Mr. Longworth, Mr. Robert Buchanan, Mr. Werk, and other eminent growers near Cincinnati are of opinion that wines equal both to red and white Burgundy will be successfully grown in Ohio, South Carolina, and California. As yet there are no symptoms in Ame- rica that the clarets of France will ever be surpassed or equalled. But far different is it with French Champagne, who as the Queen of Wines must yield her sceptre and throne to one purer and brighter than she, who sits on the banks of the Ohio, and whom Mr. Longworth serves as chief adviser and prime minister. VOL. i. p 210 CATAWBA WINE. Longfellow, worthy to celebrate the wines of Long- worth, sings of Catawba " This song of mine Is a song of the Tine, To he sung by the glowing embers Of wayside inns When the rain begins To darken the drear Novembers. * * * * " For richest and best Is the wine of the West, That grows by the beautiful river, Whose sweet perfume Fills all the room With a benison on the giver." Mr. Longfellow maintains, with all the fervour of an American, as well as of a poet, that European wines are drugged and poisoned, that port burns and is the mother of podagra, that sherry is a sham, and that champagne is a vile concoction, born of turnips and of gooseberries, not of the vine : " Drugged is their juice For foreign use, When shipped o'er the reeling Atlantic, To rack our brains With the fever pains That have driven the Old World frantic. * * # * To the sewers and sinks With all such drinks, And after them tumble the mixer ! " But not so with Catawba ! For Catawba is pure. Hear, ye lovers of wholesome drink, another ditty CATAWBA WINE. 211 from a native of the Old country, who knows how to appreciate the dainty luxuries of the New : "CATAWBA WINE. '' Ohio's green hillrtops Glow bright in the sun, And yield us more treasure Than Rhine or Garonne; They give us Catawba, The pure and the true, As radiant as sunlight, As soft as the dew, And fragrant as gardens When summer is new: Of all the glad vintage The purest and best, Catawba the nectar And balm of the West ! "Champagne is too often A trickster malign, That flows from the apple, And not from the vine. But thou, my Catawba, Art mild as a rose, And sweet as the lips Of my love, when they close To give back the kisses My passion bestows. Thou'rt born of the vintage, And fed on its breast, Catawba the nectar And balm of the West ! "When pledging the lovely, This sparkler we'll kiss; When drinking to true hearts, We'll toast them in this; P 2 212 CATAWBA WINE. "For Catawba is like them, Though tender, yet strong, As pleasant as morning, And soft as a song, Whose delicate beauty The echoes prolong. Catawba ! Heart- warmer ! m Soul-cheerer! Life-zest! Catawba the nectar And balm of the West ! " Mr. Longworth's son-in-law kindly gave our party an invitation to accompany him on a visit to the vineyards. They are situated on a hill top and slope overlooking the windings of the beautiful Ohio beautiful at a distance, but somewhat thick and turbid on a close inspection. We there found an old soldier of Napoleon, from Saxe- Weimar, who fought at Waterloo, and afterwards retired to his native fields to cultivate the vine. Mr. Longworth having sent to Europe for persons skilled in the manu- facture of Rhenish and Moselle wines, had the for- tune to discover this excellent old man, good soldier, and skilful vintager. Soon after his arrival he was placed in the responsible position of chief wine- maker and superintendent, under Mr. Longworth. Under the guidance of this venerable gentleman Mr. Christian Schnicke we traversed the vineyards, learned the difficulties he had surmounted, and yet hoped to surmount ; the varieties of grape on which CATAWBA WINE. 213 he had made experiments ; the names of the wines he had succeeded in producing; and the number of acres that, year after year, he brought under cultivation. We ended by repairing to his domicile, on the crown of the hill, where he set before us bread and cheese, and a whole constellation of native wines. Among others were dry Catawba and sparkling Catawba, both excellent ; a not very palatable wine produced from grapes imported from the Cape of Good Hope ; and two other wines almost equal to Catawba itself one from the grape called the Isabella, rosy-red as the morning, and sparkling as the laughter of a child ; the other a dry wine, of a pale amber colour, clear, odoriferous, and of most delicate flavour, and almost equal to Johannis- berger. This wine, it appeared, had not arrived at the honours of a name ; was not known to com- merce ; and was simply designated by Mr. Schnicke as the wine of the Minor Seedling grape. As so excellent a beverage could not remain for ever without a name, it received one on this occasion, in the manner recorded by Colonel Fuller in the following extract from a letter to the New Orleans Picayune : " On visiting Mr. Longvvorth's vine- yard in the neighbourhood of Cincinnati, vineyards which yield from six to seven hundred gallons 214 THE MACKAY WINE. to the acre, we found the 'boss' to be an old soldier of Napoleon the Great, and as devoted to the memory of the Emperor, as he is enthusiastic in the culture of the vine. Producing a very choice brand of the colour of amber, and with a bouquet that filled the room, called the wine of the Minor Seedling, objection was taken to the name, but not to the article; so it was there and then christened ' Mackay ' wine, in honour of the poet who was present. Mr. Longworth afterwards con- firmed the new name in a prose as well as a poetical epistle." It is, to some extent, owing to the increase of the cultivation of the vine in Ohio that so many Germans have settled in Cincinnati and the neigh- bourhood. There are about fifty thousand of these people in the city, of whom one fourth are Jews. The Germans inhabit a district of their own, over the Miami Canal, which runs through a district of Cincinnati. To tin's canal they have given the name of the Rhine; and on its banks they have erected concert-gardens such as they have in Germany. Here, embowered unter den Lauben, they congregate on Sunday evenings, the old stagers with wooden shoes on their feet and night-caps on their heads, and the young in a more cosmopolitan costume, to drink MR. N. LONGWORTH. 215 Lager beer, smoke long pipes, and sing the songs of " Fatherland." They have also erected a German theatre, established German schools, and one or two, if not more, German newspapers. It should not be omitted from this record of Catawba and the vintage of America that Mr. Longworth was the first friend of Mr. Hiram Powers, so well known as the sculptor of the " Greek Slave." Mr. Powers, as he takes pleasure in remembering, was greatly aided in the early struggles of his professional career by Mr. Long- worth. Nor is Hiram Powers the only artist whom the Western Bacchus has befriended, for Mr. Longworth uses his great wealth to noble pur- poses, and never more willingly than in aiding the artist of genius up those few first steps of the ladder of fame which it is always difficult, and some- times impossible, to climb. 216 CHAPTER XVII. ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI. St. Louis, Jan. 3lst, 1858. WESTWABD ever westward ! After no less than four accidents to our train on the Ohio and Missis- sippi Railway, happily involving no other evil con- sequences than the smashing of the company's engine and two or three cars, the sacrifice of many valuable hours, and the loss of an amount of patience difficult to estimate, though once possessed by all the passengers, myself included, we arrived at the miserable village, though called a city, of Jeffersonville, in Indiana, nearly opposite to Louis- ville in Kentucky on the river Ohio. The train was due at an early hour of the afternoon, but did not reach Jeffersonville until half-past nine in the evening, long before which time the steam ferry- boat had ceased to ply, and the captain of which refused to relight the fires of his engines, to carry the passengers across. We saw the lights of the large city . gleaming temptingly across the stream, JEFFERSOKTVILLE. 217 but there being no means of conveyance, we were all reluctantly compelled to betake ourselves to the best inn at Jeffersonville, and bad, very bad, was the best. We had had nothing to eat or to drink all day, in consequence of the accident to our train having befallen us in out-of-the-way places, and in the very heart of the wilderness ; and such of us as. were not teetotallers looked forward to a comfortable supper and glass of wine, or toddy, after our fatigue and disappointments. But on asking for supper and wine at the hotel, we were told by mine host that we were in a Temperance State; and that nothing in the way of drink would be served except milk, tea, coffee, and lemonade. A thoughtful friend at Cincinnati had given us on starting a bottle of Bourbon whiskey twenty years old ; and we told mine host that if he would pro- vide us with glasses, hot water, sugar, and a cork- screw, we should enjoy his meat, find our own drink, and set Fate at defiance. Hot water he had, glasses he had, sugar he had, but no cork- screw. Under the circumstances, he advised us either to break off the neck of the bottle, or go round to the shop of the apothecary in the adjoining street. He thought that personage would be able to draw the cork for us, or " loan " or sell us a 218 LOUISVILLE. corkscrew. Colonel Fuller and myself held a council of war, and resolved, lest we should waste the liquor, to make friends with the apothecary. A corkscrew was procured from that respectable practitioner not borrowed, but bought and paid for, and after a fair supper, and some excellent toddy, we turned into our miserable beds. Next morning at an early hour, glad to leave Jeffersonville and all that belonged to it, we crossed in the steamer to Louisville, and once more found ourselves in a land of plenty and comfort, in a nourishing city, in an excellent hotel the " Gait House," one of the best conducted esta- blishments in America ; in a State where the Maine Liquor Law was only known by name, and where it was not necessary to go to the apothecary's shop to obtain, by a sneaking, hypocritical, false pretence, the glass of wine, beer, or spirits that custom, taste, health, or absolute free-will and pleasure demanded. Louisville is the principal commercial city of the State of Kentucky, well situated on the Ohio, and having direct communication with the Mississippi, and with all the immense internal navigation of these great rivers. It contains a population of up- wards of 60,000, and next to Cincinnati, which it aspires to rival, is the greatest emporium of the pork trade on the North American continent. The annual LOUISVILLE. 219 number of hogs slaughtered here is nearly 300,000, and is yearly increasing. On the second night after our arrival, I and my fellow-traveller were alarmed several hours after we had retired to rest by the loud cry of " Fire, fire ! " several times repeated in the lobby adjoining our rooms. I rushed out of bed, opened the door, and saw a negro woman rushing frantically past She called, "Fire fire!" and passed out of sight. Another door was opened, and a woman's voice ex- claimed, " It is not in the Gait House ; there's no danger ! " In the meantime, as quick as thought, an uproar of bells and the rattle of engines were heard ; and knowing how frequent fires were in America, and how much more frequent at hotels than in other places, we prepared ourselves to escape. But by the blaze that suddenly illumined our bed-rooms, we saw that the conflagration was at the opposite " block " or row of buildings, at a manufactory of naphtha and other distilled spirits. The fire raged till long after daylight, and all efforts to subdue it being utterly futile, the " boys " with the engines directed their energies to save the adjoining buildings, in which they happily succeeded. At breakfast in the morn- ing we learned from the negro waiter who attended us, that the fire had proved fatal to his good master. 220 LOUISVILLE. The landlord of the hotel had lain for three days previously at the point of death, and the noise and alarm created by the fire, and the dread lest it should extend to his premises, had acted so power- fully on his weakened frame that he had expired in a paroxysm caused by the excitement. There is nothing to detain the traveller in Louis- ville, unless it be private friendship and hospitality, of both of which we had our share. After three days we took our departure for St. Louis ; but found it as difficult to quit Louisville as it had been to arrive at it. We crossed to Jeffersonville to take the train for the Mississippi, and were in the cars within ten minutes of the appointed time. We had not pro- ceeded five hundred yards from the " depot," or sta- tion, when our locomotive, which happily had not put on all its steam, ran off the rails, and stuck hard and dry upon the embankment. Here we waited two hours in hope of assistance, but none being forth- coming, we made the best of the calamity, and returned to our old quarters at Louisville for another day. On the morrow we again started for the same place; but this time being more successful, we arrived, travelling at the rate of not more than fourteen miles an hour, at the bank of the great river Missis- sippi. For a week previously I had been looking for- THE MISSISSIPPI. 221 ward with pleasant anticipation to the first glimpse of the "Father of Waters." But at this point the scenery is not picturesque. The shores are low, flat, and unvaried by the slightest elevation ; but the stream itself broad, rapid, and turbid, and swarming with steam-boats and river craft has associations of wealth and power which go far to make amends for the absence of natural beauty. Cincinnati was at no remote period the Ultima Thule of civilization, and the furthest city of the West. But in America the " West " is very difficult to fix. Ask the people of Cincinnati, and they will tell you it is at St. Louis. At St. Louis it is in the new territory of Kansas. At Kansas it is at Utah, the paradise of the Mormons. At Utah the West is in Oregon ; and at Oregon it is in California or Van- couver's Island, and the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Every one remembers Pope's line " Ask where's the North ? At York, 'tis on the Tweed ;" and how he ends by giving up the inquiry in despair of an answer, looking for it only "In Nova Zembla or the Lord knows where." In America the true West is quite as difficult to "locate," and is pushed so far from one ocean to- wards the other, by the restless love of adventure, 222 ST. LOUIS. by the auri sacra fames, and by the " go-ahead-itive- ness " characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race on this continent, that West and East melt insensibly into each other, and the ultra-occidentalist finds himself looking at China and Japan in the Far East before he is aware that he has reached the limit of his researches. St. Louis remains, next to Cincinnati, the greatest city of the West; but, as its growth has been more rapid than that of its sister on the Ohio, and as it contains within itself far greater elements of prosperity and in- crease, it is likely, within a very few years, to surpass it in trade, population, and extent. It is already the largest and most flourishing place between Cincinnati and San Francisco; and will, in all probability, within a quarter of a century contain and employ half a million of people. It is situated on the Mis- sissippi, about twenty miles below the point at which that river, pure and lucent in all its upper course, receives the dark and muddy waters of the Missouri. It was founded so early as the year 1746, by Laclede, a Frenchman, and named in honour of St. Louis of France, or, as some say, of Louis XV., who, though a Louis, was assuredly no Saint. Until its transfer to the United States, in 1804, it remained a village of a few log-huts, inhabited by trappers, who traded ST. LOUIS. 223 with the red men for the spoils of the forest; ex- changing bad rum and execrable brandy for peltry ; and detestable muskets, warranted not to go off, for furs that sold exceedingly well in the markets of Europe. The first brick house in St. Louis was built in 1813; and the first steam-boat arrived at its levte, or quay, in 1817, having taken six weeks to ascend the Mississippi. This voyage is now per- formed in six days ; but before the introduction of steam, when flat-bottomed boats were rowed, or otherwise painfully propelled, up the stream, it oc- cupied from six to seven months. After all America need not crow so very loudly over the " old country." It is steam that has been the making of them both, and given them their wonderful impulse. Were it not for steam what would be England's place in the world? And were it not for steam, what would the United States of America be? England would be better off than the United States, as regards wealth and population, and civi- lized America would be a mere strip on the sea- board, as it was in the days of Washington, when it took months to go up and down the Mississippi, and when a man might lose not only his time but Ms scalp in the perilous adventure. It was not until 1820, when the population of St. Louis was under 224 ST. LOUIS. 5,000, that the place became of any importance. Twenty years afterwards the population reached 17,000. In 1852 it exceeded 100,000, and in 1857 it was variously estimated at from 150,000 to 180,000. It is still rapidly increasing. English y Irish, German, and the surplus population of such old States and communities as Massachusetts, Con- necticut, and others in New England, continually flock into it, and beyond it, to add to its wealth, and to develop the resources of the great and fertile regions lying between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, and the remote sources of the Missouri. Men are still living in the city, owners of "town lots," for which they paid, forty years ago, the Government price of one dollar and a quarter per acre. These lots, in consequence of the enormous rise in the value of real estate, are not to be obtained at the present day under six hundred or sometimes one thousand dollars per foot frontage, and are covered with noble buildings and lines -of commercial palaces. These prosperous citizens and millionaires deserve their good fortune ; and if there be any who envy them, they go out into the backwoods, still further West, in the hope that equal luck will attend their own speculations in land and their own conflicts with the border savages. Such men are the pioneers EIVER NAVIGATION. 225 of civilization, and bear the brunt and heat of the battle. In early life they hold their lands on the sufferance of the Indians, and have to guard their possessions like beleaguered fortresses in an enemy's country, with the war-whoop ringing in their ears, and the murderous tomahawk suspended continually over their heads. St*_ Louis, via Washington and Cincinnati, is about 1,200 miles from New York, 20 miles below the mouth of the Missouri, and 174 miles above the junction of the Ohio with the Mississippi. Above, it commands the navigation of the Missouri for nearly 2,000 miles, and of the Mississippi to the Falls of St. Anthony for 750. Below, it commands the Mississippi for 1,295 miles to New Orleans, and from New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico 94 miles. Besides this extent of direct riverine traffic, it com- mands that of the various tributaries of the Missis- sippi ; rivers, many of them larger than the Rhine or the Danube, such as the Ohio, navigable from its junction with the Mississippi at Cairo, to Pitts- burgh, in Pennsylvania, a distance of 1,000 miles; the Red River, navigable for 1,100 miles; the White River, for 400 miles; the Tennessee, for 600 miles ; the Cumberland, for 300 miles ; the Wabash, for 300 miles ; and many others inferior VOL. I. Q 226 ST. LOUIS. in length or importance to these, but navigable for a hundred or two hundred miles beyond the point of their confluence with the larger streams to which they run. The levee of St. Louis extends along the right bank of the Mississippi for nearly six miles, about half of which length is densely built upon. No city in the world offers to the gaze of the spectators such a vast assemblage of river steam-boats. As many as one hundred and seventy, loading and unloading, have been counted along the leve'e at one time. These vessels, which, like all those that ply on the Mississippi and the Ohio, are of peculiar construction, painted white, and with two tall black funnels, are built for internal traffic, and would play but a sorry part in the salt water if the wind blew ever so little. I^ut for riverine purposes they are admirable, and were it not for the occasional mis- chance of a collision in the fog, or the still more frequent casualty of a blow-up from the bursting of a boiler, would afford the traveller the safest, as they do the pleasantest, mode of conveyance in America. The people of St. Louis are as proud of their steam-boats as of their city. One of them in conversation with a newly-arrived emigrant from the "old country," who had discoursed too well ST. LOUIS. 227 arid too wisely to please his listener on the wealth, power, and greatness of England, put a stop to all further argument by exclaiming, like a man of large ideas, " Darn your little island ! when I was there I found it so little I was afeerd I should tumble off. Look you, sirree ! we've steam-boats enough at St. Louis to tow Great Britain out into the Atlantic and stick her fast; opposite New York harbour!" But, as just observed, these steamers are but frail affairs; and one hour of an Atlantic storm would be sufficient to make wrecks of all that ever plied or ever will ply upon the drumly bosom of the " Father of Waters." Had the "Britisher" thus rebuked possessed ideas commensurate with those of his Yankee friend, he might have rejoined that it would take the combined strength of all the steamers between St. Louis and New Orleans to tow the Great Eastern from Dover to Calais, and that the whole fleet would in all probability perish in the gigantic attempt. For steam tonnage it is estimated that St. Louis is the third city in the Union. New York ranks first, with a tonnage in the year 1854 of 101,478 ; New Orleans second, with a tonnage of 57,147 ; and St. Louis third, with a tonnage little inferior to that of New Orleans itself, amounting to 48,557. The Q 2 228 ST. LOUIS. manufactures of St. Louis are numerous and impor- tant, and comprise twenty flour-mills, about the same . number of saw-mills, twenty-five foundries, engine and boiler manufactories and machine-shops, eight or ten establishments engaged in the manufacture of railroad cars and locomotives, besides several che- mical, soap, and candle works, and a celebrated type foundry, which supplies the whole of the Far West with the types that are absolutely necessary to the creation of all new cities in the wilderness. A church, a forge, a hotel, and a daily newspaper: with these four, aided by a doctor or two, and as many lawyers and bankers, a newly-named city will take its place on the map, and speculators who have bought land at a dollar and a quarter per acre will look to make their fortunes by simply holding on to their purchase until streets run over their grounds, and they become in America such men as the Duke of Bedford, Lord Portman, and the Marquis of Westminster are in London, and Lord Derby in his town of Preston. St. Louis contains two theatres, and the two finest lecture-rooms in the United States. The upper and lower rooms of the Mercantile Literary Association are unrivalled for this purpose ; and neither New York nor Boston contains any lecture-rooms at all THE MORMONS. 229 to be compared to them for elegance of construction and decoration, or adaptability to the end proposed. The city contains at most times a large floating population of Englishmen of a class that America is not very anxious to receive, and is at this moment somewhat puzzled what to do with the Mormon emigration. These fanatics, who are mostly recruited from the manufacturing districts of Wales and the north and middle of England, with a few from Scotland, make St. Louis their resting-place, on their way from New York to the Salt Lake City, and recruit both their energies and their finances before starting on their long and perilous overland pilgrimage to Utah. They generally remain here for a year, and, being for the most part expert handicraftsmen or mechanics, they manage without much difficulty to procure employment. Those who have no trades set up small grocery stores, or betake themselves to the easy, and in America most profitable, occupation of hackney-coach drivers. Horses are cheap; horse-feed is cheap; but riding in carriages in every part of the Union is most exorbitantly dear. The Jehus, having no law to control them, and no fear of policeman or magistrate before their eyes, charge exactly what they please. To drive from a steam-boat to a hotel that may 230 THE IRON MOUNTAIN. happen to be less than a hundred yards distant is seldom to be accomplished under a dollar; and a drive which in London would be overpaid at two shillings costs two dollars in any American city, except in Boston, which in this respect is a city of law and order, and an example to the whole of the Union. Either at this profession or some other the Mormons make money, and generally depart from St. Louis well laden with the spoils of the Gentiles, leaving the next batch from England to imitate their example. The mineral resources of St. Louis and the State of Missouri are abundant. About eighty miles to the westward of St. Louis, on a line of railway which is nearly completed, exist two hills or " mountains" of iron ore. One is called the Iron Mountain, and the other the Pilot Knob. The base of the Iron Mountain, in the country of St. Francis, covers an area of about five hundred acres. It rises to a height of about 270 feet, and is esti- mated to contain above the surface no less than 200 millions of tons of iron ore, yielding from sixty- eight to seventy per cent, of pure iron. The ore below the surface is probably quite as abundant. Over an area of 20,000 acres, in the plain from the midst of which this singular mountain rises, are THE PILOT KNOB. 231 scattered huge blocks of similar formation, some of them sharp-pointed and pyramidal, and deeply im- bedded in the earth; others, unshapely and cumbrous, are lying loose upon the soil, and seeming as if they had dropped from the moon, or were the disjecta membra of some broken asteroid wandering in too close proximity to the sphere of the earth's attrac- tion, and dashed to pieces in their fall against the superior planet, where they have at length found a resting-place. The Pilot Knob is eight miles further to the west of St. Louis, and rises to the height of seven hundred feet. It contains quite as large an amount of iron ore as the Iron Mountain, though the percentage of pure iron differs by one or two degrees. There is a third hill in the vicinity, called the Shepherd Mountain, which is almost equally rich in iron; besides a plateau covered with loose iron ore, which is to be gathered in nuggets and blocks from the weight of one or two pounds to lumps of three and four hundred. As Missouri possesses coal as well as iron, these mountains will in due time make her richer than if she possessed all the gold of California or Australia. Several blast- furnaces have been at full work in this region for the last four years, and many more are in process of erection. 232 ST. LOUIS. The country around St. Louis contains not only these immense quantities of iron, but large mines of copper and lead, and some excellent quarries of what has been called ts Missouri marble." Many of the public buildings in St. Louis are composed of this stone, which is of a brownish-gray colour, and susceptible of a high polish. Altogether St. Louis is one of the most flourishing places in America. It is full of life and activity, but too densely covered with a pall of smoke to be a very agreeable abode for more than a day or two to the traveller who journeys either for health or recreation. 233 CHAPTER XVIII. THE MORMONS. St. Louis, February, 1858. THE collision between the Government of the United States and the singular theocracy of the Mormons, which has established itself in the Great Salt Lake Valley, tinder the presidency of Brigham Young, and which took place in the " fall " of last year, was inevitable, sooner or later. The United States pro- claim perfect liberty of religion perfect liberty even of the grossest superstition and fanaticism so that Brigham Young and his apostles and elders may, if it so please them, and if they can afford the extra- vagance, indulge themselves with a hundred wives apiece, and exclaim, like their kindred Mahometans, that " God is great, and Joe Smith is his prophet!" without forfeiting thereby the right of the territory of Utah or Deseret to be admitted in due time, with its own laws, religion, and customs, among the sove- reign republics of the United States. Brigham Young, the choice of the people, was for many years, 234 THE MORMONS. de jure as well as de facto, the Governor of Utah, and as fully entitled to be so as the respective Governors of New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, Pennsylvania, or any other state, are to administer the laws of those commonwealths. It would have been well if the question had been left in that state for twenty or thirty years if the Mormons had been allowed, in the wilderness where they have fixed their abode, to govern themselves in their own way, and to give their knavish and disgusting- superstition rope enough to hang itself. It was highly desirable for a thousand reasons that no vio- lence should be done, or seem to be done, to that great principle of religious freedom and equality which the founders of the Union established. Un- fortunately, however, the question was hurried for- ward with undue and unwise haste. From small beginnings the Mormons have grown into a large community; and from equally small beginnings of interference the Government of the United States was drawn on, step after step, to assume a position with respect to them from which there was no honourable escape on either side. To do the Mor- mons justice and much as the world must loathe their filthy doctrine, they are entitled to fair consi- deration they did their utmost to avoid collision. THE MORMONS. 235 When their pretended prophet was cruelly and treacherously murdered by a gang of bloodthirsty ruffians, and elevated into the 'dignity of martyr- dom ; when they were driven from one settlement to another, and finally expelled from Nauvoo, their new Zion they withdrew beyond the Rocky Mountains, that they might be out of the way of all neighbours, that they might live Avith a belt of wilderness around them, and wive, thrive, work, and worship after their own fashion. But it was not decreed that they should remain in this state of isolation. Deseret, or Utah, is in the high-road from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The discovery of gold in California, which was partly due to Mormon agency, has made their territory a station through which the civilization and the trade of the Atlantic seaboard must pour to the seaboard of the Pacific and drawn them into that community of Anglo-Saxon nations with whom they have so little in common but their industry, their pluck, and their mother-tongue. The inevitable collision was thus hastened. The Mormons refused obedience to the laws of the United States ; drove from their territory the officers of the supreme Government legally appointed ; overruled the autho- rity of the President and Congress of the United States by the mere will of Brigham Young, a 236 THE MOKMONS. theocrat and a despot, as well as the choice of the people and rendered it impossible for the Govern- , ment at Washington, without loss of dignity and sacrifice of principle, to do other than enforce obe- dience by the strong arm of physical force. If left alone, Mormonism, like other mischiefs and absurdi- ties, might have died out, and given the world no further trouble. But it is the fortune or the fatality of religions, new or old, and of forms of faith of every kind, that they thrive upon obstruction and hostility. Nothing in its previous history did so much for Mormonism as the murder of Joe Smith. The next great aid and impetus which their cause received was the savage expulsion of the Mormons from Missouri, and their exodus, in the midst of a severe winter, with their goods and chattels, their ploughs, their oxen and their kine, their wives and their children, across the wilderness for upwards of two thousand miles, and through the gorges of the Rocky Mountains to the Great Salt Lake, where they succeeded in establishing themselves, amidst dangers and difficulties unparalleled in history. It only needed a hostile collision with the army of the United States to make Mormonism a still greater fact than it is, and to establish it, perhaps, too firmly to be shaken. The United States Government sent, late THE MORMONS. 237 last autumn, a small force of only 2,500 men, of whom only one half were really available, to reduce the fanatics to obedience ; and the Mormons, in a rude, wild country, defended by mountain passes, in which a hundred men might destroy an invading force of fifty times their number, resolved to do battle against their assailants. Upon the rule that ah 1 is fair in war, the Mormons engaged the Indian tribes in their defence. Seventy-five wag- gons, containing the stores and provisions of the United States' army, fell into their hands; they burnt up all the grass and every green thing for two hundred miles on the route which the soldiers had to take ; and animated with the fiercest spirit of resistance, they organized a force, independent of their Indian auxiliaries, three times as numerous as that of their invaders. Every man capable of bear- ing arms was enrolled; and they had a mounted troop of shepherds, huntsmen, and others, well skilled in the use of the rifle, every man of whom knew all the mountain passes and gorges, of which their adversaries were totally ignorant. But after a great show of resistance, and still greater bluster, the Mormons, finding the ultimate hopelessness of the struggle, unexpectedly made a quasi submission at the last moment ; and the United States' Govern- 238 THE MORMONS. ment, glad of an opportunity to end this impolitic struggle, appointed another Governor not a Mor- mon in the room of Brigham Young. Thus did President Buchanan and his Cabinet retire from a false position. To coerce the Mormons into submission, and to compel them to conform to the laws of that great Union of which their territory forms a part, may or may not have been a desirable object to attempt. But to have made the attempt and failed would have been a political and social crime of the highest mag- nitude. Its results would have fanned the flame of Mormon fanaticism and audacity, and brought into their ranks a whole army of scamps, filibusters, ana soldiers of fortune ready to fight for any cause that promised pay, promotion, and power ; and that added the additional inducement, potent with such scoundrels, of a harem with as many wives as Brigham Young or Heber Kimbal. The United States, having entered upon this war, were bound to conquer ; but it can scarcely be asserted by the warmest friends of the Administration, that the vic- tory was a brilliant one for the Federal Govern- ment The struggle will be renewed at a future time. There is no room for such fanatics in the United States territory, wide as it is ; and they must " clear THE MORMONS. 239 out" as civilization spreads westward. Whether their next home will be in Mexico or in British ter- ritory is impossible to predict. They are certainly not wanted on British ground ; and Mexico would not be the worse of their company, but might pro- bably be the better for the infusion of a little more vigorous blood ; and of a new superstition, not more degrading than its own. 240 CHAPTER XIX. FKOM ST. LOUIS TO NEW OKLEANS. New Orleans, Feb. 20, 1858. ON leaving St. Louis, our sensations were not of the most agreeable kind. Two days previously the steamer Colonel Grossman had burst her boiler near a place called New Madrid, several hundred miles down the river, and the papers were filled with accounts of the calamity and with long lists of the killed and wounded. As we drove down to the levee to secure our state-rooms on board of the Philadelphia, the Irish newsboys thrust into our hands the St. Louis Republican of that morning, bawling out, " Horrible accident ! bursting of the Colonel Grossman fifty people killed!" This was not pleasant ; but all the passengers there were sixty or seventy of us consoled themselves with the hope that such a calamity would endow with extra caution, for at least a month to come, every captain, pilot, engineer, and stoker on the Mississippi. And so we took our voyage, satisfied that our captain THE MISSISSIPPI. 241 was " clever" both in the English and in the American sense of the word; and that the clerk, the next in authority, was equally so. The crew and stokers were all negro slaves : and this was a circumstance to be deplored perhaps, but not to be remedied ; for the recklessness of the negroes, recklessness caused not by wickedness, but by want of thought, want of responsibility and want of moral dignity, con- sequent upon the state of slavery, is doubtless one cause, among many, of the frequency of accidents in all the waters where they form the crews of the navigating vessels. We had on board the Philadelphia at starting from the levee 1,000 head of chickens, 400 turkeys, 1,100 sheep, 180 hogs, 2,000 barrels of flour, 1,990 sacks of corn, 400 barrels of pork, besides two or three hundred bales of hemp and cotton, and a load of fuel. In travelling for such long distances in the United States, any one from England who has journeyed for even a thousand or five hundred miles on the Continent of Europe, is impressed not alone with the comfort and freedom of being able to go so far without that eurse of our old and, in some respects, semi-barbarous civilization the pass- port, with its fees and its visas, its delays, and its obstructions, and its often insolent and always VOL. i. B 242 THE MISSISSIPPI. greedy gendarmerie and officials but with the unvarying sameness of aspect presented by the landscape, the cities, and the people. There is little that is picturesque on the great lines of travel, for the Ohio and Mississippi are but monstrous drains. The Mississippi flows through a loose, soft soil, and a flat woody country, with here and there a bluff, or headland, of reddish sandstone. But even these breaks to the prevailing uniformity are unknown at the last twelve hundred miles of its monotonous course. The cities, too, appear to be all built upon the same model. The long rectangular streets, the monster quadrangular hotels, the neat new chapels, and flaring stores seem repeated everywhere with little or no variations of aggregate or detail; and the people have the same look, the same swagger, the same costume, the same speech: so that the traveller, not being startled at every hundred or two hundred miles of his course, as in Europe, by the apparition of a new uniform, a new style of building, by being addressed in a new language by waiters or officials, or by seeing new and unfamiliar names over the shop doors and at the corners of the streets forgets the enormousness of the dis- tances that he is passing through, or only remembers them by their tediousness. But, though the scenery MISSISSIPPI STEAMERS. 243 of the Mississippi has but little attraction after the first few hours, the incidents that occur by day and night are novel enough to interest and instruct every traveller who has his eyes open and his wits about him. And foremost among these incidents are the lading or discharging of cargo, and the taking in of wood. The steamers invariably burn wood, for coal is too dear for this purpose. On either bank of the Mississippi, as the traveller is borne down its steady current, he may observe at every four or five miles' distance piles of wood. These are cut by the negroes for their masters, the owners of the forests and the plantations, and heaped near the shore for the convenience of the steamers. When a steamer requires wood, it touches at any one of these points, takes what it wants, and either leaves the money or a note of what has been taken, to be settled hereafter. Sometimes the planter will be glad to take corn or pork in exchange ; and if it be inconvenient to him to leave a negro or any other person in charge to take the chance of a passing boat, he leaves a notification of his wants and wishes on the pile of wood, and the captain, if it be pos- sible, complies with his wishes. If not, he leaves a memorandum stating the reason why, and a note for the money perhaps the money itself. When R 2 244 MISSISSIPPI STEAMERS. the operation of taking in wood is performed at night, it is picturesque in the extreme. The steamer rests with her prow upon the bank ; a plank is laid from the lower deck to the shore ; an iron stove, hoisted up on an iron pole, is filled with fire, which burns merrily, and casts its red flickering glow upon the rapidly descending current, and a gang of negroes, singing at their work, pass on shore and return laden with logs of cotton-wood and cypress, and pile it upon the deck ready for the all-devouring furnace. In five or six hours it will need a fresh supply, and the operation will be repeated at least thirty or forty times in the 1,200 miles. The fuel bill for the voyage between St. Louis and New Orleans aver- ages, down stream, about 1,000 dollars, or 200/., and for the upward voyage about 250 dollars more. All travellers have heard much of the "snags" and the " sawyers " upon the Mississippi. A snag- is an agglomeration of trunks and branches of trees, borne down by the ever varying current of the river, that is continually encroaching either on the left bank or on the right; sometimes on the one curve and sometimes on the other ; and wash- ing away the trees that grow too near to the margin. A sawyer is a single trunk that has been fixed diagonally by the action of the stream. If an THE MISSISSIPPI. 245 ascending vessel happens in the dark to run against one of these formidable instruments of destruction, she may be ripped up in her whole length before there is time to stop the engine. We on our voy- age experienced no difficulties from either of these sources of evil. Every year they are becoming of less frequent occurrence; the United States Government having established a series of flat-bot- tomed steamers expressly to dredge for, collect, and carry away these disjecta membra. But the snags and sawyers, though no longer so formidable or so many as in the days of yore, are still numerous enough to tax all the vigilance of the pilots and captains of the Mississippi boats, especially when ascending the stream. Our course was downward, and for that reason the less dangerous. Another peculiarity of the Mississippi is its numerous beds and curves, to which may be added the bayous, or streams, running out of instead of into the main current, thus reversing the process to which we are accustomed in the Old World, where the small streams feed the large ones. For many hun- dred miles the Mississippi flows upon a ridge above the adjoining country, and breaking loose now and then, lets off a portion of its superabundant waters into the lower region, forming a stream called a bayou, 246 THE MISSISSIPPI. that is largest near its source, and smallest at its termination. The bayous often end in stagnant pools, the haunt of the alligator, and the hotbeds of fever and malaria. The bends of the river may be understood in their pattern, but not in their mag- nitude and multitudinousness, by any one who has stood upon the battlements of Stirling Castle, and seen " the mazy Forth unravelled." At one place a, canal of less than two miles has been constructed, which saves a navigation of upwards of twenty miles ; and occasionally, after heavy falls of rain, the stream itself, making a new channel across slight obstruction, forsakes its devious ways, and goes directly to its purpose, miles adown. But the Mississippi is one of the most shifting of rivers; always eating away its own banks, flooding the country at one side, and leaving it dry on the other, and next day, taking a fancy to return to its old bed, in obedience to some inscrutable law which in its results looks more h'ke caprice than order. When we left St. Louis, the Mississippi, or, as the people call it familiarly and affectionately, the " Mississip," was covered with floating ice. Two days before we arrived at New Orleans we steamed into another climate warm, balmy, and delicious as England is in the first week of June. DOWN THE 'MISSISSIP.' 247 The following rhymed version of our seven days' adventures on the bosom of the " Father of Waters " was written during the voyage. The verses have the merit of fidelity to the truth in all their inci- dents and descriptions of scenery. It may be said of them, even by their author, that they helped in their composition to beguile the monotony of a very long voyage of 1,295 miles, and that if they yield no amusement to the reader, they yielded some to the writer: " DOWN THE MISSISSIP.' i. " 'Twas a wintry morning, as the clock struck ten, That we left St. Louis, two dejected men; Gazing* on the river, thick with yellow mud, And dreaming of disaster, fire, and fog, and flood; Of boilers ever bursting, of snags that break the wheel, And sawyers ripping steam-boats through all their length of keel: Yet, on shipboard stepping, we dismissed our fears, And beheld through sunlight, in the upper spheres, Little cherubs, waving high their golden wings, Guarding us from evil and its hidden springs; So on Heaven reliant, thinking of our weans, Thinking of our true-loves, we sailed for New Orleans : Southward, ever southward, in our gallant ship, Floating, steaming, panting, down the Mississip. " Oh, the hapless river ! in its early run Clear as molten crystal, sparkling in the sun; Ere the fierce Missouri rolls its troublous tide To pollute the beauty of his injured bride; Like a bad companion poisoning a life, With a vile example and incessant strife; 248 DOWN THE ' MISSIS SIP.' So the Mississippi, lucent to the brim, Wedded to Missouri, takes her hue from him ; And is pure no longer, but with sullen haste Journeys to the ocean a gladness gone to waste; Thus our idle fancies shaped themselves that day, Mid the bluffs and headlands, and the islets gray, Southward, ever southward, in our creaking ship: Steaming through the ice-drifts, down the Mississip. " In our wake there followed, white as flakes of snow, Seven adventurous seagulls, floating to and fro, Diving for the bounty of the bread we threw, Dipping, curving, swerving; fishing as they flew And in deep mid-current, throned upon a snag, Par away a rover from his native crag, Sat a stately eagle, Jove's imperial bird, Heedless of our presence, though he saw and heard ; L/ooking so contemptuous, that human nature sighed For a loaded rifle to slay him for his pride ; But superb, defiant, slowly at his ease, Spreading his wide pinions he vanished on the breeze, Southward, flying southward, far beyond oiir ship; Floating, creaking, panting, down the Mississip, " In a blaze of glory shone the sun that day; In a blaze of beauty, fresh as flowery May, A maid from Alabama came tripping on the deck Bright as heaven above us ; pure without a speck, Singing songs till twilight freely as the lark That for inner gladness sings, though none may hark: Songs of young affection, mournful songs of home, Songs of happy sadness, when the fancies roam From th' oppressive Real to the fairy Far Shining through the Future, silvery as a star: And the Sun departed in his crimson robe, Leaving Sleep his viceroy, to refresh the globe. Thus we travelled southward in our gallant ship; Floating, drifting, dreaming, dozen the Mississip. DOWN THE 'MISSISSIP.' 249 " Brightly rose the morning o'er the straggling town, Where the broad Ohio pours its waters down To the Mississippi, rolling as before, Seeming none the wider for increase of store; And they said, ' These houses scattered on the strand Take their name from Cairo, in the Eastern land. And shall be a city at some future day, Mightier than Cairo, dead and passed away.' And we thought it might be, as we gazed awhile; And we thought it might not, ere we passed a mile : And our paddles paddled through the turbid stream, As we floated downwards in a golden dream, Southward, ever southward, in our panting ship ; Idling, dawdling, loafing, down the Mississip. " Sometimes in Missouri we delayed an hour, Taking in a cargo butter, corn, and flour; Sometimes in Kentucky shipped a pile of logs, Sometimes sheep or turkeys, once a drove of hogs. Ruthlessly the negroes drove them down the bank, Stubbornly the porkers eyed the narrow plank, Till at length, rebellious, snuffing danger near, They turned their long snouts landward, and grunted out their fear. And the white-teethed ' niggers,' grinning with delight, Rode them, and bestrode them, and charged them in the fight ! And then came shrill lamenting, and agony and wail, And pummelling, and hoisting, and tugging at the tail, Until the swine were conquered; and southwards passed our ship, Panting, steaming, snorting, down the Mississip. " Thus flew by the slow hours, till the afternoon, Mid a wintry landscape, and a sky like June; And the mighty river, brown with clay and sand, Swept, in curves majestic, through the forest land, 250 DOWN THE 'MISSISSIP.' And stuck into its bosom, heaving fair and large, Many a lowly cypress that grew upon the marge; Stumps, and trunks, and branches, as maids might stick a pin, To vex the daring fingers that seek to venture in. O travellers ! bold travellers ! that roam in wild unrest, Beware the pins and brooches that guard this river's breast ! For danger ever follows the captain and the ship, Who scorn the snags and sawyers that gem the Mississip. " Three days on the river, nights and mornings three, Ere we stopped at Memphis, the port of Tennessee. And wondered why they gave it such name of old renown A dreary, dingy, muddy, melancholy town, But rich in bales of cotton, o'er all the landing spread, And bound for merry England, to earn the people's bread; And here oh! shame to Freedom, that boasts with tongue and pen ! We took on board a " cargo " of miserable men ; A freight of human creatures, bartered, bought, and sold Like hogs, or sheep, or poultry the living blood for gold; And then I groaned remorseful, and thought, in pity strong, A curse might fall upon us for suffering the wrong, A curse upon the cargo, a curse upon the ship, Panting, moaning, groaning, down tlie Mississip. * " Here our songster fled us, the little gipsy queen, Leaving us a memory of gladness that had been, And through the dark night passing, dark without a ray, Save the light we carried, we held upon our way; Darkness on the waters darkness on the sky, Rain-floods beating o'er us, wild winds howling high, * This poem has been extensively copied into the American papers; but it may be mentioned as a sign of the sensitiveness of public opinion on the subject of negro slavery, that the eight lines referring to the cargo of slaves were invariably omitted in all the journals, except those of Massachusetts and the other New England States. DOWN THE ' MISSISSIP.' 251 But, safely led and guided, by pilots who could tell The pulses of the river, its windings and its swell; Who knew its closest secrets by dark as well as light, Each bluff or fringing forest, each swamp or looming height Its gambols and caprices, its current's steady law, And at the fourth day dawning we skirted Arkansaw; Southward, steering southward, in our trusty ship, Floating, steaming, panting, down the Mississip. " Weary were the forests, dark on either side; Weary were the marshes, stretching far and wide: Weary were the wood-piles, strewn upon the bank ; Weary were the cane-groves, growing wild and dank ; Weary were the tree-stumps, charred and black with fire ; Weary was the wilderness, without a house or spire; Weary were the log-huts, built upon the sand : Weary were the waters, weary was the land; Weary was the cabin with its gilded wall, Weary was the deck we trod weary weary all Nothing seemed so pleasant to hope for or to keep, Nothing in the wide world so beautiful as sleep, As we journeyed southward in our lazy ship, Dawdling, idling, loafing, down the Mississip. " Ever in the evening as we hurried by Shone the blaze of forests, red against the sky Forests burned for clearings, to spare the woodman's stroke, Cotton-wood and cypress, and ash and giant oak And from sleep upspringing, when the morning came, Seemed the lengthening landscape evermore the same. Evermore the forest and the rolling flood, And the sparse plantations and the fertile muds- Tims we came to Princeton, threading countless isles ; Thus we came to Vicksburg, thrice three hundred miles; Thus we came to Natchez, when the starlight shone, Glad to see it glad to leave it glad to hurry on- Southward, ever southward, in our laden ship, Fuming, toiling, heaving, down the Mississip. 252 DOWN THE 'MISSISSIP.' " Whence the sound of music ? Whence the merry laugh ? Surely boon companions, who jest and sing and quaff? No! the slaves rejoicing; happier than the free, With guitar and banjo, and burst of revelry ! Hark the volleyed laughter ! hark the joyous shout ! Hark the nigger chorus ringing sharply out ! Merry is the bondsman; gloomy is his lord; For merciful is Justice and kind is Fate's award. And God, who ever tempers the winter to the shorn, Dulls the edge of Sorrow to these His lambs forlorn And gives them cheerful natures and thoughts that never soar Into that dark To-morrow which wiser men deplore. So sing, ye careless negroes, in our joyous ship, Floating, steaming, dancing, down the Mississip. " At the sixth day dawning all around us lay Fog, and mist, and vapour, motionless and gray : Dimly stood the cane-swamps, dimly rolled the stream, Bayou-Sara's housetops faded like a dream ; Nothing seemed substantial in the dreary fog Nothing but our vessel drifting like a log: Not a breath of motion round our pathway blew Idle was our pilot, idle were our crew Idle were our paddles, idle, free and slave Everything was idle but the restless wave, Bearing down the tribute of three thousand miles To the Southern Ocean and its Indian isles ; Thus all morn we lingered in our lazy ship, Dozing, dreaming, nodding, down the Mississip. " But ere noon, uprising, blew the southern breeze, Rolling off the vapour from the cypress-trees, Opening up the blue sky to the south and west, Driving off the white clouds from the river's breast; Breathing in our faces, balmy, from the land, A roamer from the gardens, as all might understand ; DOWN THE 'MISSISSIP.' 253 Happy as the swallows or cuckoos on the wing, We 'd cheated Father Winter, and sailed into the Spring; And beheld it round us, with all its sounds and sights, Its odours and its balsams, its glories and delights, The green grass, green as England; the apple-trees in bloom; The waves alert with music, and freighted with perfume As we journeyed southward in our gallant ship, Singing and rejoicing doicn the Mississip. " On the seventh day morning we entered New Orleans, The joyous ' Crescent City ' a Queen among the Queens; And saw her pleasant harbour alive with tapering spars, With 'union-jacks' from England, and flaunting 'stripes and stars,' And all her swarming levee, for miles upon the shore, Buzzing, humming, surging, with Trade's incessant roar; With negroes hoisting hogsheads, and casks of pork and oil, Or rolling bales of cotton, and singing at their toil; And downwards widening downwards the broad majestic river, Hasting not, nor lingering, but rolling on for ever : And here, from travel resting, in soft ambrosial hours, We plucked the growing orange and gathered summer flowers, And thanked our trusty captain our pilot and our ship For bearing us in safety doicn the Mississip." 254 CHAPTER XX. "THE CRESCENT CITY." New Orleans, Feb. 25, 1858. IN descending the great River Mississippi our anticipations of New Orleans were of the most agreeable kind. We had no misgivings of plague or yellow fever, and dreaded far more the explosion or hurning of the steam-boat to which we had entrusted the safety of our limbs and lives than any calamity attendant on the proverbial sickliness of the great city of the south. Nor is New Orleans more subject to the great scourge, of which the recollection is so intimately associated with its name, than Mobile, Charleston, Savannah, and other places in the same latitudes. The yellow fever, when it appears in the fulness of its ghastly majesty, generally affects the whole seaboard, and showers its unwelcome favours upon the just and upon the unjust, upon green and breezy Savannah as freely as upon the closely packed lanes and alleys of the " Crescent City." But in winter, spring, and early summer New THE "SWEET SOUTH." 255 Orleans is as healthy as London. These pleasant anticipations were not doomed to disappointment. New Orleans was in the full tide of its most brilliant season, and everything and everybody seemed de- voted to enjoyment. And, certainly, the contrast with the lands and the scenery which we had left a week before, was as agreeable as it was remark- able. On bidding farewell to St. Louis we left the winter behind us; and on approaching Baton Rouge, the State capital of Louisiana, and within one hundred and twenty-five miles of New Orleans, it was a physical as well as a mental luxury to note the difference of climate with which a few days' voyage had made us acquainted. There were no more floating ice-fields on the Mississippi ; no more cold winds or leafless trees ; no more stunted, brown and withered grass, such as that which had wearied our eyes for many hundreds of miles previously; but, by a transformation as complete and rapid as that in a fairy pantomime, the land was covered with all the beauty and glory of the early spring. The sky was of bright, unclouded blue ; the grass beautifully green ; the plum, peach, and apple trees were in full and luxuriant bloom of white and purple ; and the breeze that blew in our faces came laden with the balm of roses and jessamines. The 256 THE "SWEET SOUTH." sugar plantations on either bank of the river, with the white houses of the proprietors, each in the midst of gardens, of which the orange-tree, the evergreen oak, the magnolia, and the cypress were the most conspicuous ornaments, gleamed so cheerily in the sunshine that we could not but rejoice that we had turned our backs on the bitter north, and helped ourselves to an extra allowance of vernal enjoyment. For a few days it seemed like a reali- zation of the poetical wish of Logan, in his well- known apostrophe to the cuckoo : " Oh, could I fly, I'd fly with thee ! We'd make with social wing Our annual visits o'er the globe, Companions of the spring." Steam was the cuckoo of this occasion a cuckoo whose monotonous notes have in this land made the remotest wildernesses to smile with beauty and fertility. The simile may not be a very good one. But let it pass. The effect of the change of climate upon the spirits of all the passengers was decided. The taciturn became talkative ; the reserved became communicative. The man of monosyllables ex- panded into whole sentences ; and the ladies, like the flowers by the river side, felt the bland influence of the skies, and bloomed into fresher loveliness. The wearisome and apparently interminable forests of THE "SWEET SOUTH." 257 cypress and cotton-wood, through which our vessel had been steaming for five days previously, were left far in our wake ; and the landscape around us was alive, not only with the bustle of commercial and agricultural business, but with all the exhila- rating sights and sounds of that sweet season when nature leaps to the kisses of the sun. This was on the 13th of February the day before St. Valen- tine's. In England, in the ancient epoch of our traditional poetry, ere Chaucer, the " morning star of song," had arisen upon our land, the anniversary of St. Valentine, when the birds began to choose their mates, was considered to be the first day of spring. May not the fact suggest a change of the seasons in the old land within the last five or six hundred years ? And may it not help to prove that the climate enjoyed by our forefathers in the twelfth century was similar to that which now blesses the people of the sunny south in the nineteenth ? But, leaving this point to the curious and to the weather- wise, I must own that, while walking out on St. Valentine's-day in the beautiful green meadows near Algiers, on the side of the Mississippi opposite to New Orleans, I was ungrateful enough to complain (to myself) that something was wanting to complete my enjoyment. The home-sickness was upon me; VOL. i. s 258 THE " SWEET SOUTH." and I was dissatisfied with the green grass because there were no buttercups, daisies, cowslips, or prim- roses among it. And here let me state that none of these flowers are to be found on the North American continent except in conservatories, where they are not exactly the same as our beautiful wild English varieties. But if there be no daisies, it must be confessed that there are violets in the south, for I gathered bunches of them on the 14th of February. But, alas ! they had no scent, and did not betray themselves by their fragrance before the eye was aware of their proximity, like the sweet violets of Europe. But then it may be said for Nature in these latitudes that she gives so much odour to the orange-blossoms, the roses, the bay-spice, and the jessamines, as to have none to spare for such humble flowers as violets. Let me also confess, en passant (and still under a qualm of the home- sickness), that I found another deficiency, I will not say defect, in the landscape, to which all the sur- passing loveliness of the atmosphere failed to recon- cile me, which was, that the air was silent, and that no skylarks, "true to the kindred points of heaven and home," sang in the blue heavens. There are no larks in North America ; nor, as far as I have been able to discover, any other bird with a song COTTON PLANTATIONS. 259 as joyously beautiful and bountiful. America lias the blue-bird and the mocking-bird; but those who love to hear the lays of that speck of delicious music, that diamond-like gem of melody which twinkles in the "blue lift" and hails the early morn at Heaven's gate, may expect the gratification in the Old World, but not in the New. But this is a digression, and we have yet to reach New Orleans. Tor a distance of several hundred miles, where the river skirts the shores of the great cotton-growing States of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee, cotton plantations, with their negroes busy at work to feed the hungry mills of Lancashire, meet the eye on both sides of the stream. But on entering Louisiana the traveller sees that the cultiva- tion of sugar replaces to a great extent that of cotton. I regret that I had not time or opportunity to visit either a sugar or cotton plantation on my way down the river, that I might have studied for a few days the relationship between the master and the slave, and have tested by my own experience the bene- volent and patriarchal character, rightly or wrong- fully, but universally given to it in the South. But on this subject I shall possibly, with more experience, have something to say hereafter. In the meantime I could but notice how little of this rich country 8 2 260 SUGAR PLANTATIONS. was cultivated, and how thin a belt of land made profitable by the plough extended between the dark river and the darker forest which bounded the view on every side. But this belt is gradually widening. The axe and the torch are clearing the primeval forest; and the cotton-growing States of Missis- sippi and Alabama, and the sugar-growing State of Louisiana, are annually adding to the wealth of America and of Great Britain by increasing the area of profitable culture, and developing the re- sources of a soil that contains within its bosom fertility enough to clothe and feed the whole popu- lation of Europe and America. The sugar planta- tions have seldom a river breadth of more than five acres, but they extend all but indefinitely into the forest beyond. Some of them reach for one mile, others for three or even ten miles, into the wilder- ness of cypress-trees and dismal swamps that for hundreds of miles fringe the shores of the " Father of Waters." New Orleans stands on the left bank of the Mis- sissippi, about a hundred miles from its mouths, on a crescent-like bend of the river, whence its name of the " Crescent City." By means of continual de- posits of the vast quantities of mud and sand which it holds in solution, and brings down from the great NEW ORLEANS. 261 wildernesses of the Far West, the Mississippi has raised its bed to a considerable height above the level of the surrounding country, and is embanked for hundreds of miles by earthen mounds or dykes, of six or eight feet in height, called levees. This name was originally given by the French, and is still retained by the dwellers on the banks of the Mississippi and Ohio. A levee of this kind protects New Orleans. As many parts of the city are lower than the bed of the river, no portion of the drainage finds its way into what in other cities is the natural channel, but runs, from the direction of the stream, into the swamps of the lower country towards Lake Pontchartrain. As there is very little fall in this direction, New Orleans, as may be supposed, is ill-drained. It is a matter of considerable diffi- culty and great expense to drain it, even as in- efficiently as such untoward circumstances will allow. What drainage there is, is upon the surface, and even at this early season of the year the smell affects painfully the olfactory nerves of all who prefer the odours of the rose to those of the cesspool. The population of the city is about 120,000, of whom one-half or more are alleged to be of French extrac- tion. The French call themselves, and are called, Creoles a term that does not imply, as many people 262 NEW ORLEANS. suppose, an admixture of black blood. Indeed, all persons of European descent bom in this portion of America are strictly, according to the French mean- ing of the word, Creoles. New Orleans is less like an American city than any other in the United States, and reminds the European traveller of Havre or Boulogne-sur-Mer. From the admixture of people speaking the English language it is most like Bou- logne ; but the characteristics of the streets and of the architecture are more like those of Havre. The two languages divide the city between them. On one side of the great bisecting avenue of Canal Street the shop-signs are in French, and everyone speaks that language ; on the other side the shops and the language are English. On the French side are the Opera House, the restaurants, the cafes, and the shops of the modistes. On the English or American side are the great hotels, the banks, the Exchange, and the centre of business. There is one little pecu- liarity in New Orleans which deserves notice as cha- racteristic of its French founders. In other American cities no effort of imagination is visible in the naming of streets. On the contrary, there is in this respect an almost total absence of invention. New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Cincinnati, and St. Louis seem to have exhausted at a very early period of STREET NOMENCLATURE. 263 their histories the imagination or the gratitude of their builders. Street nomenclature has been con- signed to the alphabet at Washington, where they have A Street, B Street, C Street, D Street, &c. At New York the streets are named from First Street up to One Hundred and Eighty-eighth or even to Two Hundredth Street. At Philadelphia imagination in this particular matter seems to have reached its limit when it named some of the principal thorough- fares after the most noted and beautiful trees that nourished on the soil "Walnut, Chesnut, Spruce, and Pine, Hickory, Sassafras, Oak, and Vine." Having stretched so far it could go no further, and took refuge, as New York did, in simple arithmetic. At Cincinnati, where the same system prevails, the street-painters do not even take the trouble of adding the word street, but simply write Fourth or Fifth, as the case may be. In that pleasant and prosperous place you order an extortionate coach-driver to take you, not to Fourth Street, but to Fourth. Not so in New Orleans. The early French had greater fertility of fancy, and named their streets after the Muses and the Graces, the Nereids and the Oreads, the Dryads and the Hamadryads, and all the gods and goddesses of Olympus. Having exhausted their 264 THE ST. CHARLES HOTEL. classic reminiscences, they next, as a gallant people, bethought themselves of the names of fair ladies dames and demoiselles and named some of the newer streets after the Adeles, Julies, Maries, Alines, and Antoinettes, whom they held in love or reverence. When these failed they betook themselves to the names of eminent men in their own and in ancient times to those of Lafayette or Washington, or to the founders of New Orleans, the Carondelets and ihe Poydras. It is, perhaps, too late for New York and other great American cities to alter the system they have established ; but to name a street after a public benefactor, a statesman, a warrior, a philoso- pher, or a poet, or even after the Muses and the Graces, seems preferable to so tame and prosaic a method of nomenclature as that afforded by the alphabet or the multiplication table. The most prominent public building in New Or- leans is the St. Charles Hotel, an edifice somewhat in the style and appearance of the Palace of the King of the Belgians at Brussels. During the twelve days that our party remained under its hospitable roof it contained from seven hundred to seven hundred and fifty guests ; and its grand entrance-hall, where the gentlemen congregate from nine in the morn- ing till eleven or twelve at night, to read the news- THE ST. CHARLES HOTEL. 26,5 papers, to smoke, to chew, and, let me add, to spit, presented a scene of bustle and animation which can be compared to nothing but the Bourse at Paris during the full tide of business, when the agioteurs and the agens de change roar, and scream, and ges- ticulate like maniacs. The southern planters, and their wives and daughters, escaping from the mono- tony of their cotton and sugar plantations, come down to New Orleans in the early spring season, and, as private lodgings are not to be had, they throng to the St. Louis and the St. Charles Hotels, but prin- cipally to the St. Charles, where they lead a life of constant publicity and gaiety, and endeavour to make themselves amends for the seclusion and weariness of winter. As many as a hundred ladies (to say nothing of the gentlemen) sit down together to breakfast the majority of them in full dress as for an evening party, and arrayed in the full splen- dour both of their charms and of their jewellery. Dinner is but a repetition of the same brilliancy, only that the ladies are still more gorgeously and elaborately dressed, and make a still greater dis- play of pearls and diamonds. After dinner the drawing-rooms offer a scene to which no city in, the world affords a parallel. It is the very Court of Queen Mob, whose courtiers are some of the 266 THE ST. CHARLES HOTEL. fairest, wealthiest, and most beautiful of the daugh- ters of the South, mingling in true Republican equality with the chance wayfarers, gentle or simple, well-dressed or ill-dressed, clean or dirty, who can pay for a nightly lodging or a day's board at this mighty caravanserai. To rule such a hotel as this in all its departments, from the kitchen and the wine-cellar to the treasury and the reception-rooms, with all its multifarious array of servants, black and white, bond and free, male and female to maintain order and regularity, enforce obedience, extrude or circumvent plunderers, interlopers, and cheats and, above all, to keep a strict watch and guard over that terrible enemy who is always to be dreaded in America Fire is a task demand- ing no ordinary powers of administration and govern- ment ; but it is one that is well performed by the proprietors, Messrs. Hall and Hildreth. Their mon- ster establishment is a model of its kind, and one of the " sights " of America. So much for the indoor life of New Orleans. Its outdoor life is seen to greatest advantage on the levee, where steamboats unloading their rich freights of cotton, sugar, and molasses from Mississippi, Ark- ansas, and Tenessee, and of pork, flour, corn, and whisky from the upper and inland regions of Mis- THE LEVEE AT NEW OKLEANS. 267 souri, Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky, present a pano- rama that may be excelled in Europe for bustle and life, but not for picturesqueness. The river can scarcely be seen for the crowd of steam-boats and of shipping that stretch along the levee for miles ; and the levee itself is covered with bales of cotton and other produce, which hundreds of negroes, singing at their work, with here and there an Irishman among them, are busily engaged in rolling from the steamers and depositing in the places set apart for each consignee. These places are distinguished one from the other by the little flags -stuck upon them flags of all colours and mixtures of colours and patterns ; and here the goods remain in the open air, unprotected, until it pleases the consignees to remove them. New Or- leans would seem, at first glance, to overflow with wealth to such an extent as to have no room for storage. The street pavements actually do service for warehouses, and are cumbered with barrels of salt, corn, flour, pork, and molasses, and bales of cotton, to such an extent as to impede the traffic, and justify the belief that the police must either be very numerous and efficient, or the population very honestly disposed. The docks of Liverpool are busy enough, but there is no life or animation at Liver- 268 THE LEVEE AT NEW ORLEANS. pool at all equal to those which may be seen at the levee in the " Crescent City." The fine open space, the clear atmosphere, the joyousness and alacrity of the negroes, the countless throngs of people, the forests of funnels and masts, the plethora of cotton and corn, the roar of arriving and depart- ing steam-boats, and the deeper and more constant roar of the multitude, all combine to impress the imagination with visions of wealth, power, and dominion, and to make the levee as attractive to the philosopher as it must be to the merchant and man of business. One day, weary of the sights and sounds of trade and anxious for fresh air, I crossed to^ Algiers on the opposite side of the Mississippi. Here, while ad- miring the orange groves but regretting that the oranges were bitter and overhearing the strange names given to the negroes by one another, and by the Creole masters and mistresses such names as Hercule, Lysandre, Diane, Agamemnon, and Hector; I was much amused by the fervid ejaculations of a man who had evidently been drinking. Talking loudly to himself, but slowly and deliberately, he said, " Damn everything ! damn everybody ! Yes ! but there's time enough to damn everything ! and it's not my business to go out of the way to do it. Besides, I THE "MYSTICK KREWE." 269 have no authority to damn anything and for that matter to damn anybody but myself; which I do most heartily. Damn me ! " and he passed on, reeling. On the third day after our arrival, New Orleans was excited beyond the limits of its ordinary pro- priety by the revelries of the " Mystick Krewe of Comus " an association of citizens whose names are known only to the initiated, who annually celebrate the festival of Mardi Gras by a procession through the city. The procession on this occasion represented Comus leading the revels, followed by Momus, Janus, Pomona, Vertumnus, Flora, Ceres, Pan, Bacchus, Silenus, Diana, and, in fact, the whole Pantheon of the Greek mythology, male and female, all dressed in appropriate costume. The " Krewe " assembled at nine o'clock in Lafayette Square, and, having obtained permission of the Mayor to perambulate the city with torchlights, started in procession through the principal streets to the Gaiety Theatre, where the performers in the masque, to the number of upwards of one hundred, represented four classical tableaux before a crowded audience. They protracted the festival till mid- night; but during that night and the preceding day, no less than three assassinations by maskers were perpetrated in the open street. The circum- 270 THE SWAMPS OF LOUISIANA. stances, horrible to a stranger, appeared to excite no sensation among the natives. But New Orleans is in this respect on a par with Southern Italy. Human life is a cheap commodity, and the blow of anger but too commonly precedes or is simultaneous with the word. And among the counterbalancing dis- advantages of a too warm and too luxurious climate, this predisposition to the stiletto or the bowie- knife is not the least disagreeable or the least remarkable. The swamps of the great cotton-growing States of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama are a striking feature of the southern landscape. The traveller, whether he proceed by the steamboats on the great rivers, or along the dreary lines of railway that pierce, often in a straight line, for hundreds of miles through the jungle and the wilderness, speedily becomes familiar with their melancholy beauty, though he seldom has occasion to penetrate far into their dangerous solitudes. No part of the rich State of Louisiana, and but few portions of the States of Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee are more than two hundred feet above the level of the Gulf of Mexico. The majestic rivers which give names to these States, and many others which are tributary to these larger arteries, such as the Red THE SWAMPS OF LOUISIANA. 271 River, the Toinbigbee, and the Ohio, overflow their banks every year, and breaking over the artificial levees that are raised to restrain them within their natural channels, lodge their waters in the low grounds and hollows of the forests. There being no fall by which they can return again to the parent or any other stream or outlet, the waters simmer in the hot sun, or fester in the thick, oppressive shadow of the trees, where nothing flourishes but the land-turtle, the alligator, the rattlesnake, and the mocassin the latter a small but very venomous reptile. An area of no less than 9,000 square miles between the Mississippi and Red River is periodically submerged; and the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers in many parts of their course are as treacherous and unruly as the Mississippi itself, and commit as much havoc on the low-lying districts within twenty or thirty miles of their banks. Between the city of New Orleans and the Lake Pontchartrain, in a carriage-drive of six miles over the celebrated Shell Road (the best road in America, though not to be compared with Regent Street, Oxford Street, or the New Road), the tra- veller may see a miniature specimen of the prevalent scenery of the American swamps. He may admire the luxuriant forest-growth, festooned with the grace- 272 THE SWAMPS OF LOUISIANA. ful ribbons of the wild vine, the funereal streamers of the tillandsia, or Spanish moss, drooping from the branches of pine, cotton-wood, cypress, and ever- green oaks weird-like all, as witches weeping in the moonlight; and underneath, amid the long thick grass, the palm and palmetto spreading their fanlike leaves in beautiful profusion. At the roots of the trees, many of them charred and blackened by fire, sleeps the dull calm water, sometimes in a smaller pool dyed to a colour like that of porter or coffee by the decayed vegetation of successive years ; but in the larger pools, often four or five feet deep, lying clearer and more translucent than when it left the turbid receptacle of the parent Mississippi. But on the banks of the great river itself, between St. Louis and Natchez, may be seen in more perfection the appa- rently interminable forests of cotton-wood and cypress, whose deep recesses, far beyond the present reach of cultivation, or the probable capabilities of existing negro labour, stretch the " dismal swamps " worthy of the name where men seldom venture, even in pursuit of sport, which elsewhere makes them brave so many dangers. The atmosphere in the summer months, when the vegetation is in its greatest beauty, is too deadly even for acclimated white men and for those in the South. None but negroes may brave THE "UNDERGROUND RAILWAY." 273 the miasmata with impunity. Their lungs seem of a texture coarse enough to imbibe the foul air without damage, and their coarse skins repel the noxious vapours that are fatal to the white race. It is to places like these, in the innermost recesses of the swamps, that the rebellious negro, determined upon freedom, flies in pursuit of the blessing, and where he hides and skulks, armed to the teeth, until opportunity serves him to travel by what the Ameri- cans call the " underground railway " to Canada, where, and where only, he can be safe from the marshals and constables of the United States. And what, it may be asked, is the " underground railway?" When and by whom the name was first applied it is difficult, if not impossible, to state, but it simply means the system by which the friends of the negro and the supporters of the abolition of Slavery pass a runaway slave from city to city throughout the length and breadth of the Union, until perseverance and good luck aiding he is finally enabled to set his foot on British territory, and set at defiance the law and the authority which would again make him captive. In most, if not all, American cities, there is some male or female philanthropist, some member of the Society of Friends, or some merely philosophic friend of man, who, looking upon slavery as a crime VOL. I. T 274 THE "UNDERGROUND RAILWAY." and a curse, makes it a point of duty to assist the negro in escaping a bondage which he believes to be an individual no less than a national disgrace. All these persons are acquainted with, and corre- spond with each other, though their existence may be unknown to the authorities and principal persons of the cities in which they reside. By degrees they have organised a system, in conformity to which they shelter and feed the runaway, and provide him with the means of passing from one city to another, until he is safely beyond the reach of all pursuit from the law officers of the Central Government, or from the officious interference of local function- aries or busybodies. Such is the underground rail- way. Canada is its usual terminus ; for there, and there alone, is safety. Unfortunately, however, for the negroes, they do not find always either a wel- come or the means of subsistence in their new home. Canada, besides, is somewhat too frosty for the negro blood; and the fugitives not unfrequently leave it in despair, to return to captivity and punish- ment in the more genial South, where, whatever may be their moral state, their physical wants are better supplied, and with less cost and exertion to them- selves than in the more wholesome and more in- vigorating North. THE SWAMPS OF LOUISIANA. 275 But it is not every negro who, in the heat of passion for real or imaginary wrong inflicted upon him by master or mistress, escapes from thraldom, that hopes, or even attempts, to reach Canada. The way is too long ; the dangers are too many ; and, moreover, it is not one negro in a thousand who knows where Canada is, and who, even when in- spired by the love of freedom, would attempt such a journey. The nearest refuge of the negro of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama is the Swamp ; and thither the runaways betake themselves on the rare occasions when they quarrel with their masters, or appeal to them in vain from the tyranny or mal- treatment of their overseers. The overseers, it should be stated, are seldom Southern men, but mostly "Yankees'* from the New England States, or indubitable Scotchmen, gaining their first footing in the world by a mode of life to which their poverty rather than their Calvinism or their education recon- ciles them. Once in the Swamp and well armed, the fugitive, if not pursued too rapidly by his master or the overseer with the bloodhounds on his track by no means an uncommon occurrence succeeds, sooner or later, in joining a band of unfortunates like himself, and in penetrating into the jungle deeply enough to elude or defy pursuit. Bands of T 2 276 LITE IN THE SWAMPS. forty or fifty negroes, and sometimes in larger num- bers, have been known to haunt the remote swamps of Louisiana and Mississippi, and to make their retreats inviolate, partly by the aid of the pestilential climate, and partly by the terror inspired by their ferocity and desperation. They have even been known to clear portions of the wilderness and plant it with maize or Indian corn for their subsistence, and to levy, like the " merry men " of Robin Hood or Rob Roy, a very considerable black mail and tribute upon the pastures of the planters within two or three days' reach of their fastnesses. When powder and shot fail them, they have recourse to the more primitive implement the bow, and thus pro- vide themselves with subsistence from the spoils of the forest. At night they light large fires with the superabundant timber of their hiding-places, not dreading, so far from the white men, that their pursuers will dare to break in upon them in such dangerous places, or trusting, if they do, that their superior knowledge of the ground will enable them, if not to capture, at least to elude whatever force, public or private, may be sent against them. The day will come, if not within the lifetime of this generation, yet in a short period compared with THE NEGRO POPULATION. 277 the history of Civilization, when all these swamps will be drained, and when all this jungle will be cut down to make room for the cultivation of cotton and sugar. But at present the cultivated land of the Southern States is but a margin and border on the great rivers. Beyond these narrow strips lies on either side the great interior country, equally rich and fruitful. But the white population in these regions, unlike that in the north and west of the Union, and unlike that in Canada, grows by its own natural growth. It has no aid from immigration. The white race increases but slowly. The black races increase rapidly; so rapidly that, in default of that immigration from the Old "World, and from the already over-populated States of New England, which is such a constant source of wealth, power, and dominion to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wis- consin, and Michigan, and which will be the same to Kansas, Nebraska, and scores of other states and territories not yet settled the negroes will ere long outnumber the whites. What may result when this takes place, and when the fact is known to the negro population, it is not for anyone now living to predict " But forward though we canna look, We guess and fear." 278 CHAPTER XXL FROM LOUISIANA TO ALABAMA. Montgomery, Alabama, March 2. FAREWELL to the pleasant and sunny City of New Orleans ! Farewell to its warin-hearted people of Creoles, both French and Anglo-Saxon ! Farewell to the St. Charles Hotel, that perfect epitome of Southern life when it escapes from its enforced solitudes in the plantations of Louisiana and mixes in the gaiety of this "Petit Paris" of America! Farewell to the busy, picturesque, swarming levee, with its negroes and its Irishmen, its cotton, its sugar, its pork, its corn, its whiskey, and its huge white steam-boats, with their tall black funnels, two to each ! Farewell to its fruit-shops, luscious and bursting over with oranges and bananas, freshly gathered from the tree ! Farewell to the bowers of roses and jessamines on the banks of the Mississippi ! And farewell to that great River Mississippi itself, fit for everything except to drink and to wash in, winding, and twisting, and pouring to the sea its FAREWELL TO NEW ORLEANS. 279 majestic tide for upwards of two thousand miles, receiving into its bosom, from tributaries scarcely inferior to itself, the drainage of an area sufficient to feed and lodge one half of the human race ! And farewell, too, to the sweet South, where by a little manoeuvre and change of plan I had contrived to evade the frost and snow, and to make Spring follow immediately upon Autumn ! I was now bound for Mobile, in Alabama, and turned my face north- wards, travelling with the Spring. Hitherto New Orleans had been to my imagination a weird city, a city of the plague, a city that London life-assu- rance offices would not allow their clients to visit unless upon payment of a premium for the extra risk ; but for the future it was to be associated in my mind with all pleasant fancies and ideas of beautiful women, beautiful flowers, beautiful skies, and balmy breezes. From the St. Charles Hotel to the Lake Pont- chartrain railway station is a distance of less than a mile. The hack fare demanded of each pas- senger on this occasion was one dollar. London cab-drivers, who are not allowed by the law or the police to extort as much as they please from the fear, the ignorance, or the indolence of the public, might advantageously expatriate them- 280 HACK DRIVERS. selves to Louisiana, or, indeed, to any other State in the wide dominion of "Uncle Sam." Were the American hack -drivers all white men, it might not unreasonably be supposed that they had immigrated from the European side of the Atlantic, to revenge themselves for deprivation of the liberty of cheating in the Old World by the exercise of an unbounded licence of extortion in the New. But this theory does not hold in the South, where at least one half of the hack-drivers are negroes. Yet five hundred London cabmen, the very worst and most insolent that London could spare, might effect a social revo- lution in this department by coming over to Ame- rica. If they demanded no more than four times the legal London fares they'would get abundance of custom, for, even at these rates, they would be able to do the work at half the price of the American Jehus, native or imported. From the railway depot to Lake Pontchartrain is six miles, and the fare was a quarter of a dollar. From Lake Pontchartrain, by the fine mail steamer the Cuba, the distance is 165 miles; and the fare on this occasion was precisely the same as the hackney-coach fare, one dollar. The accommodation afforded included supper, a night's lodging, and breakfast in the morning. But let no future traveller imagine that such a rate is a MOBILE. 281 permanent institution. There was on that day an opposition boat on the line ; and, to vanquish and overwhelm the opposition, it was contemplated, if the ruinous rate of one dollar would not effect the purpose, to reduce it still further to one half a dollar. The consequences were, as might have been expected, that the boat was inconveniently over- crowded, and that there was a ferocious scramble at breakfast-time for seats at the table. It must be admitted, however, that the cuisine was as liberal as if the full price had been demanded. For my part, it was not without a compunctious throb and qualm of conscience that I was lending myself to a robbery, that I condescended to eat either supper or breakfast. "We left New Orleans at four in the afternoon, and steamed all night through the two sea lakes of Pontchartrain and Borgne, and along the inner shore of the Gulf of Mexico inner, because protected from the outer Gulf by a breastwork of islands. At nine the next morning the Cuba was safe in the Mobile River, discharging her freight and passengers at the leve"e. The population of Mobile is about 25,000, free and slave, who all, either directly or in- directly, live and thrive by the cotton-trade. Mobile and Liverpool are, in different ways, as closely con- 282 MOBILE. nected by interest and business as Liverpool and Manchester, and their transactions are annually oil the increase. The wharves and levee, like those of New Orleans, are covered with cotton bales. The gutters, when it rains (and the rains of Mobile are floods), bear down waifs and strays of cotton to the river, and the river is studded and flecked with cot- ton-drift floating about on its surface like so many nautili. The thoughts of the merchants of Mobile are of cotton. They talk of cotton by day, and dream of it by night. When news arrive from Europe, they turn instinctively to the Liverpool cotton report. A rise or fall of a farthing per lb., or even of one-eighth of a farthing, may make the difference between ease and embarrassment between riches and poverty between a good speculation and a bad one. " Cotton is in their steps, cotton is in their ears; In all their actions, enterprise and cotton." Next to the State of Mississippi, Alabama is the greatest cotton State of the Union, and produces from 500,000 to 700,000 bales per annum, at an average value of from forty to fifty dollars (81. to 101} per bale. Mobile was founded by the French in 1700, when they were the possessors of Louisiana, but the name, though it resembles a French word and suggests a MOBILE. 283 French origin, is said by the natives to be Indian. It was ceded to England in 1763; and, seventeen years afterwards, was made over to Spain. It bears but few traces either of its French or its Spanish founders ; and some of its most enterprising citizens are English and Scotch, attracted to it by its business connections with Liverpool and Glasgow. As a city Mobile offers few attractions to the traveller. It has no public buildings of any importance, and only one street (Government Street) which has any pretensions to beauty, and those are derivable more from its width, and the luxuriant tropical beauty of the trees which shade it on either side, than from its architec- ture. Should any of the surplus population of London cabmen, already alluded to, bethink them- selves of coming to the United States, they will do well to consider the advantages which Mobile offers to them. My travelling companion, for going to and coming from an evening party at a gentleman's house, within a distance of a mile and a half from our hotel, had to pay one driver the sum of eight dollars (ll 12s.); and for escorting two ladies to the theatre, "on a raw and rainy night," a dis- tance of less than half a mile, he had to pay six dollars (ll. 4s.) But those who do not keep car- riages of their own in Mobile seldom or never ride. 284 THE MAGNOLIA GKOVE. If it be fine, they walk ; if it be wet, they stay at home; so that, after all, the hackney-coach business may not be so prosperous as might be supposed from such an unconscionable tariff. The great charm, beauty, and attraction of Mobile is its famous Magnolia Grove. The drive for about three miles is over an excellent plank-road, through the bowery avenues of which are to be obtained at every turn most picturesque glimpses over the Bay of Mobile, and far beyond it on the verge of the horizon, of the Gulf of Mexico, and the mysterious springs and sources of that Great Gulf Stream which works its tepid way across the Atlantic to make green the fields of Ireland and England, and to soften the climate of the Hebridean Isles of Skye and Lewis and the fiords of Norway. On entering the grove the magnificent magnolias, tall and umbrageous as the chesnut-trees of Bushy Park, are seen growing to the very edge of the sea, interspersed with equally magnificent pines and evergreen oaks. The com- bination of these stately trees presents the idea of perpetual summer. The magnolias were not . in bloom so early (the 25th of February), but the wood violets were out in rich though inodorous luxuriance; the jessamines were unfolding their yellow blossoms, redolent of perfume ; and the bay- THE WAYSIDE SPRING. 285 spice displayed on every side its gorgeous crimson flowers and glossy aromatic leaves. Amid all these and a variety of other trees, the wild vine, that had not yet put out its tender shoots, wreathed and twined itself, suggesting the fuller beauty that would burst upon the land when the mocking-bird would trill its delicious notes, the magnolia woo the " amor- ous air" with its profuse white pyramids of flowers till the breeze became faint with excess of odour, and the vine itself, with its full drapery of verdure upon it, should festoon together all the trees of this exu- berant wildwood. Walking out by myself, and meriting neither then, nor at any other time, the anathema of Cowley, who says, " Unhappy man, and much accursed is he Who loves not his own company," a beautiful little spring by the wayside in the Magnolia Grove suggested to me, sitting on a fallen tree, and basking in the sunshine, the following lines : THE WAYSIDE SPRING IN ALABAMA. "Bonnie wayside burnie, Tinkling in thy well, Softly as the music Of a fairy bell ; To what shall I compare thee, For the lore I bear thee, On this sunny day, Bonnie little burnie, Gushing by the way? 286 THE WAYSIDE SPRING. " Thou'rt like to fifty fair things, Thou'rt like to fifty rare things, Spring of gladness flowing Grass and ferns among, .Singing all the noontime Thine incessant song; Like a pleasant reason, Like a word in season, Like a friendly greeting, Like a happy meeting, Like the voice of comfort In the hour of pain, Or sweet sleep long vanished, Coming back again: "Like the heart's romances, Like a poet's fancies, Like a lover's visions Of his bliss to be ; Like a little maiden Crowned with summers three, Komping in the sunshine Beautiful to see ; Like my true-love's accents When alone we stray, Happy with each other, Through the meads of May, Or sit down together, In the wintry weather By the cheery fire, Gathering in that circle All this world's desire, Hope and love and friendship, And music of the lyre ! "Bonnie little burnie, Winding through the grass, Tune shall never waste thee, Or drain thy sparkling glass ^ And were I not to taste thee, And bless thee as I pass, 'Twould be a scorn of Beauty, 'Twould be a want of Duty, THE ALABAMA RIVER. 287 Twould be neglect of Pleasure- So come thou little treasure ! I'll kiss thee while I may, And while I sip thy coolness, On this sunny day, 111 bless thy Gracious Giver, Thou little baby River, Gushing by the way ! " We were detained at Mobile no longer than three days, and then, once more taking passage npon a steam-boat, we steamed up, and not down, a great American river. The Alabama is not so great as the Mississippi or the Ohio, but is still a great and a noble stream. It is formed by the junction of the Coosa and the Tallapoosa, and is navigable by large steam-boats from Mobile to Wetumpka, a distance of about six hundred miles. About forty miles above Mobile it is joined by a river with the somewhat cacophonous name of the Tombigbee, and from the point of junction downwards is sometimes called the Mobile River. The river runs for two or three hundred miles right through the middle of the State of Alabama, of which it is the broad, the silent, and the beautiful highway, and then slopes to the west towards Georgia. Bat this reminds me that I am speaking not of nature but of the map, and commit- ting an error similar to that of a newly appointed postmaster of Mobile, who wrote to a clerk in his 288 THE ALABAMA EIVER. department at the further end of the State of Ala- bama, asking him how far the Tombigbee ran up ? The reply was that the Tombigbee did not run up, but down a truth and a witticism which cost the sharp clerk his situation by the fiat of the offended functionary, who, if he had sense to see the joke, had not magnanimity enough to pardon it. From Mobile to Montgomery, by the windings of the stream, tracing it upwards, is a distance of nearly five hundred miles, and the voyage usually occupies about forty -eight hours. Between these two points the only towns of importance are Selma and Cahawba towns which in England would be called villages, but which in America are called cities. To steam up this lonely and lovely river, fringed to the water's brink with apparently inter- minable wildernesses and swamps of cane and cypress the cypresses heavy and gloomy with the banner-like beards of the tillandsia, was like steaming into the aboriginal forest for the first time. So still and dream-like was the landscape, so bright a moon shone on the fairy solitude of wood and flood, that it seemed as ii we had passed the uttermost confines of civilization, and were tempting the unknown waters of an un- known land, where the savage still prowled, where THE ALABAMA RIVER. 289 the war-cry still resounded, and where the up- lifted tomahawk might still glitter in the moonlight over the scalp of the too adventurous white man rushing recklessly into danger. For forty miles at a stretch we travelled onwards ever onwards without seeing any trace of a human habitation ; though occasionally we stopped at a lonely corner where negroes, bearing torches, suddenly appeared, to receive a barrel of corn, or pork, or other com- modity with which we were freighted. There were cotton plantations within easy distances, though not always visible from the river. In the downward voyage of the steamers the owners of these planta- tions load them with cotton for Mobile, but in the upward voyage to Montgomery the freight is usually of such articles as the planters require for them- selves and their slaves. Alabama finds cotton pro- duction more profitable than any other. It grows but little corn, raises but little pork, and carries on no manufactures. There is, in consequence, a continual exchange of cotton for every other commodity and thing which the free man's luxuries and his slaves' necessities require. Alabama is not yet totally free of the Indian tribes ; and portions of them come annually down to Mobile to sell their fancy beadwork, and the little VOL. i. u 290 THE ALABAMA RIVER. ornaments of bark which the women make in the winter. The women, young and old, are often to be seen in Mobile, with bundles of firewood on their backs, which they sell in the streets, crying with a melancholy intonation, " Chumpa ! chumpa ! " the only word resembling English which they speak, and some- what more musical than "chumps," which it signifies. The Alabama River was the scene of many romantic and many horrible incidents of the early warfare between the white and red races, and many stories are told of the encounters of the hardy pioneers of civilization with the equally hardy but more luckless aborigines who resisted their invasion, and of which the Alabama, its swamps and bluffs, was the scene even so lately as the year 1830. Among the Indian heroes, one, " General" Mackintosh, the son of a Scotchman by an Indian mother, stands conspicuous for his chivalry and bravery, and for the influence which he exercised over all the Indian tribes of Alabama. The river is almost as intimately associated with his name as Loch Lomond is with that of Rob Roy, or the caves of the Island of Skye with the memory of Prince Charlie. Montgomery is the capital of the State of Ala- bama, and carries on a considerable business in the forwarding of cotton and other produce to Mobile. MONTGOMERY. 291 Its population is under 10,000. It offers nothing to detain the traveller, and has nothing remarkable about it except the badness of its principal hotel. Among the numerous eccentricities of this establish- ment may be mentioned the fact that it contains no bells in its rooms. By this economy the traveller is compelled, if he want anything, to go to the top of the stairs, and use his lungs, or, if that be dis- agreeable or unavailing, to help himself, which is, perhaps, his most advisable mode of getting out of the difficulty. Another peculiarity of this re- markable hostelry is (or was) that nothing is (or was) to be had on a Sunday evening after six o'clock. Having dined by compulsion of the custom of the place at one o'clock, I sought out a negro waiter about nine o'clock, and asked for some refreshment. There was nothing to be had no tea, no milk, no meat, not even a crust of bread. " Is the bar open ? " I inquired, with a faint hope that that department might prove more hospitable, and afford a hungry traveller a " cracker" (the American name for a biscuit, and for a southern rustic) and a glass of beer or wine. The hope was vain ; the bar-keeper had shut up at six o'clock. It was a case of starvation in a land of plenty; and, to make the matter more provoking, it was starvation charged in u 2 292 MONTGOMERY. the bill at the rate of two dollars and a half per diem. I made a friend of the negro, however ; and he borrowed a crust of bread for me, out of doors somewhere, and managed to procure me a lump or two of sugar : a worthy Scotchman at Mobile had, when I left that city, filled me a pocket-flask with genuine Islay whiskey from the " old country"; and, with these abundant resources, and a tea-kettle, I was enabled to be independent of the landlord of the bell-less, comfortless, foodless hotel of Mont- gomery, Alabama. 293 CHAPTER XXII. SOUTH CAROLINA. Charleston, South Carolina, March 5, 1858. Two days after our pleasant voyage up the Ala- bama river, the weather suddenly changed. A " norther " (a wind as much dreaded in the sunny South of this continent as is the kindred " bora " by the inhabitants of the sloping hills of the Adriatic from Trieste to Zara,) swept over the States of Ala- bama and Georgia, and in less than two hours the thermometer fell forty degrees. In the morning it was a luxury to breathe the balmy airs from the Gulf of Mexico, redolent of fresh flowers and all the wealth of early spring ; in the afternoon the weather was raw and bleak, and suggested Siberia or Greenland. The unhappy wayfarer, unaccus- tomed to the clime, was fain to betake himself to his thickest robes, or to sit in stifling proximity to that greatest of all abominations an American stove, glowing at a red heat with anthracite coal. Nor was it strangers alone who suffered. The na- 294 THE ALABAMA KIVEK. tives are no more inured to these abrupt changes of temperature than travellers are. The men think it unsafe to leave off their overcoats in February days that seem to an Englishman as hot as the days of mid-June ; and the ladies more susceptible of cold than any ladies I ever met with in the Old World will not venture their fair noses or their fair finger-tips beyond the warm privacy of their boudoirs or bed-rooms when there blows a breeze from the east or north. While steaming up the Alabama, and for twenty miles running a race with another boat, which, greatly to my satisfaction, parted company with us at the junction with the Tombigbee, I could not help reflecting on the numerous fires, wrecks, and explosions for which the rivers of the South are notorious. I inquired whether it was the reckless- ness of the captains, or whether it was that of the passengers, who but too often incite captains to race with rival boats, pour passer le temps and to beguile the monotony of the voyage, that produced such accidents. Then I debated whether there could be any stimulating influence in a southern atmosphere which acted upon the human brain and organisation so as to make men more thoughtless and impulsive than they are in the steadier and THE ALABAMA KIVEK. 295 soberer north; or whether it was a want of care in the manufacture or the management of the machinery ; or whether all these causes might not combine more or less to render life more insecure in the southern railways and rivers than it is in other parts of the world ? Altogether I was so gloomily impressed with the idea of impending calamity that I looked carefully and anxiously around to weigh the chances of escape, if our boat should be the victim either of misfortune or mismanagement. The prospect was not particularly pleasant. The river had overflowed its banks, and the trees on each side, as far as the eye could pierce through the intricacies of the primeval forest, stood three or four feet deep in the stream. There was nothing to be seen but a waste of water, and a tangled forest-growth the haunt of alligators and rattlesnakes. There was this comfort, however it was too early in the year either for alligators or rattlesnakes, both of which hibernate in these regions until the begin- ning of May. I ultimately came to the conclusion that, if the St. Charles (such was the name of our boat) took fire, or burst her boiler, the most reason- able and promising chance of safety would be to seize a life-belt, to plunge into the water and make for the jungle, where, perched on the branch of 296 THE ALABAMA KIVEK. a tree, I might await with all the fortitude at my command the mode and the hour of deliverance. On retiring to rest for the night, having made sure of a life-belt (and one is placed in every berth to be ready for the worst), I speedily forgot my forebodings in the blessed sleep " which slid into my soul." Next afternoon, safely landed at the pretty but inhospitable city of Montgomery (only inhospitable as far as its principal inn is concerned), I exchanged the perils of the river for the perils of the rail. Let me not be considered an exagger- ator or an alarmist. All travelling is in the south more perilous than it is anywhere else. The " reason why " is difficult to tell, on any other supposition than that the climate is too relaxing to the body and too stimulating to the brain of the Anglo-Saxon races, and that they become reckless and careless in consequence. But I must leave this point for the consideration of physiologists, assuring them that, like the shake of Lord Burleigh's head in the play, " there may be something in it," and pro- ceed with my story. After leaving Montgomery, and travelling all night through the long, weary, and apparently illimitable pine forests of Georgia, in the upper branches of which the night wind made a perpetual THE ALABAMA KIVER. 297 moaning, our train arrived at nine in the morning in the beautiful little city of Augusta. Here an hour was allowed us for breakfast, and hither the electric telegraph conveyed to us from the Tom- bigbee and Alabama Rivers the announcement of one of the most heartrending steam-boat calamities that had ever occurred, even in southern waters. The newspapers put into our hands at breakfast narrated the circumstances in the curtest, driest, and baldest manner ; but I learned the details after- wards from a variety of sources. These details, doubtless, made a stronger impression on my mind than they might otherwise have done, from the strange presentiment of evil which I had experienced on the river, and from the similarity of some of the circumstances that actually occurred to those which my fancy had conjured up on the lovely moonlight evening when our vessel had pierced the silent wilderness of " the beautiful river." Before leaving the "Battle House" at Mobile, I noticed a large steamer at the levee called the Eliza Battle, and wondered whether she were so named after one of the Battle family, from whom the Battle House, or Hotel, had taken its appellation. This elegant steamer, a floating palace, as most of these river boats are, was suddenly discovered to be on fire 298 A STEAMER ON EIRE. in her voyage from Mobile up the Tombigbee. She had a large freight of dry goods, provisions, and groceries, which she was taking up to the plantations in part payment of the cotton bales which she had brought down; and upwards of fifty passengers, of whom about twenty were women and children. How the fire originated is not known; but, as already narrated, the night was intensely cold, and water spilled upon the deck froze almost immediately. Large icicles hung on the inside, and oozed through the woodwork of the paddle-boxes; and even the negro stokers, who fed the furnaces with wood, were cold at their work. The machinery, furnaces, and boilers of these boats are on the lower deck, open to all the winds of heaven, and are not inclosed like the machinery of English boats ; so that, even in feeding the furnaces with logs of greasy pine and looking at a roaring fire, the workmen may feel cold. Whether the negroes piled on the wood too fiercely and overheated the funnel, or whether sparks from the chimney fell on some of the more combustible freight upon the lower deck, is not, and possibly never will be known ; but at one hour after midnight the fearful cry of " Fire ! " was raised in the Eliza Battle. The flames made rapid pro- gress, and all efforts to extinguish or subdue them A STEAMER ON FIKE. 299 were unavailing. Amid the shrieks and frantic prayers of agonized women some moved out of their beds at a moment's notice, and rushing on to the deck in their night-clothes, some of them grasp- ing their terrified little children by the hand, or clasping them to their bosoms, ready to plunge into the river, as the less fearful of the two forms of death which menaced them the voice of the captain was heard giving orders, and urging all the passen- gers to keep to the ship. In one minute he promised to run her ashore among the trees. Husbands con- soled their wives with the hope of safety ; and all the passengers, male or female, tacitly or openly agreed that the Captain was right, and that their only chance of safety lay in obedience to his orders. The Captain was at his post. The wheel obeyed his hand, and in less than a minute the ship was aground on the river-bank, her upper deck high amid the branches of the oaks, cotton-wood, and cypress. How it was managed my informants could not tell, but in a few minutes between forty and fifty human creatures white and black, free and slave, male and female, young and old were perched upon the strongest boughs to the leeward of the flames, a motley and a miserable company. Soon after, the burning vessel drifted down the stream with 300 A STEAMEE ON FIRE. the bodies of many of the passengers and of the negro crew; how many, none at that time could tell, nor have I ever been able to ascertain. Then a new horror became visible and palpable, and grew more horrible every hour. In this desolate situation the tender women and children, without clothes to shelter them, were exposed to the pitiless breath of a " norther," the coldest wind that blows. Some of them were so weak that strong-handed and kind-hearted men stripped themselves of their under garments to cover their frailer fellow-sufferers, or tied women and children by stockings, cravats, pocket-handkerchiefs, and other contrivances to the branches, lest their limbs, benumbed by the cold, should be unable to perform their offices, and they should drop, like lumps of inanimate matter from the trees into the dismal swamp below. Hour after hour, until daylight, they remained in this helpless condition, anxiously looking for assistance. They listened to every sound on the water, with the faint hope that it might prove to proceed from the paddles of a steam-boat coming to their deliver- ance ; or the plashing oar of a row-boat from some neighbouring plantation, whose owner had heard of their calamity and was hastening to the rescue. Even the cry of a water-bird gave them courage, A STEAMER ON TIKE. 301 lest the bird perchance might have been startled by an approaching boat; but no boat appeared. There was no help within call. The cold stars shone alone upon their misery. The night wind rustled and shook the dead leaves of last year upon the trees; and the ripple of the river, flowing as calmly to the sea as if human hearts were not break- ing, and precious human lives ebbing away upon its dreary banks, were the only sounds audible, except their own prayers and lamentations, and the wailing cry of a young child dying in its mother's arms. After a couple of hours, one little baby, frozen to death, dropped from the hands of its young mother, too benumbed to hold it; and falling into the swamp below was lost from sight. After another short interval, the mother also fell from the tree into the swamp, alongside of her child. A husband, who had tied himself to a tree and held his wife and child close to his bosom, discovered that both wife and child were dead with cold, and kept kissing their lifeless forms for hours until he, too, felt his hands powerless to hold them, and they dropped from his nerveless grasp into the same cold receptacle. And when morning at last dawned upon their sufferings it was found by the sad survivors, on counting their numbers, that twenty-eight were 302 A STEAMEK ON PIKE. missing, and had only escaped the fearful but quick death of fire to perish by the still more fearful, be- cause more lingering, death of cold. Surely in all the annals of shipwreck there has seldom occurred a more affecting incident than this ! With this story in full possession of all my sym- pathies, I saw but little of the landscape between Augusta and Charleston nothing but a wilder- ness of pine trees amid which, every time the engine stopped to take in water, I could hear the low wind moaning and sighing. Pine-trees nothing but pine-trees such is the landscape of Georgia and the Carolinas. 303 CHAPTER XXIII. SOUTH CAROLINA. Charleston, March 1858. THERE is a class of very small critics in America who are continually on the look-out for the errors, great or small, that may be made by English travellers in their description of American scenery, manners, or institutions. There is another class of persons who make it their pleasure to mystify, bam- boozle, and hoax strangers, and who palm off upon them, with grave faces, lies of every magnitude, great and petty, mischievous and harmless. There is another class, composed to some extent of per- sons belonging to the snarlers and mauvais farceurs, already mentioned, but including many honest and estimable people, who think that no person from the Old World can understand the New, and that America is, and must be, a mystery to all but Ame- ricans. Some of my letters published in England from time to time have, more or less, excited the attention of these persons. The first in spying 304 MISTAKES OF TRAVELLERS. out and commenting upon small mistakes, in which the obvious errors of the printer were set down to the writer attempted to prove that the leaven of one unimportant misstatement leavened the whole lump. The second tried their best and worst, but were guarded against, and to use their own jargon, they did not " sell the Britisher." For the benefit of the third and of the first class of objectors, and to show to them what a difficult animal to catch is a fact, and what a slippery tail it has, even when you think you have got safe hold of it, a little story relative to Boston in Massachusetts may not be inap- propriate or useless ; inasmuch as it may convince some of them that the most conscientious and pains- taking of travellers may involuntarily fall into mistakes, and that, in some instances at least, these mistakes may be traced to the incapacity or careless- ness of those who answer questions, and not to the incapacity or carelessness of those who put them. Being in the office of a gentleman who had resided thirty years in the city of Boston, he informed me that in the street next to his own Benjamin Franklin was born. t( Does the house exist ? " " No ! it was pulled down some years ago, and a large store or pile of buildings was erected on the site." MISTAKES OF TRAVELLERS. 305 "Is there no inscription to state that here was born Benjamin Franklin ? " "None whatever." " I am surprised at that. The birthplace of a man of whom Boston and all America is so justly proud one of the great fathers of American liberty of a man who, next to Washington, is the American best known throughout the world, ought to have been designated by some inscription or memorial." "Well, I agree with you that there ought to have been something of the kind, but there is not" Ten minutes afterwards I passed through the street of Franklin's birthplace ; looked from the opposite side of the way to the large building erected on the site of the humble cottage where the great man first saw the light; and there, on the top of the building, in large letters, " that those who run might read," was the inscription which the old inha- bitant ignored, or was unaware of, stating the fact that in that place was born Benjamin Franklin. A traveller might well have been excused for taking the not very important fact, or no fact, on such respectable authority as that from whom I received it; but yet the traveller would have been wrong, and might have been yelped at for his inaccuracy VOL. I. * 306 CHAELESTON. by all the angry curs of half-a-dozen little Ped- lingtons. But this has nothing to do with Charleston in South Carolina, except as far as it may serve to bespeak the charitable indulgence both of those who do and of those who do not know how difficult it is to catch fast hold of a fact, large or small, and what amount of the errors of a traveller may be fairly attributed to those with whom the traveller may be brought into contact, and who lead him astray without intending to do so. Charleston, the greatest city of South Carolina, but not its capital, is pleasantly situated between the Rivers Ashley and Cooper, at their junction with the sea. These names were given to the two streams by an early English Governor of South Carolina, who sought in this manner to perpetuate his own patronymics in the New World ; but there is a disposition at present to revert to the original Indian appellations, and to call the Cooper the Ettiwan, and the Ashley the Chicora. The popula- tion of Charleston is variously estimated from 50,000 to 60,000, of whom at least 20,000 are slaves. The city, founded in 1670, was laid out on a plan sent from England, and does not present the monotonous rectangularity of streets which characterizes Ameri- CHARLESTON. 307 can cities of a later growth. The original constitu- tion of South Carolina was framed by no less a person than the philosopher John Locke; and the principal church of Charleston, that of St. Michael, is affirmed by the citizens and by tradition to have been built from the designs of an architect no less renowned than Sir Christopher Wren. King-street and Queen-street were named after Charles II. and his consort, names which have been retained by the Charlestonians in spite of attempts made to change them during periods of war with Eng- land. Thus Charleston has reminiscences of the "old country" and is proud of them. The society of South Carolina and of Charleston is polished and aristocratic, and the principal citizens love to trace their descent from Englishmen or from old Huguenot families, driven to America by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Charleston covers a large space of ground. To look at it from the top of the tower of St. Michael, or to steam into it, either from the ocean, or from the arms of the sea, which percolate through the Sea Islands extending along the coast from Savannah, the traveller might imagine it to contain a population of at least a quarter of a million. The great attraction of Charleston is the battery, at the extreme point of land where the Ashley and the X2 308 THE PALMETTO STATE. Cooper (or the Ettiwan and the Chicora) mingle their waters. Upon the Battery, which is laid out in walks and drives, are situated some of the finest mansions of the city; and here, in all seasons, the inhabitants congregate in the afternoon and evening to walk or ride, and inhale the fresh breezes of the Atlantic. It is their Hyde Park, their Prater, and their Champs Elyse*es, and they are justly proud of it. South Carolina is called the "Palmetto State," from the abundance of palmettos that nourish in the Sea Islands along the coast the Sea Islands that produce the cotton so much in request in England for the manufacture of the finer descriptions of muslins and cambrics. In East Bay-street nearly opposite the office of the Charleston Courier stands, carefully guarded by a fence, a magnificent palmetto in full luxuriance of growth, and in the gardens of the citizens the same tree flourishes in almost tropical beauty. The piers of the wharves at Charleston are made of palmetto-wood for the worm that consumes all other available timber spares the palmetto. The wharves of Charleston, though not so busy and bustling as the Levee of New Orleans, present an animated spectacle, and the port is filled with vessels, principally from Liverpool^and COLOURED SEAMEN. 309 Greenock, taking away cotton in huge and multi- tudinous bales for the mills of Manchester and Glasgow ; and bringing in exchange for the white freight which they carry home the black freight of the English and Scottish collieries. Coal for cotton or rice is the ultimate barter into which the commerce of Charleston often resolves itself, to the mutual advantage of all concerned. Charleston had at one time a bad name for its inhospitable treatment of coloured seamen, who came from Great Britain, France, or the free States of America, into the port. It was the rule, rigidly enforced, that such seamen, whether British subjects or not, should, as soon as the vessel arrived in the harbour, be conveyed ashore and locked up in prison until such time as the captain should notify to the authorities that he was ready to depart, when his men were restored to him under strong escort, and safely deposited on board without having been per- mitted to exchange a word with any inhabitant of Charleston, black or white. This law led, as a natural consequence, to frequent misunderstandings, and often to reclamation, on the part of the British authorities. The rigour of the rule has lately been somewhat relaxed, chiefly, if not entirely, through the exertions of Mr. Bunch, the present British 310 COLOURED SEAMEN. Consul for North and South Carolina. Thanks to his exertions, the coloured seaman, instead of being treated as a felon, is allowed to remain on board of his ship in the harbour, provided he or his captain can procure bail or security that he will not attempt to go on shore. If a free coloured seaman presume, in defiance of this law, to walk in the streets of Charleston, his bail is forfeited, and he is marched off to prison as a felon. It will be seen, although the system is an improvement on that which previously existed, that the people of Charleston are still too much alarmed at the idea of the consequences which might result from the admixture, even for a short period, of free negroes among their slaves, and, from the interchange of ideas between them, to do justice either to themselves, to their port, to free black men, or to the maritime nations of Europe with whom they trade. But slavery is a sore subject in South Carolina and in Charleston, though not, perhaps, more so than it is in Louisiana, Ala- bama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Georgia. Every night at nine o'clock the bells of St. Michael's ring as a signal to the negroes to return to their homes. A quarter of an hour is given them to wend their way to the abodes of their masters ; and any negro, male or female, young or old, VINDICATORS OF SLAVERY. 311 who is found in the streets after that hour, without a written permit or warrant from his owner, is liable to be led off to prison and locked up until the morning. And while upon the subject of slavery, I may be permitted to mention the universal anxiety which prevails at the South that strangers, and especially Englishmen, should see the social operation of the system at the plantations and elsewhere, and judge for themselves as to the condition of the negroes. The slave -owners, who as far as my observation has extended appear to be very urbane, polished, gentlemanly, and estimable persons, imagine, from the exaggerations which have been circulated re- specting negro slavery, that Englishmen who have never been in America are predisposed to look upon them as monsters of ferocity and oppression ; as tyrants who maim and scourge, harass and per- secute the black race; and as positive ogres of lust and cruelty. When they prove, as they may easily do, that they treat their slaves with kindness, and that, as a rule, slaves are better clad, fed, and cared for than the agricultural labourers of Europe or the slop tailors and sempstresses of London and Liverpool, they imagine that they cover the whole ground of objection to slavery. 312 VINDICATORS OF SLAVEEY. The writers in the slave interest love to draw a contrast between the "hireling" of Europe and the " slave" of America, in which they give all the advantage to the latter. They dilate upon the certainty of subsistence in return for his labour which the slave enjoys, and upon the uncertainty that attends upon the life and the struggles of the free man, or, as they contemptuously call him, the " hireling." They assert that the free man is only of value while he can work ; that if he is sick and unable to labour he must starve, unless for public or private charity; but that the slave is subject to no such hazards, that his subsistence is secured from the cradle to the grave, and that he is happier than the free man, from the absence of all care for the mor- row. They refuse to argue the question upon higher ground than that of the mere animal well-being of the human cattle whom they buy and sell, and breed for profit. They seem to be satisfied if they can convince the stranger from a far country that they treat their poor dependants and immortal chattels with common humanity. A few of them go still further, and justify slavery, not only by expediency and necessity, but by social and economic considerations, by philosophy and ethnology, and even by religion. They support it by VINDICATOKS OF SLAVERY. 313 the Old Testament and by the New, by the Pentateuch and by the Book of Revelations, by Moses and by St. John the Evangelist. Some of them go so far as to assert that it is impious to attempt to abolish slavery, inasmuch as at the end of the world at the opening of the Sixth Seal (Revelations, chap. vi. v. 15) there will be slavery in the world, because it is written that " every bondman and every free man " will at that day hide himself in the dens and rocks of the mountains from the wrath of God. They support it by their attachment to the doctrines of Christianity, and allege that in their opinion slavery would be a good thing in itself, if for no other reason than that it made the benighted African conversant with the great truths of the Gospel, which he could not otherwise have known, and that it raised him from the condition of Paganism in his own land to that of Christianism in another. At Charleston a book was put into my hand setting forth in glowing language the happy condition of the slave in America and the unhappy condition of the free working man in England, France, and Germany. One of the chief arguments of the author was em- ployed to demolish the logic of a writer in the Westminster Review, who had cited among other objections to slavery, that it demoralized the slave- 314 VINDICATORS OE SLAVERY. owner far more than it did the slave; and that slavery was to be condemned for the very same reasons that induced the British Legislature to pass a law against cruelty to animals cruelty which was not only objectionable and worthy of punishment because it inflicted wrong upon the inferior creation, but because it brutalized and degraded the human beings who were guilty of it. " Very true," said the pro-slavery writer in a tone of triumph : " very true ; but did the British Legislature, in its zeal in this cause, ever go so far as to decree the manumission of horses?" And, as if this argument were a triumphant answer to all objections, he left the Westminster reviewer, without deigning to take further notice of him, crushed under the weight of such tremendous logic ! The slave-owners, as a body, are not cruel, and many of them treat their slaves with paternal and patriarchal kindness ; but they are blinded by edu- cation and habits, as well as supposed self-interest, to the real evils of a system the horrors of which they do their best to alleviate. In my next letter, without entering into any argument pro or con, I shall describe my visit to a very large rice plantation near this city, where upwards of two hundred slaves are em- ployed, and where the system is in full operation. 315 CHAPTER XXIV. A RICE PLANTATION. Charleston, South Carolina, March, 1858. IN visiting a rice plantation, my object was not so much to satisfy myself that the slave-owners of America are kind to their negroes, as to satisfy the public opinion of Charleston that English tra- vellers are not prejudiced against Southern pro- prietors, and that they are willing to be con- vinced, by ocular demonstration, that humanity and generosity towards the negro race may exist in the bosoms and sway the actions of men who hold property in their fellows. So much exaggeration has entered into the descriptions of negro life in the South, which have been given to the world by writers who have earned for themselves the title of "malignant philanthropists," that the slave-owners actually think they have sufficiently vindicated slavery when they have proved, as they easily can, that they do not scourge, disfigure, maim, starve, or kill their negroes, but that, on the con- 316 A SLAVE SALE. trary, they feed them well, clothe them well, pro- vide them with good medical attendance for the ills of the flesh, and spiritual consolation for the doubts and distresses of the soul. They will not stand on higher ground. But far different is the case with those educated in the different moral at- mosphere of Europe. On my first arrival at New Orleans I lingered for a few moments at the open door of a slave depot, without daring to go in, lest I should be suspected of espionage, or of idle curiosity, and expelled. But seeing among the company an eminent merchant of New York, whose friendship I had been fortunate enough to make, and whom I knew to be no slave dealer, or supporter of slavery, I walked in and joined his party, drawn thither like myself by curiosity. On one side of the room the male slaves, with clean linen, and shining new hats and boots, were arranged; and on the other the females were disposed in their best attire, most of them exceedingly neat, but some bedizened with ribbons, of colours more flaring and tawdry than elegant or appropriate. I was immediately beset with entreaties to purchase. " Achetez-moi," said a young negress, in French ; fi Je suis bonne cuisiniere, et couturiere. Achetez- moi ! " A SLAVE SALE. 317 "Buy me," said another, in the same language; " I am accustomed to children, and can make myself useful in the nursery." I felt a sensation something similar to that of the first qualm of sea-sickness to be so addressed by my fellow-creatures a feeling of nausea, as if I were about to be ill. I told the poor women that I was a stranger, who had not come to buy. But they were incredulous; and, when at last convinced, they re- turned to their seats with a sigh and an expression of deep disappointment on their dark and good-humoured features. I entertained at that moment such a hatred of slavery that, had it been in my power to abolish it in one instant off the face of the earth by the mere expression of my will, slavery at that instant would have ceased to exist. I then walked to the male side of the slave mart, where I was beset by similar entreaties, urged in every variety of tone and manner, and by almost every variety of labourer and handicraftsman. Some were accustomed to the cotton, and some to the sugar plantation; some were carpenters, some gardeners, some coachmen, some barbers, some waiters; but all were equally anxious to be sold. One man who to my inexperienced eyes seemed as white as myself, and whom I at once put down in my own 318 A SLAVE SALE. mind as an Irishman, of the purest quality of the county of Cork got up from his seat as I passed, and asked me to buy him ; " I am a good gardener, your honour," said he, with an unmistakeable brogue. " I am also a bit of a carpenter, and can look after the horses, and do any sort of odd job about the house." " But you are joking," said I ; " you are an Irish- man?" " My father was an Irishman," he said. At this moment the slave-dealer and owner of the depot came up. u Is there not a mistake here ?" I inquired. " This is a white man." " His mother was a nigger," he replied. " We have sometimes much whiter men for sale than he is. Look at his hair and lips. There is no mistake about him.". Again the sickness came over me, and I longed to get into the open air to breathe the purer atmo- sphere. " I would like to buy that man, and set him free," I said to my friend from New York. "You would do him no good," was the reply. " A manumitted slave has seldom any self-reliance or energy. Slavery so degrades and cripples the A SLAVE SALE. 319 moral faculties of the negroes that they require the crutch, even in freedom, and cannot walk alone. They find it impossible to compete with the free whites, and, if left to themselves, sink into the lowest and most miserably-paid occupations." "You are an Englishman and a traveller," said the slave-dealer, "and I should be much obliged to "you if you would put any questions to the negroes." "What questions?" said I. "Shall I ask them whether they would prefer freedom or slavery ? " " I don't mean that," he replied. " Ask them whether I do not treat them well? whether I am not kind to them ; whether they do not have plenty to eat and drink while they are with me ?" I told him that I had no doubt of the fact ; that they looked clean, comfortable, and well fed ; but . And in that " but " lay the whole case, though the worthy dealer of New Orleans was totally incapable of comprehending it. As already mentioned, I had received many invitations while in the south to visit planta- tions of cotton, sugar and rice, that I might see the slaves in their homes and watch them at their labours in the field or the swamp, and judge for myself whether they were well or ill 320 A RICE PLANTATION. treated, and whether their owners were men of the patriarchal type, like Abraham of old, or of the type of Blunderbore in the child's story ogres of cruelty and oppression. I was unable to accept any of these invitations until my arrival in Charleston, when I gladly availed myself of the opportunity afforded me by the courteous hospitality of General Gadsden to visit his rice plantation at Pimlico. The General is known both to Europe and America as the negotiator of the famous Gadsden Treaty with Mexico, by means of which a portion of the large province of Sonora was annexed to the already overgrown dominion of Brother Jonathan. His estate at Pimlico is situated about twenty-seven miles from Charleston. The General owns on 'this property between two and three hundred slaves, but only resides upon it for a small portion of the year, having possessions in Florida and other parts of the Union ; and being compelled, like all other men of European blood, to avoid, in the warm weather, the marshy regions favourable to rice culti- vation. From Charleston the railway for twenty miles runs as straight as an arrow's flight through a forest of primeval pine. These melancholy trees form the most conspicuous feature of the landscape in the A RICE PLANTATION. 321 two Carolinas, and in Georgia. Often for whole days, and for hundreds of miles, the traveller sees no other vegetation but this rank, monotonous forest growth. Here and there a clearing, here and there a swamp, here and there a village, dignified with the title of a town or of a city, and one unvarying level of rich but uncultivated land ; such is the general characteristic of the " Sunny South " as the traveller leaves the seaboard and penetrates inwards to the great valley of the Mississippi. In less than an hour and a half our train stopped at a station at which there was neither clerk, nor check-taker, nor porter, nor official of any kind. Having descended, luggage in hand, we saw our train dart away into the long-receding vista of the forest, and awaited in solitude the vehicle which had been ordered from Pimlico to convey us to the planta- tion. We being before, or the negro-driver after, the appointed time, we had to remain about a quarter of an hour at the station and amuse ourselves as best we might. Though the station itself was deserted, a small log-hut and inclosure, almost immediately oppo- site, swarmed with life. A whole troop of ragged children, with fair hair and blue eyes, played about the clearing; a donkey browsed upon the scanty undergrowth; cocks crowed upon the fence; hens VOL. I. T 322 A GERMAN TRADER. cackled in the yard; and lean pigs prowled about in every direction seeking what they might devour. The loneliness of the place, with the deep thick pine- woods all around it, and the shiny lines of rail stretching as far as the vision could penetrate in one unbroken parallel into the wilderness, suggested the inquiry as to who and what were the inhabitants of the log-hut ? " The pest of the neighbourhood," was the reply. " Here lives a German Jew and his family, who keep a store for the accommodation of the negroes." "And how a pest?" "The negroes require no accommodation. They are sup- plied by their owners with everything necessary for their health and comfort ; but they resort to places like this with property which they steal from their masters, and which the men exchange, at most nefarious profit to the Jew receiver, for whisky and tobacco, and which the females barter for ribbons and tawdry finery. Wherever there is a large plantation, these German traders if it be not a desecration of the name of trade to apply it to their business squat in the neighbourhood, build up a wooden shanty, and open a store. If a saddle, a coat, or a watch be lost, the planter may be tole- rably certain that it has been bartered by his negroes at some such place as this for whisky or tobacco. A RICE PLANTATION. 323 The business is so profitable that, although the delinquent may be sometimes detected and im- prisoned, he soon contrives to make money enough to remove with his ill-gotten gams to the Far West, where his antecedents are unknown and never in- quired after, and where, perhaps under a new name, he figures as a great merchant in the more legi- timate business of a dry-goods store." A drive of five miles through the forest, in the course of which we had to cross a swamp two feet deep with water, brought us to Pimlico and its mansion, pleasantly embowered among trees of greater beauty and variety than we had passed on our way. Among these the live or evergreen oak, the cypress, the cedar, and the magnolia, were the most conspicuous. The mansion, like most of the houses in the South, where trees are abundant and stone is scarce, was built of wood, and gave but little exterior promise of the comfort and elegance to be found within. Here we fared sumptuously, having our choice of drinks, from London porter and Allsop's India ale, to Hock and Claret, and Catawba and Isabella, of Longworth's choicest growth. The food was of every variety, including fish with names unknown in Europe, but of most excellent quality, and game in an abundance with which T 2 324 A BICE PLANTATION. Europe can scarcely claim equality. The greatest novelty was the small turtle called the "cooter," similar to but smaller than the " terrapin," so well known and esteemed in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington. The " cooter " is, it appears, a perquisite of the slaves. They will not themselves eat it, looking upon its flesh with loathing and aversion, but in their leisure moments they seek it hi the water-courses and trenches, or at the borders of the streams, and sell it to their masters. Among other privileges which they are allowed may be here mentioned that of keeping poultry on their own account, the profits of which enable them to buy tobacco for themselves and finery for their wives. In the morning we sallied over the plantation, under the guidance of the General, and saw the whole art and mystery of rice cultivation. At high water the river which gives the estate its value is five feet above the level of the rice-ground; so that by means of sluices it is easy to flood the plantation, or any part of it, and just as easy to let off the water as soon as the growing crop has received a sufficient steeping. The rice is submitted to three several floodings before it is fit to be harvested. The Srst, in the early spring, is called " the sprout flow ; " A RICE PLANTATION. 325 the second or intermediate, when the green stalks have acquired a certain strength and height, is called " the long flow ; " and the last, " the harvest flow." Between each " flow " the slaves, male and female, are employed in gangs, under the superintendence of the overseer (or "boss," as the negroes always call a master of any kind), in hoeing among the roots. In this occupation we found about a hun- dred and fifty of them in different parts of the estate. They were not asked to rest from their labour on our arrival. They were coarsely but comfortably clad, and wore that cheerful, good- humoured expression of countenance which seems to be the equivalent and the compensation granted them by paternal Providence for their loss of free- dom. Measured by mere physical enjoyment and absence of care or thought of the morrow, the slave is, doubtless, as a general rule, far happier than his master. His wants are few, he is easily satisfied, and his toil is not excessive. Rambling along the raised dykes and sluices, the strangers of the party were surprised to see the immense flocks of birds which suddenly rose from the ground or from the low bushes that fringed the stream, and which sometimes settled upon a tree in countless thousands till the branches seemed to 326 A RICE PLANTATION. bend beneath their weight. They were declared to be blackbirds ; but a boy of about twelve years of age, the adopted son of the General, who had been out all the morning with his gun .making havoc among them, having brought one for our inspection, it was found to be very different from the blackbird of Europe. It wanted the golden bill and the glowing plumage, and had instead of them a white bill and a breast speckled like that of the English thrush. It was too early in the season for the alligators to make their appearance ; but they swarm in the river in the months of June and July, and commit sad depredation, not only among the fish, but among the ducks and geese or wild-fowl that frequent the stream. Alligators are said to be quite equal to the Chinese in their partiality for dogs and .cats when they can get hold of them. But cats are proverbial for their dislike of water, and dogs are too knowing to treat themselves to the luxury of a bath in any stream where the alligator is found, so that poor Alligator seldom enjoys the dainty that he most loves. But the bark of a dog excites him as much as the sight of a live turtle does a London alder- man ; and you have but to bring a dog to the brink of a river and make him bark, when the A RICE PLANTATION. 327 alligators, unless they suspect mischief, will pop their long noses out of the water, and yearn for the delicacy which hard Fate has denied them. From the rice-grounds our party proceeded to the negro village where the slaves resided. Most of the occupiers were at work in the fields ; but we entered some of the tenements, and found no- thiiig to object to on the score of comfort. To each hut wa's attached a plot of ground for a garden; but none of the gardens were cultivated or gave the slightest promise of a flower. In one there was a luxuriant peach-tree in full bloom a perfect blaze of crimson beauty but as a general rule the negro either has no love of gardens or no time to attend to their cultivation. From all I could gather here and elsewhere, and as the result of my own observation, the former and not the latter reason explains the neglect of this beautiful and innocent means of enjoyment which both climate and circumstances place within the reach of the black population. In the village there were an hospital, an infirmary for the sick, a chapel, where twice every Sunday Divine service was performed by a missionary allowed to have access to the slaves upon con- dition of not preaching freedom to them; and a 328 A RICE PLANTATION. nursery, where the young children, from the earliest age upwards to fourteen, were taken care of during the absence of their parents in the fields. The elder boys and girls were made useful in nursing the infants; and the whole swarm, to the number of nearly seventy, were drawn up by the side of the road, and favoured us with several specimens of their vocal powers. The General declared them to be " hominy-eaters " and not workers ; arid they certainly looked as if hominy agreed with them, for a plumper and more joyous set of children it would have been difficult to assemble together in any country under the sun. Their songs were somewhat more hearty than musical. The enter- tainment was concluded by the Methodist hymn, " And that will be joyful, joyful," which the voci- ferous singers contrived unconsciously to turn into a comic song. But this feat, I may as well mention, is not peculiar to little negroes, for some obstreper- ous free Americans on board of our outward-bound steamer favoured their fellow-passengers with a similar exhibition, and even managed to make a comic song out of the " Old Hundredth." We were next introduced to "Uncle Tom," such was the name by which he had been known long before the publication of Mrs. Stowe's novel " UNCLE TOM." 329 a venerable negro who had been fifty years upon the plantation. His exact age was not known, but he was a strong, hearty man, when brought from the coast of Africa in the year 1808. " Tom" had been sold by some petty African king or chief at the small price of an ounce of tobacco, and had been brought over with upwards of two hundred similar unfortunates by an American slaver. He was still hale and vigorous, and had within a few years married a young wife, belonging to a neigh- bouring planter. He was told by the General that I had come to take him back to Africa ; an announcement which seemed to startle and distress him, for he suddenly fell on his knees before me, clasped his hands, and implored me in very imperfect and broken English to let him stay where he was. Every one that he had known in Africa must have long since died ; the ways of his own country would be strange to him, and perhaps his own countrymen would put him to death, or sell him again into slavery to some new master. He was much relieved to find that my intentions were neither so large nor so benevolent; though malevolent would perhaps be a better word to express the idea which impressed itself upon his mind in reference to my object in visiting him. The old man was presented with a 330 " UNCLE TOM." cigar by one of our party, and with a glass of whisky by the General's orders, and he courteously drank the health of every one present, both collectively and individually. Drinking to a lady, he expressed the gallant wish that she might grow more beauti- ful as she grew older ; and to the donor of the cigar he uttered his hope that at the Last Day " Gor Amighty might hide him in some place where the Devil not know where to find him." On this plantation I have no doubt, from, what I saw, that the slaves are kindly treated, and that the patriarchal relation in all its best aspects exists between the master and his poor dependants. But I do not wish to depict this one as a sample of all, but confine myself to a simple narrative of what I saw. Slavery has many aspects, and upon some future occasion I may be enabled to state some other facts, less patent, which may throw light upon its operation not only upon the fortunes and character of the white men who hold them in bondage, but upon the future destinies of the United States of America. 331 CHAPTER XXV. SAVANNAH AND THE SEA ISLANDS. March, 1858. FBOM Charleston to Savannah by sea is a distance of one hundred miles; by land there being no railway communication, except by traversing two sides of a triangle the distance is about two hun- dred. A direct coast railway is in course of con- struction ; but at present most travellers, except those who are very bad sailors, prefer the sea passage. As I had already gone over a considerable portion of the land route, through the pine forests of Georgia and South Carolina "Where, northward as you go, The pines for ever grow; Where, southward if you bend, Are pine-trees without end; Where, if you travel west, Earth loves the pine-tree best; Where, eastward if you gaze, Through long, unvaried ways, Behind you and before, Are pine-trees evermore;" 332 SAVANNAH. I preferred the sea, as offering more comfort, as well as more novelty, than the land route. Taking my passage in the tidy little boat, the St. Mary's, bound for the St. John's river in Florida, and touching at Savannah, I found myself in comfortable quarters. The crew consisted entirely of negro slaves ; the only white men on board, the passengers excepted, being the captain and the clerk. There are two routes to Savannah by sea one the outer, and one the inner, and the St. Mary's, being more of a river than a sea boat, only ventures on the outer passage when the weather is calm. Such being the case on this particular day we made a short and pleasant passage, leaving the harbour of Charleston at nine in the morning, and arriving at Savannah before seven in the evening. It was not until we arrived at the mouth of the Savannah river, and began to steam up for eighteen miles to the city, that the scenery offered any attractions. On each side was a low, flat, fertile country, with reeds twenty feet high the summer haunts of the alligator growing upon the bank, and the land studded with palmetto trees, rice plantations, and negro villages. As the night darkened the blaze of a burning forest lit up the whole of the landward horizon, and gave lurid evidence that man was at work, and displacing the SAVANNAH. 333 wilderness to make room for rice and cotton. The flocks of wild-fowl upon the Savannah positively darkened the air, and, when the birds descended to feed or rest, it seemed as if black clouds, moved by their own volition, had taken refuge among the reeds and canes. The Savannah river divides the States of Georgia and South Carolina for a portion of its length. It is navigable for sea steamers only as far as the city of Savannah, and for steamers of a smaller draught as far as Augusta, the second city of Georgia, 230 miles inland. Savannah was founded, in 1732, by the celebrated General Oglethorp, and is the chief city of Georgia, though not the capital, that honour being conferred, as is usual in the States, upon a more central place of very inferior importance. Milledgeville, the political capital, contains a population of about 3,000 persons, while Savannah, the commercial capital, has a population of upwards of 30,000, of whom about one half are slaves. Of all the cities in America, none impresses itself more vividly upon the imagination and the memory than this little green bowery city of the South. It stands upon a terrace about forty feet higher than the river, and presents the appearance of an agglomeration of rural hamlets and small towns. If four-and- 334 SAVANNAH. twenty villages had resolved to hold a meeting, and had assembled at this place, each with its pump, its country church, its common, and its avenue of trees, the result would have been a facsimile of Savannah. Twenty-four open spaces, as large as, or larger than, Bedford-square, with a pump in the middle, a church or a bank at one side, and neat wooden and stone houses around, the open spaces being laid out into walks and drives, and thickly planted with trees, among which the flowering china-tree or pride of India, the oelanthus, and the evergreen oak, are the most prominent; such are the component parts and general aspect of Savannah. The soil is so loose and sandy that a good road is a luxury to be read of and imagined by the people, but not to be enjoyed, for want of stone and every other material of sufficient hardness. There is, it is true, about a mile and a half of shell road leading towards the lovely estate of Bonaventura on which a carriage can roll with a moderate amount of comfort. This road gives so much satis- faction that the people are determined to extend it, and to imitate it in other directions, by such means as fortune and circumstances have placed within their control. Like all Americans, whether of the North or the South, the inhabitants of Savannah, SAVANNAH. 335 rich or poor, free or slave, consume immense quantities of oysters. For breakfast, for dinner, and for supper, oysters, in one form or another, are sure to be supplied to all above the poorest classes of the population ; and here there are few who can be called as absolutely poor as their compeers in Europe. The result is, according to the calculation of a notable inhabitant, that Savannah consumes in a year a sufficient quantity of oysters to leave shells enough for the construction of one mile of road. But at present the roads are no exception to the general badness of American thoroughfares. They are dusty and rutty in the fine weather, muddy and rutty when it rains. The view from the Custom-house and Exchange and from the street occupied by the stores, offices, and warehouses of the merchants, and which skirts the river for a mile, extends to the distant horizon over a low, flat country, covered for the most part with rice plantations and marshy ground. A gentle- man of this city who had filled a diplomatic appoint- ment in Turkey and Egypt, and whose courtesies at Savannah I gratefully remember, declared that he often thought he was looking at Egypt when he looked at this portion of Georgia. There were the same climate, the same atmosphere, the same soil, the 336 BCXNAVENTURA. same cultivation, and a river offering the same characteristics as the Nile. But of all the scenery in and about Savannah the Cemetery of Bonaventura is the most remarkable. There is nothing like it in America, or perhaps in the world. Its melancholy loveliness, once seen, can never be forgotten. Dull indeed must be the imagination and cold the fancy of any one who could wander through its weird and fairy avenues without being deeply impressed with its solemnity and appropriateness for the last resting- place of the dead. One melancholy enthusiast, a clergyman, weary of his life, disgusted with the world, with a brain weakened by long brooding over a disap- pointed affection, happened in an evil moment to stray into this place. He had often meditated suicide, and the insane desire took possession of his mind with more than its usual intensity as he lingered in this solemn and haunted spot. For days and nights he wan- dered about it and through it, and at last determined in his melancholy frenzy, that to die for the satis- faction of being buried in that place would be the supremest happiness the world could offer. He wrote his last sad wishes upon a piece of paper, left it upon a tomb, and leaped into the Savannah River. His body was discovered some days afterwards ; but alas for the vanity of human wishes ! his dying BONAVENTURA. 337 request was not complied with ; and it was decided by the authorities that he should be buried in the city of Savannah. So he died as he had lived in vain ! And why is the Cemetery of Bonaventura so eminently beautiful? Let me try to describe it. The place was formerly the country seat of an early 'settler, named Tatnall, one of the founders of the colony of Georgia. This gentleman, though he came to a forest land where trees were considered a nuisance, admired the park -like beauty around the great country mansions of the nobility and gentry in his native England, and, while every one else in the colony was cutting down trees, made himself busy in planting them. Having built himself a house on the estate of Bonaventura, he planted an avenue or carriage-drive leading up to its porch, and the tree he chose for the purpose was the evergreen oak, next to the cypress and the magnolia the noblest tree in the Southern States of America. In due time, long after the good man's death, the trees attained a com- manding height, and from their boughs hung the long feathery festoons of the tillandsia, or Spanish moss, that lends such melancholy beauty to all the Southern landscape. In the shadow of the wild- wood around this place the Tatnalls are buried ; but VOL. i. z 338 BONAVEXTURA. the mansion-house which was of wood as nearly all the rural dwellings are in Georgia and the Caro- linas having taken fire one Christmas evening, when a large party were assembled, and being utterly destroyed, with the sole exception of the chimneys and a little brickwork, the then owner took a dislike to the place, and never rebuilt the dwelling. The estate was ultimately sold, and now belongs to Mr. Wiltberger, the proprietor of the Pulaski House at Savannah, who, finding the tombstones of the Tat- nalls and others in the ground, had a portion set aside for the purposes of a public cemetery. Never was a place more beautifully adapted by nature for such an object. The mournful avenue of live oak, and the equally mournful glades that pierce on every side into the profuse and tangled wilderness, are all hung with the funereal drapery of the tillandsia. To those who have never seen this peculiar vegetation it may be difficult to convey an adequate idea of its sadness and loveliness. It looks as if the very trees, instinct with life, had veiled themselves like mourners at a grave ; or as if the fogs and vapours from the marshes had been solidified by some stroke of elec- tricity, and hung from the trees in palpable wreaths, swinging and swaying to every motion of the winds. Not unlike the effect produced by the tattered banners BONAVENTURA. 339 hung from the roofs of Gothic cathedrals as trophies of war in the olden time, or to mark the last resting- places of knights and nobles, is the effect of these long streamers pending from the overarching boughs of the forest. Many of them are so long as to trail upon the ground from a height of twenty or thirty feet, and many of the same length, drooping from the topmost branches of oak and cypress, dangle in mid air. What adds to the awe inspired by the remarkable beaiity of this parasitic plant is the alleged fact that wherever it flourishes the yellow fever is from time to time a visitant, clsfc grows plentifully on the shores of the Lower "-Mississippi from Cairo to New Orleans, and throughout all Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina. In North Carolina it is not so common, and disappears altogether in Virginia. In New Orleans it has been converted into an article of commerce, and being dried and peeled, it is used instead of horsehair which in this condition it much resembles for stuffing mattresses and cushions for chairs and sofas. As I had determined to return to Charleston by sea, I gladly awaited at Savannah the return of the St. Mary's from Florida. It was not until thirty hours after her appointed time that the little 340 THE SEA ISLANDS. steamer, with her white captain and her black crew, reappeared in the river. She had met with strong head winds at sea, and, the bad weather still continuing, the captain determined to try the inner instead of the outer passage. This arrangement was in every way to my taste, as it would afford me the opportunity of sailing through the countless and picturesque mazes of the Sea Islands. These islands extend from Charleston downwards to Savan- nah, and as far south as the great peninsula of Florida; and are famous for the production of the fine staple so well known and esteemed in all the cotton markets of the world from New Orleans, Mobile, and Charleston, to Liverpool, Manchester, and Glasgow as the " Sea Island cotton." In the summer this region is not habitable by the whites ; but in the early spring there is neither fog nor fever, and the climate is delicious. Though the storm raged in the outer sea, the weather was calm, sunny, and beautiful as the St. Mary's threaded her way for a hundred and fifty miles through the narrow channels amid these low and fertile islands some as large as the Isle of Wight or the Isle of Man, others as small as the islets of Venice. At times the water-way was like that of a noble river, broad as the Mississippi, but without its cur- THE SEA ISLANDS. 341 rents ; and at others not wider than the Regent's Canal, or the New River at Islington. So narrow was it at times that we could have jumped ashore from either side of the deck ; but the feat, though possible, and indeed easy, was not inviting ; for, had any one been frolicsome enough to do so, he would have found himself up to the middle, or perchance to the neck, in soft bog and swamp. We had often to twist and turn in places where it seemed quite impossible that a steam-boat could pass, and the negroes had continually to push us out of difficul- ties by means of sturdy poles ten or twelve feet long an exercise in which some of the passengers seemed delighted to take part. The tall rushes and reeds grew up to the height of the deck ; and, had it been midsummer, we might have disturbed many an alligator as we wound our way, north and south, east and west, far into the bowels of the land, and then out again towards the sea, in this intricate navi- gation. Twenty times at least the St. Mary's seemed fast aground, and as often did stalwart negroes launch the ship's boat and row ashore, to affix a tow-rope to a stake left amid the long vegetation in previous voyages, to enable us to be manoeuvred off again. The whole voyage was one constant succession of novelties of scene and adventure. 342 THE SEA ISLANDS. From the deck we could look over a large ex- panse of country, studded with cotton-fields, with the white mansions of the planters, with negro vil- lages, and with here and there a stretch of pasture land, in which the cattle were feeding. Amid the swamp the palmetto, sometimes singly, sometimes in clusters, raised its graceful branches ; while on the higher grounds, and sometimes on the bank of the channel, were clumps of pines and evergreen oaks, all hung with the graceful but melancholy drapery of the tillandsia. At one turn we came suddenly upon a negro village, and several little " darkies," from the ages of three to ten, some entirely and others partially naked, who were upon a dungheap, set up a shout of delight on our arrival, which speedily brought forth the sable elders of the place, as well as the dogs, to take a look at us ; the adults grinning and showing their white teeth, the dogs and the children vying with each other who should make the most noise in our honour. Many of the planters' houses which we passed were large and commodious, and surrounded by groves of oak, cedar, and mag- nolia, giving the place the leafy attractions of an English midsummer all through the winter. There is throughout all this country a very onsiderable population engaged in the cultiva- THE SEA ISLANDS. 343 tion of the Sea Island cotton; and the villages as well as country mansions were numerous as we passed. Here, for four or five months in the year, the planter lives like a patriarch of the olden time, or like a petty despotic monarch, surrounded by his obedient subjects, with a white " oikonomos," or overseer, for his prime minister, who on his part is condemned to endure the climate the whole year, that the slaves may be kept in order, while the master himself hurries away with his family to the far North- to New York or to Newport, and very often to London and Paris to spend the abundant revenues of his cotton crop. We passed one con- siderable town or city, that of Beaufort, the capital of the Sea Islands, and pleasantly as well as im- posingly situated; and then, streaming through the broad channel of the Whapoo, reached Charleston, after a long but by no means disagreeable passage of forty-eight hours. END OF VOL. I. LONDON : PRINTED BY SMITH, ELDER AND CO., LITTLE GREEN ARBOUR COURT, OLD BAILEY, E. C. 1 I i i 5 Q it I 3 I \ i% ^ v r<> **? CI I SI 5 1 f 1 L 005 833 765 1 I i I \ rt i s 1 lUftl * I IL~" 1 J i i OF-CAUFOftfe, A-Of-CAUF I I ^OKAUFOfiV A (^ x^^s. T? .S 1