A NIGHT STEAMER ON THE POTOMAC RIVER. VIRGINIA ROAD, AND A BLACK DRIVER.
RICHMOND. BALTIMORE. THE HARRISBURG MAIL, AND A GLIMPSE OF THE CITY. A
CANAL BOAT
WE were to proceed in the first instance by steamboat; and as it is usual
to sleep on board, in consequence of the starting-hour being four o’clock
in the morning, we went down to where she lay, at that very uncomfortable
time for such expeditions when slippers are most valuable, and a familiar
bed, in the perspective of an hour or two, looks uncommonly pleasant.
It is ten o’clock at night: say half-past ten: moonlight, warm, and dull
enough. The steamer (not unlike a child’s Noah’s ark in form, with the
machinery on the top of the roof) is riding lazily up and down, and
bumping clumsily against the wooden pier, as the ripple of the river
trifles with its unwieldy carcase. The wharf is some distance from the
city. There is nobody down here; and one or two dull lamps upon the
steamer’s decks are the only signs of life remaining, when our coach has
driven away. As soon as our footsteps are heard upon the planks, a fat
negress, particularly favoured by nature in respect of bustle, emerges
from some dark stairs, and marshals my wife towards the ladies’ cabin, to
which retreat she goes, followed by a mighty bale of cloaks and
great-coats. I valiantly resolve not to go to bed at all, but to walk up
and down the pier till morning.
I begin my promenade—thinking of all kinds of distant things and persons,
and of nothing near—and pace up and down for half-an-hour. Then I go on
board again; and getting into the light of one of the lamps, look at my
watch and think it must have stopped; and wonder what has become of the
faithful secretary whom I brought along with me from Boston. He is
supping with our late landlord (a Field Marshal, at least, no doubt) in
honour of our departure, and may be two hours longer. I walk again, but
it gets duller and duller: the moon goes down: next June seems farther
off in the dark, and the echoes of my footsteps make me nervous. It has
turned cold too; and walking up and down without my companion in such
lonely circumstances, is but poor amusement. So I break my staunch
resolution, and think it may be, perhaps, as well to go to bed.
I go on board again; open the door of the gentlemen’s cabin and walk in.
Somehow or other—from its being so quiet, I suppose—I have taken it into
my head that there is nobody there. To my horror and amazement it is
full of sleepers in every stage, shape, attitude, and variety of slumber:
in the berths, on the chairs, on the floors, on the tables, and
particularly round the stove, my detested enemy. I take another step
forward, and slip on the shining face of a black steward, who lies rolled
in a blanket on the floor. He jumps up, grins, half in pain and half in
hospitality; whispers my own name in my ear; and groping among the
sleepers, leads me to my berth. Standing beside it, I count these
slumbering passengers, and get past forty. There is no use in going
further, so I begin to undress. As the chairs are all occupied, and
there is nothing else to put my clothes on, I deposit them upon the
ground: not without soiling my hands, for it is in the same condition as
the carpets in the Capitol, and from the same cause. Having but
partially undressed, I clamber on my shelf, and hold the curtain open for
a few minutes while I look round on all my fellow-travellers again. That
done, I let it fall on them, and on the world: turn round: and go to
sleep.
I wake, of course, when we get under weigh, for there is a good deal of
noise. The day is then just breaking. Everybody wakes at the same time.
Some are self-possessed directly, and some are much perplexed to make out
where they are until they have rubbed their eyes, and leaning on one
elbow, looked about them. Some yawn, some groan, nearly all spit, and a
few get up. I am among the risers: for it is easy to feel, without going
into the fresh air, that the atmosphere of the cabin is vile in the last
degree. I huddle on my clothes, go down into the fore-cabin, get shaved
by the barber, and wash myself. The washing and dressing apparatus for
the passengers generally, consists of two jack-towels, three small wooden
basins, a keg of water and a ladle to serve it out with, six square
inches of looking-glass, two ditto ditto of yellow soap, a comb and brush
for the head, and nothing for the teeth. Everybody uses the comb and
brush, except myself. Everybody stares to see me using my own; and two
or three gentlemen are strongly disposed to banter me on my prejudices,
but don’t. When I have made my toilet, I go upon the hurricane-deck, and
set in for two hours of hard walking up and down. The sun is rising
brilliantly; we are passing Mount Vernon, where Washington lies buried;
the river is wide and rapid; and its banks are beautiful. All the glory
and splendour of the day are coming on, and growing brighter every
minute.
At eight o’clock, we breakfast in the cabin where I passed the night, but
the windows and doors are all thrown open, and now it is fresh enough.
There is no hurry or greediness apparent in the despatch of the meal. It
is longer than a travelling breakfast with us; more orderly, and more
polite.
Soon after nine o’clock we come to Potomac Creek, where we are to land;
and then comes the oddest part of the journey. Seven stage-coaches are
preparing to carry us on. Some of them are ready, some of them are not
ready. Some of the drivers are blacks, some whites. There are four
horses to each coach, and all the horses, harnessed or unharnessed, are
there. The passengers are getting out of the steamboat, and into the
coaches; the luggage is being transferred in noisy wheelbarrows; the
horses are frightened, and impatient to start; the black drivers are
chattering to them like so many monkeys; and the white ones whooping like
so many drovers: for the main thing to be done in all kinds of hostlering
here, is to make as much noise as possible. The coaches are something
like the French coaches, but not nearly so good. In lieu of springs,
they are hung on bands of the strongest leather. There is very little
choice or difference between them; and they may be likened to the car
portion of the swings at an English fair, roofed, put upon axle-trees and
wheels, and curtained with painted canvas. They are covered with mud
from the roof to the wheel-tire, and have never been cleaned since they
were first built.
The tickets we have received on board the steamboat are marked No. 1, so
we belong to coach No. 1. I throw my coat on the box, and hoist my wife
and her maid into the inside. It has only one step, and that being about
a yard from the ground, is usually approached by a chair: when there is
no chair, ladies trust in Providence. The coach holds nine inside,
having a seat across from door to door, where we in England put our legs:
so that there is only one feat more difficult in the performance than
getting in, and that is, getting out again. There is only one outside
passenger, and he sits upon the box. As I am that one, I climb up; and
while they are strapping the luggage on the roof, and heaping it into a
kind of tray behind, have a good opportunity of looking at the driver.
He is a negro—very black indeed. He is dressed in a coarse
pepper-and-salt suit excessively patched and darned (particularly at the
knees), grey stockings, enormous unblacked high-low shoes, and very short
trousers. He has two odd gloves: one of parti-coloured worsted, and one
of leather. He has a very short whip, broken in the middle and bandaged
up with string. And yet he wears a low-crowned, broad-brimmed, black
hat: faintly shadowing forth a kind of insane imitation of an English
coachman! But somebody in authority cries ‘Go ahead!’ as I am making
these observations. The mail takes the lead in a four-horse waggon, and
all the coaches follow in procession: headed by No. 1.
By the way, whenever an Englishman would cry ‘All right!’ an American
cries ‘Go ahead!’ which is somewhat expressive of the national character
of the two countries.
The first half-mile of the road is over bridges made of loose planks laid
across two parallel poles, which tilt up as the wheels roll over them;
and IN the river. The river has a clayey bottom and is full of holes, so
that half a horse is constantly disappearing unexpectedly, and can’t be
found again for some time.
But we get past even this, and come to the road itself, which is a series
of alternate swamps and gravel-pits. A tremendous place is close before
us, the black driver rolls his eyes, screws his mouth up very round, and
looks straight between the two leaders, as if he were saying to himself,
‘We have done this often before, but _now_ I think we shall have a
crash.’ He takes a rein in each hand; jerks and pulls at both; and
dances on the splashboard with both feet (keeping his seat, of course)
like the late lamented Ducrow on two of his fiery coursers. We come to
the spot, sink down in the mire nearly to the coach windows, tilt on one
side at an angle of forty-five degrees, and stick there. The insides
scream dismally; the coach stops; the horses flounder; all the other six
coaches stop; and their four-and-twenty horses flounder likewise: but
merely for company, and in sympathy with ours. Then the following
circumstances occur.
BLACK DRIVER (to the horses). ‘Hi!’
Nothing happens. Insides scream again.
BLACK DRIVER (to the horses). ‘Ho!’
Horses plunge, and splash the black driver.
GENTLEMAN INSIDE (looking out). ‘Why, what on airth—’
Gentleman receives a variety of splashes and draws his head in again,
without finishing his question or waiting for an answer.
BLACK DRIVER (still to the horses). ‘Jiddy! Jiddy!’
Horses pull violently, drag the coach out of the hole, and draw it up a
bank; so steep, that the black driver’s legs fly up into the air, and he
goes back among the luggage on the roof. But he immediately recovers
himself, and cries (still to the horses),
‘Pill!’
No effect. On the contrary, the coach begins to roll back upon No. 2,
which rolls back upon No. 3, which rolls back upon No. 4, and so on,
until No. 7 is heard to curse and swear, nearly a quarter of a mile
behind.
BLACK DRIVER (louder than before). ‘Pill!’
Horses make another struggle to get up the bank, and again the coach
rolls backward.
BLACK DRIVER (louder than before). ‘Pe-e-e-ill!’
Horses make a desperate struggle.
BLACK DRIVER (recovering spirits). ‘Hi, Jiddy, Jiddy, Pill!’
Horses make another effort.
BLACK DRIVER (with great vigour). ‘Ally Loo! Hi. Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill.
Ally Loo!’
Horses almost do it.
BLACK DRIVER (with his eyes starting out of his head). ‘Lee, den. Lee,
dere. Hi. Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo. Lee-e-e-e-e!’
They run up the bank, and go down again on the other side at a fearful
pace. It is impossible to stop them, and at the bottom there is a deep
hollow, full of water. The coach rolls frightfully. The insides scream.
The mud and water fly about us. The black driver dances like a madman.
Suddenly we are all right by some extraordinary means, and stop to
breathe.
A black friend of the black driver is sitting on a fence. The black
driver recognises him by twirling his head round and round like a
harlequin, rolling his eyes, shrugging his shoulders, and grinning from
ear to ear. He stops short, turns to me, and says:
‘We shall get you through sa, like a fiddle, and hope a please you when
we get you through sa. Old ‘ooman at home sa:’ chuckling very much.
‘Outside gentleman sa, he often remember old ‘ooman at home sa,’ grinning
again.
‘Ay ay, we’ll take care of the old woman. Don’t be afraid.’
The black driver grins again, but there is another hole, and beyond that,
another bank, close before us. So he stops short: cries (to the horses
again) ‘Easy. Easy den. Ease. Steady. Hi. Jiddy. Pill. Ally.
Loo,’ but never ‘Lee!’ until we are reduced to the very last extremity,
and are in the midst of difficulties, extrication from which appears to
be all but impossible.
And so we do the ten miles or thereabouts in two hours and a half;
breaking no bones, though bruising a great many; and in short getting
through the distance, ‘like a fiddle.’
This singular kind of coaching terminates at Fredericksburgh, whence
there is a railway to Richmond. The tract of country through which it
takes its course was once productive; but the soil has been exhausted by
the system of employing a great amount of slave labour in forcing crops,
without strengthening the land: and it is now little better than a sandy
desert overgrown with trees. Dreary and uninteresting as its aspect is,
I was glad to the heart to find anything on which one of the curses of
this horrible institution has fallen; and had greater pleasure in
contemplating the withered ground, than the richest and most thriving
cultivation in the same place could possibly have afforded me.
In this district, as in all others where slavery sits brooding, (I have
frequently heard this admitted, even by those who are its warmest
advocates:) there is an air of ruin and decay abroad, which is
inseparable from the system. The barns and outhouses are mouldering
away; the sheds are patched and half roofless; the log cabins (built in
Virginia with external chimneys made of clay or wood) are squalid in the
last degree. There is no look of decent comfort anywhere. The miserable
stations by the railway side, the great wild wood-yards, whence the
engine is supplied with fuel; the negro children rolling on the ground
before the cabin doors, with dogs and pigs; the biped beasts of burden
slinking past: gloom and dejection are upon them all.
In the negro car belonging to the train in which we made this journey,
were a mother and her children who had just been purchased; the husband
and father being left behind with their old owner. The children cried
the whole way, and the mother was misery’s picture. The champion of
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, who had bought them, rode in
the same train; and, every time we stopped, got down to see that they
were safe. The black in Sinbad’s Travels with one eye in the middle of
his forehead which shone like a burning coal, was nature’s aristocrat
compared with this white gentleman.
[Picture: Black and White]
It was between six and seven o’clock in the evening, when we drove to the
hotel: in front of which, and on the top of the broad flight of steps
leading to the door, two or three citizens were balancing themselves on
rocking-chairs, and smoking cigars. We found it a very large and elegant
establishment, and were as well entertained as travellers need desire to
be. The climate being a thirsty one, there was never, at any hour of the
day, a scarcity of loungers in the spacious bar, or a cessation of the
mixing of cool liquors: but they were a merrier people here, and had
musical instruments playing to them o’ nights, which it was a treat to
hear again.
The next day, and the next, we rode and walked about the town, which is
delightfully situated on eight hills, overhanging James River; a
sparkling stream, studded here and there with bright islands, or brawling
over broken rocks. Although it was yet but the middle of March, the
weather in this southern temperature was extremely warm; the peech-trees
and magnolias were in full bloom; and the trees were green. In a low
ground among the hills, is a valley known as ‘Bloody Run,’ from a
terrible conflict with the Indians which once occurred there. It is a
good place for such a struggle, and, like every other spot I saw
associated with any legend of that wild people now so rapidly fading from
the earth, interested me very much.
The city is the seat of the local parliament of Virginia; and in its
shady legislative halls, some orators were drowsily holding forth to the
hot noon day. By dint of constant repetition, however, these
constitutional sights had very little more interest for me than so many
parochial vestries; and I was glad to exchange this one for a lounge in a
well-arranged public library of some ten thousand volumes, and a visit to
a tobacco manufactory, where the workmen are all slaves.
I saw in this place the whole process of picking, rolling, pressing,
drying, packing in casks, and branding. All the tobacco thus dealt with,
was in course of manufacture for chewing; and one would have supposed
there was enough in that one storehouse to have filled even the
comprehensive jaws of America. In this form, the weed looks like the
oil-cake on which we fatten cattle; and even without reference to its
consequences, is sufficiently uninviting.
Many of the workmen appeared to be strong men, and it is hardly necessary
to add that they were all labouring quietly, then. After two o’clock in
the day, they are allowed to sing, a certain number at a time. The hour
striking while I was there, some twenty sang a hymn in parts, and sang it
by no means ill; pursuing their work meanwhile. A bell rang as I was
about to leave, and they all poured forth into a building on the opposite
side of the street to dinner. I said several times that I should like to
see them at their meal; but as the gentleman to whom I mentioned this
desire appeared to be suddenly taken rather deaf, I did not pursue the
request. Of their appearance I shall have something to say, presently.
On the following day, I visited a plantation or farm, of about twelve
hundred acres, on the opposite bank of the river. Here again, although I
went down with the owner of the estate, to ‘the quarter,’ as that part of
it in which the slaves live is called, I was not invited to enter into
any of their huts. All I saw of them, was, that they were very crazy,
wretched cabins, near to which groups of half-naked children basked in
the sun, or wallowed on the dusty ground. But I believe that this
gentleman is a considerate and excellent master, who inherited his fifty
slaves, and is neither a buyer nor a seller of human stock; and I am
sure, from my own observation and conviction, that he is a kind-hearted,
worthy man.
The planter’s house was an airy, rustic dwelling, that brought Defoe’s
description of such places strongly to my recollection. The day was very
warm, but the blinds being all closed, and the windows and doors set wide
open, a shady coolness rustled through the rooms, which was exquisitely
refreshing after the glare and heat without. Before the windows was an
open piazza, where, in what they call the hot weather—whatever that may
be—they sling hammocks, and drink and doze luxuriously. I do not know
how their cool rejections may taste within the hammocks, but, having
experience, I can report that, out of them, the mounds of ices and the
bowls of mint-julep and sherry-cobbler they make in these latitudes, are
refreshments never to be thought of afterwards, in summer, by those who
would preserve contented minds.
There are two bridges across the river: one belongs to the railroad, and
the other, which is a very crazy affair, is the private property of some
old lady in the neighbourhood, who levies tolls upon the townspeople.
Crossing this bridge, on my way back, I saw a notice painted on the gate,
cautioning all persons to drive slowly: under a penalty, if the offender
were a white man, of five dollars; if a negro, fifteen stripes.
The same decay and gloom that overhang the way by which it is approached,
hover above the town of Richmond. There are pretty villas and cheerful
houses in its streets, and Nature smiles upon the country round; but
jostling its handsome residences, like slavery itself going hand in hand
with many lofty virtues, are deplorable tenements, fences unrepaired,
walls crumbling into ruinous heaps. Hinting gloomily at things below the
surface, these, and many other tokens of the same description, force
themselves upon the notice, and are remembered with depressing influence,
when livelier features are forgotten.
To those who are happily unaccustomed to them, the countenances in the
streets and labouring-places, too, are shocking. All men who know that
there are laws against instructing slaves, of which the pains and
penalties greatly exceed in their amount the fines imposed on those who
maim and torture them, must be prepared to find their faces very low in
the scale of intellectual expression. But the darkness—not of skin, but
mind—which meets the stranger’s eye at every turn; the brutalizing and
blotting out of all fairer characters traced by Nature’s hand;
immeasurably outdo his worst belief. That travelled creation of the
great satirist’s brain, who fresh from living among horses, peered from a
high casement down upon his own kind with trembling horror, was scarcely
more repelled and daunted by the sight, than those who look upon some of
these faces for the first time must surely be.
I left the last of them behind me in the person of a wretched drudge,
who, after running to and fro all day till midnight, and moping in his
stealthy winks of sleep upon the stairs betweenwhiles, was washing the
dark passages at four o’clock in the morning; and went upon my way with a
grateful heart that I was not doomed to live where slavery was, and had
never had my senses blunted to its wrongs and horrors in a slave-rocked
cradle.
It had been my intention to proceed by James River and Chesapeake Bay to
Baltimore; but one of the steamboats being absent from her station
through some accident, and the means of conveyance being consequently
rendered uncertain, we returned to Washington by the way we had come
(there were two constables on board the steamboat, in pursuit of runaway
slaves), and halting there again for one night, went on to Baltimore next
afternoon.
The most comfortable of all the hotels of which I had any experience in
the United States, and they were not a few, is Barnum’s, in that city:
where the English traveller will find curtains to his bed, for the first
and probably the last time in America (this is a disinterested remark,
for I never use them); and where he will be likely to have enough water
for washing himself, which is not at all a common case.
This capital of the state of Maryland is a bustling, busy town, with a
great deal of traffic of various kinds, and in particular of water
commerce. That portion of the town which it most favours is none of the
cleanest, it is true; but the upper part is of a very different
character, and has many agreeable streets and public buildings. The
Washington Monument, which is a handsome pillar with a statue on its
summit; the Medical College; and the Battle Monument in memory of an
engagement with the British at North Point; are the most conspicuous
among them.
There is a very good prison in this city, and the State Penitentiary is
also among its institutions. In this latter establishment there were two
curious cases.
One was that of a young man, who had been tried for the murder of his
father. The evidence was entirely circumstantial, and was very
conflicting and doubtful; nor was it possible to assign any motive which
could have tempted him to the commission of so tremendous a crime. He
had been tried twice; and on the second occasion the jury felt so much
hesitation in convicting him, that they found a verdict of manslaughter,
or murder in the second degree; which it could not possibly be, as there
had, beyond all doubt, been no quarrel or provocation, and if he were
guilty at all, he was unquestionably guilty of murder in its broadest and
worst signification.
The remarkable feature in the case was, that if the unfortunate deceased
were not really murdered by this own son of his, he must have been
murdered by his own brother. The evidence lay in a most remarkable
manner, between those two. On all the suspicious points, the dead man’s
brother was the witness: all the explanations for the prisoner (some of
them extremely plausible) went, by construction and inference, to
inculcate him as plotting to fix the guilt upon his nephew. It must have
been one of them: and the jury had to decide between two sets of
suspicions, almost equally unnatural, unaccountable, and strange.
The other case, was that of a man who once went to a certain distiller’s
and stole a copper measure containing a quantity of liquor. He was
pursued and taken with the property in his possession, and was sentenced
to two years’ imprisonment. On coming out of the jail, at the expiration
of that term, he went back to the same distiller’s, and stole the same
copper measure containing the same quantity of liquor. There was not the
slightest reason to suppose that the man wished to return to prison:
indeed everything, but the commission of the offence, made directly
against that assumption. There are only two ways of accounting for this
extraordinary proceeding. One is, that after undergoing so much for this
copper measure he conceived he had established a sort of claim and right
to it. The other that, by dint of long thinking about, it had become a
monomania with him, and had acquired a fascination which he found it
impossible to resist; swelling from an Earthly Copper Gallon into an
Ethereal Golden Vat.
After remaining here a couple of days I bound myself to a rigid adherence
to the plan I had laid down so recently, and resolved to set forward on
our western journey without any more delay. Accordingly, having reduced
the luggage within the smallest possible compass (by sending back to New
York, to be afterwards forwarded to us in Canada, so much of it as was
not absolutely wanted); and having procured the necessary credentials to
banking-houses on the way; and having moreover looked for two evenings at
the setting sun, with as well-defined an idea of the country before us as
if we had been going to travel into the very centre of that planet; we
left Baltimore by another railway at half-past eight in the morning, and
reached the town of York, some sixty miles off, by the early dinner-time
of the Hotel which was the starting-place of the four-horse coach,
wherein we were to proceed to Harrisburg.
This conveyance, the box of which I was fortunate enough to secure, had
come down to meet us at the railroad station, and was as muddy and
cumbersome as usual. As more passengers were waiting for us at the
inn-door, the coachman observed under his breath, in the usual
self-communicative voice, looking the while at his mouldy harness as if
it were to that he was addressing himself,
‘I expect we shall want _the big_ coach.’
I could not help wondering within myself what the size of this big coach
might be, and how many persons it might be designed to hold; for the
vehicle which was too small for our purpose was something larger than two
English heavy night coaches, and might have been the twin-brother of a
French Diligence. My speculations were speedily set at rest, however,
for as soon as we had dined, there came rumbling up the street, shaking
its sides like a corpulent giant, a kind of barge on wheels. After much
blundering and backing, it stopped at the door: rolling heavily from side
to side when its other motion had ceased, as if it had taken cold in its
damp stable, and between that, and the having been required in its
dropsical old age to move at any faster pace than a walk, were distressed
by shortness of wind.
‘If here ain’t the Harrisburg mail at last, and dreadful bright and smart
to look at too,’ cried an elderly gentleman in some excitement, ‘darn my
mother!’
I don’t know what the sensation of being darned may be, or whether a
man’s mother has a keener relish or disrelish of the process than anybody
else; but if the endurance of this mysterious ceremony by the old lady in
question had depended on the accuracy of her son’s vision in respect to
the abstract brightness and smartness of the Harrisburg mail, she would
certainly have undergone its infliction. However, they booked twelve
people inside; and the luggage (including such trifles as a large
rocking-chair, and a good-sized dining-table) being at length made fast
upon the roof, we started off in great state.
At the door of another hotel, there was another passenger to be taken up.
‘Any room, sir?’ cries the new passenger to the coachman.
‘Well, there’s room enough,’ replies the coachman, without getting down,
or even looking at him.
‘There an’t no room at all, sir,’ bawls a gentleman inside. Which
another gentleman (also inside) confirms, by predicting that the attempt
to introduce any more passengers ‘won’t fit nohow.’
The new passenger, without any expression of anxiety, looks into the
coach, and then looks up at the coachman: ‘Now, how do you mean to fix
it?’ says he, after a pause: ‘for I _must_ go.’
The coachman employs himself in twisting the lash of his whip into a
knot, and takes no more notice of the question: clearly signifying that
it is anybody’s business but his, and that the passengers would do well
to fix it, among themselves. In this state of things, matters seem to be
approximating to a fix of another kind, when another inside passenger in
a corner, who is nearly suffocated, cries faintly, ‘I’ll get out.’
This is no matter of relief or self-congratulation to the driver, for his
immovable philosophy is perfectly undisturbed by anything that happens in
the coach. Of all things in the world, the coach would seem to be the
very last upon his mind. The exchange is made, however, and then the
passenger who has given up his seat makes a third upon the box, seating
himself in what he calls the middle; that is, with half his person on my
legs, and the other half on the driver’s.
‘Go a-head, cap’en,’ cries the colonel, who directs.
‘Gŏ-lāng!’ cries the cap’en to his company, the horses, and away we go.
We took up at a rural bar-room, after we had gone a few miles, an
intoxicated gentleman who climbed upon the roof among the luggage, and
subsequently slipping off without hurting himself, was seen in the
distant perspective reeling back to the grog-shop where we had found him.
We also parted with more of our freight at different times, so that when
we came to change horses, I was again alone outside.
The coachmen always change with the horses, and are usually as dirty as
the coach. The first was dressed like a very shabby English baker; the
second like a Russian peasant: for he wore a loose purple camlet robe,
with a fur collar, tied round his waist with a parti-coloured worsted
sash; grey trousers; light blue gloves: and a cap of bearskin. It had by
this time come on to rain very heavily, and there was a cold damp mist
besides, which penetrated to the skin. I was glad to take advantage of a
stoppage and get down to stretch my legs, shake the water off my
great-coat, and swallow the usual anti-temperance recipe for keeping out
the cold.
When I mounted to my seat again, I observed a new parcel lying on the
coach roof, which I took to be a rather large fiddle in a brown bag. In
the course of a few miles, however, I discovered that it had a glazed cap
at one end and a pair of muddy shoes at the other and further observation
demonstrated it to be a small boy in a snuff-coloured coat, with his arms
quite pinioned to his sides, by deep forcing into his pockets. He was, I
presume, a relative or friend of the coachman’s, as he lay a-top of the
luggage with his face towards the rain; and except when a change of
position brought his shoes in contact with my hat, he appeared to be
asleep. At last, on some occasion of our stopping, this thing slowly
upreared itself to the height of three feet six, and fixing its eyes on
me, observed in piping accents, with a complaisant yawn, half quenched in
an obliging air of friendly patronage, ‘Well now, stranger, I guess you
find this a’most like an English arternoon, hey?’
The scenery, which had been tame enough at first, was, for the last ten
or twelve miles, beautiful. Our road wound through the pleasant valley
of the Susquehanna; the river, dotted with innumerable green islands, lay
upon our right; and on the left, a steep ascent, craggy with broken rock,
and dark with pine trees. The mist, wreathing itself into a hundred
fantastic shapes, moved solemnly upon the water; and the gloom of evening
gave to all an air of mystery and silence which greatly enhanced its
natural interest.
We crossed this river by a wooden bridge, roofed and covered in on all
sides, and nearly a mile in length. It was profoundly dark; perplexed,
with great beams, crossing and recrossing it at every possible angle; and
through the broad chinks and crevices in the floor, the rapid river
gleamed, far down below, like a legion of eyes. We had no lamps; and as
the horses stumbled and floundered through this place, towards the
distant speck of dying light, it seemed interminable. I really could not
at first persuade myself as we rumbled heavily on, filling the bridge
with hollow noises, and I held down my head to save it from the rafters
above, but that I was in a painful dream; for I have often dreamed of
toiling through such places, and as often argued, even at the time, ‘this
cannot be reality.’
At length, however, we emerged upon the streets of Harrisburg, whose
feeble lights, reflected dismally from the wet ground, did not shine out
upon a very cheerful city. We were soon established in a snug hotel,
which though smaller and far less splendid than many we put up at, it
raised above them all in my remembrance, by having for its landlord the
most obliging, considerate, and gentlemanly person I ever had to deal
with.
As we were not to proceed upon our journey until the afternoon, I walked
out, after breakfast the next morning, to look about me; and was duly
shown a model prison on the solitary system, just erected, and as yet
without an inmate; the trunk of an old tree to which Harris, the first
settler here (afterwards buried under it), was tied by hostile Indians,
with his funeral pile about him, when he was saved by the timely
appearance of a friendly party on the opposite shore of the river; the
local legislature (for there was another of those bodies here again, in
full debate); and the other curiosities of the town.
I was very much interested in looking over a number of treaties made from
time to time with the poor Indians, signed by the different chiefs at the
period of their ratification, and preserved in the office of the
Secretary to the Commonwealth. These signatures, traced of course by
their own hands, are rough drawings of the creatures or weapons they were
called after. Thus, the Great Turtle makes a crooked pen-and-ink outline
of a great turtle; the Buffalo sketches a buffalo; the War Hatchet sets a
rough image of that weapon for his mark. So with the Arrow, the Fish,
the Scalp, the Big Canoe, and all of them.
I could not but think—as I looked at these feeble and tremulous
productions of hands which could draw the longest arrow to the head in a
stout elk-horn bow, or split a bead or feather with a rifle-ball—of
Crabbe’s musings over the Parish Register, and the irregular scratches
made with a pen, by men who would plough a lengthy furrow straight from
end to end. Nor could I help bestowing many sorrowful thoughts upon the
simple warriors whose hands and hearts were set there, in all truth and
honesty; and who only learned in course of time from white men how to
break their faith, and quibble out of forms and bonds. I wonder, too,
how many times the credulous Big Turtle, or trusting Little Hatchet, had
put his mark to treaties which were falsely read to him; and had signed
away, he knew not what, until it went and cast him loose upon the new
possessors of the land, a savage indeed.
Our host announced, before our early dinner, that some members of the
legislative body proposed to do us the honour of calling. He had kindly
yielded up to us his wife’s own little parlour, and when I begged that he
would show them in, I saw him look with painful apprehension at its
pretty carpet; though, being otherwise occupied at the time, the cause of
his uneasiness did not occur to me.
It certainly would have been more pleasant to all parties concerned, and
would not, I think, have compromised their independence in any material
degree, if some of these gentlemen had not only yielded to the prejudice
in favour of spittoons, but had abandoned themselves, for the moment,
even to the conventional absurdity of pocket-handkerchiefs.
It still continued to rain heavily, and when we went down to the Canal
Boat (for that was the mode of conveyance by which we were to proceed)
after dinner, the weather was as unpromising and obstinately wet as one
would desire to see. Nor was the sight of this canal boat, in which we
were to spend three or four days, by any means a cheerful one; as it
involved some uneasy speculations concerning the disposal of the
passengers at night, and opened a wide field of inquiry touching the
other domestic arrangements of the establishment, which was sufficiently
disconcerting.
However, there it was—a barge with a little house in it, viewed from the
outside; and a caravan at a fair, viewed from within: the gentlemen being
accommodated, as the spectators usually are, in one of those locomotive
museums of penny wonders; and the ladies being partitioned off by a red
curtain, after the manner of the dwarfs and giants in the same
establishments, whose private lives are passed in rather close
exclusiveness.
We sat here, looking silently at the row of little tables, which extended
down both sides of the cabin, and listening to the rain as it dripped and
pattered on the boat, and plashed with a dismal merriment in the water,
until the arrival of the railway train, for whose final contribution to
our stock of passengers, our departure was alone deferred. It brought a
great many boxes, which were bumped and tossed upon the roof, almost as
painfully as if they had been deposited on one’s own head, without the
intervention of a porter’s knot; and several damp gentlemen, whose
clothes, on their drawing round the stove, began to steam again. No
doubt it would have been a thought more comfortable if the driving rain,
which now poured down more soakingly than ever, had admitted of a window
being opened, or if our number had been something less than thirty; but
there was scarcely time to think as much, when a train of three horses
was attached to the tow-rope, the boy upon the leader smacked his whip,
the rudder creaked and groaned complainingly, and we had begun our
journey.