by, and a decided seasoning of stale tobacco. Many of the
gentlemen passengers were far from particular in respect of their
linen, which was in some cases as yellow as the little rivulets
that had trickled from the corners of their mouths in chewing, and
dried there. Nor was the atmosphere quite free from zephyr
whisperings of the thirty beds which had just been cleared away,
and of which we were further and more pressingly reminded by the
occasional appearance on the table-cloth of a kind of Game, not
mentioned in the Bill of Fare.
And yet despite these oddities – and even they had, for me at
least, a humour of their own – there was much in this mode of
travelling which I heartily enjoyed at the time, and look back upon
with great pleasure. Even the running up, bare-necked, at five
o’clock in the morning, from the tainted cabin to the dirty deck;
scooping up the icy water, plunging one’s head into it, and drawing
it out, all fresh and glowing with the cold; was a good thing. The
fast, brisk walk upon the towing-path, between that time and
breakfast, when every vein and artery seemed to tingle with health;
the exquisite beauty of the opening day, when light came gleaming
off from everything; the lazy motion of the boat, when one lay idly
on the deck, looking through, rather than at, the deep blue sky;
the gliding on at night, so noiselessly, past frowning hills,
sullen with dark trees, and sometimes angry in one red, burning
spot high up, where unseen men lay crouching round a fire; the
shining out of the bright stars undisturbed by noise of wheels or
steam, or any other sound than the limpid rippling of the water as
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Dickens, Charles – American Notes for General Circulation
the boat went on: all these were pure delights.
Then there were new settlements and detached log-cabins and framehouses,
full of interest for strangers from an old country: cabins
with simple ovens, outside, made of clay; and lodgings for the pigs
nearly as good as many of the human quarters; broken windows,
patched with worn-out hats, old clothes, old boards, fragments of
blankets and paper; and home-made dressers standing in the open air
without the door, whereon was ranged the household store, not hard
to count, of earthen jars and pots. The eye was pained to see the
stumps of great trees thickly strewn in every field of wheat, and
seldom to lose the eternal swamp and dull morass, with hundreds of
rotten trunks and twisted branches steeped in its unwholesome
water. It was quite sad and oppressive, to come upon great tracts
where settlers had been burning down the trees, and where their
wounded bodies lay about, like those of murdered creatures, while
here and there some charred and blackened giant reared aloft two
withered arms, and seemed to call down curses on his foes.
Sometimes, at night, the way wound through some lonely gorge, like
a mountain pass in Scotland, shining and coldly glittering in the
light of the moon, and so closed in by high steep hills all round,
that there seemed to be no egress save through the narrower path by
which we had come, until one rugged hill-side seemed to open, and
shutting out the moonlight as we passed into its gloomy throat,
wrapped our new course in shade and darkness.
We had left Harrisburg on Friday. On Sunday morning we arrived at
the foot of the mountain, which is crossed by railroad. There are
ten inclined planes; five ascending, and five descending; the
carriages are dragged up the former, and let slowly down the
latter, by means of stationary engines; the comparatively level
spaces between, being traversed, sometimes by horse, and sometimes
by engine power, as the case demands. Occasionally the rails are
laid upon the extreme verge of a giddy precipice; and looking from
the carriage window, the traveller gazes sheer down, without a
stone or scrap of fence between, into the mountain depths below.
The journey is very carefully made, however; only two carriages
travelling together; and while proper precautions are taken, is not
to be dreaded for its dangers.