FROM PITTSBURG TO CINCINNATI IN A WESTERN STEAMBOAT. CINCINNATI
THE Messenger was one among a crowd of high-pressure steamboats,
clustered together by a wharf-side, which, looked down upon from the
rising ground that forms the landing-place, and backed by the lofty bank
on the opposite side of the river, appeared no larger than so many
floating models. She had some forty passengers on board, exclusive of
the poorer persons on the lower deck; and in half an hour, or less,
proceeded on her way.
We had, for ourselves, a tiny state-room with two berths in it, opening
out of the ladies’ cabin. There was, undoubtedly, something satisfactory
in this ‘location,’ inasmuch as it was in the stern, and we had been a
great many times very gravely recommended to keep as far aft as possible,
‘because the steamboats generally blew up forward.’ Nor was this an
unnecessary caution, as the occurrence and circumstances of more than one
such fatality during our stay sufficiently testified. Apart from this
source of self-congratulation, it was an unspeakable relief to have any
place, no matter how confined, where one could be alone: and as the row
of little chambers of which this was one, had each a second glass-door
besides that in the ladies’ cabin, which opened on a narrow gallery
outside the vessel, where the other passengers seldom came, and where one
could sit in peace and gaze upon the shifting prospect, we took
possession of our new quarters with much pleasure.
If the native packets I have already described be unlike anything we are
in the habit of seeing on water, these western vessels are still more
foreign to all the ideas we are accustomed to entertain of boats. I
hardly know what to liken them to, or how to describe them.
In the first place, they have no mast, cordage, tackle, rigging, or other
such boat-like gear; nor have they anything in their shape at all
calculated to remind one of a boat’s head, stem, sides, or keel. Except
that they are in the water, and display a couple of paddle-boxes, they
might be intended, for anything that appears to the contrary, to perform
some unknown service, high and dry, upon a mountain top. There is no
visible deck, even: nothing but a long, black, ugly roof covered with
burnt-out feathery sparks; above which tower two iron chimneys, and a
hoarse escape valve, and a glass steerage-house. Then, in order as the
eye descends towards the water, are the sides, and doors, and windows of
the state-rooms, jumbled as oddly together as though they formed a small
street, built by the varying tastes of a dozen men: the whole is
supported on beams and pillars resting on a dirty barge, but a few inches
above the water’s edge: and in the narrow space between this upper
structure and this barge’s deck, are the furnace fires and machinery,
open at the sides to every wind that blows, and every storm of rain it
drives along its path.
Passing one of these boats at night, and seeing the great body of fire,
exposed as I have just described, that rages and roars beneath the frail
pile of painted wood: the machinery, not warded off or guarded in any
way, but doing its work in the midst of the crowd of idlers and emigrants
and children, who throng the lower deck: under the management, too, of
reckless men whose acquaintance with its mysteries may have been of six
months’ standing: one feels directly that the wonder is, not that there
should be so many fatal accidents, but that any journey should be safely
made.
Within, there is one long narrow cabin, the whole length of the boat;
from which the state-rooms open, on both sides. A small portion of it at
the stern is partitioned off for the ladies; and the bar is at the
opposite extreme. There is a long table down the centre, and at either
end a stove. The washing apparatus is forward, on the deck. It is a
little better than on board the canal boat, but not much. In all modes
of travelling, the American customs, with reference to the means of
personal cleanliness and wholesome ablution, are extremely negligent and
filthy; and I strongly incline to the belief that a considerable amount
of illness is referable to this cause.
We are to be on board the Messenger three days: arriving at Cincinnati
(barring accidents) on Monday morning. There are three meals a day.
Breakfast at seven, dinner at half-past twelve, supper about six. At
each, there are a great many small dishes and plates upon the table, with
very little in them; so that although there is every appearance of a
mighty ‘spread,’ there is seldom really more than a joint: except for
those who fancy slices of beet-root, shreds of dried beef, complicated
entanglements of yellow pickle; maize, Indian corn, apple-sauce, and
pumpkin.
Some people fancy all these little dainties together (and sweet preserves
beside), by way of relish to their roast pig. They are generally those
dyspeptic ladies and gentlemen who eat unheard-of quantities of hot corn
bread (almost as good for the digestion as a kneaded pin-cushion), for
breakfast, and for supper. Those who do not observe this custom, and who
help themselves several times instead, usually suck their knives and
forks meditatively, until they have decided what to take next: then pull
them out of their mouths: put them in the dish; help themselves; and fall
to work again. At dinner, there is nothing to drink upon the table, but
great jugs full of cold water. Nobody says anything, at any meal, to
anybody. All the passengers are very dismal, and seem to have tremendous
secrets weighing on their minds. There is no conversation, no laughter,
no cheerfulness, no sociality, except in spitting; and that is done in
silent fellowship round the stove, when the meal is over. Every man sits
down, dull and languid; swallows his fare as if breakfasts, dinners, and
suppers, were necessities of nature never to be coupled with recreation
or enjoyment; and having bolted his food in a gloomy silence, bolts
himself, in the same state. But for these animal observances, you might
suppose the whole male portion of the company to be the melancholy ghosts
of departed book-keepers, who had fallen dead at the desk: such is their
weary air of business and calculation. Undertakers on duty would be
sprightly beside them; and a collation of funeral-baked meats, in
comparison with these meals, would be a sparkling festivity.
The people are all alike, too. There is no diversity of character. They
travel about on the same errands, say and do the same things in exactly
the same manner, and follow in the same dull cheerless round. All down
the long table, there is scarcely a man who is in anything different from
his neighbour. It is quite a relief to have, sitting opposite, that
little girl of fifteen with the loquacious chin: who, to do her justice,
acts up to it, and fully identifies nature’s handwriting, for of all the
small chatterboxes that ever invaded the repose of drowsy ladies’ cabin,
she is the first and foremost. The beautiful girl, who sits a little
beyond her—farther down the table there—married the young man with the
dark whiskers, who sits beyond _her_, only last month. They are going to
settle in the very Far West, where he has lived four years, but where she
has never been. They were both overturned in a stage-coach the other day
(a bad omen anywhere else, where overturns are not so common), and his
head, which bears the marks of a recent wound, is bound up still. She
was hurt too, at the same time, and lay insensible for some days; bright
as her eyes are, now.
Further down still, sits a man who is going some miles beyond their place
of destination, to ‘improve’ a newly-discovered copper mine. He carries
the village—that is to be—with him: a few frame cottages, and an
apparatus for smelting the copper. He carries its people too. They are
partly American and partly Irish, and herd together on the lower deck;
where they amused themselves last evening till the night was pretty far
advanced, by alternately firing off pistols and singing hymns.
They, and the very few who have been left at table twenty minutes, rise,
and go away. We do so too; and passing through our little state-room,
resume our seats in the quiet gallery without.
A fine broad river always, but in some parts much wider than in others:
and then there is usually a green island, covered with trees, dividing it
into two streams. Occasionally, we stop for a few minutes, maybe to take
in wood, maybe for passengers, at some small town or village (I ought to
say city, every place is a city here); but the banks are for the most
part deep solitudes, overgrown with trees, which, hereabouts, are already
in leaf and very green. For miles, and miles, and miles, these solitudes
are unbroken by any sign of human life or trace of human footstep; nor is
anything seen to move about them but the blue jay, whose colour is so
bright, and yet so delicate, that it looks like a flying flower. At
lengthened intervals a log cabin, with its little space of cleared land
about it, nestles under a rising ground, and sends its thread of blue
smoke curling up into the sky. It stands in the corner of the poor field
of wheat, which is full of great unsightly stumps, like earthy
butchers’-blocks. Sometimes the ground is only just now cleared: the
felled trees lying yet upon the soil: and the log-house only this morning
begun. As we pass this clearing, the settler leans upon his axe or
hammer, and looks wistfully at the people from the world. The children
creep out of the temporary hut, which is like a gipsy tent upon the
ground, and clap their hands and shout. The dog only glances round at
us, and then looks up into his master’s face again, as if he were
rendered uneasy by any suspension of the common business, and had nothing
more to do with pleasurers. And still there is the same, eternal
foreground. The river has washed away its banks, and stately trees have
fallen down into the stream. Some have been there so long, that they are
mere dry, grizzly skeletons. Some have just toppled over, and having
earth yet about their roots, are bathing their green heads in the river,
and putting forth new shoots and branches. Some are almost sliding down,
as you look at them. And some were drowned so long ago, that their
bleached arms start out from the middle of the current, and seem to try
to grasp the boat, and drag it under water.
Through such a scene as this, the unwieldy machine takes its hoarse,
sullen way: venting, at every revolution of the paddles, a loud
high-pressure blast; enough, one would think, to waken up the host of
Indians who lie buried in a great mound yonder: so old, that mighty oaks
and other forest trees have struck their roots into its earth; and so
high, that it is a hill, even among the hills that Nature planted round
it. The very river, as though it shared one’s feelings of compassion for
the extinct tribes who lived so pleasantly here, in their blessed
ignorance of white existence, hundreds of years ago, steals out of its
way to ripple near this mound: and there are few places where the Ohio
sparkles more brightly than in the Big Grave Creek.
All this I see as I sit in the little stern-gallery mentioned just now.
Evening slowly steals upon the landscape and changes it before me, when
we stop to set some emigrants ashore.
Five men, as many women, and a little girl. All their worldly goods are
a bag, a large chest and an old chair: one, old, high-backed,
rush-bottomed chair: a solitary settler in itself. They are rowed ashore
in the boat, while the vessel stands a little off awaiting its return,
the water being shallow. They are landed at the foot of a high bank, on
the summit of which are a few log cabins, attainable only by a long
winding path. It is growing dusk; but the sun is very red, and shines in
the water and on some of the tree-tops, like fire.
The men get out of the boat first; help out the women; take out the bag,
the chest, the chair; bid the rowers ‘good-bye;’ and shove the boat off
for them. At the first plash of the oars in the water, the oldest woman
of the party sits down in the old chair, close to the water’s edge,
without speaking a word. None of the others sit down, though the chest
is large enough for many seats. They all stand where they landed, as if
stricken into stone; and look after the boat. So they remain, quite
still and silent: the old woman and her old chair, in the centre the bag
and chest upon the shore, without anybody heeding them all eyes fixed
upon the boat. It comes alongside, is made fast, the men jump on board,
the engine is put in motion, and we go hoarsely on again. There they
stand yet, without the motion of a hand. I can see them through my
glass, when, in the distance and increasing darkness, they are mere
specks to the eye: lingering there still: the old woman in the old chair,
and all the rest about her: not stirring in the least degree. And thus I
slowly lose them.
The night is dark, and we proceed within the shadow of the wooded bank,
which makes it darker. After gliding past the sombre maze of boughs for
a long time, we come upon an open space where the tall trees are burning.
The shape of every branch and twig is expressed in a deep red glow, and
as the light wind stirs and ruffles it, they seem to vegetate in fire.
It is such a sight as we read of in legends of enchanted forests: saving
that it is sad to see these noble works wasting away so awfully, alone;
and to think how many years must come and go before the magic that
created them will rear their like upon this ground again. But the time
will come; and when, in their changed ashes, the growth of centuries
unborn has struck its roots, the restless men of distant ages will repair
to these again unpeopled solitudes; and their fellows, in cities far
away, that slumber now, perhaps, beneath the rolling sea, will read in
language strange to any ears in being now, but very old to them, of
primeval forests where the axe was never heard, and where the jungled
ground was never trodden by a human foot.
Midnight and sleep blot out these scenes and thoughts: and when the
morning shines again, it gilds the house-tops of a lively city, before
whose broad paved wharf the boat is moored; with other boats, and flags,
and moving wheels, and hum of men around it; as though there were not a
solitary or silent rood of ground within the compass of a thousand miles.
Cincinnati is a beautiful city; cheerful, thriving, and animated. I have
not often seen a place that commends itself so favourably and pleasantly
to a stranger at the first glance as this does: with its clean houses of
red and white, its well-paved roads, and foot-ways of bright tile. Nor
does it become less prepossessing on a closer acquaintance. The streets
are broad and airy, the shops extremely good, the private residences
remarkable for their elegance and neatness. There is something of
invention and fancy in the varying styles of these latter erections,
which, after the dull company of the steamboat, is perfectly delightful,
as conveying an assurance that there are such qualities still in
existence. The disposition to ornament these pretty villas and render
them attractive, leads to the culture of trees and flowers, and the
laying out of well-kept gardens, the sight of which, to those who walk
along the streets, is inexpressibly refreshing and agreeable. I was
quite charmed with the appearance of the town, and its adjoining suburb
of Mount Auburn: from which the city, lying in an amphitheatre of hills,
forms a picture of remarkable beauty, and is seen to great advantage.
There happened to be a great Temperance Convention held here on the day
after our arrival; and as the order of march brought the procession under
the windows of the hotel in which we lodged, when they started in the
morning, I had a good opportunity of seeing it. It comprised several
thousand men; the members of various ‘Washington Auxiliary Temperance
Societies;’ and was marshalled by officers on horseback, who cantered
briskly up and down the line, with scarves and ribbons of bright colours
fluttering out behind them gaily. There were bands of music too, and
banners out of number: and it was a fresh, holiday-looking concourse
altogether.
I was particularly pleased to see the Irishmen, who formed a distinct
society among themselves, and mustered very strong with their green
scarves; carrying their national Harp and their Portrait of Father
Mathew, high above the people’s heads. They looked as jolly and
good-humoured as ever; and, working (here) the hardest for their living
and doing any kind of sturdy labour that came in their way, were the most
independent fellows there, I thought.
The banners were very well painted, and flaunted down the street
famously. There was the smiting of the rock, and the gushing forth of
the waters; and there was a temperate man with ‘considerable of a
hatchet’ (as the standard-bearer would probably have said), aiming a
deadly blow at a serpent which was apparently about to spring upon him
from the top of a barrel of spirits. But the chief feature of this part
of the show was a huge allegorical device, borne among the
ship-carpenters, on one side whereof the steamboat Alcohol was
represented bursting her boiler and exploding with a great crash, while
upon the other, the good ship Temperance sailed away with a fair wind, to
the heart’s content of the captain, crew, and passengers.
After going round the town, the procession repaired to a certain
appointed place, where, as the printed programme set forth, it would be
received by the children of the different free schools, ‘singing
Temperance Songs.’ I was prevented from getting there, in time to hear
these Little Warblers, or to report upon this novel kind of vocal
entertainment: novel, at least, to me: but I found in a large open space,
each society gathered round its own banners, and listening in silent
attention to its own orator. The speeches, judging from the little I
could hear of them, were certainly adapted to the occasion, as having
that degree of relationship to cold water which wet blankets may claim:
but the main thing was the conduct and appearance of the audience
throughout the day; and that was admirable and full of promise.
Cincinnati is honourably famous for its free schools, of which it has so
many that no person’s child among its population can, by possibility,
want the means of education, which are extended, upon an average, to four
thousand pupils, annually. I was only present in one of these
establishments during the hours of instruction. In the boys’ department,
which was full of little urchins (varying in their ages, I should say,
from six years old to ten or twelve), the master offered to institute an
extemporary examination of the pupils in algebra; a proposal, which, as I
was by no means confident of my ability to detect mistakes in that
science, I declined with some alarm. In the girls’ school, reading was
proposed; and as I felt tolerably equal to that art, I expressed my
willingness to hear a class. Books were distributed accordingly, and
some half-dozen girls relieved each other in reading paragraphs from
English History. But it seemed to be a dry compilation, infinitely above
their powers; and when they had blundered through three or four dreary
passages concerning the Treaty of Amiens, and other thrilling topics of
the same nature (obviously without comprehending ten words), I expressed
myself quite satisfied. It is very possible that they only mounted to
this exalted stave in the Ladder of Learning for the astonishment of a
visitor; and that at other times they keep upon its lower rounds; but I
should have been much better pleased and satisfied if I had heard them
exercised in simpler lessons, which they understood.
As in every other place I visited, the judges here were gentlemen of high
character and attainments. I was in one of the courts for a few minutes,
and found it like those to which I have already referred. A nuisance
cause was trying; there were not many spectators; and the witnesses,
counsel, and jury, formed a sort of family circle, sufficiently jocose
and snug.
The society with which I mingled, was intelligent, courteous, and
agreeable. The inhabitants of Cincinnati are proud of their city as one
of the most interesting in America: and with good reason: for beautiful
and thriving as it is now, and containing, as it does, a population of
fifty thousand souls, but two-and-fifty years have passed away since the
ground on which it stands (bought at that time for a few dollars) was a
wild wood, and its citizens were but a handful of dwellers in scattered
log huts upon the river’s shore.