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