The Thames Steamer—Torrid Night—"The Lady that helped" and her Stays—Port Stanley—Buffalo City— Its Commercial Prosperity—Newspaper Advertisements—Hatred to England and encouragement of Desertion—General Crispianus— Lake Erie in a rage—Benjamin Lett—Auburn Penitentiary— Crime and Vice in the Canadas—Independence of Servants—Penitentiaries unfit for juvenile offenders—Inefficiency of the Police—Insolence of Cabmen—Carters—English rule of the road reversed—Return to Toronto.
The heat at Amherstburgh was so desiccating, that I was glad to leave even my urbane host, serjeant-major as he had been of a royal regiment, and his crowded though clean and comfortable inn, for the spacious deck of the splendid Canadian steamer Thames, Captain Van Allan, on board of which was to be enjoyed the absolute luxury of a spacious state-room upon deck. Alas for the roomy state-room! even in its commodious berth, rest could not be enjoyed, for the night was a torrid one; nothing in the Western Indies could beat it, only there was no yellow fever, although plenty of yellow countenances presented themselves on the shoulders of Americans from the South, and coloured waiters; but that which actually at last put me in a fever was the sight of the female attendant of the ladies' cabin, whose form was so buckled up in stays of the most rigid order, that the heat, American-bred as she was, appeared to have rendered her a Niobe, for she was tall and as straight as a poplar-tree, and much of the colour of its inner rind. Oh! the heat, the intolerable heat, on Lake Erie that night! The worthy captain declared he had never experienced its like, and that as for rest it was impracticable. If the lady's-maid, or "the lady that helped" in the ladies' cabin, as she is called in American boats, kept her stays on that night, Heaven help her! She must have been in a greater state of despair than the man in armour on Lord Mayor's day, who requires to go to bed after a warm bath, the moment he takes his stays off.
But we steamed on, and the boilers themselves were not a whit hotter than we were. How the stokers stood it is a marvel to this day. I suffered dreadfully with the prickly heat, as if in the West Indies.
The Thames is the most splendid boat on Lake Erie, and that is saying a good deal; for the Americans have so many, and several so much larger than this Britisher, that it is a matter of surprise that she should beat them all in convenience, build, and speed; and yet, according to received opinion, the Yankee builders of vessels excel us "by a long chalk," to use a Yankee figure of speech. It is so, however, and is so acknowledged on both sides of the water, that the Thames, Captain Van Allan, takes the shine out of them all.
We started from Amherstburgh, where she called on her way from Detroit, and left Bullock's inn for the steamer which was close at hand, at nine o'clock p.m., and got under steam and travelled all night at a most rapid rate, nor stopped until eight a.m., the next morning, at Port Stanley, formerly called Kettle Creek, a small village with a fine parallel pier harbour, which, unlike Amherstburgh, has thriven amazingly during the past seven years, before which I recollect it to have consisted of about three or four houses. It is now a thriving village; and, as it has a planked road reaching far into the interior, is every day going ahead. The plank road leads to London, twenty-six miles distant. The piers of this artificial harbour are much too narrow, consequently it is dangerous to approach in stormy weather; and, as Lake Erie is a very turbulent little ocean, they must be modified some day or other, whenever the Board of Works is rich enough.
We took in several passengers here, mostly Americans touring, and the vessel was now full, for we had a large proportion of the same class from Detroit. They were chiefly people from the hotter regions of the States, and resembled each other remarkably; sallow, sharp-angled, acute-looking physiognomies: the men tall and loosely jointed; the women prematurely old, and not very handsome. They were quiet and respectable in their manners and demeanour; in fact, too quiet, contrasting strongly in this respect with the real, genuine Yankee.
We reached Buffalo at seven in the evening, after encountering a thunderstorm, which appeared to be very severe towards the shores of the American side of Lake Erie.
Such a mob as poured on board the vessel, after she had with much difficulty threaded the inconvenient, narrow, muddy creek on which Buffalo is located, I never beheld before: blacks and whites, browns and yellows, cabmen and carters, porters and tavern-scouts, pickpockets and free and enlightened citizens.
How the passengers got their baggage conveyed to their hotels, or dwellings, is beyond my art to imagine. Insolent and daring, if these be a pattern mob, Heaven defend us Britishers from democracy! for freedom reigns at Buffalo in a pattern of the newest, which the seldomer copied the better. But one must not judge the money-getting citizens of this fine town by the scenes in the Wapping part of it; for, if one did, it would necessarily be said that they were not an enviable race.
Buffalo, a mere wooden village, burnt during the war of 1812, is now a large and flourishing city, containing 30,000 inhabitants; and, if it had a good harbour, would soon rival New York. To prove this, I beg the reader to take the trouble to peruse the accompanying statement of the present commerce of that city, from the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser of January 10, 1846, by which it will be seen that in the year 1845 the increase of vessels trading with it was enormous, and that by the Welland Canal, or an American ship canal, round the Falls of Niagara, they already contemplate a direct trade with Europe in British bottoms.
"There has been a prodigious accession to the Lake marine during the past season—no less than sixty vessels, whose aggregate tonnage is over 13,000 tons, and at an outlay of 825,000 dollars. Had we not the evidence before us, the assertion would stagger belief.
"More than usual pains were taken by us, during the past season, to procure information on this head and others touching thereto, the result of which we now present in our annual list of new vessels. This season we have ventured beyond the immediate margin of Lake Erie, and those other broad lakes beyond, to Lake Ontario, a knowledge of whose marine is now deemed essential to a thorough understanding of our lake matters.
NUMBER, TONNAGE, AND ESTIMATED COST OF NEW VESSELS BUILT IN 1845, FROM THIS CITY WESTWARD TO CHICAGO.
"During the past season we stated that there was employed on the lakes a marine equal to 80,000 tons; we have assurance now that even that large estimate was below the reality. The latest returns to Congress, in 1843, gave 60,000 tons; but, as those documents are always a year or two behind the reality, and embrace dead as well as living vessels, they are of very little consequence. The existing and employed tonnage is what is most desired. The subjoined shows the number, class, tonnage, and cost of vessels built on this and the other upper lakes during the past five seasons. By adding the cost of annual repairs and money expended in enlarging and re-modelling vessels, the sum would reach 2,500,000 dollars. The total number of vessels built during that period is 179.
"The whole of the above vessels were built above the Falls, at places between this port and Chicago, by capital drawn from the many sources legitimately pertaining to the lake business, and designed as a permanent investment. What has been done below Niagara, in the same field, during the past season, may be seen in the subjoined list of
VESSELS BUILT ON LAKE ONTARIO, 1845.
"To which must be added the schooner J. S. Weeks, rebuilt and enlarged at Point Peninsula, at a heavy outlay; and also the schooner Georgiana Jenia, at St. Catharine's, which was cut in two, and rebuilt. The Josephine and Wyman are rebuilds, but so thoroughly as almost to fall within the denomination of new craft. The Wyman is polacca-rigged, the only one in service, we think. The Algomah is full rigged, and, like the others, very strongly built. The Quebec and Liverpool are also well ironed, and designed for Atlantic service, when the St. Lawrence locks will admit of a free passage.
"There have been built on the lower lake other vessels than those embraced in the above list, including some steamers; and, in order to give our exchanges an opportunity to present the entire number and amount of expense, we omit any estimate of the cost and general outlay of the vessels named above. Applying our data, however, we make the outlay 25,000 dollars each, for the two propellers, and 127,000 dollars for the fifteen sail vessels, being a total of 177,000 dollars.
"Of some sixty steamers now owned on the lake (Erie), there are required for the several lines, when the consolidation exists, about thirty boats. There are also used, at the same time, some ten more small boats, between intermediate ports, for towing, &c., to which we also add the London and four others, belonging to and owned in Canada. There are also fourteen propellers, and ten more to be added on the opening of navigation in the spring, with fifty brigs and two hundred and seventy schooners, known to be in commission, giving the annexed summary of lake tonnage:—
* - totals corrected
"In this we enumerate the seven Oswego propellers, and such sail craft belonging to Lake Ontario only as we know participate in the business of the upper lakes.
"On the stocks.—The desire to invest farther capital in vessels is seen in the number of new craft now on the stocks at various places throughout the whole range of the lakes. At this early day, we hear of the following to be rapidly pushed towards completion:
"At this port, a steamer of 750 tons, for Mr. Reed, the iron steamer Dallas, of 370 tons, for government, and three propellers of large size; at Chippewa, C. W., a large steamer; at Euclid, O., a brig of 290 tons; at Conneaut, O., a brig of 300 tons; at Cleveland, O., a steamer of 700 tons, three propellers of 350 tons each, a brig of 280 tons, a schooner of 230 tons, and another of 70 tons, all to be out early; at Charleston, O., a steamer of 800 tons, a propeller of 350 tons, and a schooner of 200 tons. An Oswego house has an interest in the propeller: at Maumee City, O., two propellers of 350 tons each; at Truago, Michigan, a large steamer of 225 feet keel, for Captain Whitaker; at Detroit, a large steamer for Mr. Newbury, another for Captain Gager, and a third, of the largest class, for Captain Randall; at Palmer, Michigan, a propeller for Captain Easterbrooks; at Newport, Michigan, a steamer for the Messrs. Wards, and the frame of another but smaller boat, for the same firm, to run between Detroit and Port Huron.
"At Goderich, C. W., or vicinity, a propeller; at Milwaukie, a barque and brig, of large tonnage, 300 each. One of these vessels is nearly planked up already, and will be down with a cargo of wheat as soon as the straits are navigable; at Depere, W. T., a large-sized schooner, and a yacht of 70 tons; at Chicago, a large brig, or schooner, for Captain Parker, late of the Indiana; at St. Catherine's, C. W., a brig; and at the mouth of the Genesee River a propeller, for a Rochester company, making, in all, ten steamers, twelve propellers, and twelve sail vessels—thirty-four in all."
Another American paper, in its remarks on the preceding article, furnishes some additional information.
"The introduction of steam upon the lakes was gradual, yet commensurate with our wants. From the building of the second boat, in 1822, to the launch of the Sheldon Thompson, at Huron, in 1830, six or seven small steamers had only been put in commission, and for the ensuing four years a press of business kept in advance of the facilities. But the zeal and extended desire to invest capital in new steamers was reached in 1837-8, when no less than thirty-three boats, with an aggregate of 11,000 tons, were built at an outlay of 1,000,000 dollars. This period points to the maximum, and then came the reaction. In 1840, only one steamer came off the stocks, and the same prostration and dearth in this department continued for three years, when it again received a new and fresh impulse, and now presents one of the leading characteristics of investment in our inland trade. The sum of 1,000,000 dollars has been diverted from other channels of business to this branch within the past two years, in addition to a very large outlay in sail vessels; and as the wants of commerce develop, some marked changes may be observed. The small, or medium-sized boats, into which the merchant farmer and foreign immigrant were indiscriminately huddled, have given place to capacious, swift, and stately vessels, in which are to be found a concentration of all that is desirable in water conveyance. Such is now the characteristic of steamboat building on the western lake.
"The following is the number and value of vessels owned and exclusively engaged in the trade of Upper Canada in 1844:—
"The whole number of men employed between Buffalo and Chicago is estimated at about 5,000. During the season of non-navigation, half of these are employed upon farms in Ohio.
"Demonstrable evidence from many sources is at command to show the progressive change and accumulative power of the lake trade. In 1827, a steamer first visited Green Bay, for government purposes, and the Black Hawk war in 1832 drew two boats to Chicago for the first time. Now the trade of the latter place, in connexion with the business growing out of the rapid settlement of Wisconsin, sustains a daily line. A glance at the trade of Chicago for last year will illustrate the change that has taken place there.
"The gross tonnage of the lakes above the Falls, in 1845, was 100 vessels and 80,000 tons. This spring it will be found to have augmented from 5,000 to 10,000 tons.
"In 1845, the whole number of arrivals at the port of Buffalo was 1,700. Last season, 1,320 entries were made at Chicago. The entries at the port of Buffalo for 1845 were—
*-total corrected
"From a valuable table given by the "Commercial Advertiser," we learn that theavailablesteam marine of the lakes is 60 steamers, and a tonnage of 30,000 tons. This is irrespective of 20 propellers."
If the spirit of tradelocatesany where on this earth of ours, it does so specially at Buffalo, where dollars and cents, cents and dollars, occupy almost every thought of almost every mind. It is very amusing to look at the advertisements in a Buffalo paper. I shall give two or three as specimens.
Another Lotof those worsted dress goods, at onedollar a pattern, received this morning.
A. Wattles.
French Corded Skirts.Another lot of those Frenchcorded skirts just received, and for sale at
J. G. Latimer's, 216, Main Street.
Crash, Crash.Pure linen crash, slightly damaged,at half price at
Wattles'Cheap Store.
What kind of goods do you want?Ladies andgentlemen can find every kind of goods they may wish, inthe dry goods line, at Garbutt's, plain or fanciful, any kindof dress you are in want of. Call at theBig Window, 204,Main Street.
Running off again.After Friday next, I shall commencerunning off my beautiful stock of Paris muslins andBalzorines, at great reduction.
N. B. Palmer, 194, Main Street.
History of Oregon, by George Wilkes, 25 cents.
T. S. Hawkes.
Gaiter Pantsmade to order, No. 11, Pearl Street.
E. W. Smith.
Voice of the People.Need not force them down.Sugar-coated Indian vegetable pills.
G. B. Smith.
Illustrations of the most ridiculous kinds show that newspaper advertisements must be very cheap indeed, for everything literally, from a washing-tub to a steamboat, is advertised daily for sale at Buffalo.
Buffalo is a sample city of the lake frontier of the United States, better than Rochester, a more manufacturing mill-power place; a specimen of what enterprise, energy, and paper money credit can do: a specimen of the border population, where hatred to England reigns supreme among the lower classes, and where a residence of six months would quite cure any English ultra-radical destructive of good education; an ultra-radical destructive of no education, or half educated, would, however, be vastly improved.
I had a soldier with me, and he asked leave to go on shore, which I freely granted, convinced, from what I knew of him, that he was proof against Buffalonian eloquence. He had scarcely stepped out of the vessel, on the wharf, in plain clothes, before he was hailed by a deserter, who was doing duty as a porter to some shopkeeper, and told of the delights of liberty and independence; but the porter had left the regiment for a little false estimate of the wordsmeumandtuum, and therefore the old soldier declined turning from the carrying of Brown Bess[3]to being a beast of burden. He was then assailed by a sergeant, who had been obliged to desert for misconduct in a pecuniary point of view, and shown into a little grog-shop on the quay, that he was keeping; but appearances were here not very flattering either: in short, the deserter is not at a premium in the United States, for he is always suspected. Strange to say, these men are occasionally enlisted in the regular American army; a proof of which was witnessed last winter at Sackett's Harbour, where some of our officers from Kingston saw a man who had been received, and who had deceived all the American officers, except the surgeon. This gentleman, suspecting he was not a free and enlightened citizen, although he assumed the drawl and guess, suddenly said to him, "Attention!" upon which the deserter immediately dropped his hands straight, and stood, confessed, a soldier.
It would appear that in peace-time deserters should not be received into the ranks of a friendly power. Even in war, they are received by European nations with difficulty and distrust; for a man who once voluntarily breaks his oath and casts off his allegiance is very likely to be a double traitor.
The deserters from the regiments stationed in Canada frequently apply to be received back, but it is a rule to refuse them; and very properly so.
It is incredible what pains are taken on the frontier, by the loafing population from the States, to persuade the young soldiers to desert; and that, too, without any adequate prospect of benefit, but merely out of hatred, intense hatred, to England; for they soon leave the unfortunate men, who usually are plied with liquor, to their fate, when once in the land of liberty; and this fate is almost invariably a very miserable one.
The soldier I had with me told me that, while we were at the Falls, a man made up to him at the hotel, for he was then in uniform, being on the British side, and introduced himself as a general, saying that he was surprised he could remain in such a service, and volunteered to place him in their army, which he laughed at, and told him he preferred Queen Victoria's. This man he described to me as a gentleman, in his dress and manner; but, if he was a general, he was certainly a militia one, for the regular generals are not very plenty; and, from what I have heard of them, are above such meanness.
We had a military general, who is, I believe, a shoemaker of Buffalo or of New York, at Kingston last winter, who gave out that he had crossed over the ice to see if it was true that fortifications were actually in progress at Kingston. He met a keen young gentleman, who was determined to have a little fun with General Crispianus, who was attired in a fine furred, frogged, winter coat, and pointed Astracan cap, with a heavy tassel of silk.
"So you are at work here, I guess?"
"Yes," said the young gentleman, "we are."
"Well, I do hope you will be prepared in Kanaday, for though we don't approve some of our president's notions, we shall sustain him to a man; and, as soon as ever war is declared, we shall pour two or three hundred thousand men into your country and annex it."
"Oh, is that all!" replied the youth; "I advise you then, general, to take care of yourself, for we expect sixty thousand regulars from England."
"I didn't hear that before," said General Crispianus; and no doubt he returned to his last somewhat discomfited.Ne sutor ultra crepidam.
Before his departure, however, he went to see a newly invented pile-driver, which was at work, and, after looking at themonkeyfor some time, which was raised and lowered by two horses, and drove the piles very quickly, with enormous power, he said to his friend suddenly, "Waal, I swar, that does act sassy."
So much for General Crispianus.
We passed the night aboard of the Thames, preferring her spacious accommodations to those of the hotels in such a hot season, when the rain poured in torrents; but sleep was out of the question, for the climate of Sierra Leone could scarcely be more insufferable than the atmosphere then and there.
The rain cleared away in the morning, and a prospect of Lake Erie in a rage presented itself; so we could not quit the miserable apology for a harbour which Buffalo Creek affords, crowded, narrow, and nasty, until half past nine, and then, with great difficulty, on board the Emerald, a small Canadian steamboat, worked out amidst a string or maze of all sorts of merchant-craft.
Lake Erie presented an appearance exactly like the shallow sea, green and foamy, and very angry; and, in passing the shoals at the entrance of the Niagara river, it rolled the boat so that there was some danger; and one old lady vowed that she would never quit the United States any more.
A nice comfortable-looking Massachusetts farmer, the very type of a Buckinghamshire grazier of the year 1800, who was her husband, took a fancy to me because I was endeavouring to assure his old dame that she was not in real danger, and told me various stories, for he was very loquacious.
Among other things, he said it was very disgraceful to the Buffalonians to allow such a miscreant as Benjamin Lett, whom we saw on the wharf, be at large, as he boasted of having blown up Brock's monument, and of shooting Captain Ussher in cool blood at his own door in the night, long after all the disturbances of the insurrection were over. Lett seemed to glory in his villanies, and was a disgusting-looking loafer, for whose punishment the laws of the United States have proved either too lenient or totally inadequate. This fellow escaped when heavily ironed by jumping out of a rail car on his way to the Auburn Penitentiary, and no doubt has many admirers.
The good farmer told me that he had been to see Auburn, and that there was a little boy confined there for setting fire to a barn. He was only eleven years of age, and had been hired for half a dollar by a ruffian to do the deed.
But Auburn (what a misnomer for a penitentiary establishment, enough to make poor Goldsmith shiver in his shroud!) is not the only penitentiary in America where children expiate crime. Kingston in Canada can show several examples, among others, three brothers; and it appears to me that a better system is required in both countries. A house of correction for such juvenile offenders would surely be better than to mix them in labour with the hardened villains of a penitentiary. It is, in fact, punishing thought before it has time to discriminate, and the consequence is that these children return youths to the same place, and when they again leave it as youths, they return as men, for their minds are then callous.
The penitentiary system in Canada is undergoing a strict trial.
It will surprise my readers to state that, in an agricultural country, where the manners of the people are still very primitive, where education is still backward, and civilization slowly advancing, out of a population of about 1,200,000, scattered widely in the woods, there should be so large a proportion as twenty women, and five hundred men, in the Kingston Penitentiary; for, as education and civilization advance, and large towns grow up, new wants arise, and evil communication corrupts good manners, so that the proportion of great crimes between an old and a new country is much in favour always of the latter.
Recent discoveries of the police in Montreal have shown thathellsof the most atrocious character, and one in imitation of Crockford's, as far as its inferior means would go, have been found out.
At Kingston a most wretched establishment of the same nature has recently been broken up, and at Toronto great incentives to vice in the very young exist.
Clerks in banks have gambled away the property of their employers in these places to the amount of several thousands, and, the frontier of the United States being so near, they have fled as soon as discovery was apprehended, but, owing to the international arrangements for the arrest of such criminals, have hitherto been detected, and consigned to the laws of their offended country.
The spirit of insubordination, which so forcibly operates in uneducated minds, where the constant example of the excess of freedom in the neighbouring States is ever present, has much changed the aspect of society in all the large towns and villages of Western Canada. There is no longer that honest independence of the working and labouring classes which existed fifteen years ago; but impudent assumption has forced its way very generally, and among servants more particularly. If they are not permitted to make the kitchen a rendezvous for their friends, to go out whenever they like, and in fact to be masters and mistresses of the habitation, they immediately, and without warning, leave, and no laws exist to prevent the growing evil: the consequence is that household economy is every where deranged, and aplace, as it is called, is only good where high life below stairs is freely permitted.
The servants too are chiefly Irish, who have neither means nor inclination for settling in the forest, and consequently there is little or no competition, while they are so well known to each other, and so banded in a sort of Carbonari system, that it is extremely difficult to replace bad ones, even by worse.
The women servants are the worst. I saw an instance lately however of a precocious young villain of twelve, who was footboy in a gentleman's family, and his young sister, not fourteen, under-housemaid. His mother, a widow in infirm health, recently imported from Dublin, had brought up her children well, as far as reading and writing went, but had indulged them too much, and beat them so much, that they neither loved nor feared her. The little boy, only twelve, got into bad company, and ran away from his place, where he was well fed, well clothed, and kindly treated, and took his livery with him. He was brought back, after being partially frost-bitten, by his uncle, and received again from mistaken kindness. A cook of bad habits and worse temper got hold of him, and, after staying a short time, he again deserted with all the clothes and things he could carry. A young lady in the family had previously told him that her father would one day take him to the penitentiary to show him what bad boys came to. "That is the very place I want to get into," said the young ruffian, "for I hear there is fine fun there; I will steal something by and by, and then they will send me there."
Accordingly, he did steal, and took French leave one fine morning with Madam Cookey, having previously strangled the young lady's favourite cat, just about to kitten, and having the night before he absconded told the young lady he had made a famous nest for pussy to kitten in, and that if she went to the cellar in the morning, she would find the cat on her nest.
The young lady thought nothing of what he said at the moment, but, after finding when the family got up that the cook and boy were off, she went to look at her kittens, found the cat strangled, frozen, and placed on the nest. A day or two afterwards, the little sister decamped with three suits of dresses. Now what use would there be in putting such a boy or such a girl at so tender an age, and with such principles, into a penitentiary?
Penitentiaries are not proper receptacles for infant villains. The very contagion of working with murderers, coiners, horse-stealers, and scoundrels of the deepest dye is enough alone to confirm their habits and inclinations; and I am not aware of any instance of an infant boy or girl coming out of the Kingston Penitentiary subdued or improved. They are more marked characters when they again join their former friends; for they seldom avoid their former haunts and those whose example first led them astray, but plunge again and again deeper into crime.
It is the same with beating a child to excess; spare the rod and spoil the child, says the Jewish lawgiver; but where slavery does not exist, the rod is not to be used to that extent, and it does not improve even slaves. No; as in the army and in the navy, it hardens culprits, and very seldom indeed acts upon their consciences.
Border population is usually of a low character, and I cannot think it can be worse anywhere than where the maritime, or ratherlaculine, if such a word is admissible, preponderates, and where that race are unemployed for at least five months of the Boreal winters of Canada. It is only a wonder that serious crime is so infrequent. Burglary was almost unknown, as well as highway robbery, until last year; but instances of both occurred near Toronto, and the former twice at Kingston. The only use to such a class that a war could be of would be to employ them; but it is to be predicted, if peace exists much longer, that the civil and criminal jurisprudence of towns and cities bordering on the great lakes must undergo very great revision, and a suitable police be employed in them.
Nothing can, by any possibility, be more eminently absurd than the police of Kingston as at present constituted. These men are dressed like officers in the army; and, instead of being in the streets to prevent accident or crime, are employed, as they say, hard at work, detecting the latter. How they do now and then, at intervals few and far between, succeed in detecting an unhappy loafer is a mystery to everybody, for they are usually observed on the steps of the Town Hall, or carrying home provisions from the market, with a fine dog following them, or else jaunting about in cabs or sleighs.
London is said to have suffered much by the policemen finding their way down the area steps of houses, and amusing themselves in cupboard courtships with the lady-cooks, housemaids, and scullions; but I verily believe Kingston has not arrived at that perfection of a domestic police, for most of the men are middle-aged and married.
The cabmen and carters of Kingston, it is said, elect the Aldermen and Common Council. Whether this be true or false, I cannot pretend to say, but it is very certain that a more insolent, ungoverned race than the cabmen do not exist anywhere. The best position of the best promenade is occupied by these fellows; and no respectable female or timid man dares to pass them without receiving coarse insult; and, if complaint is made, they mark the complainant; and, if they keep a sleigh or carriage, make a point of running races near them, and cracking heavy whips to frighten their horses. One of these ruffians frightened a gentleman's horse last winter, and threw him, his wife, and daughter on the pavement, in consequence of the animal running away, and overturning the vehicle they were in. They know all the grooms and servants, and act according as they like or dislike them, caring very little what their masters hear or see. The carters are somewhat better, as there are decent men among them; but many of that body care very little about the laws of the road, which, by the by, are different here from those at home.