SOME FURTHER ACCOUNT OF THE CANAL BOAT, ITS DOMESTIC ECONOMY, AND ITS
PASSENGERS. JOURNEY TO PITTSBURG ACROSS THE ALLEGHANY MOUNTAINS.
PITTSBURG
AS it continued to rain most perseveringly, we all remained below: the
damp gentlemen round the stove, gradually becoming mildewed by the action
of the fire; and the dry gentlemen lying at full length upon the seats,
or slumbering uneasily with their faces on the tables, or walking up and
down the cabin, which it was barely possible for a man of the middle
height to do, without making bald places on his head by scraping it
against the roof. At about six o’clock, all the small tables were put
together to form one long table, and everybody sat down to tea, coffee,
bread, butter, salmon, shad, liver, steaks, potatoes, pickles, ham,
chops, black-puddings, and sausages.
‘Will you try,’ said my opposite neighbour, handing me a dish of
potatoes, broken up in milk and butter, ‘will you try some of these
fixings?’
There are few words which perform such various duties as this word ‘fix.’
It is the Caleb Quotem of the American vocabulary. You call upon a
gentleman in a country town, and his help informs you that he is ‘fixing
himself’ just now, but will be down directly: by which you are to
understand that he is dressing. You inquire, on board a steamboat, of a
fellow-passenger, whether breakfast will be ready soon, and he tells you
he should think so, for when he was last below, they were ‘fixing the
tables:’ in other words, laying the cloth. You beg a porter to collect
your luggage, and he entreats you not to be uneasy, for he’ll ‘fix it
presently:’ and if you complain of indisposition, you are advised to have
recourse to Doctor So-and-so, who will ‘fix you’ in no time.
One night, I ordered a bottle of mulled wine at an hotel where I was
staying, and waited a long time for it; at length it was put upon the
table with an apology from the landlord that he feared it wasn’t ‘fixed
properly.’ And I recollect once, at a stage-coach dinner, overhearing a
very stern gentleman demand of a waiter who presented him with a plate of
underdone roast-beef, ‘whether he called _that_, fixing God A’mighty’s
vittles?’
There is no doubt that the meal, at which the invitation was tendered to
me which has occasioned this digression, was disposed of somewhat
ravenously; and that the gentlemen thrust the broad-bladed knives and the
two-pronged forks further down their throats than I ever saw the same
weapons go before, except in the hands of a skilful juggler: but no man
sat down until the ladies were seated; or omitted any little act of
politeness which could contribute to their comfort. Nor did I ever once,
on any occasion, anywhere, during my rambles in America, see a woman
exposed to the slightest act of rudeness, incivility, or even
inattention.
By the time the meal was over, the rain, which seemed to have worn itself
out by coming down so fast, was nearly over too; and it became feasible
to go on deck: which was a great relief, notwithstanding its being a very
small deck, and being rendered still smaller by the luggage, which was
heaped together in the middle under a tarpaulin covering; leaving, on
either side, a path so narrow, that it became a science to walk to and
fro without tumbling overboard into the canal. It was somewhat
embarrassing at first, too, to have to duck nimbly every five minutes
whenever the man at the helm cried ‘Bridge!’ and sometimes, when the cry
was ‘Low Bridge,’ to lie down nearly flat. But custom familiarises one
to anything, and there were so many bridges that it took a very short
time to get used to this.
As night came on, and we drew in sight of the first range of hills, which
are the outposts of the Alleghany Mountains, the scenery, which had been
uninteresting hitherto, became more bold and striking. The wet ground
reeked and smoked, after the heavy fall of rain, and the croaking of the
frogs (whose noise in these parts is almost incredible) sounded as though
a million of fairy teams with bells were travelling through the air, and
keeping pace with us. The night was cloudy yet, but moonlight too: and
when we crossed the Susquehanna river—over which there is an
extraordinary wooden bridge with two galleries, one above the other, so
that even there, two boat teams meeting, may pass without confusion—it
was wild and grand.
I have mentioned my having been in some uncertainty and doubt, at first,
relative to the sleeping arrangements on board this boat. I remained in
the same vague state of mind until ten o’clock or thereabouts, when going
below, I found suspended on either side of the cabin, three long tiers of
hanging bookshelves, designed apparently for volumes of the small octavo
size. Looking with greater attention at these contrivances (wondering to
find such literary preparations in such a place), I descried on each
shelf a sort of microscopic sheet and blanket; then I began dimly to
comprehend that the passengers were the library, and that they were to be
arranged, edge-wise, on these shelves, till morning.
I was assisted to this conclusion by seeing some of them gathered round
the master of the boat, at one of the tables, drawing lots with all the
anxieties and passions of gamesters depicted in their countenances; while
others, with small pieces of cardboard in their hands, were groping among
the shelves in search of numbers corresponding with those they had drawn.
As soon as any gentleman found his number, he took possession of it by
immediately undressing himself and crawling into bed. The rapidity with
which an agitated gambler subsided into a snoring slumberer, was one of
the most singular effects I have ever witnessed. As to the ladies, they
were already abed, behind the red curtain, which was carefully drawn and
pinned up the centre; though as every cough, or sneeze, or whisper,
behind this curtain, was perfectly audible before it, we had still a
lively consciousness of their society.
The politeness of the person in authority had secured to me a shelf in a
nook near this red curtain, in some degree removed from the great body of
sleepers: to which place I retired, with many acknowledgments to him for
his attention. I found it, on after-measurement, just the width of an
ordinary sheet of Bath post letter-paper; and I was at first in some
uncertainty as to the best means of getting into it. But the shelf being
a bottom one, I finally determined on lying upon the floor, rolling
gently in, stopping immediately I touched the mattress, and remaining for
the night with that side uppermost, whatever it might be. Luckily, I
came upon my back at exactly the right moment. I was much alarmed on
looking upward, to see, by the shape of his half-yard of sacking (which
his weight had bent into an exceedingly tight bag), that there was a very
heavy gentleman above me, whom the slender cords seemed quite incapable
of holding; and I could not help reflecting upon the grief of my wife and
family in the event of his coming down in the night. But as I could not
have got up again without a severe bodily struggle, which might have
alarmed the ladies; and as I had nowhere to go to, even if I had; I shut
my eyes upon the danger, and remained there.
One of two remarkable circumstances is indisputably a fact, with
reference to that class of society who travel in these boats. Either
they carry their restlessness to such a pitch that they never sleep at
all; or they expectorate in dreams, which would be a remarkable mingling
of the real and ideal. All night long, and every night, on this canal,
there was a perfect storm and tempest of spitting; and once my coat,
being in the very centre of the hurricane sustained by five gentlemen
(which moved vertically, strictly carrying out Reid’s Theory of the Law
of Storms), I was fain the next morning to lay it on the deck, and rub it
down with fair water before it was in a condition to be worn again.
Between five and six o’clock in the morning we got up, and some of us
went on deck, to give them an opportunity of taking the shelves down;
while others, the morning being very cold, crowded round the rusty stove,
cherishing the newly kindled fire, and filling the grate with those
voluntary contributions of which they had been so liberal all night. The
washing accommodations were primitive. There was a tin ladle chained to
the deck, with which every gentleman who thought it necessary to cleanse
himself (many were superior to this weakness), fished the dirty water out
of the canal, and poured it into a tin basin, secured in like manner.
There was also a jack-towel. And, hanging up before a little
looking-glass in the bar, in the immediate vicinity of the bread and
cheese and biscuits, were a public comb and hair-brush.
At eight o’clock, the shelves being taken down and put away and the
tables joined together, everybody sat down to the tea, coffee, bread,
butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, ham, chops,
black-puddings, and sausages, all over again. Some were fond of
compounding this variety, and having it all on their plates at once. As
each gentleman got through his own personal amount of tea, coffee, bread,
butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, ham, chops,
black-puddings, and sausages, he rose up and walked off. When everybody
had done with everything, the fragments were cleared away: and one of the
waiters appearing anew in the character of a barber, shaved such of the
company as desired to be shaved; while the remainder looked on, or yawned
over their newspapers. Dinner was breakfast again, without the tea and
coffee; and supper and breakfast were identical.
There was a man on board this boat, with a light fresh-coloured face, and
a pepper-and-salt suit of clothes, who was the most inquisitive fellow
that can possibly be imagined. He never spoke otherwise than
interrogatively. He was an embodied inquiry. Sitting down or standing
up, still or moving, walking the deck or taking his meals, there he was,
with a great note of interrogation in each eye, two in his cocked ears,
two more in his turned-up nose and chin, at least half a dozen more about
the corners of his mouth, and the largest one of all in his hair, which
was brushed pertly off his forehead in a flaxen clump. Every button in
his clothes said, ‘Eh? What’s that? Did you speak? Say that again,
will you?’ He was always wide awake, like the enchanted bride who drove
her husband frantic; always restless; always thirsting for answers;
perpetually seeking and never finding. There never was such a curious
man.
I wore a fur great-coat at that time, and before we were well clear of
the wharf, he questioned me concerning it, and its price, and where I
bought it, and when, and what fur it was, and what it weighed, and what
it cost. Then he took notice of my watch, and asked me what _that_ cost,
and whether it was a French watch, and where I got it, and how I got it,
and whether I bought it or had it given me, and how it went, and where
the key-hole was, and when I wound it, every night or every morning, and
whether I ever forgot to wind it at all, and if I did, what then? Where
had I been to last, and where was I going next, and where was I going
after that, and had I seen the President, and what did he say, and what
did I say, and what did he say when I had said that? Eh? Lor now! do
tell!
Finding that nothing would satisfy him, I evaded his questions after the
first score or two, and in particular pleaded ignorance respecting the
name of the fur whereof the coat was made. I am unable to say whether
this was the reason, but that coat fascinated him afterwards; he usually
kept close behind me as I walked, and moved as I moved, that he might
look at it the better; and he frequently dived into narrow places after
me at the risk of his life, that he might have the satisfaction of
passing his hand up the back, and rubbing it the wrong way.
We had another odd specimen on board, of a different kind. This was a
thin-faced, spare-figured man of middle age and stature, dressed in a
dusty drabbish-coloured suit, such as I never saw before. He was
perfectly quiet during the first part of the journey: indeed I don’t
remember having so much as seen him until he was brought out by
circumstances, as great men often are. The conjunction of events which
made him famous, happened, briefly, thus.
The canal extends to the foot of the mountain, and there, of course, it
stops; the passengers being conveyed across it by land carriage, and
taken on afterwards by another canal boat, the counterpart of the first,
which awaits them on the other side. There are two canal lines of
passage-boats; one is called The Express, and one (a cheaper one) The
Pioneer. The Pioneer gets first to the mountain, and waits for the
Express people to come up; both sets of passengers being conveyed across
it at the same time. We were the Express company; but when we had
crossed the mountain, and had come to the second boat, the proprietors
took it into their beads to draft all the Pioneers into it likewise, so
that we were five-and-forty at least, and the accession of passengers was
not at all of that kind which improved the prospect of sleeping at night.
Our people grumbled at this, as people do in such cases; but suffered the
boat to be towed off with the whole freight aboard nevertheless; and away
we went down the canal. At home, I should have protested lustily, but
being a foreigner here, I held my peace. Not so this passenger. He
cleft a path among the people on deck (we were nearly all on deck), and
without addressing anybody whomsoever, soliloquised as follows:
‘This may suit _you_, this may, but it don’t suit _me_. This may be all
very well with Down Easters, and men of Boston raising, but it won’t suit
my figure nohow; and no two ways about _that_; and so I tell you. Now!
I’m from the brown forests of Mississippi, _I_ am, and when the sun
shines on me, it does shine—a little. It don’t glimmer where _I_ live,
the sun don’t. No. I’m a brown forester, I am. I an’t a Johnny Cake.
There are no smooth skins where I live. We’re rough men there. Rather.
If Down Easters and men of Boston raising like this, I’m glad of it, but
I’m none of that raising nor of that breed. No. This company wants a
little fixing, _it_ does. I’m the wrong sort of man for ’em, _I_ am.
They won’t like me, _they_ won’t. This is piling of it up, a little too
mountainous, this is.’ At the end of every one of these short sentences
he turned upon his heel, and walked the other way; checking himself
abruptly when he had finished another short sentence, and turning back
again.
It is impossible for me to say what terrific meaning was hidden in the
words of this brown forester, but I know that the other passengers looked
on in a sort of admiring horror, and that presently the boat was put back
to the wharf, and as many of the Pioneers as could be coaxed or bullied
into going away, were got rid of.
When we started again, some of the boldest spirits on board, made bold to
say to the obvious occasion of this improvement in our prospects, ‘Much
obliged to you, sir;’ whereunto the brown forester (waving his hand, and
still walking up and down as before), replied, ‘No you an’t. You’re none
o’ my raising. You may act for yourselves, _you_ may. I have pinted out
the way. Down Easters and Johnny Cakes can follow if they please. I
an’t a Johnny Cake, I an’t. I am from the brown forests of the
Mississippi, I am’—and so on, as before. He was unanimously voted one of
the tables for his bed at night—there is a great contest for the
tables—in consideration for his public services: and he had the warmest
corner by the stove throughout the rest of the journey. But I never
could find out that he did anything except sit there; nor did I hear him
speak again until, in the midst of the bustle and turmoil of getting the
luggage ashore in the dark at Pittsburg, I stumbled over him as he sat
smoking a cigar on the cabin steps, and heard him muttering to himself,
with a short laugh of defiance, ‘I an’t a Johnny Cake,—I an’t. I’m from
the brown forests of the Mississippi, I am, damme!’ I am inclined to
argue from this, that he had never left off saying so; but I could not
make an affidavit of that part of the story, if required to do so by my
Queen and Country.
As we have not reached Pittsburg yet, however, in the order of our
narrative, I may go on to remark that breakfast was perhaps the least
desirable meal of the day, as in addition to the many savoury odours
arising from the eatables already mentioned, there were whiffs of gin,
whiskey, brandy, and rum, from the little bar hard by, and a decided
seasoning of stale tobacco. Many of the gentlemen passengers were far
from particular in respect of their linen, which was in some cases as
yellow as the little rivulets that had trickled from the corners of their
mouths in chewing, and dried there. Nor was the atmosphere quite free
from zephyr whisperings of the thirty beds which had just been cleared
away, and of which we were further and more pressingly reminded by the
occasional appearance on the table-cloth of a kind of Game, not mentioned
in the Bill of Fare.
And yet despite these oddities—and even they had, for me at least, a
humour of their own—there was much in this mode of travelling which I
heartily enjoyed at the time, and look back upon with great pleasure.
Even the running up, bare-necked, at five o’clock in the morning, from
the tainted cabin to the dirty deck; scooping up the icy water, plunging
one’s head into it, and drawing it out, all fresh and glowing with the
cold; was a good thing. The fast, brisk walk upon the towing-path,
between that time and breakfast, when every vein and artery seemed to
tingle with health; the exquisite beauty of the opening day, when light
came gleaming off from everything; the lazy motion of the boat, when one
lay idly on the deck, looking through, rather than at, the deep blue sky;
the gliding on at night, so noiselessly, past frowning hills, sullen with
dark trees, and sometimes angry in one red, burning spot high up, where
unseen men lay crouching round a fire; the shining out of the bright
stars undisturbed by noise of wheels or steam, or any other sound than
the limpid rippling of the water as the boat went on: all these were pure
delights.
Then there were new settlements and detached log-cabins and frame-houses,
full of interest for strangers from an old country: cabins with simple
ovens, outside, made of clay; and lodgings for the pigs nearly as good as
many of the human quarters; broken windows, patched with worn-out hats,
old clothes, old boards, fragments of blankets and paper; and home-made
dressers standing in the open air without the door, whereon was ranged
the household store, not hard to count, of earthen jars and pots. The
eye was pained to see the stumps of great trees thickly strewn in every
field of wheat, and seldom to lose the eternal swamp and dull morass,
with hundreds of rotten trunks and twisted branches steeped in its
unwholesome water. It was quite sad and oppressive, to come upon great
tracts where settlers had been burning down the trees, and where their
wounded bodies lay about, like those of murdered creatures, while here
and there some charred and blackened giant reared aloft two withered
arms, and seemed to call down curses on his foes. Sometimes, at night,
the way wound through some lonely gorge, like a mountain pass in
Scotland, shining and coldly glittering in the light of the moon, and so
closed in by high steep hills all round, that there seemed to be no
egress save through the narrower path by which we had come, until one
rugged hill-side seemed to open, and shutting out the moonlight as we
passed into its gloomy throat, wrapped our new course in shade and
darkness.
We had left Harrisburg on Friday. On Sunday morning we arrived at the
foot of the mountain, which is crossed by railroad. There are ten
inclined planes; five ascending, and five descending; the carriages are
dragged up the former, and let slowly down the latter, by means of
stationary engines; the comparatively level spaces between, being
traversed, sometimes by horse, and sometimes by engine power, as the case
demands. Occasionally the rails are laid upon the extreme verge of a
giddy precipice; and looking from the carriage window, the traveller
gazes sheer down, without a stone or scrap of fence between, into the
mountain depths below. The journey is very carefully made, however; only
two carriages travelling together; and while proper precautions are
taken, is not to be dreaded for its dangers.
It was very pretty travelling thus, at a rapid pace along the heights of
the mountain in a keen wind, to look down into a valley full of light and
softness; catching glimpses, through the tree-tops, of scattered cabins;
children running to the doors; dogs bursting out to bark, whom we could
see without hearing: terrified pigs scampering homewards; families
sitting out in their rude gardens; cows gazing upward with a stupid
indifference; men in their shirt-sleeves looking on at their unfinished
houses, planning out to-morrow’s work; and we riding onward, high above
them, like a whirlwind. It was amusing, too, when we had dined, and
rattled down a steep pass, having no other moving power than the weight
of the carriages themselves, to see the engine released, long after us,
come buzzing down alone, like a great insect, its back of green and gold
so shining in the sun, that if it had spread a pair of wings and soared
away, no one would have had occasion, as I fancied, for the least
surprise. But it stopped short of us in a very business-like manner when
we reached the canal: and, before we left the wharf, went panting up this
hill again, with the passengers who had waited our arrival for the means
of traversing the road by which we had come.
On the Monday evening, furnace fires and clanking hammers on the banks of
the canal, warned us that we approached the termination of this part of
our journey. After going through another dreamy place—a long aqueduct
across the Alleghany River, which was stranger than the bridge at
Harrisburg, being a vast, low, wooden chamber full of water—we emerged
upon that ugly confusion of backs of buildings and crazy galleries and
stairs, which always abuts on water, whether it be river, sea, canal, or
ditch: and were at Pittsburg.
Pittsburg is like Birmingham in England; at least its townspeople say so.
Setting aside the streets, the shops, the houses, waggons, factories,
public buildings, and population, perhaps it may be. It certainly has a
great quantity of smoke hanging about it, and is famous for its
iron-works. Besides the prison to which I have already referred, this
town contains a pretty arsenal and other institutions. It is very
beautifully situated on the Alleghany River, over which there are two
bridges; and the villas of the wealthier citizens sprinkled about the
high grounds in the neighbourhood, are pretty enough. We lodged at a
most excellent hotel, and were admirably served. As usual it was full of
boarders, was very large, and had a broad colonnade to every story of the
house.
We tarried here three days. Our next point was Cincinnati: and as this
was a steamboat journey, and western steamboats usually blow up one or
two a week in the season, it was advisable to collect opinions in
reference to the comparative safety of the vessels bound that way, then
lying in the river. One called the Messenger was the best recommended.
She had been advertised to start positively, every day for a fortnight or
so, and had not gone yet, nor did her captain seem to have any very fixed
intention on the subject. But this is the custom: for if the law were to
bind down a free and independent citizen to keep his word with the
public, what would become of the liberty of the subject? Besides, it is
in the way of trade. And if passengers be decoyed in the way of trade,
and people be inconvenienced in the way of trade, what man, who is a
sharp tradesman himself, shall say, ‘We must put a stop to this?’
Impressed by the deep solemnity of the public announcement, I (being then
ignorant of these usages) was for hurrying on board in a breathless
state, immediately; but receiving private and confidential information
that the boat would certainly not start until Friday, April the First, we
made ourselves very comfortable in the mean while, and went on board at
noon that day.