American Notes

ng-hour being four o'clock in the morning, we went down to where she lay, at that very uncomfortable time for such expedi

h its unwieldy carcase. The wharf is some distance from the city. There is nobody down here; and one or two dull lamps upon the steamer's decks are the only signs of life remaining, when our coach has driven away. As soon as our footsteps are heard upon the planks, a fat negress, particularl

e of the faithful secretary whom I brought along with me from Boston. He is supping with our late landlord (a Field Marshal, at least, no doubt) in honour of our departure, and may be two hours longer. I walk again, but it gets duller and duller: the moon goes down: next June seem

forward, and slip on the shining face of a black steward, who lies rolled in a blanket on the floor. He jumps up, grins, half in pain and half in hospitality; whispers my own name in my ear; and groping among the sleepers, leads me to my berth. Standing beside it, I count these slumbering passengers, and get past forty. There is no use in going further, so I begin to undress. As the chairs are all occupied, and there

cabin is vile in the last degree. I huddle on my clothes, go down into the fore-cabin, get shaved by the barber, and wash myself. The washing and dressing apparatus for the passengers generally, consists of two jack-towels, three small wooden basins, a keg of water and a ladle to serve it out with, six square inches of looking-glass, two ditto ditto of yellow soap, a comb and brush for the head, and nothing for the teeth. Everybody uses the comb and brush, except myself. E

e all thrown open, and now it is fresh enough. There is no hurry or greediness apparent in the des

t, and into the coaches; the luggage is being transferred in noisy wheelbarrows; the horses are frightened, and impatient to start; the black drivers are chattering to them like so many monkeys; and the white ones whooping like so many drovers: for the main thing to be done in all kinds of hostlering here, is to make as much noise as possible. The coaches are something like the French coaches, but not n

ed by a chair: when there is no chair, ladies trust in Providence. The coach holds nine inside, having a seat across from door to door, where we in England put our legs: so that there is only one feat more difficult in the performance than getting in, and that

dd gloves: one of parti-coloured worsted, and one of leather. He has a very short whip, broken in the middle and bandaged up with string. And yet he wears a low-crowned, broad-brimmed, black hat: faintly shadowing forth a kind o

t!' an American cries 'Go ahead!' which is somewhat ex

h tilt up as the wheels roll over them; and in the river. The river has a clayey bottom and is full of ho

ften before, but now I think we shall have a crash.' He takes a rein in each hand; jerks and pulls at both; and dances on the splashboard with both feet (keeping his seat, of course) like the late lamented Ducrow on two of his fiery coursers. We come to the spot, sink down in the mire nearly to the coach window

r (to the h

ens. Insides

r (to the h

and splash th

(looking out). 'W

nd draws his head in again, without finish

ll to the horses)

p, that the black driver's legs fly up into the air, and he goes back among the lugga

il

hich rolls back upon No. 3, which rolls back upon No. 4, and so on, unt

louder than be

to get up the bank, and aga

uder than before

a desperat

ring spirits). 'Hi,

ke anothe

igour). 'Ally Loo! Hi. Jid

almos

of his head). 'Lee, den. Lee, dere. Hi. J

ottom there is a deep hollow, full of water. The coach rolls frightfully. The insides scream. The mud and water fly abou

him by twirling his head round and round like a harlequin, rolling his eyes, shruggi

e get you through sa. Old 'ooman at home sa:' chuckling very much. 'Outsi

care of the old wom

cries (to the horses again) 'Easy. Easy den. Ease. Steady. Hi. Jiddy. Pill. Ally. Loo,' but never 'Lee!' until we are reduce

a half; breaking no bones, though bruising a great many;

ng a great amount of slave labour in forcing crops, without strengthening the land: and it is now little better than a sandy desert overgrown with trees. Dreary and uninteresting as its aspect is, I was glad to the heart to find anyt

uses are mouldering away; the sheds are patched and half roofless; the log cabins (built in Virginia with external chimneys made of clay or wood) are squalid in the last degree. There is no look of decent comfort anywhere. The miserable stations by

ildren cried the whole way, and the mother was misery's picture. The champion of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, who had bought them, rode in the same train; and, every time we stopped, g

king-chairs, and smoking cigars. We found it a very large and elegant establishment, and were as well entertained as travellers need desire to be. The climate being a thirsty one, there was never, at any hour of the day

as yet but the middle of March, the weather in this southern temperature was extremely warm; the peech-trees and magnolias were in full bloom; and the trees were green. In a low ground among the hills, is a valley known as 'Bloody Run,' from a

dint of constant repetition, however, these constitutional sights had very little more interest for me than so many parochial vestries; and I was glad to excha

rse of manufacture for chewing; and one would have supposed there was enough in that one storehouse to have filled even the comprehensive jaws of Americ

there, some twenty sang a hymn in parts, and sang it by no means ill; pursuing their work meanwhile. A bell rang as I was about to leave, and they all poured forth into a building on the opposite side of the street to dinner. I said severa

live is called, I was not invited to enter into any of their huts. All I saw of them, was, that they were very crazy, wretched cabins, near to which groups of half-naked children basked in the sun, or wallowed on the dusty ground. But I bel

was exquisitely refreshing after the glare and heat without. Before the windows was an open piazza, where, in what they call the hot weather-whatever that may be-they sling hammocks, and drink and doze luxuriously. I do not know how their cool rejections may taste within

ome old lady in the neighbourhood, who levies tolls upon the townspeople. Crossing this bridge, on my way back, I saw a notice painted on the

round; but jostling its handsome residences, like slavery itself going hand in hand with many lofty virtues, are deplorable tenements, fences unrepaired, walls crumbling into ruinous heaps. Hinting gloom

them, must be prepared to find their faces very low in the scale of intellectual expression. But the darkness-not of skin, but mind-which meets the stranger's eye at every turn; the brutalizing and blotting out of all fairer characters traced by Nature's hand; immeasurably outdo his worst belief.

lthy winks of sleep upon the stairs betweenwhiles, was washing the dark passages at four o'clock in the morning; and went upon my way with a grat

gh some accident, and the means of conveyance being consequently rendered uncertain, we returned to Washington by the way we had come (there were

ity: where the English traveller will find curtains to his bed, for the first and probably the last time in America (this is a disinterest

favours is none of the cleanest, it is true; but the upper part is of a very different character, and has many agreeable streets and public buildings. The Washington Monument, which is

te Penitentiary is also among its institutions. In th

mpted him to the commission of so tremendous a crime. He had been tried twice; and on the second occasion the jury felt so much hesitation in convicting him, that they found a verdict of manslaughter, or murder in the s

manner, between those two. On all the suspicious points, the dead man's brother was the witness: all the explanations for the prisoner (some of them extremely plausible) went, by construction and inference

and stole the same copper measure containing the same quantity of liquor. There was not the slightest reason to suppose that the man wished to return to prison: indeed everything, but the commission of the offence, made directly against that assumption. There are only two ways of accounting for this extraordinary proceeding. One is, tha

afterwards forwarded to us in Canada, so much of it as was not absolutely wanted); and having procured the necessary credentials to banking-houses on the way; and having moreover looked for two evenings at the setting sun, with as well-defined an idea of the country before us as if we had been going

s muddy and cumbersome as usual. As more passengers were waiting for us at the inn-door, the coachman observed under his breath

shall want th

win-brother of a French Diligence. My speculations were speedily set at rest, however, for as soon as we had dined, there came rumbling up the street, shaking its sides like a corpulent giant, a kind of barge on wheels. After much blundering and backing, it stopped at t

adful bright and smart to look at too,' cried an el

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. Howeve

otel, there was another

ies the new passeng

lies the coachman, without getti

ch another gentleman (also inside) confirms, by predicting that

nto the coach, and then looks up at the coachman: 'Now, how d

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

. 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

n,' cries the col

p'en to his company, th

nd subsequently slipping off without hurting himself, was seen in the distant perspective reeling back to the grog-shop where we had f

th 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 besi

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.

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 in

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

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 rai

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

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 p

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 quibb

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 painfu

independence in any material degree, if some of these gentlemen had not only yielded to the prejudice in favour of

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 specula

ing accommodated, as the spectators usually are, in one of those locomotive museums of penny wonders; and the ladies being partitioned off by a

ht 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, whi