Border and Bastille

Looking back on an experience of many lands and seas, I cannot recall a single scene more utterly dreary and desolate than that which awaited us, the outward-bound, in the early morning of the 20th of last December. The same sullen neutral tint pervaded and possessed everything-the leaden sky-the bleak, brown shores over against us-the dull graystone work lining the quays-the foul yellow water-shading one into the other, till the division-lines became hard to discern.

Even where the fierce gust swept off the crests of the river wavelets, boiling and breaking angrily, there was scant contrast of color in the dusky spray, or murky foam.

The chafing Mersey tried in vain to make himself heard. All other sounds-a voice, for instance, two yards from your ear-were drowned by the trumpet of the strong northwester. All through the past night, we listened to that note of war; we could feel the railway carriages trembling and quivering, as if shaken by some rude giant's hand, when they halted at any exposed station; and, this morning, the pilots shake their wise, grizzled beads, and hint at worse weather yet in the offing. For forty-eight hours the storm-signals had never been lowered, nor changed, except to intimate the shifting of a point or two in the current of the gale, and few vessels, if any, had been found rash enough to slight "the admiral's" warning.

It had been gravely discussed, we heard afterwards, by the owners and captain of "The Asia," whether she should venture to sea that day; finally, the question was left to the latter to decide. There are as nice points of honor, and as much jealous regard for professional credit in the merchant service as in any other. Only once, since the line was started, has a "Cunarder" been kept in port by wind or weather-this was the commander's first trip across the Atlantic since his promotion; you may guess which way the balance turned.

We waited on the landing-stage one long cold hour. The huge square structure, ordinarily steady and solid as the mainland itself, was pitching and rolling not much less "lively" than a Dutch galliot in a sea-way; and the tug that was to take us on board parted three hawsers before she could make fast alongside. It was hard to keep one's footing on the shaking, slippery bridge, but in ten minutes all staggered or tumbled, as choice or chance directed, on to the deck of the little steamer. I was looking for a dry corner, when an American passenger made room for me very courteously, and I begun to talk to him-about the weather, of course. It was a keen, intellectual face, pleasant withal, and kindly, and in its habitual expression not devoid of genial humor. But, at that moment, it was possessed by an unutterable misery. No wonder.

"I was ill the whole way over from America," he said, "and then we started with bright weather and a fair wind."

I was much attracted by the voice, betraying scarcely any Transatlantic accent: it was quiet and calm in tone, like that of any brave man on his way to encounter some irresistible pain or woe; but saddened by an agony of anticipation, he presaged, only too truly, "the burden of the atmosphere and the wrath to come."

Another struggle and scramble-and we are on board, at last. It is some comfort to exchange that wretched little wet tug for the deck of the Asia; though a trifle unsteady even now, she oscillates after the sober and stately fashion befitting a mighty "liner." Half an hour sees the end of the long stream of mail-bags, and the huge bales of newspapers shipped; then the moorings are cast loose; there rises the faintest echo of a cheer-who could be enthusiastic on such a morning?-the vast wheels turn slowly and sullenly, as if hating the hard work before them; and we are fairly off.

The waves and weather grew rapidly wilder; as we neared blue water, just after passing the light, we saw a large ship driving helplessly and-the sailors said-hopelessly, among the breakers of the North Sands. She had tried to run in without a pilot, and ours seemed to think her fate the justest of judgments; but to disinterested and unprofessional spectators the sight was very sad, and somewhat discouraging. So with omen and augury, as well as the wind dead against us.

"The Sword went out to sea."

All that day and night "The Asia" staggered and weltered on through the yeasty channel waves, breaking in her passengers rather roughly for a conflict with vaster billows. Thirteen hours of hard steaming barely brought us abreast of Holyhead. The gale moderated towards morning, and we ran along the Irish coast under a blue sky, making Queenstown shortly after sundown.

By this time I had become acquainted with my cabin-mate, in which respect I was singularly fortunate. M. -- was a thorough Parisian, and a favorable specimen of his class. Small of stature, and slender of proportion-a very important point where space is so limited-low-voiced, and sparing of violent expletives or gestures, delicately neat in his person and apparel, one could hardly have selected a more amiable colleague under circumstances of some difficulty. I can aver that he conducted himself always with a perfect modesty and decorum: he would preserve his equilibrium miraculously, when his perpendicular had been lost long ago: he never fell upon me but once (sleeping on a sofa, I was exposed defenselessly to all such contingencies), and then lightly as thistle-down. On the rare occasions when the mal-de-mer proved too much for his valiant self-assertion, he yielded to an overruling fate without groan or complaint: folding the scanty coverlet around him, he would subside gradually into his berth, composing his little limbs as gracefully as C?sar. His courtesy was invincible and untiring: he was anxious to defer and conform even to my insular prejudices. Discovering that I was in the habit of daily immersing in cold water-a feat not to be accomplished without much toil, trouble, and abrasion of the cuticle-he thought it necessary to simulate a like performance, though nothing would have tempted him to incur such needless danger. His endeavors to mislead me on this point, without actually committing himself, were ingenious and wily in the extreme. Sitting in the saloon at the most incongruous hours of day and night, he would exclaim, "J'ai l'idée de prendre bient?t mon bain!" or he would speak with a shiver of recollection of the imaginary plunge taken that morning. I don't think I should ever have been deluded, even if my curiosity had not led me to question the steward; but never, by word or look, did I impugn the reality of that Barmecide bath. To his other accomplishments, M. -- added a very pretty talent for piquet; the match was even enough, though, to be interesting, at almost nominal stakes, and so we got pleasantly through many hours-dark, wet, or boisterous.

We were not a numerous company-only thirty-three in all. Few amateurs travel at this inclement season. I knew only one other Englishman on board, an officer in the Rifle Brigade, returning to Canada from sick-leave. Among the Americans was Cyrus Field, the energetic promoter of the Atlantic Telegraph, then making (I think he said) his thirtieth transit within five years. He was certainly entitled to the freedom of the ocean, if intimate acquaintance with every fathom of its depth and breadth could establish a claim. It rather surprised me, afterwards, to see such science and experience yield so easily to the common weakness of seafaring humanity. Mr. Field told me that throughout the fearful weather to which the Niagara and Agamemnon were exposed, on their first attempt to lay down the cable, he never once felt a sensation of nausea; the body had not time to suffer till the mind was relieved from its heavy, anxious strain.

For three days after leaving Queenstown, the west winds met us, steady and strong; but it was not till the afternoon of Christmas day that the sea began to "get up" in earnest, and the weather to portend a gale. Then, the Atlantic seemed determined to prove that report had not exaggerated the hardships of a winter passage. It blew harder and harder all Friday, and after a brief lull on Saturday-as though gathering breath for the final onset-the storm fairly reached its height, and then slowly abated, leaving us substantial tokens of its visit in the shape of shattered boats, and the ruin of all our port bulwarks forward of the deck-house. I fancy there was nothing extraordinary in the tempest; and, in a stout ship, with plenty of sea room, there is probably little real danger; but about the intense discomfort there could be no question. I speak with no undue bitterness, for of nausea, in any shape, I know of little or nothing, but-oh, mine enemy!-if I could feel certain you were well out in the Atlantic, experiencing, for just one week, the weather that fell to our lot, I would abate much of my animosity, purely from satiation of revenge.

Unless absolutely prostrated by illness, the voyager, of course, has a ravenous appetite; such being the case, what can be more exasperating than having to grapple with a sort of dioramic dinner, where the dishes represent a series of dissolving views-mutton and beef of mature age, leaping about with a playfulness only becoming living lambs and calves-while the proverb of "cup and lip" becomes a truism from perpetual illustration? Neither is it agreeable, after falling into an uncertain doze, to feel dampness mingling strangely with your dreams, and to awake to find yourself, as it were, an island in a little salt lake formed by distillation through invisible crevices.

"Oh, laith, laith were our gude Scot lords

To wet their cork-heeled shoon,"

says the grand old ballad; so, I suppose, it is nothing "unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman" to hold such midnight irrigation in utter abhorrence.

On one of these occasions I abandoned a post no longer tenable, and went into the small saloon close by, to seek a dry spot whereon to finish the night, I found it occupied by a ghastly man, with long, wild gray hair, and a white face-striding staggeringly up and down-moaning to himself in a harsh, hollow voice, "No rest; I can't rest." He never spoke any other words, and never ceased repeating these, while I remained to hear him. Instantly there came back to my memory a horrible German tale, read and forgotten fifteen years ago, of a certain old and unjust steward, Daniel by name, who, having murdered his master by casting him down an oubliettes, ever haunted the fatal tower, first as a sleep-walker, then as a restless ghost-moaning and gibbering to himself, and tearing at a walled-up door with bleeding hands. The train of thought thereby suggested was so very sombre, that I preferred returning to my cabin, and climbing into an unfurnished berth, to spending more minutes in that weird company. I never made the man out satisfactorily afterwards. It is possible that he was one of the few who scarcely showed on deck, till we were in sight of land; but rather, I believe, like other visions and voices of the night, he changed past recognition under the garish light of day.

Then come the noisy nuisances, extending through all the diapason of sound. One-the most annoying-to which the ear never becomes callous by use, is the incessant crash, not only alongside, but overhead. At intervals-more frequent, of course, after our bulwarks were swept away-the green water came tumbling on board by tons; and, being unable to escape quickly enough by the after-scuppers, surged backwards and forwards with every roll of the vessel, as if it meant to keep you down and bury you forever. Lying in my berth, I could feel the heavy seas smite the strong ship one cruel blow after another on her bows or beam, till at last she would seem to stop altogether, and, dropping her head, like a glutton in the P. R., would take her punishment sullenly, without an effort at rising or resistance. Nevertheless, I stand by "The Asia," as a right good boat for rough weather, though she is not a flyer, and sometimes could hardly do more than hold her own. Eighty-one knots in the twenty-four hours was all the encouragement the log could give one day.

I liked our commander exceedingly. He had just left the Mediterranean station, and there still abode with him a certain languid levantine softness of voice and manner; when he came in to dinner, out of the wild weather, the moral contrast with the turmoil outside was quite refreshing. Report speaks highly of Captain Grace's seamanship; and I believe in him far more implicitly than I should in one of those hoarse and blusterous Tritons, who think roughness and readiness inseparable, and talk to you as if they were hailing a consort.

The library on board was not extensive, consisting (with the exception of "The Newcomes") chiefly of religious works of the Nonconformist school, and tales, which have long ago passed into surplus stock, or been withdrawn from general circulation. But there was one invaluable novel, which I shall always remember gratefully. I never got quite through it, but I read enough to be enabled to affirm, that its principles are unexceptionable, its style grammatically faultless, and its purpose sustained (ah, how pitilessly!) from first to last. The few amatory scenes are conducted with the most rigid propriety; and when there occurs a lover's quarrel, the parties hurl high moral truths at each other, instead of idle reproaches. But it is mainly as a soporific, that I would recommend "Silwood:" on four different occasions, under most trying circumstances it succeeded perfectly and promptly with me, for which relief-unintentional, perchance-I tender much thanks to the unknown author, and wish "more power to his arm."

Quite crippled for the time being by rheumatism, I was in bad form for clambering about the sloping, slippery planks; nevertheless I did contrive to crawl up to the hurricane-deck just before sundown, about the crisis of the gale. I confess to being disappointed in the "rollers:" it may be that their vast breadth and volume takes off from their apparent height, but I scarcely thought it reached Dr. Scoresby's standard-from 26 to 30 feet, if I remember right, from trough to crest. One realizes thoroughly the abysmal character of the turbulent chaos, and there is a sensation of infiniteness around and below you not devoid of grandeur; but as an exhibition of the puissance of angry water, I do not think the mid-ocean tempest equal to the storm which brings the thunder of the surf full on the granite bulwarks of Western Ireland.

It must be owned, that the conversational powers of our small society were limited. Very often some selfishness mingled with my sincere compassion for the prostrated sufferings of my Philadelphian friend of the tug-boat; for whenever his weary aching head would allow of the exertion, he could talk on almost any subject, fluently and well. He was returning from a long visit to Paris, and a rapid tour through Germany and Southern Europe. Most of the countries, that he had been compelled to hurry over, I had loitered through in days past, and I ought to have been shamed by the contrast in our recollections-his, so clear and systematical-mine, so vague and dim. An intellectual American travelling through strange lands does certainly look at nature, animate and inanimate, after a practical business-like fashion peculiar to his race; but it would be unfair to infer that such minds are, necessarily, unappreciative. At all events, that concentrative, synthetical power, that takes in surrounding objects at a single glance, and retains them in a tolerably distinct classification, is rather enviable, even as a mental accomplishment.

We did not speak much about the troubles beyond sea, and the Philadelphian was rather reserved as to his proclivities. My impression is, that his sympathy tended rather southward (all his early life had been spent in Alabama), but he declined to commit himself much, nor do I believe that he was a violent partisan either way. On one point he was very decided: Falkland himself could not have wished more devoutly for the termination of a fatal civil war-fatal, he said, to the interests, present and future, of both the combatant powers-ruinous to every class, with two exceptions; the adventurers who, having little to lose, gained, by joining the ranks of either army, a social position to which they could not otherwise have aspired; and the speculators, who, directly or indirectly, fairly or unfairly, made gains vast and unholy, such as wreckers are wont to gather in time of tempest and general disaster. He scarcely alluded to the corruption and peculation prevalent in all high places, diluted in its downward percolation till sutlers and horse-thieves would strive in vain to emulate the fraudulent audacity of their superiors. It was well he spared me then, for soon after landing, my eyes and ears grew weary with the repetition of all these ignoble details. To illustrate how heavily the taxes were already beginning to weigh on the non-militant part of the population, my informant proved to me by very clear figures that, if he individually could secure permanent exemption from such burdens by the absolute sacrifice of one-tenth of his whole property, real and personal, the commutation, would be decidedly advantageous to him. True, he represented a class whose incomes exceeded a certain standard, and therefore suffered rather more heavily; but the same calculation, with very slight alterations, applied to all other subordinate ones.

Grave and mild of speech was the Philadelphian philosopher, without a trace of dogmatism or self-assertion in his tone; nevertheless, I judged him to be a man of mark somewhere, and I afterwards heard that, albeit not a violent or prominent politician, he had great honor in his own country.

Strong head-winds and a heavy sea baffled us till we had cleared the longitude of Cape Race; then the weather softened, the breeze veered round till it blew on our quarter, and we had clear sky above us all the way in. We sighted the first pilot-boat on the afternoon of January 3d, and, as she came sweeping down athwart us, with her broad, white wings full spread, our glasses soon made out the winning number of the sweepstakes, "22." It was long past dinner hour when the beautiful little schooner rounded to, under our lee, but all appetite just then was merged in a craving for latest intelligence.

It was a caricaturist's study-the crowd of keen, anxious faces round the gangway-as the pilot came aboard. He was a stout man, of agricultural exterior, looking as if he were in the habit of ploughing anything rather than the deep sea; but it is the fashion of his guild to eschew the nautical as much as possible in their attire. The "anxious inquirers" got little satisfaction from him-he seemed taciturn by nature, if not sullen-and they came back to where the rest of us stood on the hurricane deck, muttering discontentedly, "Gold at 46. No news." It seemed very odd-such a complete stagnation of affairs, military and civil-but we went to dinner in spite of our disappointment. Before we rose from table the truth began to ooze out. One or two New York papers, that had slipped on board with the pilot, were more communicative than he would or could be.

Thousands of corpses, the full tale of which will never be known till the day of judgment, lying rolled in blood, with a handful of earth raked over them under the fatal Fredericksburg heights; the finest army in Federaldom hurled back upon its intrenchments; nothing but darkness covering a disastrous, if not shameful defeat; the papers crowded with dreary funeral notices, showing how, to every great city of the North, from hospital and battle-ground, the slain are being gathered in, to be buried among their own people; a wail of widows and orphans and mothers, from homestead, hamlet, and town, overpowering with its simple energy, the bombastic war-notes and false stage-thunder of the press; rumors of a terrible battle in the far West, where, after three days' hard fighting, Rosecrans barely holds his own, and yet "there are no news!"

It is an excellent quality in a soldier not to know when he is beaten, but whether blind obstinacy will succeed when it influences the rulers and destinies of a great nation, is more than questionable. Pondering these things, I remembered how, four thousand years ago, a stiff-necked generation were brought to their senses and on their knees. It was on the morning after the visit of the Dark Angel, when Egypt awoke, and found not a house in which there was not one dead. If such fearful waste of life goes on here, with no decisive or final advantage on either side attained, that ancient curse may not be long in recurring.

I rose when the sun ought to have risen, on the following morning, intending to admire the famous harbor which Americans love to compare with the Neapolitan Bay. But long before we reached the Narrows,

"A blinding mist came up and hid the land

As far as eye could see."

Very soon we were buried in fog, dense and Cimmerian, as ever brooded over our own Thames or the Righi panorama. More and more slowly the paddles turned, till they stopped altogether. It was dangerous to advance, ever so cautiously, when the keenest sight could not pierce half a ship's length ahead. So there we lay at anchor for weary hours, listening to the church-bells chiming drowsily through the heavy air, till an enterprising tug ventured out for the mails, and sent another for the relief of the passengers.

The custom-house officers were not troublesome, and I was soon at the Brevoort House, the Parisian Pylades still faithfully following my fortunes. I was far from entreating him to leave me; landing utterly alone in a strange land, one does not lightly cast aside companionship. For reasons easily understood, I had declined to avail myself of many proffered letters of introduction to New Yorkers.

That lonely feeling did not last long: the first object which caught my eye on the steps of the Brevoort House was an honest English face-a face I have known, and liked right well, these dozen years and more. There stood "the Colonel" (any Ch. Ch. or Rifle Brigade man will recognize the sobriquet), beaming upon the world in general with the placid cheerfulness that no changes of time or place or fortune seem able to alter, looking just as comfortable and thoroughly "at home" as he did, steering Horniblow to victory at Brixworth. I had heard that my old friend was on his way to England to join the Staff College, but had never reckoned on such a successful "nick" as this. By my faith, my turns of luck beyond the Atlantic were not so frequent as to excuse forgetfulness, when they did befall.

So I had aid and abetment in performing the little lionization which is obligatory on a visitor to New York; for the "Colonel's" comrade, my fellow-voyager of the Asia, came to the same hotel.

Assisted by the Parisian, we made trial of the esculents peculiar to the country-gombo soup, sweet potatoes, terrapins, and canvas-backs-with much solemnity and satisfaction, agreeing, that fame had spoken truth for once, in extolling the two last-named delicacies. We went to the Opera, and there, in a brilliant salle of white and gold, spoilt, however, by the incongruity of bonnets mingling everywhere with full evening toilettes, assisted at a massacre-unmusical and melancholy-of "Lucrezia." We drove out through the crude, unfinished Central Park to Harlem lane, whither the trotters are wont to resort, and saw several teams looking very much like work (though no celebrities), almost all of the lean, rather ragged form which characterizes, more or less, all American-bred "fast horses." The ground was too hard frozen to allow of anything beyond gentle exercise; but even at quarter-speed, that wonderful hind-action was very remarkable. Watching those clean, sinewy pasterns shoot forward-well outside of the fore hoof-track-straight and swift as Mace's arm in an "upper-cut," you marvel no longer at the mile-time which hitherto has seemed barely credible.

Perhaps this same bitter weather may account for our disappointment in the brilliancy of Broadway. Several careful reviews of the sunny side failed to detect anything dangerously attractive in beauty, equipage, or attire. It is probable that most of the lionnes had laid them down in their delicate dens, waiting for a more clement season, to renew external depredations; though sometimes you could just catch a glimpse of bright eyes and a little pink nose peering over dark fur wrappings, as a brougham or barouche, carefully closed, swept quickly by. We visited Barnum, of course. I think a conversational and communicative Albino was the most note-worthy curiosity in the Museum, chiefly, from his intense appreciation of the imposture of the whole concern, originated and directed by the King of Humbugdom.

The sanguine popular mind was unusually depressed just then. The President's emancipatory proclamation had recently issued, and seemed to adapt itself, with wonderful elasticity, to the discontents of all parties; not comprehensive enough for the ultra-Abolitionists, it was stigmatized by the Democrats as unconstitutional and oppressive; while moderate politicians agreed that, beyond irritating feelings already bitter enough, it would be practically invalid as an offensive measure. We shall see, hereafter, how these prognostications were justified.

But the first word in all men's mouths, for a day or two at least after my arrival, was-Monitor. That same gale which had buffeted the Asia so rudely on the high seas, had raged yet more savagely shorewards: the Merrimac's antagonist, like a drowning paladin of the mail-clad days, had sunk under her mighty armor, and now, with half her crew in their iron coffin, lay at rest in the crowded burial-ground on which Cape Hatteras looks down. Great discouragement and consternation-greater than has often been caused by the loss of any single vessel-fell upon all the North when the news came in. Ever since her famous duel, which the Federals never would allow was a drawn battle, they had elevated the Monitor into a national champion, and prophesied weeping in the South if she and their batteries should meet: few then dared to insinuate a doubt about Charleston's certain fall, when once the leaguer was fairly mustered for assault. Grave doubts were now expressed as to the seaworthiness of all the new iron-clads, though their advocates could point to a sister of the unhappy Monitor, which had survived a great part of the same storm. That they all must be more unsafe in really rough weather than the crankiest of our old "coffin brigs," seems quite ascertained now: the fact of their being unable to make headway through a heavy sea unless towed by a consort, speaks for itself. The immediate cause of the Monitor's foundering (according to Captain Worden's account, which my informant had from his own lips) was a leak sprung, where her protruding stern-armour, coming down flat on the waves with every plunge of the vessel, became loosened from the main hull; but, for some time before this was discovered, she seems to have spent more minutes under than above the water, and nothing alive could have stood unlashed for a second on her deck. So great was the public disappointment, that the tribe of false prophets-whose cry of "Go up to Ramoth Gilead, and prosper," deafens us here, not less, usually in defeat than in success-did for awhile abate their blatancy; while Ericsson-most confident of projectors-spake softly, below his breath, as he suggested faint excuse and encouragement.

The news from the West-hourly improving, and more clearly confirmed-were hardly welcomed, as they deserved, and scarcely counter-balanced the naval disaster. It was not long, however, before Rosecrans the Invincible came in for his full share of credit-perhaps not more than he merited. Few other Federal commanders can claim that epithet; and, though some people persisted in considering Murfreesburg a Pyrrhic victory, it is certain that he held his ground manfully, and eventually advanced, where defeat, or even a retrograde movement, would have been simply ruin.

On the fifth day our small company were scattered-each going his own way, east, north, and south-while the Parisian abode in New York still.

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