"It is because the deer has no gall," answered the man, "that the pison

don't take effect. But their meat will not do to eat, except in a small

quantity, and cooked with pork, which I think helps take the pison out of

it."

"The deer," he went on to say, "are now passing out of the blue into the

gray. After the holidays, when their hair becomes long, and their winter

coat is quite grown, their hide is soft and tender, and tears easily when

dressed, and it would be folly to kill them, even if there were no law

against it." He went on to find a parallel to the case of the deer-skins

in the hides of neat-cattle, which, when brought from a hot country, like

South America, are firmer and tougher than when obtained in a colder

climate like ours.

The Wyoming traveller gave a bad account of the health, just at present,

of the beautiful valley in which he lived. "We have never before," said

he, "known what it was to have the fever and ague among us, but now it is

very common, as well as other fevers. The season has neither been

uncommonly wet nor uncommonly dry, but it has been uncommonly hot." I

heard the same account of various other districts in Pennsylvania. Mifflin

county, for example, was sickly this season, as well as other parts of the

state which, hitherto have been almost uniformly healthy. Here, however,

in Stroudsburg and its neighborhood, they boasted that the fever and ague

had never yet made its appearance.

I was glad to hear a good account of the pecuniary circumstances of the

Pennsylvania farmers. They got in debt like every body else during the

prosperous years of 1835 and 1836, and have been ever since working

themselves gradually out of it. "I have never," said an intelligent

gentleman of Stroudsburg, "known the owners of the farms so free from

debt, and so generally easy and prosperous in their condition, as at this

moment." It is to be hoped that having been so successful in paying their

private debts, they will now try what can be done with the debt of the

state.

We left Stroudsburg this morning—one of the finest mornings of this

autumnal season—and soon climbed an eminence which looked down upon

Cherry Hollow. This place reminded me, with the exception of its forests,

of the valleys in the Peak of Derbyshire, the same rounded summits, the

same green, basin-like hollows. But here, on the hill-sides, were tall

groves of oak and chestnut, instead of the brown heath; and the large

stone houses of the German householders were very unlike the Derbyshire

cottages. The valley is four miles in length, and its eastern extremity is

washed by the Delaware. Climbing out of this valley and passing for some

miles through yellow woods and fields of springing corn, not Indian corn,

we found ourselves at length travelling on the side of another long

valley, which terminates at its southern extremity in the Wind Gap.

The Wind Gap is an opening in the same mountain ridge which is cloven by

the Water Gap, but, unlike that, it extends only about half-way down to

the base. Through this opening, bordered on each side by large loose

blocks of stone, the road passes. After you have reached the open country

beyond, you look back and see the ridge stretching away eastward towards

the Water Gap, and in the other direction towards the southwest till it

sinks out of sight, a rocky wall of uniform height, with this opening in

the midst, which looks as if part of the mountain had here fallen into an

abyss below. Beyond the Wind Gap we came to the village of Windham, lying

in the shelter of this mountain barrier, and here, about twelve o'clock,

our driver stopped a moment at an inn to give water to his horses. The

bar-room was full of fresh-colored young men in military uniforms, talking

Pennsylvania German rather rapidly and vociferously. They surrounded a

thick-set man, in a cap and shirt-sleeves, whom they called Tscho, or

Joe, and insisted that he should give them a tune on his fiddle.

"Spiel, Tscho, spiel, spiel," was shouted on every side, and at last Tscho

took the floor with a fiddle and began to play. About a dozen of the young

men stood up on the floor, in couples, facing each other, and hammered out

the tune with their feet, giving a tread or tap on the floor to correspond

with every note of the instrument, and occasionally crossing from side to

side. I have never seen dancing more diligently performed.

When the player had drawn the final squeak from his violin, we got into

our vehicle, and in somewhat more than an hour were entering the little

village of Nazareth, pleasantly situated among fields the autumnal verdure

of which indicated their fertility. Nazareth is a Moravian village, of

four or five hundred inhabitants, looking prodigiously like a little town

of the old world, except that it is more neatly kept. The houses are

square and solid, of stone or brick, built immediately on the street; a

pavement of broad flags runs under their windows, and between the flags

and the carriage-way is a row of trees. In the centre of the village is a

square with an arcade for a market, and a little aside from the main

street, in a hollow covered with bright green grass, is another square, in

the midst of which stands a large white church. Near it is an avenue, with

two immense lime-trees growing at the gate, leading to the field in which

they bury their dead. Looking upon this square is a large building, three

or four stories high, where a school for boys is kept, to which pupils are

sent from various parts of the country, and which enjoys a very good

reputation. We entered the garden of this school, an inclosure thickly

overshadowed with tall forest and exotic trees of various kinds, with

shrubs below, and winding walks and summer-houses and benches. The boys of

the school were amusing themselves under the trees, and the arched walks

were ringing with their shrill voices.

We visited also the burying place, which is situated on a little eminence,

backed with a wood, and commands a view of the village. The Moravian grave

is simple in its decorations; a small flat stone, of a square shape, lying

in the midst, between the head and foot, is inscribed with the name of the

dead, the time and place of his birth, and the time when, to use their own

language, he "departed," and this is the sole epitaph. But innovations

have been recently made on this simplicity; a rhyming couplet or quatrain

is now sometimes added, or a word in praise of the dead. One recent grave

was loaded with a thick tablet of white marble, which covered it entirely,

and bore an inscription as voluminous as those in the burial places of

other denominations. The graves, as in all Moravian burying grounds, are

arranged in regular rows, with paths at right angles between them, and

sometimes a rose-tree is planted at the head of the sleeper.

As we were leaving Nazareth, the innkeeper came to us, and asked if we

would allow a man who was travelling to Easton to take a seat in our

carriage with the driver. We consented, and a respectable-looking,

well-clad, middle-aged person, made his appearance. When we had proceeded

a little way, we asked him some questions, to which he made no other reply

than to shake his head, and we soon found that he understood no English. I

tried him with German, which brought a ready reply in the same language.

He was a native of Pennsylvania, he told me, born at Snow Hill, in Lehigh

county, not very many miles from Nazareth. In turn, he asked me where I

came from, and when I bid him guess, he assigned my birthplace to Germany,

which showed at least that he was not very accurately instructed in the

diversities with which his mother tongue is spoken.

As we entered Easton, the yellow woods on the hills and peaks that

surround the place, were lit up with a glowing autumnal sunset. Soon

afterward we crossed the Lehigh, and took a walk along its bank in South

Easton, where a little town has recently grown up; the sidewalks along its

dusty streets were freshly swept for Saturday night. As it began to grow

dark, we found ourselves strolling in front of a row of iron mills, with

the canal on one side and the Lehigh on the other. One of these was a

rolling mill, into which we could look from the bank where we stood, and

observe the whole process of the manufacture, which is very striking.

The whole interior of the building is lighted at night only by the mouths

of several furnaces, which are kindled to a white heat. Out of one of

these a thick bar of iron, about six feet in length and heated to a

perfect whiteness, is drawn, and one end of it presented to the cylinders

of the mill, which seize it and draw it through between them, rolled out

to three or four times its original size. A sooty workman grasps the

opposite end of the bar with pincers as soon as it is fairly through, and

returns it again to the cylinders, which deliver it again on the opposite

side. In this way it passes backward and forward till it is rolled into an

enormous length, and shoots across the black floor with a twining motion

like a serpent of fire. At last, when pressed to the proper thinness and

length, it is coiled up into a circle by the help of a machine contrived

for the purpose, which rolls it up as a shopkeeper rolls up a ribbon.

We found a man near where we stood, begrimed by the soot of the furnaces,

handling the clumsy masses of iron which bear the name of bloom. The

rolling mill, he said, belonged to Rodenbough, Stewart & Co., who had very

extensive contracts for furnishing iron to the nailmakers and wire

manufacturers.

"Will they stop the mill for the new tariff?" said I.

"They will stop for nothing," replied the man. "The new tariff is a good

tariff, if people would but think so. It costs the iron-masters fifteen

dollars a ton to make their iron, and they sell it for forty dollars a

ton. If the new tariff obliges them to sell it for considerable less they

will still make money."

So revolves the cycle of opinion. Twenty years ago a Pennsylvanian who

questioned the policy of the protective system would have been looked upon

as a sort of curiosity. Now the bloomers and stable-boys begin to talk

free trade. What will they talk twenty years hence?

Letter XL.

Boston.—Lawrence.—Portland.

Portland, _July_ 31, 1847.

I left Boston for this place, a few days since, by one of the railways. I

never come to Boston or go out of it without being agreeably struck with

the civility and respectable appearance of the hackney-coachmen, the

porters, and others for whose services the traveller has occasion. You

feel, generally, in your intercourse with these persons that you are

dealing with men who have a character to maintain.

There is a sober substantial look about the dwellings of Boston, which

pleases me more than the gayer aspect of our own city. In New York we are

careful to keep the outside of our houses fresh with paint, a practice

which does not exist here, and which I suppose we inherited from the

Hollanders, who learned it I know not where—could it have been from the

Chinese? The country houses of Holland, along the canals, are bright with

paint, often of several different colors, and are as gay as pagodas. In

their moist climate, where mould and moss so speedily gather, the

practice may be founded in better reasons than it is with us.

"Boston," said a friend to whom I spoke of the appearance of comfort and

thrift in that city, "is a much more crowded place than you imagine, and

where people are crowded there can not be comfort. In many of the

neighborhoods, back of those houses which present so respectable an

aspect, are buildings rising close to each other, inhabited by the poorer

class, whose families are huddled together without sufficient space and

air, and here it is that Boston poverty hides itself. You are more

fortunate on your island, that your population can extend itself

horizontally, instead of heaping itself up, as we have begun to do here."

The first place which we could call pleasant after leaving Boston was

Andover, where Stuart and Woods, now venerable with years, instruct the

young orthodox ministers and missionaries of New England. It is prettily

situated among green declivities. A little beyond, at North Andover, we

came in sight of the roofs and spires of the new city of Lawrence, which

already begin to show proudly on the sandy and sterile banks of the

Merrimac, a rapid and shallow river. A year ago last February, the

building of the city was begun; it has now five or six thousand

inhabitants, and new colonists are daily thronging in. Brick kilns are

smoking all over the country to supply materials for the walls of the

dwellings. The place, I was told, astonishes visitors with its bustle and

confusion. The streets are encumbered with heaps of fresh earth, and

piles of stone, brick, beams, and boards, and people can with difficulty

hear each other speak, for the constant thundering of hammers, and the

shouts of cartmen and wagoners urging their oxen and horses with their

loads through the deep sand of the ways. "Before the last shower," said a

passenger, "you could hardly see the city from this spot, on account of

the cloud of dust that hung perpetually over it."

"Rome," says the old adage, "was not built in a day," but here is a city

which, in respect of its growth, puts Rome to shame. The Romulus of this

new city, who like the Latian of old, gives his name to the community of

which he is the founder, is Mr. Abbot Lawrence, of Boston, a rich

manufacturer, money-making and munificent, and more fortunate in building

cities and endowing schools, than in foretelling political events. He is

the modern Amphion, to the sound of whose music, the pleasant chink of

dollars gathered in many a goodly dividend, all the stones which form the

foundation of this Thebes dance into their places,

"And half the mountain rolls into a wall."

Beyond Lawrence, in the state of New Hampshire, the train stopped a moment

at Exeter, which those who delight in such comparisons might call the Eton

of New England. It is celebrated for its academy, where Bancroft, Everett,

and I know not how many more of the New England scholars and men of

letters, received the first rudiments of their education. It lies in a

gentle depression of the surface of the country, not deep enough to be

called a valley, on the banks of a little stream, and has a pleasant

retired aspect. At Durham, some ten miles further on, we found a long

train of freight-cars crowded with the children of a Sunday-school, just

ready to set out on a pic-nic party, the boys shouting, and the girls, of

whom the number was prodigious, showing us their smiling faces. A few

middle-aged men, and a still greater number of matrons, were dispersed

among them to keep them in order. At Dover, where are several cotton

mills, we saw a similar train, with a still larger crowd, and when we

crossed the boundary of New Hampshire and entered South Berwick in Maine,

we passed through a solitary forest of oaks, where long tables and benches

had been erected for their reception, and the birds were twittering in the

branches over them.

At length the sight of numerous groups gathering blue-berries, in an

extensive tract of shrubby pasture, indicated that we were approaching a

town, and in a few minutes we had arrived at Portland. The conductor, whom

we found intelligent and communicative, recommended that we should take

quarters, during our stay, at a place called the Veranda, or Oak Grove, on

the water, about two miles from the town, and we followed his advice. We

drove through Portland, which is nobly situated on an eminence overlooking

Casco Bay, its maze of channels, and almost innumerable islands, with

their green slopes, cultivated fields, and rocky shores. We passed one

arm of the sea after another on bridges, and at length found ourselves on

a fine bold promontory, between Presumpscot river and the waters of Casco

Bay. Here a house of entertainment has just been opened—the beginning of

a new watering-place, which I am sure will become a favorite one in the

hot months of our summers. The surrounding country is so intersected with

straits, that, let the wind come from what quarter it may, it breathes

cool over the waters; and the tide, rising twelve feet, can not ebb and

flow without pushing forward the air and drawing it back again, and thus

causing a motion of the atmosphere in the stillest weather.

We passed twenty-four hours in this pleasant retreat, among the oaks of

its grove, and along its rocky shores, enjoying the agreeable coolness of

the fresh and bracing atmosphere. To tell the truth we have found it quite

cool enough ever since we reached Boston, five days ago; sometimes, in

fact, a little too cool for the thin garments we are accustomed to wear at

this season. Returning to Portland, we took passage in the steamer

Huntress, for Augusta, up the Kennebeck. I thought to give you, in this

letter, an amount of this part of my journey, but I find I must reserve it

for my next.

Letter XLI.

The Kennebeck.

Keene, New Hampshire, _August 11, 1847_.

We left Portland early in the afternoon, on board the steamer Huntress,

and swept out of the harbor, among the numerous green islands which here

break the swell of the Atlantic, and keep the water almost as smooth as

that of the Hudson. "It is said," remarked a passenger, "that there are as

many of these islands as there are days in the year, but I do not know

that any body has ever counted them." Two of the loftiest, rock-bound,

with verdant summits, and standing out beyond the rest, overlooking the

main ocean, bore light-houses, and near these we entered the mouth of the

Kennebeck, which here comes into the sea between banks of massive rock.

At the mouth of the river were forests of stakes, for the support of the

nets in which salmon, shad, and alewives are taken. The shad fishery, they

told me, was not yet over, though the month of August was already come. We

passed some small villages where we saw the keels of large unfinished

vessels lying high upon the stocks; at Bath, one of the most considerable

of these places, but a small village still, were five or six, on which

the ship-builders were busy. These, I was told, when once launched would

never be seen again in the place where they were built, but would convey

merchandise between the great ports of the world.

"The activity of ship-building in the state of Maine," said a gentleman

whom I afterward met, "is at this moment far greater than you can form any

idea of, without travelling along our coast. In solitary places where a

stream or creek large enough to float a ship is found, our builders lay

the keels of their vessels. It is not necessary that the channel should be

wide enough for the ship to turn round; it is enough if it will contain

her lengthwise. They choose a bend in the river from which they can launch

her with her head down stream, and, aided by the tide, float her out to

sea, after which she proceeds to Boston or New York, or some other of our

large seaports to do her part in carrying on the commerce of the world."

I learned that the ship-builders of Maine purchase large tracts of forest

in Virginia and other states of the south, for their supply of timber.

They obtain their oaks from the Virginia shore, their hard pine from North

Carolina; the coverings of the deck and the smaller timbers of the large

vessels are furnished by Maine. They take to the south cargoes of lime and

other products of Maine, and bring back the huge trunks produced in that

region. The larger trees on the banks of the navigable rivers of Maine

were long ago wrought into the keels of vessels.

It was not far from Bath, and a considerable distance from the open sea,

that we saw a large seal on a rock in the river. He turned his head slowly

from side to side as we passed, without allowing himself to be disturbed

by the noise we made, and kept his place as long as the eye could

distinguish him. The presence of an animal always associated in the

imagination with uninhabited coasts of the ocean, made us feel that we

were advancing into a thinly or at least a newly peopled country.

Above Bath, the channel of the Kennebeck widens into what is called

Merrymeeting Bay. Here the great Androscoggin brings in its waters from

the southwest, and various other small streams from different quarters

enter the bay, making it a kind of Congress of Rivers. It is full of

wooded islands and rocky promontories projecting into the water and

overshading it with their trees. As we passed up we saw, from time to

time, farms pleasantly situated on the islands or the borders of the

river, where a soil more genial or more easily tilled had tempted the

settler to fix himself. At length we approached Gardiner, a flourishing

village, beautifully situated among the hills on the right bank of the

Kennebeck. All traces of sterility had already disappeared from the

country; the shores of the river were no longer rock-bound, but disposed

in green terraces, with woody eminences behind them. Leaving Gardiner

behind us, we went on to Hallowell, a village bearing similar marks of

prosperity, where we landed, and were taken in carriages to Augusta, the

seat of government, three or four miles beyond.

Augusta is a pretty village, seated on green and apparently fertile

eminences that overlook the Kennebeck, and itself overlooked by still

higher summits, covered with woods, The houses are neat, and shaded with

trees, as is the case with all New England villages in the agricultural

districts. I found the Legislature in session; the Senate, a small quiet

body, deliberating for aught I could see, with as much grave and tranquil

dignity as the Senate of the United States. The House of Representatives

was just at the moment occupied by some railway question, which I was told

excited more feeling than any subject that had been debated in the whole

session, but even this occasioned no unseemly agitation; the surface was

gently rippled, nothing more.

While at Augusta, we crossed the river and visited the Insane Asylum, a

state institution, lying on the pleasant declivities of the opposite

shore. It is a handsome stone building. One of the medical attendants

accompanied us over a part of the building, and showed us some of the

wards in which there were then scarcely any patients, and which appeared

to be in excellent order, with the best arrangements for the comfort of

the inmates, and a scrupulous attention to cleanliness. When we expressed

a desire to see the patients, and to learn something of the manner in

which they were treated, he replied, "We do not make a show of our

patients; we only show the building." Our visit was, of course, soon

dispatched. We learned afterward that this was either insolence or

laziness on the part of the officer in question, whose business it

properly was to satisfy any reasonable curiosity expressed by visitors.

It had been our intention to cross the country from Augusta directly to

the White Hills in New Hampshire, and we took seats in the stage-coach

with that view. Back of Augusta the country swells into hills of

considerable height with deep hollows between, in which lie a multitude of

lakes. We passed several of these, beautifully embosomed among woods,

meadows, and pastures, and were told that if we continued on the course we

had taken we should scarcely ever find ourselves without some sheet of

water in sight till we arrived at Fryeburg on the boundary between Maine

and New Hampshire. One of them, in the township of Winthrop, struck us as

particularly beautiful. Its shores are clean and bold, with little

promontories running far into the water, and several small islands.

At Winthrop we found that the coach in which we set out would proceed to

Portland, and that if we intended to go on to Fryeburg, we must take seats

in a shabby wagon, without the least protection for our baggage. It was

already beginning to rain, and this circumstance decided us; we remained

in the coach and proceeded on our return to Portland. I have scarcely ever

travelled in a country which presented a finer appearance of agricultural

thrift and prosperity than the portions of the counties of Kennebeck and

Cumberland, through which our road carried us. The dwellings are large,

neatly painted, surrounded with fruit-trees and shrubs, and the farms in

excellent order, and apparently productive. We descended at length into

the low country, crossed the Androscoggin to the county of York, where, as

we proceeded, the country became more sandy and sterile, and the houses

had a neglected aspect. At length, after a journey of fifty or sixty miles

in the rain, we were again set down in the pleasant town of Portland.

Letter XLII.

The White Mountains.

Springfield, Mass., _August_ 13, 1847.

I had not space in my last letter, which was written from Keene, in New

Hampshire, to speak of a visit I had just made to the White Mountains. Do

not think I am going to bore you with a set description of my journey and

ascent of Mount Washington; a few notes of the excursion may possibly

amuse you.

From Conway, where the stage-coach sets you down for the night, in sight

of the summits of the mountains, the road to the Old Notch is a very

picturesque one. You follow the path of the Saco along a wide valley,

sometimes in the woods that overhang its bank, and sometimes on the edge

of rich grassy meadows, till at length, as you leave behind you one summit

after another, you find yourself in a little plain, apparently inclosed on

every side by mountains.

Further on you enter the deep gorge which leads gradually upward to the

Notch. In the midst of it is situated the Willey House, near which the

Willey family were overtaken by an avalanche and perished as they were

making their escape. It is now enlarged into a house of accommodation for

visitors to the mountains. Nothing can exceed the aspect of desolation

presented by the lofty mountain-ridges which rise on each side. They are

streaked with the paths of landslides, occurring at different periods,

which have left the rocky ribs of the mountains bare from their bald tops

to the forests at their feet, and have filled the sides of the valley with

heaps of earth, gravel, stones, and trunks of trees.

From the Willey house you ascend, for about two miles, a declivity, by no

means steep, with these dark ridges frowning over you, your path here and

there crossed by streams which have made for themselves passages in the

granite sides of the mountains like narrow staircases, down which they

come tumbling from one vast block to another. I afterward made

acquaintance with two of these, and followed them upward from one clear

pool and one white cascade to another till I was tired. The road at length

passes through what may be compared to a natural gateway, a narrow chasm

between tall cliffs, and through which the Saco, now a mere brook, finds

its way. You find yourself in a green opening, looking like the bottom of

a drained lake with mountain summits around you. Here is one of the houses

of accommodation from which you ascend Mount Washington.

If you should ever think of ascending Mount Washington, do not allow any

of the hotel-keepers to cheat you in regard to the distance. It is about

ten miles from either the hotels to the summit, and very little less from

any of them. They keep a set of worn-out horses, which they hire for the

season, and which are trained to climb the mountain, in a walk, by the

worst bridle-paths in the world. The poor hacks are generally tolerably

sure-footed, but there are exceptions to this. Guides are sent with the

visitors, who generally go on foot, strong-legged men, carrying long

staves, and watching the ladies lest any accident should occur; some of

these, especially those from the house in the Notch, commonly called Tom

Crawford's, are unmannerly fellows enough.

The scenery of these mountains has not been sufficiently praised. But for

the glaciers, but for the peaks white with perpetual snow, it would be

scarcely worth while to see Switzerland after seeing the White Mountains.

The depth of the valleys, the steepness of the mountain-sides, the variety

of aspect shown by their summits, the deep gulfs of forest below, seamed

with the open courses of rivers, the vast extent of the mountain region

seen north and south of us, gleaming with many lakes, took me with

surprise and astonishment. Imagine the forests to be shorn from half the

broad declivities—imagine scattered habitations on the thick green turf

and footpaths leading from one to the other, and herds and flocks

browzing, and you have Switzerland before you. I admit, however, that

these accessories add to the variety and interest of the landscape, and

perhaps heighten the idea of its vastness.

I have been told, however, that the White Mountains in autumn present an

aspect more glorious than even the splendors of the perpetual ice of the

Alps. All this mighty multitude of mountains, rising from valleys filled

with dense forests, have then put on their hues of gold and scarlet, and,

seen more distinctly on account of their brightness of color, seem to

tower higher in the clear blue of the sky. At that season of the year they

are little visited, and only awaken the wonder of the occasional

traveller.

It is not necessary to ascend Mount Washington, to enjoy the finest views.

Some of the lower peaks offer grander though not so extensive ones; the

height of the main summit seems to diminish the size of the objects beheld

from it. The sense of solitude and immensity is however most strongly felt

on that great cone, overlooking all the rest, and formed of loose rocks,

which seem as if broken into fragments by the power which upheaved these

ridges from the depths of the earth below. At some distance on the

northern side of one of the summits, I saw a large snow-drift lying in the

August sunshine.

The Franconia Notch, which we afterwards visited, is almost as remarkable

for the two beautiful little lakes within it, as for the savage grandeur

of the mountain-walls between which it passes. At this place I was shown a

hen clucking over a brood of young puppies. They were littered near the

nest where she was sitting, when she immediately abandoned her eggs and

adopted them as her offspring. She had a battle with the mother, and

proved victorious; after which, however, a compromise took place, the slut

nursing the puppies and the hen covering them as well as she could with

her wings. She was strutting among them when I saw her, with an appearance

of pride at having produced so gigantic a brood.

From Franconia we proceeded to Bath, on or near the Connecticut, and

entered the lovely valley of that river, which is as beautiful in New

Hampshire, as in any part of its course. Hanover, the seat of Dartmouth

College, is a pleasant spot, but the traveller will find there the worst

hotels on the river. Windsor, on the Vermont side, is a still finer

village, with trim gardens and streets shaded by old trees; Bellows Falls

is one of the most striking places for its scenery in all New England. The

coach brought us to the railway station in the pleasant village of

Greenfield. We took seats in the train, and leaving on our left the quiet

old streets of Deerfield under their ancient trees, and passing a dozen or

more of the villages on the meadows of the Connecticut, found ourselves in

less than two hours in this flourishing place, which is rapidly rising to

be one of the most important towns in New England.

Letter XLIII.

A Passage to Savannah.

Augusta, Georgia, _March 29, 1849_.

A quiet passage by sea from New York to Savannah would seem to afford

little matter for a letter, yet those who take the trouble to read what I

am about to write, will, I hope, admit that there are some things to be

observed, even on such a voyage. It was indeed a remarkably quiet one, and

worthy of note on that account, if on no other. We had a quiet vessel,

quiet weather, a quiet, good-natured captain, a quiet crew, and remarkably

quiet passengers.

When we left the wharf at New York last week, in the good steamship

Tennessee, we were not conscious, at first, as we sat in the cabin, that

she was in motion and proceeding down the harbor. There was no beating or

churning of the sea, no struggling to get forward; her paddles played in

the water as smoothly as those of a terrapin, without jar or noise. The

Tennessee is one of the tightest and strongest boats that navigate our

coast; the very flooring of her deck is composed of timbers instead of

planks, and helps to keep her massive frame more compactly and solidly

together. It was her first voyage; her fifty-one passengers lolled on

sofas fresh from the upholsterer's, and slept on mattresses which had

never been pressed by the human form before, in state-rooms where foul air

had never collected. Nor is it possible that the air should become impure

in them to any great degree, for the Tennessee is the best-ventilated ship

I ever was in; the main cabin and the state-rooms are connected with each

other and with the deck, by numerous openings and pipes which keep up a

constant circulation of air in every part.

I have spoken of the passengers as remarkably quiet persons. Several of

them, I believe, never spoke during the passage, at least so it seemed to

me. The silence would have been almost irksome, but for two lively little

girls who amused us by their prattle, and two young women, apparently just

married, too happy to do any thing but laugh, even when suffering from

seasickness, and whom we now and then heard shouting and squealing from

their state-rooms. There were two dark-haired, long-limbed gentlemen, who

lay the greater part of the first and second day at full length on the

sofas in the after-cabin, each with a spittoon before him, chewing tobacco

with great rapidity and industry, and apparently absorbed in the endeavor

to fill it within a given time. There was another, with that atrabilious

complexion peculiar to marshy countries, and circles of a still deeper hue

about his eyes, who sat on deck, speechless and motionless, wholly

indifferent to the sound of the dinner-bell, his countenance fixed in an

expression which seemed to indicate an utter disgust of life.

Yet we had some snatches of good talk on the voyage. A robust old

gentleman, a native of Norwalk, in Connecticut, told us that he had been

reading a history of that place by the Rev. Mr. Hall.

"I find," said he, "that in his account of the remarkable people of

Norwalk, he has omitted to speak of two of the most remarkable, two

spinsters, Sarah and Phebe Comstock, relatives of mine and friends of my

youth, of whom I retain a vivid recollection. They were in opulent

circumstances for the neighborhood in which they lived, possessing a farm

of about two hundred acres; they were industrious, frugal, and extremely

charitable; but they never relieved a poor family without visiting it, and

inquiring carefully into its circumstances. Sarah was the housekeeper, and

Phebe the farmer. Phebe knew nothing of kitchen matters, but she knew at

what time of the year greensward should be broken up, and corn planted,

and potatoes dug. She dropped Indian corn and sowed English grain with her

own hands. In the time of planting or of harvest, it was Sarah who visited

and relieved the poor.

"I remember that they had various ways of employing the young people who

called upon them. If it was late in the autumn, there was a chopping-board

and chopping-knife ready, with the feet of neat-cattle, from which the

oily parts had been extracted by boiling. 'You do not want to be idle,'

they would say, 'chop this meat, and you shall have your share of the

mince-pies that we are going to make.' At other times a supply of old

woollen stockings were ready for unraveling. 'We know you do not care to

be idle' they would say, 'here are some stockings which you would oblige

us by unraveling.' If you asked what use they made of the spools of

woollen thread obtained by this process, they would answer: 'We use it as

the weft of the linsey-woolsey with which we clothe our negroes.' They had

negro slaves in those times, and old Tone, a faithful black servant of

theirs, who has seen more than a hundred years, is alive yet.

"They practiced one very peculiar piece of economy. The white hickory you

know, yields the purest and sweetest of saccharine juices. They had their

hickory fuel cut into short billets, which before placing on the fire they

laid on the andirons, a little in front of the blaze, so as to subject it

to a pretty strong heat. This caused the syrup in the wood to drop from

each end of the billet, where it was caught in a cup, and in this way a

gallon or two was collected in the course of a fortnight. With this they

flavored their finest cakes.

"They died about thirty years since, one at the age of eighty-nine, and

the other at the age of ninety. On the tomb-stone of one of them, it was

recorded that she had been a member of the church for seventy years. Their

father was a remarkable man in his way. He was a rich man in his time, and

kept a park of deer, one of the last known in Connecticut, for the purpose

of supplying his table with venison. He prided himself on the strict and

literal fulfillment of his word. On one occasion he had a law-suit with

one of his neighbors, before a justice of the peace, in which he was cast

and ordered to pay ten shillings damages, and a shilling as the fees of

court. He paid the ten shillings, and asked the justice whether he would

allow him to pay the remaining shilling when he next passed his door. The

magistrate readily consented, but from that time old Comstock never went

by his house. Whenever he had occasion to go to church, or to any other

place, the direct road to which led by the justice's door, he was careful

to take a lane which passed behind the dwelling, and at some distance from

it. The shilling remained unpaid up to the day of his death, and it was

found that in his last will he had directed that his corpse should be

carried by that lane to the place of interment."

When we left the quarantine ground on Thursday morning, after lying moored

all night with a heavy rain beating on the deck, the sky was beginning to

clear with a strong northwest wind and the decks were slippery with ice.

When the sun rose it threw a cold white light upon the waters, and the

passengers who appeared on deck were muffled to the eyes. As we proceeded

southwardly, the temperature grew milder, and the day closed with a calm

and pleasant sunset. The next day the weather was still milder, until

about noon, when we arrived off Cape Hatteras a strong wind set in from

the northeast, clouds gathered with a showery aspect, and every thing

seemed to betoken an impending storm. At this moment the captain shifted

the direction of the voyage, from south to southwest; we ran before the

wind leaving the storm, if there was any, behind us, and the day closed

with another quiet and brilliant sunset.

The next day, the third of our voyage, broke upon us like a day in summer,

with amber-colored sunshine and the blandest breezes that ever blew. An

awning was stretched over the deck to protect us from the beams of the

sun, and all the passengers gathered under it; the two dark-complexioned

gentlemen left the task of filling the spittoons below, and came up to

chew their tobacco on deck; the atrabilious passenger was seen to interest

himself in the direction of the compass, and once was thought to smile,

and the hale old gentleman repeated the history of his Norwalk relatives.

On the fourth morning we landed at Savannah. It was delightful to eyes

which had seen only russet fields and leafless trees for months, to gaze

on the new and delicate green of the trees and the herbage. The weeping

willows drooped in full leaf, the later oaks were putting forth their new

foliage, the locust-trees had hung out their tender sprays and their

clusters of blossoms not yet unfolded, the Chinese wistaria covered the

sides of houses with its festoons of blue blossoms, and roses were nodding

at us in the wind, from the tops of the brick walls which surround the

gardens.

Yet winter had been here, I saw. The orange-trees which, since the great

frost seven or eight years ago, had sprung from the ground and grown to

the height of fifteen or twenty feet, had a few days before my arrival

felt another severe frost, and stood covered with sere dry leaves in the

gardens, some of them yet covered with fruit. The trees were not killed,

however, as formerly, though they will produce no fruit this season, and

new leaf-buds were beginning to sprout on their boughs. The dwarf-orange,

a hardier tree, had escaped entirely, and its blossoms were beginning to

open.

I visited Bonaventure, which I formerly described in one of my letters. It

has lost the interest of utter solitude and desertion which it then had. A

Gothic cottage has been built on the place, and the avenues of live-oaks

have been surrounded with an inclosure, for the purpose of making a

cemetery on the spot. Yet there they stand, as solemn as ever, lifting and

stretching their long irregular branches overhead, hung with masses and

festoons of gray moss. It almost seemed, when I looked up to them, as if

the clouds had come nearer to the earth than is their wont, and formed

themselves into the shadowy ribs of the vault above me. The drive to

Bonaventure at this season of the year is very beautiful, though the roads

are sandy; it is partly along an avenue of tall trees, and partly through

the woods, where the dog-wood and azalea and thorn-trees are in blossom,

and the ground is sprinkled with flowers. Here and there are dwellings

beside the road. "They are unsafe the greater part of the year," said the

gentleman who drove me out, and who spoke from professional knowledge, "a

summer residence in them is sure to bring dangerous fevers." Savannah is a

healthy city, but it is like Rome, imprisoned by malaria.

The city of Savannah, since I saw it six years ago, has enlarged

considerably, and the additions made to it increase its beauty. The

streets have been extended on the south side, on the same plan as those of

the rest of the city, with small parks at short distances from each other,

planted with trees; and the new houses are handsome and well-built. The

communications opened with the interior by long lines of railway have, no

doubt, been the principal occasion of this prosperity. These and the

Savannah river send enormous quantities of cotton to the Savannah market.

One should see, with the bodily eye, the multitude of bales of this

commodity accumulating in the warehouses and elsewhere, in order to form

an idea of the extent to which it is produced in the southern states—long

trains of cars heaped with bales, steamer after steamer loaded high with

bales coming down the rivers, acres of bales on the wharves, acres of

bales at the railway stations—one should see all this, and then carry his

thoughts to the millions of the civilized world who are clothed by this

great staple of our country.

I came to this place by steamer to Charleston and then by railway. The

line of the railway, one hundred and thirty-seven miles in length, passes

through the most unproductive district of South Carolina. It is in fact

nothing but a waste of forest, with here and there an open field, half a

dozen glimpses of plantations, and about as many villages, none of which

are considerable, and some of which consist of not more than half a dozen

houses. Aiken, however, sixteen miles before you reach the Savannah river,

has a pleasant aspect. It is situated on a comparatively high tract of

country, sandy and barren, but healthy, and hither the planters resort in

the hot months from their homes in the less salubrious districts. Pretty

cottages stand dispersed among the oaks and pines, and immediately west of

the place the country descends in pleasant undulations towards the valley

of the Savannah.

The appearance of Augusta struck me very agreeably as I reached it, on a

most delightful afternoon, which seemed to me more like June than March. I

was delighted to see turf again, regular greensward of sweet grasses and

clover, such as you see in May in the northern states, and do not meet on

the coast in the southern states. The city lies on a broad rich plain on

the Savannah river, with woody declivities to the north and west. I have

seen several things here since my arrival which interested me much, and if

I can command time I will speak of them in another letter.

Letter XLIV.

Southern Cotton Mills.

Barnwell District, South Carolina, _March_ 31, 1849.

I promised to say something more of Augusta if I had time before departing

from Cuba, and I find that I have a few moments to spare for a hasty

letter.

The people of Augusta boast of the beauty of their place, and not without

some reason. The streets are broad, and in some parts overshadowed with

rows of fine trees. The banks of the river on which it stands are high and

firm, and slopes half covered with forest, of a pleasant aspect, overlook

it from the west and from the Carolina side. To the south stretches a

broad champaign country, on which are some of the finest plantations of

Georgia. I visited one of these, consisting of ten thousand acres, kept

throughout in as perfect order as a small farm at the north, though large

enough for a German principality.

But what interested me most, was a visit to a cotton mill in the

neighborhood,—a sample of a class of manufacturing establishments, where

the poor white people of this state and of South Carolina find occupation.

It is a large manufactory, and the machinery is in as perfect order as in

any of the mills at the north. "Here," said a gentleman who accompanied

us, as we entered the long apartment in the second story, "you will see a

sample of the brunettes of the piny woods."

The girls of various ages, who are employed at the spindles, had, for the

most part, a sallow, sickly complexion, and in many of their faces, I

remarked that look of mingled distrust and dejection which often

accompanies the condition of extreme, hopeless poverty. "These poor

girls," said one of our party, "think themselves extremely fortunate to be

employed here, and accept work gladly. They come from the most barren

parts of Carolina and Georgia, where their families live wretchedly, often

upon unwholesome food, and as idly as wretchedly, for hitherto there has

been no manual occupation provided for them from which they do not shrink

as disgraceful, on account of its being the occupation of slaves. In these

factories negroes are not employed as operatives, and this gives the

calling of the factory girl a certain dignity. You would be surprised to

see the change which a short time effects in these poor people. They come

barefooted, dirty, and in rags; they are scoured, put into shoes and

stockings, set at work and sent regularly to the Sunday-schools, where

they are taught what none of them have been taught before—to read and

write. In a short time they became expert at their work; they lose their

sullen shyness, and their physiognomy becomes comparatively open and

cheerful. Their families are relieved from the temptations to theft and

other shameful courses which accompany the condition of poverty without

occupation."

"They have a good deal of the poke-easy manner of the piny woods about

them yet," said one of our party, a Georgian. It was true, I perceived

that they had not yet acquired all that alacrity and quickness in their

work which you see in the work-people of the New England mills. In one of

the upper stories I saw a girl of a clearer complexion than the rest, with

two long curls swinging behind each ear, as she stepped about with the air

of a duchess. "That girl is from the north," said our conductor; "at first

we placed an expert operative from the north in each story of the building

as an instructor and pattern to the rest."

I have since learned that some attempts were made at first to induce the

poor white people to work side by side with the blacks in these mills.

These utterly failed, and the question then became with the proprietors

whether they should employ blacks only or whites only; whether they should

give these poor people an occupation which, while it tended to elevate

their condition, secured a more expert class of work-people than the

negroes could be expected to become, or whether they should rely upon the

less intelligent and more negligent services of slaves. They decided at

length upon banishing the labor of blacks from their mills. At

Graniteville, in South Carolina, about ten miles from the Savannah river,

a neat little manufacturing village has lately been built up, where the

families of the _crackers_, as they are called, reclaimed from their idle

lives in the woods, are settled, and white labor only is employed. The

enterprise is said to be in a most prosperous condition.

Only coarse cloths are made in these mills—strong, thick fabrics,

suitable for negro shirting—and the demand for this kind of goods, I am

told, is greater than the supply. Every yard made in this manufactory at

Augusta, is taken off as soon as it leaves the loom. I fell in with a

northern man in the course of the day, who told me that these mills had

driven the northern manufacturer of coarse cottons out of the southern

market.

"The buildings are erected here more cheaply," he continued, "there is far

less expense in fuel, and the wages of the workpeople are less. At first

the boys and girls of the cracker families were engaged for little more

than their board; their wages are now better, but they are still low. I am

about to go to the north, and I shall do my best to persuade some of my

friends, who have been almost ruined by this southern competition, to come

to Augusta and set up cotton mills."

There is water-power at Augusta sufficient to turn the machinery of many

large establishments. A canal from the Savannah river brings in a large

volume of water, which passes from level to level, and might be made to

turn the spindles and drive the looms of a populous manufacturing town.

Such it will become, if any faith is to be placed in present indications,

and a considerable manufacturing population will be settled at this place,

drawn from the half-wild inhabitants of the most barren parts of the

southern states. I look upon the introduction of manufactures at the south

as an event of the most favorable promise for that part of the country,

since it both condenses a class of population too thinly scattered to have

the benefit of the institutions of civilized life, of education and

religion—and restores one branch of labor, at least, to its proper

dignity, in a region where manual labor has been the badge of servitude

and dependence.

One of the pleasantest spots in the neighborhood of Augusta is Somerville,

a sandy eminence, covered with woods, the shade of which is carefully

cherished, and in the midst of which are numerous cottages and country

seats, closely embowered in trees, with pleasant paths leading to them

from the highway. Here the evenings in summer are not so oppressively hot

as in the town below, and dense as the shade is, the air is dry and

elastic. Hither many families retire during the hot season, and many

reside here the year round. We drove through it as the sun was setting,

and called at the dwellings of several of the hospitable inhabitants. The

next morning the railway train brought us to Barnwell District, in South

Carolina, where I write this.

I intended to send you some notes of the agricultural changes which I

have observed in this part of South Carolina since I was last here, but I

have hardly time to do it. The culture of wheat has been introduced, many

planters now raising enough for their own consumption. The sugar cane is

also planted, and quantities of sugar and molasses are often made

sufficient to supply the plantations on which it is cultivated.

Spinning-wheels and looms have come into use, and a strong and durable

cotton cloth is woven by the negro women for the wear of the slaves. All

this shows a desire to make the most of the recources of the country, and

to protect the planter against the embarrassments which often arise from

the fluctuating prices of the great staple of the south—cotton. But I

have no time to dwell upon this subject. To-morrow I sail for Cuba.

Letter XLV.

The Florida Coast.—Key West.

Havana, _April_ 7, 1849.

It was a most agreeable voyage which I made in the steamer Isabel, to this

port, the wind in our favor the whole distance, fine bright weather, the

temperature passing gradually from what we have it in New York at the end

of May, to what it is in the middle of June. The Isabel is a noble

sea-boat, of great strength, not so well ventilated as the Tennessee, in

which we came to Savannah, with spacious and comfortable cabins, and, I am

sorry to say, rather dirty state-rooms.

We stopped off Savannah near the close of the first day of our voyage, to

leave some of our passengers and take in others; and on the second, which

was also the second of the month, we were running rapidly down the Florida

coast, with the trade-wind fresh on our beam, sweeping before it a long

swell from the east, in which our vessel rocked too much for the stomachs

of most of the passengers. The next day the sea was smoother; we had

changed our direction somewhat and were going before the wind, the Florida

reefs full in sight, with their long streak of white surf, beyond which,

along the line of the shore, lay a belt of water, of bright translucent

green, and in front the waves wore an amethystine tint. We sat the greater

part of the day under an awning. A long line, with a baited hook at the

end, was let down into the water from the stern of our vessel, and after

being dragged there an hour or two, it was seized by a king-fish, which

was immediately hauled on board. It was an elegantly shaped fish, weighing

nearly twenty pounds, with a long head, and scales shining with blue and

purple. It was served up for dinner, and its flavor much commended by the

amateurs.

The waters around us were full of sails, gleaming in the sunshine. "They

belong," said our Charleston pilot, "to the wreckers who live at Key West.

Every morning they come out and cruise among the reefs, to discover if

there are any vessels wrecked or in distress—the night brings them back

to the harbor on their island."

Your readers know, I presume, that at Key West is a town containing nearly

three thousand inhabitants, who subsist solely by the occupation of

relieving vessels in distress navigating this dangerous coast, and

bringing in such as are wrecked. The population, of course, increases with

the commerce of the country, and every vessel that sails from our ports to

the Gulf of Mexico, or comes from the Gulf to the North, every addition to

the intercourse of the Atlantic ports with Mobile, New Orleans, the West

Indies, or Central America, adds to their chances of gain. These people

neither plant nor sow; their isle is a low barren spot, surrounded by a

beach of white sand, formed of disintegrated porous limestone, and a

covering of the same sand, spread thinly over the rock, forms its soil.

"It is a scandal," said the pilot, "that this coast is not better lighted.

A few light-houses would make its navigation much safer, and they would be

built, if Florida had any man in Congress to represent the matter properly

to the government. I have long been familiar with this coast—sixty times,

at least, I have made the voyage from Charleston to Havana, and I am sure

that there is no such dangerous navigation on the coast of the United

States. In going to Havana, or to New Orleans, or to other ports on the

gulf, commanders of vessels try to avoid the current of the gulf-stream

which would carry them to the north, and they, therefore, shave the

Florida coast, and keep near the reefs which you see yonder. They often

strike the reefs inadvertently, or are driven against them by storms. In

returning northward the navigation is safer; we give a good offing to the

reefs and strike out into the gulf-stream, the current of which carries us

in the direction of our voyage."

A little before nine o'clock we had entered the little harbor of Key West,

and were moored in its still waters. It was a bright moonlight evening,

and we rambled two or three hours about the town and the island. The hull

of a dismasted vessel lay close by our landing-place; it had no name on

bow or stern, and had just been found abandoned at sea, and brought in by

the wreckers; its cargo, consisting of logwood, had been taken out and lay

in piles on the wharf. This town has principally grown up since the

Florida war. The habitations have a comfortable appearance; some of them

are quite neat, but the sterility of the place is attested by the want of

gardens. In some of the inclosures before the houses, however, there were

tropical shrubs in flower, and here the cocoanut-tree was growing, and

other trees of the palm kind, which rustled with a sharp dry sound in the

fresh wind from the sea. They were the first palms I had seen growing in

the open air, and they gave a tropical aspect to the place.

We fell in with a man who had lived thirteen years at Key West. He told us

that its three thousand inhabitants had four places of worship—an

Episcopal, a Catholic, a Methodist, and a Baptist church; and the

drinking-houses which we saw open, with such an elaborate display of

bottles and decanters, were not resorted to by the people of the place,

but were the haunt of English and American sailors, whom the disasters, or

the regular voyages of their vessels had brought hither. He gave us an

account of the hurricane of September, 1846, which overflowed and laid

waste the island.

"Here where we stand," said he, "the water was four feet deep at least. I

saved my family in a boat, and carried them to a higher part of the

island. Two houses which I owned were swept away by the flood, and I was

ruined. Most of the houses were unroofed by the wind; every vessel

belonging to the place was lost; dismasted hulks were floating about, and

nobody knew to whom they belonged, and dead bodies of men and women lay

scattered along the beach. It was the worst hurricane ever known at Key

West; before it came, we used to have a hurricane regularly once in two

years, but we have had none since."

A bell was rung about this time, and we asked the reason. "It is to

signify that the negroes must be at their homes," answered the man. We

inquired if there were many blacks in the place. "Till lately," he

replied, "there were about eighty, but since the United States government

has begun to build the fort yonder, their number has increased. Several

broken-down planters, who have no employment for their slaves, have sent

them to Key West to be employed by the government. We do not want them

here, and wish that the government would leave them on the hands of their

masters."

On the fourth morning when we went on deck, the coast of Cuba, a ridge of

dim hills, was in sight, and our vessel was rolling in the unsteady waves

of the gulf stream, which here beat against the northern shore of the

island. It was a hot morning, as the mornings in this climate always are

till the periodical breeze springs up, about ten o'clock, and refreshes

all the islands that lie in the embrace of the gulf. In a short time, the

cream-colored walls of the Moro, the strong castle which guards the

entrance to the harbor of Havana, appeared rising from the waters. We

passed close to the cliffs on which it is built, were hailed in English, a

gun was fired, our steamer darted through a narrow entrance into the

harbor, and anchored in the midst of what appeared a still inland lake.

The city of Havana has a cheerful appearance seen from the harbor. Its

massive houses, built for the most part of the porous rock of the island,

are covered with stucco, generally of a white or cream color, but often

stained sky-blue or bright yellow. Above these rise the dark towers and

domes of the churches, apparently built of a more durable material, and

looking more venerable for the gay color of the dwellings amidst which

they stand. The extensive fortifications of Cabañas crown the heights on

that side of the harbor which lies opposite to the town; and south of the

city a green, fertile valley, in which stand scattered palm-trees,

stretches towards the pleasant village of Cerro.

We lay idly in the stream for two hours, till the authorities of the port

could find time to visit us. They arrived at last, and without coming on

board, subjected the captain to a long questioning, and searched the

newspapers he brought for intelligence relating to the health of the port

from which he sailed. At last they gave us leave to land, without

undergoing a quarantine, and withdrew, taking with them our passports. We

went on shore, and after three hours further delay got our baggage through

the custom-house.

Letter XLVI.

Havana.

Havana, _April_ 10, 1849.

I find that it requires a greater effort of resolution to sit down to the

writing of a long letter in this soft climate, than in the country I have

left. I feel a temptation to sit idly, and let the grateful wind from the

sea, coming in at the broad windows, flow around me, or read, or talk, as

I happen to have a book or a companion. That there is something in a

tropical climate which indisposes one to vigorous exertion I can well

believe, from what I experience in myself, and what I see around me. The

ladies do not seem to take the least exercise, except an occasional drive

on the Paseo, or public park; they never walk out, and when they are

shopping, which is no less the vocation of their sex here than in other

civilized countries, they never descend from their _volantes_, but the

goods are brought out by the obsequious shopkeeper, and the lady makes her

choice and discusses the price as she sits in her carriage.

Yet the women of Cuba show no tokens of delicate health. Freshness of

color does not belong to a latitude so near the equator, but they have

plump figures, placid, unwrinkled countenances, a well-developed bust,

and eyes, the brilliant languor of which is not the languor of illness.

The girls as well as the young men, have rather narrow shoulders, but as

they advance in life, the chest, in the women particularly, seems to

expand from year to year, till it attains an amplitude by no means common

in our country. I fully believe that this effect, and their general

health, in spite of the inaction in which they pass their lives, is owing

to the free circulation of air through their apartments.

For in Cuba, the women as well as the men may be said to live in the open

air. They know nothing of close rooms, in all the island, and nothing of

foul air, and to this, I have no doubt, quite as much as to the mildness

of the temperature, the friendly effect of its climate upon invalids from

the north is to be ascribed. Their ceilings are extremely lofty, and the

wide windows, extending from the top of the room to the floor and guarded

by long perpendicular bars of iron, are without glass, and when closed are

generally only closed with blinds which, while they break the force of the

wind when it is too strong, do not exclude the air. Since I have been on

the island, I may be said to have breakfasted and dined and supped and

slept in the open air, in an atmosphere which is never in repose except

for a short time in the morning after sunrise. At other times a breeze is

always stirring, in the day-time bringing in the air from the ocean, and

at night drawing it out again to the sea.

In walking through the streets of the towns in Cuba, I have been

entertained by the glimpses I had through the ample windows, of what was

going on in the parlors. Sometimes a curtain hanging before them allowed

me only a sight of the small hands which clasped the bars of the grate,

and the dusky faces and dark eyes peeping into the street and scanning the

passers by. At other times, the whole room was seen, with its furniture,

and its female forms sitting in languid postures, courting the breeze as

it entered from without. In the evening, as I passed along the narrow

sidewalk of the narrow streets, I have been startled at finding myself

almost in the midst of a merry party gathered about the window of a

brilliantly lighted room, and chattering the soft Spanish of the island in

voices that sounded strangely near to me. I have spoken of their languid

postures: they love to recline on sofas; their houses are filled with

rocking-chairs imported from the United States; they are fond of sitting

in chairs tilted against the wall, as we sometimes do at home. Indeed they

go beyond us in this respect; for in Cuba they have invented a kind of

chair which, by lowering the back and raising the knees, places the sitter

precisely in the posture he would take if he sat in a chair leaning

backward against a wall. It is a luxurious attitude, I must own, and I do

not wonder that it is a favorite with lazy people, for it relieves one of

all the trouble of keeping the body upright.

It is the women who form the large majority of the worshipers in the

churches. I landed here in Passion Week, and the next day was Holy

Thursday, when not a vehicle on wheels of any sort is allowed to be seen

in the streets; and the ladies, contrary to their custom during the rest

of the year, are obliged to resort to the churches on foot. Negro servants

of both sexes were seen passing to and fro, carrying mats on which their

mistresses were to kneel in the morning service. All the white female

population, young and old, were dressed in black, with black lace veils.

In the afternoon, three wooden or waxen images of the size of life,

representing Christ in the different stages of his passion, were placed in

the spacious Church of St. Catharine, which was so thronged that I found

it difficult to enter. Near the door was a figure of the Saviour sinking

under the weight of his cross, and the worshipers were kneeling to kiss

his feet. Aged negro men and women, half-naked negro children, ladies

richly attired, little girls in Parisian dresses, with lustrous black eyes

and a profusion of ringlets, cast themselves down before the image, and

pressed their lips to its feet in a passion of devotion. Mothers led up

their little ones, and showed them how to perform this act of adoration. I

saw matrons and young women rise from it with their eyes red with tears.

The next day, which was Good Friday, about twilight, a long procession

came trailing slowly through the streets under my window, bearing an image

of the dead Christ, lying upon a cloth of gold. It was accompanied by a

body of soldiery, holding their muskets reversed, and a band playing

plaintive tunes; the crowd uncovered their heads as it passed. On Saturday

morning, at ten o'clock, the solemnities of holy week were over; the bells

rang a merry peal; hundreds of volantes and drays, which had stood ready

harnessed, rushed into the streets; the city became suddenly noisy with

the rattle of wheels and the tramp of horses; the shops which had been

shut for the last two days, were opened; and the ladies, in white or

light-colored muslins, were proceeding in their volantes to purchase at

the shops their costumes for the Easter festivities.

I passed the evening on the _Plaza de Armas_, a public square in front of

the Governor's house, planted with palms and other trees, paved with broad

flags, and bordered with a row of benches. It was crowded with people in

their best dresses, the ladies mostly in white, and without bonnets, for

the bonnet in this country is only worn while travelling. Chairs had been

placed for them in a double row around the edge of the square, and a row

of volantes surrounded the square, in each of which sat two or more

ladies, the ample folds of their muslin dresses flowing out on each side

over the steps of the carriage. The Governor's band played various airs,

martial and civic, with great beauty of execution. The music continued for

two hours, and the throng, with only occasional intervals of conversation,

seemed to give themselves up wholly to the enjoyment of listening to it.

It was a bright moonlight night, so bright that one might almost see to

read, and the temperature the finest I can conceive, a gentle breeze

rustling among the palms overhead. I was surprised at seeing around me so

many fair brows and snowy necks. It is the moonlight, said I to myself, or

perhaps it is the effect of the white dresses, for the complexions of

these ladies seem to differ several shades from those which I saw

yesterday at the churches. A female acquaintance has since given me

another solution of the matter.

"The reason," she said, "of the difference you perceived is this, that

during the ceremonies of holy week they take off the _cascarilla_ from

their faces, and appear in their natural complexions."

I asked the meaning of the word _cascarilla_, which I did not remember to

have heard before.

"It is the favorite cosmetic of the island, and is made of egg-shells

finely pulverized. They often fairly plaster their faces with it. I have

seen a dark-skinned lady as white almost as marble at a ball. They will

sometimes, at a morning call or an evening party, withdraw to repair the

_cascarilla_ on their faces."

I do not vouch for this tale, but tell it "as it was told to me." Perhaps,

after all, it was the moonlight which had produced this transformation,

though I had noticed something of the same improvement of complexion just

before sunset, on the Paseo Isabel, a public park without the city walls,

planted with rows of trees, where, every afternoon, the gentry of Havana

drive backward and forward in their volantes, with each a glittering

harness, and a liveried negro bestriding, in large jack-boots, the single

horse which draws the vehicle.

I had also the same afternoon visited the receptacle into which the

population of the city are swept when the game of life is played out—the

Campo Santo, as it is called, or public cemetery of Havana. Going out of

the city at the gate nearest the sea, I passed through a street of the

wretchedest houses I had seen; the ocean was roaring at my right on the

coral rocks which form the coast. The dingy habitations were soon left

behind, and I saw the waves, pushed forward by a fresh wind, flinging

their spray almost into the road; I next entered a short avenue of trees,

and in a few minutes the volante stopped at the gate of the cemetery. In a

little inclosure before the entrance, a few starvling flowers of Europe

were cultivated, but the wild plants of the country flourished luxuriantly

on the rich soil within. A thick wall surrounded the cemetery, in which

were rows of openings for coffins, one above the other, where the more

opulent of the dead were entombed. The coffin is thrust in endwise, and

the opening closed with a marble slab bearing an inscription.

Most of these niches were already occupied, but in the earth below, by far

the greater part of those who die at Havana, are buried without a monument

or a grave which they are allowed to hold a longer time than is necessary

for their bodies to be consumed in the quicklime which is thrown upon

them. Every day fresh trenches are dug in which their bodies are thrown,

generally without coffins. Two of these, one near each wall of the

cemetery, were waiting for the funerals. I saw where the spade had divided

the bones of those who were buried there last, and thrown up the broken

fragments, mingled with masses of lime, locks of hair, and bits of

clothing. Without the walls was a receptacle in which the skulls and other

larger bones, dark with the mould of the grave, were heaped.

Two or three persons were walking about the cemetery when we first

entered, but it was now at length the cool of the day, and the funerals

began to arrive. They brought in first a rude black coffin, broadest at

the extremity which contained the head, and placing it at the end of one

of the trenches, hurriedly produced a hammer and nails to fasten the lid

before letting it down, when it was found that the box was too shallow at

the narrower extremity. The lid was removed for a moment and showed the

figure of an old man in a threadbare black coat, white pantaloons, and

boots. The negroes who bore it beat out the bottom with the hammer, so as

to allow the lid to be fastened over the feet. It was then nailed down

firmly with coarse nails, the coffin was swung into the trench, and the

earth shoveled upon it. A middle-aged man, who seemed to be some relative

of the dead, led up a little boy close to the grave and watched the

process of filling it. They spoke to each other and smiled, stood till the

pit was filled to the surface, and the bearers had departed, and then

retired in their turn. This was one of the more respectable class of

funerals. Commonly the dead are piled without coffins, one above the

other, in the trenches.

The funerals now multiplied. The corpse of a little child was brought in,

uncoffined; and another, a young man who, I was told, had cut his throat

for love, was borne towards one of the niches in the wall. I heard loud

voices, which seemed to proceed from the eastern side of the cemetery, and

which, I thought at first, might be the recitation of a funeral service;

but no funeral service is said at these graves; and, after a time, I

perceived that they came from the windows of a long building which

overlooked one side of the burial ground. It was a mad-house. The inmates,

exasperated at the spectacle before them, were gesticulating from the

windows—the women screaming and the men shouting, but no attention was

paid to their uproar. A lady, however, a stranger to the island, who

visited the Campo Santo that afternoon, was so affected by the sights and

sounds of the place, that she was borne out weeping and almost in

convulsions. As we left the place, we found a crowd of volantes about the

gate; a pompous bier, with rich black hangings, drew up; a little beyond,

we met one of another kind—a long box, with glass sides and ends, in

which lay the corpse of a woman, dressed in white, with a black veil

thrown over the face.

The next day the festivities, which were to indemnify the people for the

austerities of Lent and of Passion Week, began. The cock-pits were opened

during the day, and masked balls were given in the evening at the

theatres. You know, probably, that cock-fighting is the principal

diversion of the island, having entirely supplanted the national spectacle

of bull-baiting. Cuba, in fact, seemed to me a great poultry-yard. I heard

the crowing of cocks in all quarters, for the game-cock is the noisiest

and most boastful of birds, and is perpetually uttering his notes of

defiance. In the villages I saw the veterans of the pit, a strong-legged

race, with their combs cropped smooth to the head, the feathers plucked

from every part of the body except their wings, and the tail docked like

that of a coach horse, picking up their food in the lanes among the

chickens. One old cripple I remember to have seen in the little town of

Guines, stiff with wounds received in combat, who had probably got a

furlough for life, and who, while limping among his female companions,

maintained a sort of strut in his gait, and now and then stopped to crow

defiance to the world. The peasants breed game-cocks and bring them to

market; amateurs in the town train them for their private amusement.

Dealers in game-cocks are as common as horse-jockies with us, and every

village has its cock-pit.

I went on Monday to the _Valla de Gallos_, situated in that part of Havana

which lies without the walls. Here, in a spacious inclosure, were two

amphitheatres of benches, roofed, but without walls, with a circular area

in the midst. Each was crowded with people, who were looking at a

cock-fight, and half of whom seemed vociferating with all their might. I

mounted one of the outer benches, and saw one of the birds laid dead by

the other in a few minutes. Then was heard the chink of gold and silver

pieces, as the betters stepped into the area and paid their wagers; the

slain bird was carried out and thrown on the ground, and the victor, taken

into the hands of the owner, crowed loudly in celebration of his victory.

Two other birds were brought in, and the cries of those who offered wagers

were heard on all sides. They ceased at last, and the cocks were put down

to begin the combat. They fought warily at first, but at length began to

strike in earnest, the blood flowed, and the bystanders were heard to

vociferate, "_ahí están pelezando_"[4]—"_mata! mata! mata!_"[5]

gesticulating at the same time with great violence, and new wagers were

laid as the interest of the combat increased. In ten minutes one of the

birds was dispatched, for the combat never ends till one of them has his

death-wound.

In the mean time several other combats had begun in smaller pits, which

lay within the same inclosure, but were not surrounded with circles of

benches. I looked upon the throng engaged in this brutal sport, with eager

gestures and loud cries, and could not help thinking how soon this noisy

crowd would lie in heaps in the pits of the Campo Santo.

In the evening was a masked ball in the Tacon Theatre, a spacious

building, one of the largest of its kind in the world. The pit, floored

over, with the whole depth of the stage open to the back wall of the

edifice, furnished a ball-room of immense size. People in grotesque masks,

in hoods or fancy dresses, were mingled with a throng clad in the ordinary

costume, and Spanish dances were performed to the music of a numerous

band. A well-dressed crowd filled the first and second tier of boxes. The

Creole smokes everywhere, and seemed astonished when the soldier who stood

at the door ordered him to throw away his lighted segar before entering.

Once upon the floor, however, he lighted another segar in defiance of the

prohibition.

The Spanish dances, with their graceful movements, resembling the

undulations of the sea in its gentlest moods, are nowhere more gracefully

performed than in Cuba, by the young women born on the island. I could not

help thinking, however, as I looked on that gay crowd, on the quaint

maskers, and the dancers whose flexible limbs seemed swayed to and fro by

the breath of the music, that all this was soon to end at the Campo Santo,

and I asked myself how many of all this crowd would be huddled uncoffined,

when their sports were over, into the foul trenches of the public

cemetery.

Letter XLVII.

Scenery of Cuba.—Coffee Plantations.

Matanzas, _April 16, 1849_.

My expectations of the scenery of the island of Cuba and of the

magnificence of its vegetation, have not been quite fulfilled. This place

is but sixty miles to the east of Havana, but the railway which brings you

hither, takes you over a sweep of a hundred and thirty miles, through one

of the most fertile districts in the interior of the island. I made an

excursion from Havana to San Antonio de los Baños, a pleasant little town

at nine leagues distance, in a southeast direction from the capital, in

what is called the Vuelta Abajo. I have also just returned from a visit to

some fine sugar estates to the southeast of Matanzas, so that I may claim

to have seen something of the face of the country of which I speak.

At this season the hills about Havana, and the pastures everywhere, have

an arid look, a russet hue, like sandy fields with us, when scorched by a

long drought, on like our meadows in winter. This, however, is the dry

season; and when I was told that but two showers of rain have fallen since

October, I could only wonder that so much vegetation was left, and that

the verbenas and other herbage which clothed the ground, should yet

retain, as I perceived they did, when I saw them nearer, an unextinguished

life. I have, therefore, the disadvantage of seeing Cuba not only in the

dry season, but near the close of an uncommonly dry season. Next month the

rainy season commences, when the whole island, I am told, even the

barrenest parts, flushes into a deep verdure, creeping plants climb over

all the rocks and ascend the trees, and the mighty palms put out their new

foliage.

Shade, however, is the great luxury of a warm climate, and why the people

of Cuba do not surround their habitations in the country, in the villages,

and in the environs of the large towns, with a dense umbrage of trees, I

confess I do not exactly understand. In their rich soil, and in their

perpetually genial climate, trees grow with great rapidity, and they have

many noble ones both for size and foliage. The royal palm, with its tall

straight columnar trunk of a whitish hue, only uplifts a Corinthian

capital of leaves, and casts but a narrow shadow; but it mingles finely

with other trees, and planted in avenues, forms a colonnade nobler than

any of the porticoes to the ancient Egyptian temples. There is no thicker

foliage or fresher green than that of the mango, which daily drops its

abundant fruit for several months in the year, and the mamey and the

sapote, fruit-trees also, are in leaf during the whole of the dry season;

even the Indian fig, which clasps and kills the largest trees of the

forest, and at last takes their place, a stately tree with a stout trunk

of its own, has its unfading leaf of vivid green.

It is impossible to avoid an expression of impatience that these trees

have not been formed into groups, embowering the dwellings, and into

groves, through which the beams of the sun, here so fierce at noonday,

could not reach the ground beneath. There is in fact nothing of ornamental

cultivation in Cuba, except of the most formal kind. Some private gardens

there are, carefully kept, but all of the stiffest pattern; there is

nothing which brings out the larger vegetation of the region in that

grandeur and magnificence which might belong to it. In the Quinta del

Obispo, or Bishop's Garden, which is open to the public, you find shade

which you find nowhere else, but the trees are planted in straight alleys,

and the water-roses, a species of water-lily of immense size, fragrant and

pink-colored, grow in a square tank, fed by a straight canal, with sides

of hewn stone.

Let me say, however, that when I asked for trees, I was referred to the

hurricanes which have recently ravaged the island. One of these swept over

Cuba in 1844, uprooting the palms and the orange groves, and laying

prostrate the avenues of trees on the coffee plantations. The Paseo

Isabel, a public promenade, between the walls of Havana and the streets of

the new town, was formerly over-canopied with lofty and spreading trees,

which this tempest leveled to the ground; it has now been planted with

rows of young trees, which yield a meagre shade. In 1846 came another

hurricane, still more terrific, destroying much of the beauty which the

first had spared.

Of late years, also, such of the orange-trees as were not uprooted, or

have recently been planted, have been attacked by the insect which a few

years since was so destructive to the same tree in Florida. The effect

upon the tree resembles that of a blight, the leaves grow sere, and the

branches die. You may imagine, therefore, that I was somewhat disappointed

not to find the air, as it is at this season in the south of Italy,

fragrant with the odor of orange and lemon blossoms. Oranges are scarce,

and not so fine, at this moment, in Havana and Matanzas, as in the

fruit-shops of New York. I hear, however, that there are portions of the

island which were spared by these hurricanes, and that there are others

where the ravages of the insect in the orange groves have nearly ceased,

as I have been told is also the case in Florida.

I have mentioned my excursion to San Antonio. I went thither by railway,

in a car built at Newark, drawn by an engine made in New York, and worked

by an American engineer. For some distance we passed through fields of the

sweet-potato, which here never requires a second planting, and propagates

itself perpetually in the soil, patches of maize, low groves of bananas

with their dark stems, and of plantains with their green ones, and large

tracts producing the pineapple growing in rows like carrots. Then came

plantations of the sugar-cane, with its sedge-like blades of pale-green,

then extensive tracts of pasturage with scattered shrubs and tall dead

weeds, the growth of the last summer, and a thin herbage bitten close to

the soil. Here and there was an abandoned coffee-plantation, where cattle

were browzing among the half-perished shrubs and broken rows of trees; and

the neglected hedges of the wild pine, _piña raton_, as the Cubans call

it, were interrupted with broad gaps.

Sometimes we passed the cottages of the _monteros_, or peasants, built

often of palm-leaves, the walls formed of the broad sheath of the leaf,

fastened to posts of bamboo, and the roof thatched with the long

plume-like leaf itself. The door was sometimes hung with a kind of curtain

to exclude the sun, which the dusky complexioned women and children put

aside to gaze at us as we passed. These dwellings were often picturesque

in their appearance, with a grove of plantains behind, a thicket of bamboo

by its side, waving its willow-like sprays in the wind; a pair of

mango-trees near, hung with fruit just ripening and reddish blossoms just

opening, and a cocoa-tree or two lifting high above the rest its immense

feathery leaves and its clusters of green nuts.

We now and then met the _monteros_ themselves scudding along on their

little horses, in that pace which we call a rack. Their dress was a Panama

hat, a shirt worn over a pair of pantaloons, a pair of rough cowskin

shoes, one of which was armed with a spur, and a sword lashed to the left

side by a belt of cotton cloth. They are men of manly bearing, of thin

make, but often of a good figure, with well-spread shoulders, which,

however, have a stoop in them, contracted, I suppose, by riding always

with a short stirrup.

Forests, too, we passed. You, doubtless, suppose that a forest in a soil

and climate like this, must be a dense growth of trees with colossal stems

and leafy summits. A forest in Cuba—all that I have seen are such—is a

thicket of shrubs and creeping plants, through which, one would suppose

that even the wild cats of the country would find it impossible to make

their way. Above this impassable jungle rises here and there the palm, or

the gigantic ceyba or cotton-tree, but more often trees of far less

beauty, thinly scattered and with few branches, disposed without symmetry,

and at this season often leafless.

We reached San Antonio at nine o'clock in the morning, and went to the inn

of La Punta, where we breakfasted on rice and fresh eggs, and a dish of

meat so highly flavored with garlic, that it was impossible to distinguish

to what animal it belonged. Adjoining the inn was a cockpit, with cells

for the birds surrounding the inclosure, in which they were crowing

lustily. Two or three persons seemed to have nothing to do but to tend

them; and one, in particular, with a gray beard, a grave aspect, and a

solid gait, went about the work with a deliberation and solemnity which to

me, who had lately seen the hurried burials at the Campo Santo, in Havana,

was highly edifying. A man was training a game-cock in the pit; he was

giving it lessons in the virtue of perseverance. He held another cock

before it, which he was teaching it to pursue, and striking it

occasionally over the head to provoke it, with the wing of the bird in his

hand, he made it run after him about the area for half an hour together.

I had heard much of the beauty of the coffee estates of Cuba, and in the

neighborhood of San Antonio are some which have been reputed very fine

ones. A young man, in a checked blue and white shirt, worn like a frock

over checked pantaloons, with a spur on one heel, offered to procure us a

_volante_, and we engaged him. He brought us one with two horses, a negro

postillion sitting on one, and the shafts of the vehicle borne by the

other. We set off, passing through fields guarded by stiff-leaved hedges

of the ratoon-pine, over ways so bad that if the motion of the volante

were not the easiest in the world, we should have taken an unpleasant

jolting. The lands of Cuba fit for cultivation, are divided into red and

black; we were in the midst of the red lands, consisting of a fine earth

of a deep brick color, resting on a bed of soft, porous, chalky limestone.

In the dry season the surface is easily dispersed into dust, and stains

your clothes of a dull red.

A drive of four miles, through a country full of palm and cocoanut trees,

brought us to the gate of a coffee plantation, which our friend in the

checked shirt, by whom we were accompanied, opened for us. We passed up to

the house through what had been an avenue of palms, but was now two rows

of trees at very unequal distances, with here and there a sickly

orange-tree. On each side grew the coffee shrubs, hung with flowers of

snowy white, but unpruned and full of dry and leafless twigs. In every

direction were ranks of trees, prized for ornament or for their fruit, and

shrubs, among which were magnificent oleanders loaded with flowers,

planted in such a manner as to break the force of the wind, and partially

to shelter the plants from the too fierce rays of the sun. The coffee

estate is, in fact, a kind of forest, with the trees and shrubs arranged

in straight lines. The _mayoral_, or steward of the estate, a handsome

Cuban, with white teeth, a pleasant smile, and a distinct utterance of his

native language, received us with great courtesy, and offered us

_cigarillos_, though he never used tobacco; and spirit of cane, though he

never drank. He wore a sword, and carried a large flexible whip, doubled

for convenience in the hand. He showed us the coffee plants, the broad

platforms with smooth surfaces of cement and raised borders, where the

berries were dried in the sun, and the mills where the negroes were at

work separating the kernel from the pulp in which it is inclosed.

"These coffee estates," said he, "are already ruined, and the planters are

abandoning them as fast as they can; in four years more there will not be

a single coffee plantation on the island. They can not afford to raise

coffee for the price they get in the market."

I inquired the reason. "It is," replied he, "the extreme dryness of the

season when the plant is in flower. If we have rain at this time of the

year, we are sure of a good crop; if it does not rain, the harvest is

small; and the failure of rain is so common a circumstance that we must

leave the cultivation of coffee to the people of St. Domingo and Brazil."