First Impressions of the New World Part 9

This is the capital of Illinois, and the state-house here, too, is finished, and is a fine building. The governor has a state residence, which is really a large and handsome building, but is altogether surpa.s.sed by the private residence of an ex-governor, who lives in a sumptuous house, to judge from its external accompaniments of conservatory, &c.; it is nearly opposite our Scotch friend's abode, but the ex-governor dealt in "lumber" instead of iron, and from being a chopper of wood, has raised himself to his present position.

_Chicago, Nov. 10th._--We did not reach Chicago last night till 12 o'clock, our train, for the first time since we have been in America, having failed to reach its destination at the proper time; but the delay of two hours on this occasion was fairly accounted for by the bad state of the rails, owing to the late rains. Before it became dark we saw one or two wonderful specimens of towns growing up in this wilderness of prairie. The houses, always of wood and painted white, are neat, clean, and well-built. 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. On the other side of us, there was a smaller fire, but so close as to allow us to see the flames travelling along the surface of the ground. These fires are very common; we saw no less than five that night in the course of our journey.

We have been busily employed to-day in going over Chicago. The streets are wide and fine, but partake too abundantly of prairie mud to make walking agreeable: some of the shops are very large; a bookseller's shop, to which papa and I made our way, professes to be the largest in the world, and it is certainly one of the best supplied I ever saw with all kinds of children's books. From the bookseller's we went to papa's bankers, Messrs. Swift and Co.; Mr. Swift took us to the top of the Court-house, a wonderful achievement for me, but well worth the trouble, as the view of the town was very surprising. We went afterwards to call on William's friend, Mr. Wilkins, the consul, where we met Lord Radstock. Mr. Wilkins kindly took us to see Mr. Sturge's great granary; there are several of these in the town, but this, and a neighbouring one, capable of holding between them four or five million bushels of corn, are the two largest. The grain is brought into the warehouse, without leaving the railway, the rails running into the building. It is then carried to the top of the warehouse "in bulk," by means of hollow cylinders arranged on an endless chain. The warehouse is built by the side of the river, so that the vessels which are to carry the corn to England or elsewhere, come close under the walls, and the grain is discharged into the vessels by means of large wooden pipes or troughs, through which it is shot at once into the hold. Mr. Wilkins has seen 80,000 bushels discharged in this manner, in one day.

We afterwards drove about six miles into the country, through oceans of mud, to see one of the great slaughter and packing-houses. I did not venture out of the carriage, but the proprietor took Mr. Wilkins, Lord Radstock, and papa through every part of the building. In a yard below were a prodigious number of immense oxen, and the first process was to see one of these brought into the inside of the building by means of a windla.s.s; which drew it along by a rope attached to its horns and pa.s.sing through a ring on the floor.

The beast, by means of men belabouring it from behind, and this rope dragging it in front, was brought in and its head drawn down towards the ring, when a man with a sledge-hammer felled it instantaneously to the ground; and without a struggle it was turned over on its back by the side of eight or ten of its predecessors who had just shared the same fate, and were already undergoing the various processes to which they had afterwards to be subjected. The first of these was to rip up and remove the intestines of the poor beast, and it was then skinned and cut lengthways into two parts, when the still reeking body was hung up to cool. The immense room was hung with some hundreds of carcases of these huge animals thus skinned and cleft in two. The process, from the time the animal leaves the yard alive till the time it is split and hung up in two pieces, occupied less than a quarter of an hour. At the end of two days they are dismembered, salted, packed in casks, the best parts to be s.h.i.+pped to England, and the inferior parts to be eaten by the free and enlightened citizens of this great continent. The greater number of these beasts come from Texas, and have splendid horns, sometimes three feet long.

The next thing they saw was the somewhat similar treatment of the poor pigs; but these are animals, of which for size there is nothing similar to be seen in England, excepting, perhaps, at the cattle show. At least, one which papa saw hanging up weighed 400 lbs., and looked like a young elephant. In the yard below there was a vast herd of these, 1500 having arrived by railway the night before; the number killed and cut up daily averages about 500. It takes a very few minutes only from the time the pig leaves the pen to its being hung up, preparatory to its being cut up and salted. They first get a knock on the head like the more n.o.ble beasts already mentioned; they are then stuck, in order to be thoroughly bled; after this they are plunged headlong into a long trough of boiling water, in which they lie side by side in a quiescent state, very different to the one they were in a few minutes before, when they were quarrelling in a most unmannerly manner in the yard below. From this trough the one first put in is, by a most ingenious machine, taken up from underneath, and tossed over into an empty trough, where in less than a minute he is entirely denuded of his bristles, and pa.s.sed over to be cleft and hung up. The trough holds about eight or ten thus lying side by side, and the moment one is taken out at one end, another is put in at the other, and they thus all float through the length of the trough, and are taken out in order; but so rapid is the process, that no one pig is long in; in fact, the whole business occupies only a very few minutes per pig. Every part is turned to account, the ma.s.s of bristles being converted into tooth brushes, &c. In the huge larder, in the story next above the oxen, there were about 1500 unhappy pigs hung up to cool, before being cut up, salted, packed, and sent off. There are several establishments of this nature in Chicago, but only one of equal extent to the one papa saw. About 400,000 pigs are s.h.i.+pped every year from Chicago. I do not know the total number of cattle, but this house alone slaughters and sends away 10,000. There were places on an enormous scale for preparing tallow and lard, and there were many other details equally surprising, which I have not now time to describe; but papa says that the smells were most offensive, and that it was altogether a very horrible sight, and it was one I was well pleased to escape.

Among the other wonders of Chicago, I must do honour to its hotel, which I should say was as good as any we have yet seen in America. These American hotels are certainly marvellous "inst.i.tutions," though we were getting beyond the limits of the good ones when we reached Jefferson City. That, however, at St. Louis is a very fair sample of a good one.

_Indianapolis, Nov. 11th._--We arrived here late this afternoon, and have not been able as yet to see anything of the town, I shall therefore defer a description of it to my next. The road from Chicago was not without its interest, though we are becoming very tired of the prairies.

At first starting we went for many miles along the borders of Lake Michigan, which we again came upon at a very remarkable spot, Michigan city, about sixty miles from Chicago. Along the first part of the lake, in the neighbourhood of Chicago, the sh.o.r.e consists of fine sand, in strips of considerable width, and flat like an ordinary sea beach; but at Michigan city the deep sand reached to a considerable distance inland, and then rose into high dunes, precisely like those on the French coast. As we had to wait an hour there, papa and I scrambled up one of these, and although below there was deep loose sand, yet above it was hard and solid, and bound together with little shrubs like the French dunes. The view of the lake from the top was very pretty, and boundless towards the north, we being at the southern extremity. I picked up a few stones on the beach as a memorial of this splendid lake.

We were very much tempted, when at Chicago, to see more of it, and to go to Milwaukee and Madison, but we were strongly advised by Mr. Wilkins not to go further north at this season. The wreaths of snow which during the night have fallen in patches along the road, and greeted our eyes this morning, confirmed us in the wisdom of this advice, and we are now bending our steps once more towards the south. We are still here in the midst of prairie, but more wooded than in our journey of Tuesday. We crossed to-day, at Lafayette, the Wabash, which we had crossed previously at Vincennes, and here, as there, it is a very n.o.ble river.

This must end my journal for the present.

LETTER XII.

INDIANAPOLIS.--LOUISVILLE.--LOUISVILLE AND PORTLAND Ca.n.a.l.--PORTLAND.--THE PACIFIC STEAMER.--JOURNEY TO LEXINGTON.--ASHLAND.--SLAVE PENS AT LEXINGTON.--RETURN TO CINCINNATI.--PENNSYLVANIA CENTRAL RAILWAY.--RETURN TO NEW YORK.

Lexington, Kentucky, Nov. 13th, 1858.

My last letter was closed at Indianapolis, but despatched from Louisville. On the morning after I wrote we had time, before starting for Louisville, to take a walk through the princ.i.p.al streets of Indianapolis. The Capitol or state-house is the only remarkable building; and here, as in most other towns in America, we were struck by the breadth of the streets. In the centre of Indianapolis there is a large square, from which the four princ.i.p.al streets diverge, and from the centre of this, down these streets, there are views of the distant country which on all sides bounds the prospect. This has a fine effect, but all these capital cities of states have an unfinished appearance: great cities have been planned, but the plans have never been adequately carried out. The fact is, they have all a political, and not a commercial origin, and they want the stimulus of commercial enterprise to render them flouris.h.i.+ng towns, or to give them the finished appearance of cities of much more recent date, such as Chicago and others.

We left Indianapolis at about half-past ten, and reached Jeffersonville, on the north side of the Ohio at four. The country at first was entirely prairie, but became a good deal wooded as we journeyed south. It is much more peopled than the wide tracts which we have been lately traversing, for neat towns with white wooden houses and white wooden churches here succeeded each other at very short distances; we crossed several large rivers, tributaries of the Wabash; one, the White river, was of considerable size, and the banks were very prettily wooded. At Jeffersonville we got into a grand omnibus with four splendid white horses, and drove rapidly down a steepish hill, straight on board the steamboat which was to carry us across the Ohio. The horses went as quietly as on dry land, and had to make a circuit on the deck, as we were immediately followed by another similar equipage, four in hand, for which ours had to make room. This was followed by two large baggage waggons and a private vehicle; and all these carriages were on one side of the engine-room. At the other end there was s.p.a.ce for as many more, had there been any need for it; and all this on a tiny little steamboat compared with the Leviathans that were lying in the river.

On reaching Louisville we were comfortably established in a large handsome hotel. As there was still daylight, we took a walk through the princ.i.p.al 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; but without better statistics we must leave this question undecided, for papa saw quite enough at Chicago to deter him from wis.h.i.+ng to go through the same sight at Louisville; we, however, availed ourselves of the address he gave us of the largest slave-dealer, and went to-day to see a slave-pen.

We have lately been reading a most harrowing work, called the "Autobiography of a Female Slave," whose experience was entirely confined to Kentucky--indeed, to Louisville and the adjoining country within a few miles of the Ohio. She describes Kentucky as offering the worst specimen of a slave's life, and gives a horrid account of the barbarity of the masters, and of the almost diabolical character of the slave-dealers, and of those who hold subordinate situations under them.

We were hardly prepared, therefore, on reaching this pen to be received, in the absence of the master, by a good-looking coloured housekeeper, with a face as full of kindness and benevolence as one could wish to see, but "the pen" had yesterday been cleared out, with the exception of one woman with her six little children, the youngest only a year old, and two young brothers, neither of whom the dealer had sold, as he had been unable to find a purchaser who would take them without separating them, and he was determined not to sell them till he could. In the case both of the woman and of the two boys, their sale to the dealer had been caused by the bankruptcy of the owner. The woman had a husband, but having a different master, he retained his place, and his master promised that when his wife got a new home he would send him to join her.

No doubt this separation of families is a crying evil, and perhaps the greatest practical one, as respects hards.h.i.+p, to which the system is necessarily subject; but certainly, from what we have seen and heard to-day, it does not seem to be harshly done, and pains are taken to avoid it: the woman said she had been always kindly treated, and there was not the slightest difficulty made by the dark duenna to our conversing with the slaves as freely as we liked, and she left us with the whole group. The woman took us to see her baby, and we found it in a large and well ventilated room, and she said they had always as much and as good food as they could wish. She said she was forty-five years old, and had ten children living, but the four eldest were grown up. The eldest of those she had with her was a little girl of about thirteen; she said, in answer to a question from papa, that the children had made a great piece of work at parting with their father, but the woman herself seemed quite cheerful and satisfied with her prospects.

On our journey here there were a great many slaves in the car with us, coming to pa.s.s their Sunday at Lexington. They seemed exceedingly merry, and one, whom papa sat next, said he had acc.u.mulated $950, and that when he got $1900, he would be able to purchase his freedom. He said his master was a rich man, having $300,000, and that he was very well treated; but that some masters did behave very badly to their slaves, and often beat them whether they deserved it or not. From the specimen we had of those in the cars, they seemed well-conditioned men, and all paid the same fare that we did, and were treated with quite as much attention. They seem to get some sort of extra wages from their masters besides their food and raiment, out of which they can lay by if they are provident, so as to be able to purchase their freedom in time; but they do not seem always to care about this, as one man here has $4000, which would much more than suffice to buy his freedom; but he prefers remaining a slave. We shall probably see a good deal more of the condition of the slaves within the next few days, so I shall say no more upon the subject at present, excepting that all this does not alter the view which we cannot help taking of the vileness of the inst.i.tution, though it certainly does not appear so very cruel in practice as it is often represented to be by the anti-slavery party.

There are only two great sights to be seen at Louisville. One, the famous artesian well, 2086 feet deep, bored to reach a horrid sulphur spring, which is, however, a very strong one as there are upwards of 200 grains of sulphates of soda and magnesia in each gallon of water, and upwards of 700 grains of chlorides of sulphur and magnesia. There is a fountain over the well, in which the water rises 200 feet, but whether by external pressure or by the natural force of the water, the deponent sayeth not. It comes out in all sorts of forms, sometimes imitating flowers, and sometimes a shower of snow, on which the negro who showed it to us expatiated with great delight. When I said there were only two sights to see, I alluded to this well, and to the magnificent steam vessel, the "Pacific," which was lying at Portland, about three miles down the Ohio, below the Falls; but I forgot altogether the Falls themselves, and the splendid ca.n.a.l described in papa's book, through which vessels are obliged to pa.s.s to get round them, which I ought not to pa.s.s without some notice. The river here is upwards of a mile wide, but the falls are most insignificant; and though the Guide Book describes them as "picturesque in appearance," and that the islands give the Ohio here "the appearance of a great many broken rivers of foam, making their way over the falls, while the fine islands add greatly to the beauty of the scene;" neither papa with his spectacles, nor I with my keen optics, could see more than a ripple on the surface of the water. These falls, however, are sufficient to prevent vessels of any great burden ascending or descending beyond this point of the river, and hence the necessity of the ca.n.a.l: but this splendid work, about which papa's interest was very great, in consequence of what he had written about it, proved as great a disappointment as the falls themselves. It must, however, have been a work of great difficulty, as it is cut through a solid bed of rock.[13] The locks are sufficiently capacious to allow of the pa.s.sage of steamers 180 feet long by 40 feet in breadth, one of which we saw in the lock, and there were three others waiting to pa.s.s through.

These, to our eyes, seemed large and beautiful vessels; but they were altogether eclipsed and their beauty forgotten, when we found ourselves on board the "Pacific." This vessel was to sail in the evening, and is one of the most splendid steamers on the river; certainly nothing could exceed her comfort, infinitely beyond that of the Newport boat, as the saloon was one long room, unbroken by steam-engine or anything else, to obstruct the view from one end to the other. Brilliant fires were burning in two large open stoves, at equal distances from either end, and little tables were set all down the middle of the room, at which parties of six each could sit and dine comfortably. The vessel was upwards of 300 feet long, the cabin alone being about that length. On each side of the cabin were large, comfortable sleeping berths, and on the deck below, adjoining the servants' room, was a sweet little nursery, containing, besides the beds and usual was.h.i.+ng apparatus, four or five pretty little rocking-chairs, for the children. We were shown over the kitchen, and everything looked so complete and comfortable that we longed to go down in her to New Orleans, whither she is bound, and which she will reach in six days. Everything was exquisitely clean, the roof and sides of the cabin being of that beautiful white varnish paint which I have before described, which always looks so pure and lovely.

There was not much ornament, but all was in good taste.

On leaving the "Pacific," we drove to the inn at Portland. The Kentuckians are a fine tall race of men; but, tall as they are in general, the landlord, Mr. Jim Porter, surpa.s.sed them all in height, standing 7 feet 9 inches without his shoes. This is the same individual of whom d.i.c.kens gave an amusing account in his American notes fifteen years ago.

We left Louisville at two o'clock, and came on to Lexington this afternoon. The country is much more like England than anything we have yet seen, being chiefly pasture land. The gra.s.s is that known here, and very celebrated as the "blue gra.s.s" of Kentucky; though why or wherefore it is so called we cannot discover. It is of prodigiously strong growth, sometimes attaining two feet in height; but it is generally kept low, either by cropping or cutting, and is cut sometimes five times a year.

The stock raised upon it is said to be very fine, and the animals are very large and fine looking; but either from the meat not being kept long enough, or from some cause which we cannot a.s.sign, the beef, when brought to table, is very inferior to the good roast beef of Old England.

The road from Louisville to this place is pretty throughout, and seemed quite lovely as we approached Frankfort, though it was getting too dark as we pa.s.sed that town to appreciate its beauties thoroughly. For some miles before reaching it, the road pa.s.ses through a hilly country, with beautiful rounded knolls at a very short distance. The town is situated on the Kentucky river, the most beautiful, perhaps, in America. In crossing the long bridge, we had a fine view down its steep banks, with the lights of the town close on its margin. The state Capitol which we pa.s.sed, is close to the railway, and is a marble building, with a handsome portico. We were very sorry not to have stopped to pa.s.s to-morrow, Sunday, at this place, but we were anxious to reach Lexington, in order to get our letters. We have no great prospects here, as the hotel, excepting the one at Jefferson City, is the worst we have found in America. We had hardly set foot in it, when General Leslie Combe called upon us, having been on the look-out for our arrival. He claimed cousin-s.h.i.+p, having married a Miss T----, but we must leave it to Uncle Harry to determine to which branch of the T---- family she can claim kindred.

_November 15th._--The weather has been unpropitious, and instead of starting to explore the Upper Kentucky, which we had meant to do, we are returning this afternoon to Cincinnati. We have, however, been able to see all the sights here that are worth seeing, besides having been edified yesterday by a n.i.g.g.e.r sermon, remarkable, even among n.i.g.g.e.r sermons, for the wonderful stentorian powers of the preacher. The great object of interest here is Ashland, so called from the ash timber with which the place abounds. This was the residence of Henry Clay, the great American statesman. General Combe gave us a letter of introduction to Mr. James B. Clay, his eldest son, who is the present proprietor of the "location." The house is very prettily "fixed up," to use another American phrase; but we were disappointed with the 200 acres of park, which Lord Morpeth, who pa.s.sed a week at Ashland, is said to extol as being like an English one. We saw nothing, either of the "locust cypress, cedar, and other rare trees, with the rose, the jasmine, and the ivy, clambering about them," which the handbook beautifully describes. The fact is, the Americans, as I have before observed, have not the slightest idea of a garden; and on papa's venturing to insinuate this to Mr. Clay, he admitted it, and ascribed it to its undoubted cause, the expense of labour in this country.

From Ashland we went to what is really a Kentucky sight, the Fair Ground. On an eminence at about a mile from the town, surrounded by beautiful green pastures, there stands a large amphitheatre, capable of holding conveniently 12,000 spectators. In the centre is a large gra.s.s area, where the annual cattle show is held, and when filled it must be a remarkable sight. From this we went to the Cemetery, which, like all others in this country, is neatly laid out, and kept in very good order.

The grave-stones and monuments are invariably of beautiful white marble, with the single exception of a very lofty monument which is being raised to the memory of Mr. Clay. It is not yet finished, but to judge either from what has been accomplished, or from a drawing papa saw of it on a large scale, in a shop window, it is not likely to prove pretty, and the yellowish stone of which it is being built, contrasts badly with the white marble about it.

We went next to see a very large pen, in which there were about forty negroes for sale; they had within the last few days, sold about 100, who had travelled by railway chained together. Those we saw, were divided into groups, and we went through a variety of rooms in which they were domiciled, and were allowed to converse freely with them all. This is one of the largest slave markets in the United States, and is the great place from which the South is supplied. There are, in this place, five of these pens where slaves are kept on sale, and, judging from this one, they are very clean and comfortable. But these pens give one a much more revolting idea of the inst.i.tution than seeing the slaves in regular service. There was one family of a man and his wife and four little children, the price of "the lot" being _$_3500, or 700_l._ sterling, but neither the man nor the woman seemed to care much whether they were sold together or not. There was one poor girl of eighteen, with a little child of nine weeks old, who was sold, and she was to set off to-night with her baby, for a place in the State. The slave-dealer himself was a civil, well-spoken man, at least to us, and spoke quite freely of his calling, but we thought he spoke harshly to the poor negroes, especially to the man with the wife and four children. It appears he had bought the man separately from the woman and children, in order to bring them together, but the man had attempted to run away, and told us in excuse he did not like leaving his clothes behind him; whereupon papa asked him if he cared more for his clothes than his wife, and gave him a lecture on his domestic duties. The dealer said they sometimes are much distressed when separated from their wives, or husband and children, but that it was an exception when this was so. One can hardly credit this, but so far as it is true it is one of the worst features of slavery that it can thus deaden all natural feelings of affection. We have spoken a good deal to the slaves here, and they seem anxious to obtain their freedom. The brother of one of the waiters at our hotel had twice been swindled by his master of the money he had saved to purchase his freedom. I spoke to the housemaid at our hotel, also a slave, who shuddered with horror when she described the miseries occasioned by the separation of relations. She had been sold several times, and was separated from her husband by being sold away from him. She said the poor negroes are generally taken out of their beds in the middle of the night, when sold to the slave-dealers, as there is a sense of shame about transacting this trade in the day-time. From what the slaves told us, they are, no doubt, frequently treated with great severity by the masters, though not always, as they sometimes fall into the hands of kind people; but though they may have been many years in one family, they never know from hour to hour what may be their fate, as the usual cause for parting with slaves is, the master falling into difficulties, when he sells them to raise money, or to pay his debts. The waiter told us, he would rather starve as a freeman than remain a slave, and said this with much feeling and energy.

_Cincinnati, Nov. 15th_, 9 P.M.--We arrived here again this evening at about seven o'clock. The road, the whole way from Lexington, 100 miles, is very pretty, following the course of the Licking for a long way, with high steep banks on both sides, sometimes rising into high hills, but opening occasionally into wide valleys, with distant views of great beauty. In many places the trees here have still their red, or rather brown leaves, which formed a strange contrast with the thick snow covering their branches and the ground beneath. The snow storm last night, of which we had but the tail at Lexington, was very heavy further north, and the snow on the ground lighted up by the moon, enabled us to see and enjoy the beauty of the scenery as we approached Covington, at which place we embarked on board the steamboat to cross the Ohio. I omitted, when we were here before, to mention that in our Sunday walk at Covington, when we first crossed over to Kentucky, we witnessed on the banks of the river a baptism by immersion, though the attending crowd was so large that we could not distinctly see what was going on. We are told, that on these occasions, the minister takes the candidate for baptism so far into the river, that they are frequently drowned. I forget if I mentioned before that Covington is built immediately opposite Cincinnati, at the junction of the Ohio and the Licking, which is here a considerable river, about 100 yards wide, and navigable for steamboats sixty miles further up. The streets of Covington are all laid out in a direct line with the corresponding streets in Cincinnati, and as the streets on both sides mount up the hills on which the towns are built, the effect is very pretty, especially at night, when the line of lamps, interrupted only by the river, appears of immense length. When the river is frozen over, the streets of the two cities may be said to form but one, as carts and carriages can then pa.s.s uninterruptedly from the streets of Cincinnati, to those on the opposite side, and _vice versa_. This snow storm, which has made us beat a rapid retreat from the cold and draughty hotels in Kentucky, makes us feel very glad to be back in this comfortable hotel.

_Pittsburgh, Nov. 17th._--Lord Radstock made his appearance at Cincinnati yesterday, having come from Louisville in a steamer. The day was very bright and beautiful, though intensely cold; and as papa was very anxious to show Lord Radstock the view of Clifton from the heights above, we hired a carriage and went there. We were, however, somewhat disappointed, for the trees were entirely stripped of the beautiful foliage which clothed them when we saw them three weeks ago, and were laden with snow, with which the ground also was deeply covered; and although the effect was still pretty, this gave a harshness to the scene, the details being brought out too much in relief. The same cause detracted, no doubt, from the beauty of the scenery we pa.s.sed through to day on our way here, and greatly spoilt the appearance of the hills which surround Pittsburgh.

But I must not antic.i.p.ate a description of our journey here, but first tell you of our further proceedings at Cincinnati. Lord Radstock is much interested in reformatories and houses of refuge, and we were glad to visit with him the one situated at about three miles from the town, the exterior only of which we had seen in our drive with Mr. Anderson. The building is very large and capacious, having cost 2700_l._ It is capable of holding 200 boys and 80 girls, and the complement of boys is generally filled up; but there are seldom above 60 girls. The whole establishment seems admirably conducted. The boys and girls are kept apart, and each one has a very nice, clean bed-room, arranged in prison fas.h.i.+on, and opening on to long galleries; but with nothing to give the idea of a cell, so perfectly light and airy is each room. There is an hospital for the boys and one for the girls, large and well ventilated rooms; that of the girls is beautifully cheerful, with six or eight nice clean beds; but it says a good deal for the attention paid to their health, that out of the whole number of boys and girls, there was only one boy on the sick list, and he did not appear to have much amiss with him. This is somewhat surprising, as the rooms in which they work are heated by warm water, to a temperature which we should have thought must be very prejudicial to their health, but with this exception, they have every advantage. A large playground, a very large chapel, where they meet for prayers and reading the Bible, the boys below, and the girls in a gallery, and large airy schoolrooms. The children are admitted from the age of 7 up to 16, and the boys are usually kept till 21, and the girls till they are 18. The girls are taught needlework and household work, or rather are employed in this way, independently of two hours and a half daily instruction in the school, and the boys are brought up to a variety of trades, either as tailors, shoemakers, workers of various articles in wire, or the like. The proceeds of their work go in part to pay the expenses of the establishment, but the cost is, with this small exception, defrayed by the town, and amounts to about 20_l._ annually for each boy. These poor children are generally sent there by the magistrates on conviction of some crime or misdemeanour, but are often sent by parents when they have troublesome or refractory children, and the result is, in most cases, very satisfactory. They all seemed very happy, and the whole had much more the appearance of a large school, than of anything partaking of the character of a prison. Having called in the afternoon and taken leave of the Longworths, Andersons, and others, who had shown us so much kindness when we were last here, we started at half-past ten at night for this place.

As we were already acquainted with the first part of the road to Columbus, we thought we should not lose much by this plan, and we wished besides to try the sleeping cars, which has not proved altogether a successful experiment as far as papa is concerned, for he had very little sleep, and is very headachy to-day in consequence. Thrower, too, was quite knocked up by it; my powers of sleeping at all times and places prevented my suffering in the same way, and I found these sleeping cars very comfortable. They are ingeniously contrived to be like an ordinary car by day; but by means of cus.h.i.+ons spread between the seats and a flat board let down half way from the ceiling, two tiers of very comfortable beds are made on each side of the car, with a pa.s.sage between. The whole looks so like a cabin of a s.h.i.+p, that it is difficult not to imagine oneself on board a steamboat. Twenty-four beds, each large enough to hold two persons, can be made up in the cars, and the strange jumble of ladies and gentlemen all huddled together was rather ludicrous, and caused peals of laughter from some of the laughter-loving American damsels. The cots are provided with pillows and warm quilted counter-panes and curtains, which are all neatly packed away under the seats in the daytime. The resemblance to the steamboat in papa's half-waking moments seemed too much for his brain to be quite clear on the subject of where he was. Thrower, who had shared my couch, got up _sea sick_ at about four in the morning, the motion of the carriage not suiting her while in a rec.u.mbent position, and retired to a seat at one end of the carriage. As we neared Columbus, papa became very restless, and made a descent from over my head, declaring the heat was intolerable. "Where," said I, "is your cloth cap?" "Oh!" he answered, "I have thrown that away long ago; that's gone to the fishes." He said he had so tossed himself about, that he did not think he had a b.u.t.ton left on his coat; things were not, however, quite so bad as this, and on finding my couch too cold for him, I at last succeeded in making your dear restless fidgetty papa mount up again to his own place, where, to my comfort, and no doubt to his own also, he soon fell asleep. I got up at five and sat by poor Thrower, and watched the lights of the rising sun on hills, valleys, and rivers for an hour; when in came the conductor, and thrusting his lamp into the face of the sleepers, and giving them a shake, told them to get up, a quarter of an hour being allowed them for breakfast. In one second the whole place was alive; down came gentlemen without their boots, and ladies with their night caps, and in a few minutes all were busily employed in the inn, breakfasting. I had said we did not care about missing the first part of the road which we had seen before; but the joint light of a brilliant full moon and the snow on the hills, made us see the dear old Ohio and the bold Kentucky banks as clearly, almost, as if it had been daylight, till we retired to our beds; and, even then, I could not help lying awake to view the glorious scene out of my cabin window.

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. For about thirty miles we had the bold banks of Virginia opposite to us; but, after that, we quitted the state of Ohio, and for forty miles the course of the river was through the state of Pennsylvania. A number of steamboats enlivened the scene, with their huge stern wheels making a great commotion in the water. The river too was studded with islands, and the continuous bend, the river taking one prolonged curve from Steubenville to Pittsburg, added greatly to the beauty of the scene. On approaching Pittsburg we crossed the Alleghany, which is a fine broad stream. The Monongahela, which here meets it, is a still finer one, and the two together, after their junction, const.i.tute the n.o.ble river which then, for the first time, takes the name of the Ohio, or, as it is most appropriately called by the French, "La belle riviere"--for anything more beautiful than the seventy miles of it which we saw to-day it would be difficult to imagine.

We are lodged here at a very comfortable hotel, facing the Alleghany river. The town forms a triangle, situated between this river and the Monongahela, and after dinner, having arrived here early, we took a walk from the hotel, across the town, until we arrived at the latter river.

The opposite bank here is of great height, and we crossed a bridge, 1500 feet long, with the magnanimous intention of going to the top of the hill to see the magnificent prospect which the summit is said to afford. But our strength, and breath, and courage failed us before we had ascended a third of the height, although there is a good carriage road up and in good condition, from the hard frost which still prevails.

The view, however, even at that height, was very fine, although it was greatly marred by the smoky atmosphere which hangs over the city. After recrossing the bridge we went to the point forming the apex of the triangle, to see the confluence of the two rivers, and, as we could from there look up both rivers and down the Ohio, the view is very remarkable. The town itself disappointed us; but, perhaps, we expected more than we ought reasonably to have done from a great and dirty manufacturing town.

_Harrisburgh, Nov. 18th._--We started this morning by the six o'clock train in order to see the wonderful Pennsylvania railroad by daylight.

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 underrate the beauties of the road we pa.s.sed 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. The length of the two roads is very nearly the same; but, while the whole of the Baltimore and Ohio was beautiful, one side of the mountain being as much so as the other, the first part of the road to-day, till we reached the summit level, was very much of the same character as many other mountain regions we have pa.s.sed. For many miles the road followed the course of the Conemaugh, crossing and recrossing the river, but without any very striking feature. But the moment we had pa.s.sed through a tunnel, 3612 feet long, and began the descent of 2200 feet, on the eastern side of the Alleghany chain, the scene quite baffled description. The summit level of the Baltimore and Ohio is 500 feet higher; but the descent occupies a distance of seventeen miles, while the descent to-day was effected in eleven, so that, with all our partiality for the Baltimore and Ohio, it must be confessed there is nothing on it so wonderful and sublime as this. One curve was quite appalling, and it was rendered more so by the slow rate at which the train moved--not more, I should think, than at the rate of two miles an hour--certainly not nearly so fast as we could have walked, so that we had full leisure to contemplate the chasm into which we should have been plunged headlong had the slightest slip of the wheels occurred. How they can ever venture to pa.s.s it at night is quite surprising. 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.

I must, however, do justice here to the eastern side of the mountains.

For more than 100 miles we closely followed the course of the Juniata, from its source to where it ends its career by falling, quite a magnificent river, into the Susquehanna, about twenty-two miles above this place. After the junction, the n.o.ble Susquehanna was our companion for that distance, this town being situated upon it. The source of the Juniata is seen very soon after pa.s.sing Altamont, and perhaps we were more disposed to do justice to the beauty of the river, from the happy frame of body and mind we were in, owing to the excellent dinner we had just partaken of at that place, consisting of roast beef, roast turkey, apple tart, cranberry preserve, and a most superlative Charlotte Russe--pretty good fare for an hotel in a mountain pa.s.s! No wine or stimulants of any kind were allowed, or what the consequence might have been on papa's restless state of mind it would be difficult to say; as it was, I counted that he rose from his seat to look at the view from the other side of the car, thirty times in the s.p.a.ce of an hour and a half, making a move, therefore, upon an average, of once in every three minutes; and this he afterwards continued to do as often as the road crossed the river. I foolishly, at first, partook of his locomotive propensities, but my exhausted frame soon gave way, so that he declares I only saw one half of its beauties, namely, the half on the side where I was seated; but this half was ample to satisfy any reasonable mortal.

I am at a loss to imagine what our fellow-travellers could have thought of him, as they lounged on their seats, and scarcely ever condescended to look out of window.

We arrived here, not the least tired with our long journey, though it occupied twelve hours, and were so fresh afterwards, that we started after tea, this being the great annual Thanksgiving-day, to the nearest place of wors.h.i.+p we could find, which turned out to be a Baptist "Church," as it is called here, where we heard a most admirable sermon, and felt we had reason to offer up our thanks with as much earnestness as any one of the congregation, for having been spared to make this journey to the Far West, and to have returned to civilised life, without encountering a single difficulty or drawback of any kind. I may as well state, that this Thanksgiving-day was established by the Puritans, and is still kept up throughout the whole of the United States, its object being to return thanks for the blessings of the year, and more especially for the harvest. There are services in all the churches, and we much regretted not finding out till late yesterday, that this was the day set apart for it, for had we known this, we should not have travelled to-day; but once on our journey, with the fear of snow acc.u.mulating in the mountains, we were afraid of stopping on the road, and we were very glad to be able to attend the service this evening.

There is something very beautiful, I think, in thus setting apart one day in the year for such a purpose, and it is interesting too, as being a relic left by the Puritans.

_November 19th._--We are quite charmed with this place, which is a rare exception to all the other capitals we have seen, inasmuch as more has not been undertaken than has been carried out; in fact, it has much more the appearance of a village than of a large city. The beauty of the river surpa.s.ses all description. It is a mile wide, and bends gracefully towards the direction of the mountains through the gorge from which it issues forth in its course towards Chesapeake Bay, and here, where the hills recede to a distance, it expands into a great width, and its face is covered with islands. 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 n.o.ble 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.

Two bridges connect the town with the opposite sh.o.r.e, each of them being about a mile long. The weather is so piercingly cold, that we did not venture across, but we took a long walk up the banks, of the river. The town of Harrisburgh is very small, consisting of only three or four streets parallel to the river, intersected by about a dozen others at right angles to it. The centre one of these is a fine broad street, closed in at the further end by the Capitol. This is a handsome, but unpretending building of red brick, adorned by a portico, and, as usual, surmounted by a dome. On entering at the top of a flight of stairs, there is a circular area, covered in by the dome. Out of this, on one side, is a very neat Senate House, and on the opposite side is the House of Representatives. The State library, a very good one, is upstairs. The flight of stairs up to this, which is continued up to the dome, is wide and handsome, and of such easy ascent, that I ventured up to the top, in order to take a bird's-eye view of the scenery we so much enjoyed below.

We were very well repaid for the trouble, especially as the gallery was glazed, so that we could see the view without being exposed to the cutting wind which was blowing outside.

The houses here are generally of brick, painted a deep red colour, which, not being in too great ma.s.ses, and picked out with a good deal of white, has a very good effect. Some few houses, however, especially towards the outskirts of the town, were of wood, painted white. We yesterday pa.s.sed many villages and towns of these pretty houses, but with the snow lying around them, scarcely whiter than the houses themselves, they had a very chilly appearance, and looked far less tempting than the houses of this description in New England when we first saw them, each in its pretty clean lawn, and surrounded by a lovely foliage. To return to this town--and, as a climax to its perfection, it has, out and out, the most comfortable hotel we have seen in America. It is quite a bijou, with a very pretty facade, and, being new last year, everything is in the best style. The ground floor, as is generally the case in this country, consists, like the Hotel du Louvre in Paris, of good shops, which gives a gayer appearance to the whole than if it were one ma.s.s of dwelling rooms. We find it so comfortable that, instead of going on this afternoon to Philadelphia, we mean to remain here to-night, and to go on to-morrow to New York.

_New York, Nov. 22nd._--We took one more walk at Harrisburgh, before starting on Sat.u.r.day. The morning was lovely, and from the hill above the town, which we had time to reach, the view was very beautiful. But, of all the picturesque things that I have lately seen, I think the scene which presented itself this morning, when I opened our bedroom shutters at six o'clock, was the most striking. The night, on which I had looked out before going to bed, was clear and most beautiful; but a few stars now only remained as the day had begun to dawn, and the east was reddened by the approaching sunrise. Below the window was a very large market-place, lighted up and crowded with buyers and sellers. The women all had on the usual bonnet worn by the lower cla.s.ses in this country,--a sun-bonnet, made of coloured cotton, with a very deep curtain hanging down the back. They wore besides warm cloaks and coloured shawls, and the men large wide-awakes. I have already described the brilliantly red houses, and the day being sufficiently advanced to bring out the colour very conspicuously, I think I never saw a prettier or busier scene, nor one which I could have wished more to have drawn, but there was no time even to attempt it.

After leaving Harrisburgh our road lay for some miles along the course of the Susquehanna, and papa, who had bought a copy of Gertrude of Wyoming, made me read it aloud to him, to the great astonishment of our fellow-travellers and at the expense of my lungs, the noise of a railway carriage in America not being much suited for such an occupation. The river presented a succession of rich scenery, being most picturesquely studded with islands. We were quite sorry to take leave of it; but after these few miles of great beauty, the road made a dash across the country to Philadelphia. Papa, during the whole of the morning, had been most wonderfully obtuse in his geography, and was altogether perplexed when, before reaching Philadelphia, we came to the margin of the river we had to cross to reach that town. He had been quite mystified all the morning at Harrisburg, and at fault as to the direction in which the river was running, and as to whether the streets we were in were at right angles or parallel to it. This state of confusion became still worse when we got into the carriage, as he had miscalculated on which side, after leaving the town, we should first see the river, and had placed me on the left side of the car, when it suddenly appeared, in all its glory, on the right. He almost lost his temper, we all know how irritable he _can_ become, and exclaimed impatiently,--"Well, are we now on this side of the river or the other?" but his puzzle at Philadelphia was from the river which we then came upon, being the Schuylkill, while he thought we had got, in some mysterious way, to the Delaware, on the _west_ bank of which the town is situated, as well as on the _east_ of the Schuylkill. The discovery of the river it really was of course solved the puzzle; but for a long time he insisted that the steamboat we were to embark upon, later in the day, on the Delaware, must be the one we now saw, and it was all the pa.s.sengers could do to persuade him to sit still. He exclaimed, "But why not stay on this side, instead of crossing the river to cross back again to take the cars?" It was altogether a ludicrous state of confusion that poor Papa was in; but it ended, not only in our crossing the river, but in our traversing the whole town of Philadelphia, at its very centre, in the railway cars, going through beautiful streets and squares; and, as we went at a slow pace, we had a capital view of the shops and of the town, which was looking very clean and brilliant, the day being fine and frosty.

We made no stay at Philadelphia, but at length taking the cars on the east side of the Delaware, we proceeded in them to South Amboy; where, embarking again, we had a fine run of twenty-four miles between Staten Island and the coast of New Jersey, and reached this place in time for dinner. We regretted thus turning our backs on Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and Was.h.i.+ngton, without seeing more of them; but the time we have spent in the west has exceeded what we had counted on this part of our journey occupying, and we are anxious to get home to you all.