Isabella Strange Trotter

“ Here we got into a steamer to cross the river, and from the steamer we had a grand view of the citadel and town of Quebec, the tin spires shining jointly with the moon and the comet; for we beg to say we do not require telescopes of high power, as we see by the papers you do in England, to detect the latter luminary, which really does look here almost as if it added to the light of the night. Papa and I differ greatly as to the length of its tail. ”

“ Such ambitious aspirings to make a great city! Such streets marked out; twice or three times the width of Portland Place! and scarcely anything completed, with the exception of some public buildings, which, to do them justice, are not only on a magnificent scale, but very beautiful. I shall, however, delay my account of Washington till we have seen more of it, as we stay here till Monday afternoon, when we return to Baltimore so as to allow us to make a start for the West on Tuesday. ”

“ The table d'hôte toilettes here now are much quieter than they were at Westpoint, there being but two short sleevers yesterday at our two o'clock dinner. There is a large and handsome public drawing-room, where we can rock in rocking chairs (even the bed-rooms have them) , or pass an hour in the evening. We are waited on at dinner by twelve darkies, as the niggers are called, marshalled by a head waiter as tall as papa and as black as his hat. A black thumb on your plate, as he hands it to you, is not pleasant. ”

“ The only drawback to its being a grand river is its shallowness, and want of adaptation, therefore, to the purpose of navigation. There are no splendid steamboats to be seen here as on the Ohio, which make one feel that river, at the distance of more than 2000 miles from the sea, to be a noble highway of commerce, linking together with a common interest distant portions of this vast continent. In the Susquehanna, one feels that there is nothing but its beauty to admire, but this is perfect. ”

“ There are some very good streets, but the greatest part of the town consists of detached houses standing in gardens. There are very few stone buildings of any kind. The hotel we are in is not the largest, but is considered the best, and in the height of the season the place must be very gay.
The next, perhaps the greatest, feature here is the bathing. There are three beaches formed round a succession of points, the whole forming a lovely drive on dry hard sand; and such a sun as we gazed upon yesterday setting over these distant sands passes description. ”

“ The Americans certainly have grand notions of things, this Island Pond being a lake of considerable dimensions studded with beautiful islands, and surrounded on all sides by finely wooded hills, up which the heavy mist rose half way, presenting the appearance we have so often seen in Switzerland, of hills apparently rising out of a frozen ocean. The mist too, covering the surface of the water, gave it a snow-like look, and altogether the sight was very lovely. ”

“ In it are invariably to be found a piano, at which the ladies frequently perpetrate most dreadful music; a marble table, in the centre of which always stand a silver tray and silver tankard and goblets containing iced water, a rocking chair, besides other easy-chairs and sofas, and a Bible. It is a rare thing not to find a Bible, the gift of a Society, in every bedroom and drawing-room in the hotel. The bedrooms never have bed-curtains, and sometimes no window-curtains; but the windows usually have Venetian or solid shutters. ”

“ In many places near the road on each side, small farms were established, and good-sized fields of Indian corn were growing; and wherever there was a railway station, a town, or even a "city" with one or two churches, and an hotel, besides grocery stores and wooden buildings of various kinds, were in progress in this immense wilderness.
The rain poured down incessantly, giving the country a melancholy and forlorn appearance. Towards the latter part of our journey, we descended into and traversed the great valley of the Mississippi. ”

“ On reaching Louisville we were comfortably established in a large handsome hotel. As there was still daylight, we took a walk through the principal streets, and found ourselves, as usual, in a bookseller's shop; for not only are these favourite lounges of papa's, but we generally find the booksellers intelligent and civil people, from whom we can learn what is best worth seeing in the town. The one at Louisville lauded very much the pork packing establishments in this town, and said those at Chicago, and even those of Cincinnati, are not to be compared with them ”

“ We afterwards went to the penitentiary, which has a world-wide renown from its being the model of [Pg 107] many which have been built in England and elsewhere. The solitary system is maintained, the prisoners never being allowed to see each other, nor could we see them. One poor man had been in confinement sixteen years out of twenty, to which he had been condemned. Any one remembering Dickens's account of this prison, must shudder at the recollection of it, and it was sad to feel oneself in the midst of a place of such sorrow. ”

“ There is, generally, a good-looking hotel, and invariably a church, and often several of these, for although one would probably contain all the inhabitants, yet they are usually of many denominations, and then each one has its own church. About twenty or thirty miles from Chicago, we saw a very extensive tract of prairie on fire, which quite illuminated the sky, and, as the night was very dark, showed distinctly the distant trees and houses, clearly defining their outline against the horizon. ”

“ They far surpass anything we could have believed of them. This, however, I write after a thorough study of them from various points of view; for when we first caught a glimpse, in our drive to-day, of the Fall on the American side, it disappointed us; but from the verandah of this hotel, on which our bed-room windows open, we had the first astounding view of the two Falls, with Goat Island dividing them; and that sight baffles all description. The Horse-Shoe Fall is magnificent. ”

“ It must be borne in mind, however, that the great demand in this country for work renders it much more easy for a person so circumstanced to obtain employment, even with a damaged character, than in England, where our ticket-of-leave men find this almost impossible. There is also, we are told, a kinder feeling towards prisoners here on their leaving the jail than in England, and this saves them from the want and consequent temptation to which our English ticket-of-leave men are exposed; the result is that a much less proportion of those released in America are re-committed for new offences. ”

“ It is the great rival of the Baltimore and Ohio railway, on which we travelled with Mr. Tyson, and we were rather anxious to have an opportunity of comparing the two, which, having now seen them both, we feel competent to do. The great change which nature presents now, to what it did when the leaves were in full foliage, may make us [Pg 264] underrate the beauties of the road we passed over to-day, but, notwithstanding this, we think there can be no doubt that the Baltimore and Ohio, taken as a whole, is by far the most picturesque and beautiful. ”

“ We went up two pairs of stairs, and I did so in fear and trembling, remembering what the odour is when a large dining-room is filled with black waiters: a sort of sickly, sour smell pervades the room, that makes one hate the thought, either of dinner, or of the poor niggers themselves. ”

“ In our drive to-day we were much struck with the general appearance of the streets and avenues, as the streets which run parallel to Broadway are called. The weather has been sultry, but with a good deal of wind; and the ladies must think it hot, as most of them appear at breakfast in high dresses with short sleeves, and walk about in this attire with a slight black lace mantle over their shoulders, their naked elbows showing through. ”

“ The curve is like a horse shoe, and goes round the face of a rock which has been cut away to make room for the road. Another superiority in the road we travelled to-day is the much greater height of the surrounding mountains, and the extent of the distant views;—but the greater height of the mountains had the attendant disadvantage of the trees being chiefly pines, instead of the lovely forest trees, of every description, which adorned the hills amongst which we travelled in Maryland and Virginia, by the Baltimore and Ohio railway. ”

“ The harbour is entirely land-locked and studded with islands. The day was very fine, but not so clear as the day before, or we should have seen the White Mountains, which are clearly visible from this, although sixty miles distant in a right line. The city is very beautiful, and, like all the New England towns, most clean and well conditioned. Each street is embellished by avenues of elm trees [Pg 89] of a larger size than we have yet seen in America, with the exception of those in the park of Boston. ”

“ The scene is thoroughly foreign, more German than French. The ladies' hoops are extravagant in circumference; the colouring of their dresses is violent and heavy; and there is scarcely a man to be seen without moustachios, a beard, a straw hat, and a cigar. West Point is the Sandhurst of the United States, and is also the nearest summer rendezvous of the fashionables of New York. It is beautifully situated on the heights above the river, and the Military Academy, about ten minutes' drive from the hotel, commands a most splendid view of the Hudson, and the hills on either side. ”

“ Towards ten o'clock a table was laid out in the drawing-room with their Catawba champagne, which was handed round in tumblers, followed by piles of Vanilla ice a foot and a half high. There were two of these towers of Babel on the table, and each person was given a supply that would have served for half a dozen in England; the cream however is so light in this country that a great deal more can be taken of it than in England; ices are extremely good and cheap all over America; even in very small towns they are to be had as good as in the large ones. ”

“ When we got up this morning we were entering a new country, and for many miles went along a beautiful valley of one of the tributaries of the Ohio. We again fell in with the Ohio at Steubenville, having traced the tributary down to its mouth. Our road then lay along the bank of the Ohio for about seventy miles, and anything more perfect in river scenery it would be difficult to imagine. Many large tributaries fell into it, the mouths of which we crossed over long bridges, and from these bridges had long vistas up their valleys. ”

“ Some beautiful elm trees in it are the largest we have seen in this country. Around one side are the best dwelling houses, some of which are really magnificent. The hotel, which is a very large one, has some beautiful public sitting rooms, greatly larger than those at the Brevoort House at New York, which is much more quiet in this respect; but these large rooms form an agreeable adjunct to an hotel, as they are in general well filled by the guests in the house, and yet sufficiently large to let each party have their own little coterie. ”

“ We went afterwards to the Capitol, and all over it, under the guidance of our coachman, a very intelligent and civil Irishman. We were quite taken by surprise at what we saw; for not only is the building itself, which is of white marble, a very fine one, but the internal fittings, or "fixings," as they perpetually call them here, show a degree of taste for which before leaving England we had not given the Americans credit. Two wings are now being added [Pg 131] to the original building, and are nearly completed; and a new and higher dome than the original one is being built over the centre. ”