American Notes for General Circulation

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'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.

'Go-lang!' 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.

CHAPTER X - 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:

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