AS I had a desire to travel through the interior of the state
of Ohio, and to 'strike the lakes,' as the phrase is, at a small town called
Sandusky, to which that route would conduct us on our way to Niagara, we had to
return from St. Louis by the way we had come, and to retrace our former track as
far as Cincinnati.
The day on which we were to take leave of St. Louis being very fine; and the
steamboat, which was to have started I don't know how early in the morning,
postponing, for the third or fourth time, her departure until the afternoon; we
rode forward to an old French village on the river, called properly Carondelet,
and nicknamed Vide Poche, and arranged that the packet should call for us there.
The place consisted of a few poor cottages, and two or three public-houses;
the state of whose larders certainly seemed to justify the second designation of
the village, for there was nothing to eat in any of them. At length, however, by
going back some half a mile or so, we found a solitary house where ham and
coffee were procurable; and there we tarried to wait the advent of the boat,
which would come in sight from the green before the door, a long way off.
It was a neat, unpretending village tavern, and we took our repast in a
quaint little room with a bed in it, decorated with some old oil paintings,
which in their time had probably done duty in a Catholic chapel or monastery.
The fare was very good, and served with great cleanliness. The house was kept by
a characteristic old couple, with whom we had a long talk, and who were perhaps
a very good sample of that kind of people in the West.
The landlord was a dry, tough, hard-faced old fellow (not so very old either,
for he was but just turned sixty, I should think), who had been out with the
militia in the last war with England, and had seen all kinds of service, -
except a battle; and he had been very near seeing that, he added: very near. He
had all his life been restless and locomotive, with an irresistible desire for
change; and was still the son of his old self: for if he had nothing to keep him
at home, he said (slightly jerking his hat and his thumb towards the window of
the room in which the old lady sat, as we stood talking in front of the house),
he would clean up his musket, and be off to Texas to-morrow morning. He was one
of the very many descendants of Cain proper to this continent, who seem destined
from their birth to serve as pioneers in the great human army: who gladly go on
from year to year extending its outposts, and leaving home after home behind
them; and die at last, utterly regardless of their graves being left thousands
of miles behind, by the wandering generation who succeed.
His wife was a domesticated, kind-hearted old soul, who had come with him,
'from the queen city of the world,' which, it seemed, was Philadelphia; but had
no love for this Western country, and indeed had little reason to bear it any;
having seen her children, one by one, die here of fever, in the full prime and
beauty of their youth. Her heart was sore, she said, to think of them; and to
talk on this theme, even to strangers, in that blighted place, so far from her
old home, eased it somewhat, and became a melancholy pleasure.
The boat appearing towards evening, we bade adieu to the poor old lady and
her vagrant spouse, and making for the nearest landing- place, were soon on
board The Messenger again, in our old cabin, and steaming down the Mississippi.
If the coming up this river, slowly making head against the stream, be an
irksome journey, the shooting down it with the turbid current is almost worse;
for then the boat, proceeding at the rate of twelve or fifteen miles an hour,
has to force its passage through a labyrinth of floating logs, which, in the
dark, it is often impossible to see beforehand or avoid. All that night, the
bell was never silent for five minutes at a time; and after every ring the
vessel reeled again, sometimes beneath a single blow, sometimes beneath a dozen
dealt in quick succession, the lightest of which seemed more than enough to beat
in her frail keel, as though it had been pie-crust. Looking down upon the filthy
river after dark, it seemed to be alive with monsters, as these black masses
rolled upon the surface, or came starting up again, head first, when the boat,
in ploughing her way among a shoal of such obstructions, drove a few among them
for the moment under water. Sometimes the engine stopped during a long interval,
and then before her and behind, and gathering close about her on all sides, were
so many of these ill- favoured obstacles that she was fairly hemmed in; the
centre of a floating island; and was constrained to pause until they parted,
somewhere, as dark clouds will do before the wind, and opened by degrees a
channel out.
In good time next morning, however, we came again in sight of the detestable
morass called Cairo; and stopping there to take in wood, lay alongside a barge,
whose starting timbers scarcely held together. It was moored to the bank, and on
its side was painted 'Coffee House;' that being, I suppose, the floating
paradise to which the people fly for shelter when they lose their houses for a
month or two beneath the hideous waters of the Mississippi. But looking
southward from this point, we had the satisfaction of seeing that intolerable
river dragging its slimy length and ugly freight abruptly off towards New
Orleans; and passing a yellow line which stretched across the current, were
again upon the clear Ohio, never, I trust, to see the Mississippi more, saving
in troubled dreams and nightmares. Leaving it for the company of its sparkling
neighbour, was like the transition from pain to ease, or the awakening from a
horrible vision to cheerful realities.
We arrived at Louisville on the fourth night, and gladly availed ourselves of
its excellent hotel. Next day we went on in the Ben Franklin, a beautiful mail
steamboat, and reached Cincinnati shortly after midnight. Being by this time
nearly tired of sleeping upon shelves, we had remained awake to go ashore
straightway; and groping a passage across the dark decks of other boats, and
among labyrinths of engine-machinery and leaking casks of molasses, we reached
the streets, knocked up the porter at the hotel where we had stayed before, and
were, to our great joy, safely housed soon afterwards.
We rested but one day at Cincinnati, and then resumed our journey to
Sandusky. As it comprised two varieties of stage-coach travelling, which, with
those I have already glanced at, comprehend the main characteristics of this
mode of transit in America, I will take the reader as our fellow-passenger, and
pledge myself to perform the distance with all possible despatch.
Our place of destination in the first instance is Columbus. It is distant
about a hundred and twenty miles from Cincinnati, but there is a macadamised
road (rare blessing!) the whole way, and the rate of travelling upon it is six
miles an hour.
We start at eight o'clock in the morning, in a great mail-coach, whose huge
cheeks are so very ruddy and plethoric, that it appears to be troubled with a
tendency of blood to the head. Dropsical it certainly is, for it will hold a
dozen passengers inside. But, wonderful to add, it is very clean and bright,
being nearly new; and rattles through the streets of Cincinnati gaily.
Our way lies through a beautiful country, richly cultivated, and luxuriant in
its promise of an abundant harvest. Sometimes we pass a field where the strong
bristling stalks of Indian corn look like a crop of walking-sticks, and
sometimes an enclosure where the green wheat is springing up among a labyrinth
of stumps; the primitive worm-fence is universal, and an ugly thing it is; but
the farms are neatly kept, and, save for these differences, one might be
travelling just now in Kent.
We often stop to water at a roadside inn, which is always dull and silent.
The coachman dismounts and fills his bucket, and holds it to the horses' heads.
There is scarcely ever any one to help him; there are seldom any loungers
standing round; and never any stable- company with jokes to crack. Sometimes,
when we have changed our team, there is a difficulty in starting again, arising
out of the prevalent mode of breaking a young horse: which is to catch him,
harness him against his will, and put him in a stage-coach without further
notice: but we get on somehow or other, after a great many kicks and a violent
struggle; and jog on as before again.
Occasionally, when we stop to change, some two or three half- drunken loafers
will come loitering out with their hands in their pockets, or will be seen
kicking their heels in rocking-chairs, or lounging on the window-sill, or
sitting on a rail within the colonnade: they have not often anything to say
though, either to us or to each other, but sit there idly staring at the coach
and horses. The landlord of the inn is usually among them, and seems, of all the
party, to be the least connected with the business of the house. Indeed he is
with reference to the tavern, what the driver is in relation to the coach and
passengers: whatever happens in his sphere of action, he is quite indifferent,
and perfectly easy in his mind.
The frequent change of coachmen works no change or variety in the coachman's
character. He is always dirty, sullen, and taciturn. If he be capable of
smartness of any kind, moral or physical, he has a faculty of concealing it
which is truly marvellous. He never speaks to you as you sit beside him on the
box, and if you speak to him, he answers (if at all) in monosyllables. He points
out nothing on the road, and seldom looks at anything: being, to all appearance,
thoroughly weary of it and of existence generally. As to doing the honours of
his coach, his business, as I have said, is with the horses. The coach follows
because it is attached to them and goes on wheels: not because you are in it.
Sometimes, towards the end of a long stage, he suddenly breaks out into a
discordant fragment of an election song, but his face never sings along with
him: it is only his voice, and not often that.
He always chews and always spits, and never encumbers himself with a
pocket-handkerchief. The consequences to the box passenger, especially when the
wind blows towards him, are not agreeable.
Whenever the coach stops, and you can hear the voices of the inside
passengers; or whenever any bystander addresses them, or any one among them; or
they address each other; you will hear one phrase repeated over and over and
over again to the most extraordinary extent. It is an ordinary and unpromising
phrase enough, being neither more nor less than 'Yes, sir;' but it is adapted to
every variety of circumstance, and fills up every pause in the conversation.
Thus:-
The time is one o'clock at noon. The scene, a place where we are to stay and
dine, on this journey. The coach drives up to the door of an inn. The day is
warm, and there are several idlers lingering about the tavern, and waiting for
the public dinner. Among them, is a stout gentleman in a brown hat, swinging
himself to and fro in a rocking-chair on the pavement.
As the coach stops, a gentleman in a straw hat looks out of the window:
STRAW HAT. (To the stout gentleman in the rocking-chair.) I reckon that's
Judge Jefferson, an't it?
BROWN HAT. (Still swinging; speaking very slowly; and without any emotion
whatever.) Yes, sir.
STRAW HAT. Warm weather, Judge.
BROWN HAT. Yes, sir.
STRAW HAT. There was a snap of cold, last week.
BROWN HAT. Yes, sir.
STRAW HAT. Yes, sir.
A pause. They look at each other, very seriously.
STRAW HAT. I calculate you'll have got through that case of the corporation,
Judge, by this time, now?
BROWN HAT. Yes, sir.
STRAW HAT. How did the verdict go, sir?
BROWN HAT. For the defendant, sir.
STRAW HAT. (Interrogatively.) Yes, sir?
BROWN HAT. (Affirmatively.) Yes, sir.
BOTH. (Musingly, as each gazes down the street.) Yes, sir.
Another pause. They look at each other again, still more seriously than
before.
BROWN HAT. This coach is rather behind its time to-day, I guess.
STRAW HAT. (Doubtingly.) Yes, sir.
BROWN HAT. (Looking at his watch.) Yes, sir; nigh upon two hours.
STRAW HAT. (Raising his eyebrows in very great surprise.) Yes, sir!
BROWN HAT. (Decisively, as he puts up his watch.) Yes, sir.
ALL THE OTHER INSIDE PASSENGERS. (Among themselves.) Yes, sir.
COACHMAN. (In a very surly tone.) No it an't.
STRAW HAT. (To the coachman.) Well, I don't know, sir. We were a pretty tall
time coming that last fifteen mile. That's a fact.
The coachman making no reply, and plainly declining to enter into any
controversy on a subject so far removed from his sympathies and feelings,
another passenger says, 'Yes, sir;' and the gentleman in the straw hat in
acknowledgment of his courtesy, says 'Yes, sir,' to him, in return. The straw
hat then inquires of the brown hat, whether that coach in which he (the straw
hat) then sits, is not a new one? To which the brown hat again makes answer,
'Yes, sir.'
STRAW HAT. I thought so. Pretty loud smell of varnish, sir?
BROWN HAT. Yes, sir.
ALL THE OTHER INSIDE PASSENGERS. Yes, sir.
BROWN HAT. (To the company in general.) Yes, sir.
The conversational powers of the company having been by this time pretty
heavily taxed, the straw hat opens the door and gets out; and all the rest
alight also. We dine soon afterwards with the boarders in the house, and have
nothing to drink but tea and coffee. As they are both very bad and the water is
worse, I ask for brandy; but it is a Temperance Hotel, and spirits are not to be
had for love or money. This preposterous forcing of unpleasant drinks down the
reluctant throats of travellers is not at all uncommon in America, but I never
discovered that the scruples of such wincing landlords induced them to preserve
any unusually nice balance between the quality of their fare, and their scale of
charges: on the contrary, I rather suspected them of diminishing the one and
exalting the other, by way of recompense for the loss of their profit on the
sale of spirituous liquors. After all, perhaps, the plainest course for persons
of such tender consciences, would be, a total abstinence from tavern-keeping.
Dinner over, we get into another vehicle which is ready at the door (for the
coach has been changed in the interval), and resume our journey; which continues
through the same kind of country until evening, when we come to the town where
we are to stop for tea and supper; and having delivered the mail bags at the
Post-office, ride through the usual wide street, lined with the usual stores and
houses (the drapers always having hung up at their door, by way of sign, a piece
of bright red cloth), to the hotel where this meal is prepared. There being many
boarders here, we sit down, a large party, and a very melancholy one as usual.
But there is a buxom hostess at the head of the table, and opposite, a simple
Welsh schoolmaster with his wife and child; who came here, on a speculation of
greater promise than performance, to teach the classics: and they are sufficient
subjects of interest until the meal is over, and another coach is ready. In it
we go on once more, lighted by a bright moon, until midnight; when we stop to
change the coach again, and remain for half an hour or so in a miserable room,
with a blurred lithograph of Washington over the smoky fire-place, and a mighty
jug of cold water on the table: to which refreshment the moody passengers do so
apply themselves that they would seem to be, one and all, keen patients of Dr.
Sangrado. Among them is a very little boy, who chews tobacco like a very big
one; and a droning gentleman, who talks arithmetically and statistically on all
subjects, from poetry downwards; and who always speaks in the same key, with
exactly the same emphasis, and with very grave deliberation. He came outside
just now, and told me how that the uncle of a certain young lady who had been
spirited away and married by a certain captain, lived in these parts; and how
this uncle was so valiant and ferocious that he shouldn't wonder if he were to
follow the said captain to England, 'and shoot him down in the street wherever
he found him;' in the feasibility of which strong measure I, being for the
moment rather prone to contradiction, from feeling half asleep and very tired,
declined to acquiesce: assuring him that if the uncle did resort to it, or
gratified any other little whim of the like nature, he would find himself one
morning prematurely throttled at the Old Bailey: and that he would do well to
make his will before he went, as he would certainly want it before he had been
in Britain very long.
On we go, all night, and by-and-by the day begins to break, and presently the
first cheerful rays of the warm sun come slanting on us brightly. It sheds its
light upon a miserable waste of sodden grass, and dull trees, and squalid huts,
whose aspect is forlorn and grievous in the last degree. A very desert in the
wood, whose growth of green is dank and noxious like that upon the top of
standing water: where poisonous fungus grows in the rare footprint on the oozy
ground, and sprouts like witches' coral, from the crevices in the cabin wall and
floor; it is a hideous thing to lie upon the very threshold of a city. But it
was purchased years ago, and as the owner cannot be discovered, the State has
been unable to reclaim it. So there it remains, in the midst of cultivation and
improvement, like ground accursed, and made obscene and rank by some great
crime.
We reached Columbus shortly before seven o'clock, and stayed there, to
refresh, that day and night: having excellent apartments in a very large
unfinished hotel called the Neill House, which were richly fitted with the
polished wood of the black walnut, and opened on a handsome portico and stone
verandah, like rooms in some Italian mansion. The town is clean and pretty, and
of course is 'going to be' much larger. It is the seat of the State legislature
of Ohio, and lays claim, in consequence, to some consideration and importance.
There being no stage-coach next day, upon the road we wished to take, I hired
'an extra,' at a reasonable charge to carry us to Tiffin; a small town from
whence there is a railroad to Sandusky. This extra was an ordinary four-horse
stage-coach, such as I have described, changing horses and drivers, as the
stage-coach would, but was exclusively our own for the journey. To ensure our
having horses at the proper stations, and being incommoded by no strangers, the
proprietors sent an agent on the box, who was to accompany us the whole way
through; and thus attended, and bearing with us, besides, a hamper full of
savoury cold meats, and fruit, and wine, we started off again in high spirits,
at half-past six o'clock next morning, very much delighted to be by ourselves,
and disposed to enjoy even the roughest journey.
It was well for us, that we were in this humour, for the road we went over
that day, was certainly enough to have shaken tempers that were not resolutely
at Set Fair, down to some inches below Stormy. At one time we were all flung
together in a heap at the bottom of the coach, and at another we were crushing
our heads against the roof. Now, one side was down deep in the mire, and we were
holding on to the other. Now, the coach was lying on the tails of the two
wheelers; and now it was rearing up in the air, in a frantic state, with all
four horses standing on the top of an insurmountable eminence, looking coolly
back at it, as though they would say 'Unharness us. It can't be done.' The
drivers on these roads, who certainly get over the ground in a manner which is
quite miraculous, so twist and turn the team about in forcing a passage,
corkscrew fashion, through the bogs and swamps, that it was quite a common
circumstance on looking out of the window, to see the coachman with the ends of
a pair of reins in his hands, apparently driving nothing, or playing at horses,
and the leaders staring at one unexpectedly from the back of the coach, as if
they had some idea of getting up behind. A great portion of the way was over
what is called a corduroy road, which is made by throwing trunks of trees into a
marsh, and leaving them to settle there. The very slightest of the jolts with
which the ponderous carriage fell from log to log, was enough, it seemed, to
have dislocated all the bones in the human body. It would be impossible to
experience a similar set of sensations, in any other circumstances, unless
perhaps in attempting to go up to the top of St. Paul's in an omnibus. Never,
never once, that day, was the coach in any position, attitude, or kind of motion
to which we are accustomed in coaches. Never did it make the smallest approach
to one's experience of the proceedings of any sort of vehicle that goes on
wheels.
Still, it was a fine day, and the temperature was delicious, and though we
had left Summer behind us in the west, and were fast leaving Spring, we were
moving towards Niagara and home. We alighted in a pleasant wood towards the
middle of the day, dined on a fallen tree, and leaving our best fragments with a
cottager, and our worst with the pigs (who swarm in this part of the country
like grains of sand on the sea-shore, to the great comfort of our commissariat
in Canada), we went forward again, gaily.
As night came on, the track grew narrower and narrower, until at last it so
lost itself among the trees, that the driver seemed to find his way by instinct.
We had the comfort of knowing, at least, that there was no danger of his falling
asleep, for every now and then a wheel would strike against an unseen stump with
such a jerk, that he was fain to hold on pretty tight and pretty quick, to keep
himself upon the box. Nor was there any reason to dread the least danger from
furious driving, inasmuch as over that broken ground the horses had enough to do
to walk; as to shying, there was no room for that; and a herd of wild elephants
could not have run away in such a wood, with such a coach at their heels. So we
stumbled along, quite satisfied.
These stumps of trees are a curious feature in American travelling. The
varying illusions they present to the unaccustomed eye as it grows dark, are
quite astonishing in their number and reality. Now, there is a Grecian urn
erected in the centre of a lonely field; now there is a woman weeping at a tomb;
now a very commonplace old gentleman in a white waistcoat, with a thumb thrust
into each arm-hole of his coat; now a student poring on a book; now a crouching
negro; now, a horse, a dog, a cannon, an armed man; a hunch-back throwing off
his cloak and stepping forth into the light. They were often as entertaining to
me as so many glasses in a magic lantern, and never took their shapes at my
bidding, but seemed to force themselves upon me, whether I would or no; and
strange to say, I sometimes recognised in them counterparts of figures once
familiar to me in pictures attached to childish books, forgotten long ago.
It soon became too dark, however, even for this amusement, and the trees were
so close together that their dry branches rattled against the coach on either
side, and obliged us all to keep our heads within. It lightened too, for three
whole hours; each flash being very bright, and blue, and long; and as the vivid
streaks came darting in among the crowded branches, and the thunder rolled
gloomily above the tree tops, one could scarcely help thinking that there were
better neighbourhoods at such a time than thick woods afforded.
At length, between ten and eleven o'clock at night, a few feeble lights
appeared in the distance, and Upper Sandusky, an Indian village, where we were
to stay till morning, lay before us.
They were gone to bed at the log Inn, which was the only house of
entertainment in the place, but soon answered to our knocking, and got some tea
for us in a sort of kitchen or common room, tapestried with old newspapers,
pasted against the wall. The bed-chamber to which my wife and I were shown, was
a large, low, ghostly room; with a quantity of withered branches on the hearth,
and two doors without any fastening, opposite to each other, both opening on the
black night and wild country, and so contrived, that one of them always blew the
other open: a novelty in domestic architecture, which I do not remember to have
seen before, and which I was somewhat disconcerted to have forced on my
attention after getting into bed, as I had a considerable sum in gold for our
travelling expenses, in my dressing-case. Some of the luggage, however, piled
against the panels, soon settled this difficulty, and my sleep would not have
been very much affected that night, I believe, though it had failed to do so.
My Boston friend climbed up to bed, somewhere in the roof, where another
guest was already snoring hugely. But being bitten beyond his power of
endurance, he turned out again, and fled for shelter to the coach, which was
airing itself in front of the house. This was not a very politic step, as it
turned out; for the pigs scenting him, and looking upon the coach as a kind of
pie with some manner of meat inside, grunted round it so hideously, that he was
afraid to come out again, and lay there shivering, till morning. Nor was it
possible to warm him, when he did come out, by means of a glass of brandy: for
in Indian villages, the legislature, with a very good and wise intention,
forbids the sale of spirits by tavern keepers. The precaution, however, is quite
inefficacious, for the Indians never fail to procure liquor of a worse kind, at
a dearer price, from travelling pedlars.
It is a settlement of the Wyandot Indians who inhabit this place. Among the
company at breakfast was a mild old gentleman, who had been for many years
employed by the United States Government in conducting negotiations with the
Indians, and who had just concluded a treaty with these people by which they
bound themselves, in consideration of a certain annual sum, to remove next year
to some land provided for them, west of the Mississippi, and a little way beyond
St. Louis. He gave me a moving account of their strong attachment to the
familiar scenes of their infancy, and in particular to the burial-places of
their kindred; and of their great reluctance to leave them. He had witnessed
many such removals, and always with pain, though he knew that they departed for
their own good. The question whether this tribe should go or stay, had been
discussed among them a day or two before, in a hut erected for the purpose, the
logs of which still lay upon the ground before the inn. When the speaking was
done, the ayes and noes were ranged on opposite sides, and every male adult
voted in his turn. The moment the result was known, the minority (a large one)
cheerfully yielded to the rest, and withdrew all kind of opposition.
We met some of these poor Indians afterwards, riding on shaggy ponies. They
were so like the meaner sort of gipsies, that if I could have seen any of them
in England, I should have concluded, as a matter of course, that they belonged
to that wandering and restless people.
Leaving this town directly after breakfast, we pushed forward again, over a
rather worse road than yesterday, if possible, and arrived about noon at Tiffin,
where we parted with the extra. At two o'clock we took the railroad; the
travelling on which was very slow, its construction being indifferent, and the
ground wet and marshy; and arrived at Sandusky in time to dine that evening. We
put up at a comfortable little hotel on the brink of Lake Erie, lay there that
night, and had no choice but to wait there next day, until a steamboat bound for
Buffalo appeared. The town, which was sluggish and uninteresting enough, was
something like the back of an English watering-place, out of the season.
Our host, who was very attentive and anxious to make us comfortable, was a
handsome middle-aged man, who had come to this town from New England, in which
part of the country he was 'raised.' When I say that he constantly walked in and
out of the room with his hat on; and stopped to converse in the same free-and-
easy state; and lay down on our sofa, and pulled his newspaper out of his
pocket, and read it at his ease; I merely mention these traits as characteristic
of the country: not at all as being matter of complaint, or as having been
disagreeable to me. I should undoubtedly be offended by such proceedings at
home, because there they are not the custom, and where they are not, they would
be impertinencies; but in America, the only desire of a good- natured fellow of
this kind, is to treat his guests hospitably and well; and I had no more right,
and I can truly say no more disposition, to measure his conduct by our English
rule and standard, than I had to quarrel with him for not being of the exact
stature which would qualify him for admission into the Queen's grenadier guards.
As little inclination had I to find fault with a funny old lady who was an upper
domestic in this establishment, and who, when she came to wait upon us at any
meal, sat herself down comfortably in the most convenient chair, and producing a
large pin to pick her teeth with, remained performing that ceremony, and
steadfastly regarding us meanwhile with much gravity and composure (now and then
pressing us to eat a little more), until it was time to clear away. It was
enough for us, that whatever we wished done was done with great civility and
readiness, and a desire to oblige, not only here, but everywhere else; and that
all our wants were, in general, zealously anticipated.
We were taking an early dinner at this house, on the day after our arrival,
which was Sunday, when a steamboat came in sight, and presently touched at the
wharf. As she proved to be on her way to Buffalo, we hurried on board with all
speed, and soon left Sandusky far behind us.
She was a large vessel of five hundred tons, and handsomely fitted up, though
with high-pressure engines; which always conveyed that kind of feeling to me,
which I should be likely to experience, I think, if I had lodgings on the
first-floor of a powder-mill. She was laden with flour, some casks of which
commodity were stored upon the deck. The captain coming up to have a little
conversation, and to introduce a friend, seated himself astride of one of these
barrels, like a Bacchus of private life; and pulling a great clasp-knife out of
his pocket, began to 'whittle' it as he talked, by paring thin slices off the
edges. And he whittled with such industry and hearty good will, that but for his
being called away very soon, it must have disappeared bodily, and left nothing
in its place but grist and shavings.
After calling at one or two flat places, with low dams stretching out into
the lake, whereon were stumpy lighthouses, like windmills without sails, the
whole looking like a Dutch vignette, we came at midnight to Cleveland, where we
lay all night, and until nine o'clock next morning.
I entertained quite a curiosity in reference to this place, from having seen
at Sandusky a specimen of its literature in the shape of a newspaper, which was
very strong indeed upon the subject of Lord Ashburton's recent arrival at
Washington, to adjust the points in dispute between the United States Government
and Great Britain: informing its readers that as America had 'whipped' England
in her infancy, and whipped her again in her youth, so it was clearly necessary
that she must whip her once again in her maturity; and pledging its credit to
all True Americans, that if Mr. Webster did his duty in the approaching
negotiations, and sent the English Lord home again in double quick time, they
should, within two years, sing 'Yankee Doodle in Hyde Park, and Hail Columbia in
the scarlet courts of Westminster!' I found it a pretty town, and had the
satisfaction of beholding the outside of the office of the journal from which I
have just quoted. I did not enjoy the delight of seeing the wit who indited the
paragraph in question, but I have no doubt he is a prodigious man in his way,
and held in high repute by a select circle.
There was a gentleman on board, to whom, as I unintentionally learned through
the thin partition which divided our state-room from the cabin in which he and
his wife conversed together, I was unwittingly the occasion of very great
uneasiness. I don't know why or wherefore, but I appeared to run in his mind
perpetually, and to dissatisfy him very much. First of all I heard him say: and
the most ludicrous part of the business was, that he said it in my very ear, and
could not have communicated more directly with me, if he had leaned upon my
shoulder, and whispered me: 'Boz is on board still, my dear.' After a
considerable pause, he added, complainingly, 'Boz keeps himself very close;'
which was true enough, for I was not very well, and was lying down, with a book.
I thought he had done with me after this, but I was deceived; for a long
interval having elapsed, during which I imagine him to have been turning
restlessly from side to side, and trying to go to sleep; he broke out again,
with 'I suppose THAT Boz will be writing a book by-and-by, and putting all our
names in it!' at which imaginary consequence of being on board a boat with Boz,
he groaned, and became silent.
We called at the town of Erie, at eight o'clock that night, and lay there an
hour. Between five and six next morning, we arrived at Buffalo, where we
breakfasted; and being too near the Great Falls to wait patiently anywhere else,
we set off by the train, the same morning at nine o'clock, to Niagara.
It was a miserable day; chilly and raw; a damp mist falling; and the trees in
that northern region quite bare and wintry. Whenever the train halted, I
listened for the roar; and was constantly straining my eyes in the direction
where I knew the Falls must be, from seeing the river rolling on towards them;
every moment expecting to behold the spray. Within a few minutes of our
stopping, not before, I saw two great white clouds rising up slowly and
majestically from the depths of the earth. That was all. At length we alighted:
and then for the first time, I heard the mighty rush of water, and felt the
ground tremble underneath my feet.
The bank is very steep, and was slippery with rain, and half-melted ice. I
hardly know how I got down, but I was soon at the bottom, and climbing, with two
English officers who were crossing and had joined me, over some broken rocks,
deafened by the noise, half- blinded by the spray, and wet to the skin. We were
at the foot of the American Fall. I could see an immense torrent of water
tearing headlong down from some great height, but had no idea of shape, or
situation, or anything but vague immensity.
When we were seated in the little ferry-boat, and were crossing the swollen
river immediately before both cataracts, I began to feel what it was: but I was
in a manner stunned, and unable to comprehend the vastness of the scene. It was
not until I came on Table Rock, and looked - Great Heaven, on what a fall of
bright- green water! - that it came upon me in its full might and majesty.
Then, when I felt how near to my Creator I was standing, the first effect,
and the enduring one - instant and lasting - of the tremendous spectacle, was
Peace. Peace of Mind, tranquillity, calm recollections of the Dead, great
thoughts of Eternal Rest and Happiness: nothing of gloom or terror. Niagara was
at once stamped upon my heart, an Image of Beauty; to remain there, changeless
and indelible, until its pulses cease to beat, for ever.
Oh, how the strife and trouble of daily life receded from my view, and
lessened in the distance, during the ten memorable days we passed on that
Enchanted Ground! What voices spoke from out the thundering water; what faces,
faded from the earth, looked out upon me from its gleaming depths; what Heavenly
promise glistened in those angels' tears, the drops of many hues, that showered
around, and twined themselves about the gorgeous arches which the changing
rainbows made!
I never stirred in all that time from the Canadian side, whither I had gone
at first. I never crossed the river again; for I knew there were people on the
other shore, and in such a place it is natural to shun strange company. To
wander to and fro all day, and see the cataracts from all points of view; to
stand upon the edge of the great Horse-Shoe Fall, marking the hurried water
gathering strength as it approached the verge, yet seeming, too, to pause before
it shot into the gulf below; to gaze from the river's level up at the torrent as
it came streaming down; to climb the neighbouring heights and watch it through
the trees, and see the wreathing water in the rapids hurrying on to take its
fearful plunge; to linger in the shadow of the solemn rocks three miles below;
watching the river as, stirred by no visible cause, it heaved and eddied and
awoke the echoes, being troubled yet, far down beneath the surface, by its giant
leap; to have Niagara before me, lighted by the sun and by the moon, red in the
day's decline, and grey as evening slowly fell upon it; to look upon it every
day, and wake up in the night and hear its ceaseless voice: this was enough.
I think in every quiet season now, still do those waters roll and leap, and
roar and tumble, all day long; still are the rainbows spanning them, a hundred
feet below. Still, when the sun is on them, do they shine and glow like molten
gold. Still, when the day is gloomy, do they fall like snow, or seem to crumble
away like the front of a great chalk cliff, or roll down the rock like dense
white smoke. But always does the mighty stream appear to die as it comes down,
and always from its unfathomable grave arises that tremendous ghost of spray and
mist which is never laid: which has haunted this place with the same dread
solemnity since Darkness brooded on the deep, and that first flood before the
Deluge - Light - came rushing on Creation at the word of God.
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