THE Messenger was one among a crowd of high-pressure steamboats,
clustered together by a wharf-side, which, looked down upon from
the rising ground that forms the landing-place, and backed by the
lofty bank on the opposite side of the river, appeared no larger
than so many floating models. She had some forty passengers on
board, exclusive of the poorer persons on the lower deck; and in
half an hour, or less, proceeded on her way.
We had, for ourselves, a tiny state-room with two berths in it,
opening out of the ladies’ cabin. There was, undoubtedly,
something satisfactory in this ‘location,’ inasmuch as it was in
the stern, and we had been a great many times very gravely
recommended to keep as far aft as possible, ‘because the steamboats
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generally blew up forward.’ Nor was this an unnecessary caution,
as the occurrence and circumstances of more than one such fatality
during our stay sufficiently testified. Apart from this source of
self-congratulation, it was an unspeakable relief to have any
place, no matter how confined, where one could be alone: and as
the row of little chambers of which this was one, had each a second
glass-door besides that in the ladies’ cabin, which opened on a
narrow gallery outside the vessel, where the other passengers
seldom came, and where one could sit in peace and gaze upon the
shifting prospect, we took possession of our new quarters with much
pleasure.
If the native packets I have already described be unlike anything
we are in the habit of seeing on water, these western vessels are
still more foreign to all the ideas we are accustomed to entertain
of boats. I hardly know what to liken them to, or how to describe
them.
In the first place, they have no mast, cordage, tackle, rigging, or
other such boat-like gear; nor have they anything in their shape at
all calculated to remind one of a boat’s head, stem, sides, or
keel. Except that they are in the water, and display a couple of
paddle-boxes, they might be intended, for anything that appears to
the contrary, to perform some unknown service, high and dry, upon a
mountain top. There is no visible deck, even: nothing but a long,
black, ugly roof covered with burnt-out feathery sparks; above
which tower two iron chimneys, and a hoarse escape valve, and a
glass steerage-house. Then, in order as the eye descends towards
the water, are the sides, and doors, and windows of the staterooms,
jumbled as oddly together as though they formed a small
street, built by the varying tastes of a dozen men: the whole is
supported on beams and pillars resting on a dirty barge, but a few
inches above the water’s edge: and in the narrow space between
this upper structure and this barge’s deck, are the furnace fires
and machinery, open at the sides to every wind that blows, and
every storm of rain it drives along its path.
Passing one of these boats at night, and seeing the great body of
fire, exposed as I have just described, that rages and roars
beneath the frail pile of painted wood: the machinery, not warded
off or guarded in any way, but doing its work in the midst of the
crowd of idlers and emigrants and children, who throng the lower
deck: under the management, too, of reckless men whose
acquaintance with its mysteries may have been of six months’
standing: one feels directly that the wonder is, not that there
should be so many fatal accidents, but that any journey should be
safely made.
Within, there is one long narrow cabin, the whole length of the
boat; from which the state-rooms open, on both sides. A small
portion of it at the stern is partitioned off for the ladies; and
the bar is at the opposite extreme. There is a long table down the
centre, and at either end a stove. The washing apparatus is
forward, on the deck. It is a little better than on board the
canal boat, but not much. In all modes of travelling, the American
customs, with reference to the means of personal cleanliness and