THE STEAMBOAT.
Were you ever on board a Western river steamboat? As some of you may not
have had the opportunity, I will give you a short account of one.
Some of these boats are very large indeed. They would seem to you like a
little world of themselves.
The Pittsburg is about two hundred and eighty feet in length by sixty in
breadth. This boat, if placed in a field, would cover nearly half an
acre of land.
These boats are high as well as long. Besides the hold, as they call
it--a kind of cellar into which they stow away much of their heavy
freight--they have two or three other stories or decks for freight and
passengers.
The one next above the hold is where they keep their cattle and horses
and hogs, if they have any on board; also their common freight. Here,
too, in some instances, they have at one end a clumsy kind of cabin
called the forecastle, or steerage.
This forecastle is occupied, for the most part, by the poorer
passengers, especially emigrants. They have berths or shelves to recline
on, but no bed-clothing; and their accommodations are generally very
inferior.
On the next floor above are the cabins for the passengers in general.
They are usually in two great--rather long--rooms, one at each end. One
of them is used at meals as the dining-room. The berths or sleeping
places are at their sides. They, too, are mere broad shelves, but they
have bed-clothing and curtains.
On the upper deck the cabins are still more ample, as well as better
furnished. There, instead of shelves at the sides, there are small rooms
connected with the shelves, called state-rooms.
Were it not that the cabins on those upper decks are unusually long in
proportion to their breadth, and did you not feel the motion of the boat
while occupying them, the traveler would hardly know that he was not in
a large and comfortable hotel or dwelling-house.
There is still another deck or promenade above all these, but passengers
are not usually allowed to occupy it. The helmsman of the boat is
stationed here, and a crowd of people around him might obstruct his
view.
I have thus described five stories or rows; but there is a difference in
boats in this particular, even in the large ones. Some have only four
stories--that is, three besides the hold. In the latter case, the lower
or freight deck is at one end of the boat, formed into a cabin which
communicates only by means of a stairway with the next deck above it.
The best cabins are carpeted as nicely as our best parlors, and the
furniture is often as costly. The state-rooms are also well furnished,
and sometimes well ventilated. The beds are narrow. But the beds on
board the Pittsburg, though narrow, were quite comfortable. The
passenger reclines on a mattress, which rests on coils of elastic wire,
like some of our sofas and carriage seats; and the beds are almost as
soft as feather beds.
The rules and regulations in many steamboats are exceedingly strict. In
some instances they are printed and hung up at the sides of the cabins
and elsewhere, in conspicuous places. They relate to the treatment of
furniture, the hours of rising, meals, retiring to rest, &c.
No person, for example, is allowed to let his chair, while sitting, rest
against the wall, or to put his feet on the cushions of the chairs or
sofas. No lights are permitted in the state-rooms--cases of severe
sickness or other extremity alone excepted.
The female passengers have every reasonable convenience for washing,
dressing, &c., in their state-rooms. For the rest of the passengers
there is a common washroom, with which the barber's room is also
sometimes connected.
Thus you see that the art and ingenuity of man have converted these
great prisons on the water into so many magnificent hotels. Some
inconveniences and even privations there are, and must be. As a general
rule, the traveler may be very comfortable in them, and, if he chooses,
quite self-indulgent.
This word self-indulgent refers to the articles of food on the tables.
These are just what is to be expected when it is considered what the far
greater part of our travelers place their chief happiness in--what they
most think of and talk of, at least when they have little else to do.
In this respect, the steamboat is about on a par with the hotel. If
there be any difference, it seems to me to consist in this: that the
dishes at the table on board the steamboat are more complicated and more
costly, and at the same time more unhealthy, than those of the hotel.
But enough of description, for the present. We will now return to the
narration of my adventures.