A WINTERINTHE UNITED STATES.
A WINTERINTHE UNITED STATES.
THE WINTER VOYAGE RECOMMENDED—A CABIN TO ONE’S SELF MAY THEN BE HAD AT NO ADDITIONAL COST—ADVANTAGES OF TRAVELLING IN AMERICA IN WINTER—A FEELING IN A GALE—THE AMERICANS ON BOARD THE STEAMER—DIVINE SERVICE ON BOARD.
THE WINTER VOYAGE RECOMMENDED—A CABIN TO ONE’S SELF MAY THEN BE HAD AT NO ADDITIONAL COST—ADVANTAGES OF TRAVELLING IN AMERICA IN WINTER—A FEELING IN A GALE—THE AMERICANS ON BOARD THE STEAMER—DIVINE SERVICE ON BOARD.
I would recommend the man who begins to feel the effects of long-continued professional labour, or of an idle and luxurious life, if his constitution is still capable of amendment, to try what may be gained by a voyage across the Atlantic, and back again, in winter; with such an interval between the two as he might be able to allow for a tour in the United States. In the summer the weather is likely to be so fine that the only benefit he would derive from his two voyages would be that of breathing the air of the ocean for as many days as he would spend in making them; but in winter there would be almost a certainty of some rough weather; and if after a few days he should prove capable of resisting the usualdisturbing effects of such weather at sea, and come to take a pleasure in facing and battling against boisterous winds and tossing waves, I do not know what could more rapidly brace up within him what had begun to fail. Even the mere finding of one’s sea-legs, and the subsequent use of them under difficulties, would not be unattended with advantage, for I suppose it would bring into action and develope muscles not much used at other times. In winter, too, the air would be cool (it is not at all necessarily cold at that season on the track between England and America, except when one nears the American coast), and this coolness of the air would of itself have with many constitutions an invigorating effect. But be the process what it may by which your two ocean voyages bring about their renovating result, that result is that you return to your home a stronger and a hungrier man than you were before you left it.
Advantages of Travelling in Winter.
There is always much inconvenience and discomfort in sharing at sea the few square feet a cabin contains with another man, however gentlemanly he may be; and it is not improbable that one taken promiscuously from a hundred and fifty Transatlantic travellers would possess some habit or infirmity which would render such close companionship almost insufferable. In summer you cannot avoid this misery except at a great cost. To be alone at that season you must pay the fare of the one or two additional berths in your cabin which you wish should remain unoccupied. But in winter the number of passengers being always less than the number of berths, you can stipulate for a cabin to yourself without being put to any additional expense. There are now so manycompeting lines of steamers to America, that neither on the outward nor homeward voyage will you find any difficulty on this head. And you need not scruple about asking for this accommodation, for it may be granted to you without at all lessening either the profits of the owners of the ship, or the comforts of any one of the passengers.
Travelling also on theterra firmaof America in winter has its advantages. At this season of the year you find everybody at home; and if your object is rather to see the people than the country in which they live, this will alone outweigh all other considerations. The Americans being the most locomotive people in the world, are seldom to be found at home in summer. I travelled through the States in the winter and the early spring, and had letters of introduction to persons in every city I stayed at, and in no instance did I find anyone absent from home, with the single exception of a gentleman who happened to be just at that time discharging his duties as Member of Congress at Washington, whereas the letter which had been given me was directed to him at his house at Chicago, where I presented it. In winter, also, one escapes the persecutions of the mosquitoes, and of the creeping things that bite in beds, of the withering heat, and tormenting dust—those inevitable concomitants of travel under an American summer sun.
What is lost by confining one’s travels in America to the (botanically) dead season of the year is, that nothing is seen of the summer and autumn aspects of the vegetation of the country. Its winter aspect, however, is not without interest to the Englishman,whose eye is accustomed to the perennial green of his own parks and meadows, which are generally, indeed, even greener at Christmas than at Mid-summer. While in America I did not see in the winter and early spring a blade of grass that was even faintly tinted with green, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, or from New York to the Rocky Mountains. I was told that the blue grass of parts of Kentucky and Virginia is an exception, but of this I saw nothing myself. I found the roadsides, pastures, and prairies everywhere clothed in unrelieved drab.
To look out from one of the Cunard Company’s magnificent steam-ships, where everything is going on with the precision of clockwork, while a gale is raging on the ocean around you, and to see that in the Mid-Atlantic you are master of the winds and waves, makes you feel that it is something to be a man.
American Fellow-Passengers.
As I was going to America to see the Americans, I took the first opportunity which presented itself—that of the voyage to America—for weighing and measuring the specimens of that very compound race who happened to be on board the ship in which I was sailing. About half the passengers, forty-five in all, were of German extraction; and about half of this half were of the Hebrew persuasion. One young fellow among these latter, who I suppose might be regarded as a representative of the broad synagogue, delivered it as his opinion, that the time had come when the Jews should give up all their peculiar practices which modern knowledge had proved to be founded in misconceptions and mistakes. He instancedtheir abstinence from pork, and from the blood of the animals they used for food, and their method of killing animals. One of these Teutonic Americans, a youth with such a width of shoulder, and massiveness of neck and head, that no one could look upon him without being reminded of a buffalo, was an Indian trader from the borders of Kansas. His practice was to give the Indians four dollars’ worth of goods for such a buffalo robe as sells in London for fifty or sixty shillings. It was his opinion that Indians were vermin which should on every opportunity have a dose of lead administered to them. When asked if this was justifiable, ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘they are a set of bloodthirsty, treacherous skunks; and they must all die out, or be shot down, and it can’t matter much to them which it is. It comes to much the same in the end. They shot my brother, and my plan is to take a shot at them whenever I have a chance.’ All these German Americans spoke English as fluently as they did German. Their most prominent idea appeared to be hatred of all aristocracies. That of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland they regarded with their purest hatred, because it seemed to them the most developed and the most powerful. The best mannered people of the party were the Yankee and New York traders; some of these were buyers for large wholesale and retail houses, others on their own account. There were about a dozen of them on board. They were very careful about their dress, and their conversation was pleasing and intelligent. The majority of them were entirely free from the Yankee tone of voice. They were the veryreverse of pushing, and they never guessed. In appearance and manners they would have passed amongst ourselves for gentlemen. We had, however, among the passengers one genuine Yankee of the received type. He had been a successful inventor of improvements in machinery, though medicine, not mechanics or engineering, was his business. He thought that anything by which he could make money was as much his business as his profession was. He was always talking, and ready to argue on any subject: if unacquainted with it, that made no difference—he still had a right to express his opinion. His favourite idea was that discussion led to knowledge, and that books came after knowledge, and that therefore they were not of much value. This dictum he fearlessly applied to everything—to history, to science, and to religion. Theoretically he was a strong Negrophilist. He believed that the patriarchs and prophets, that the Saviour of the world and His apostles were all Negroes. He thought that the amount of wealth a man had been able to accumulate was the true measure of a man, because all pursued wealth, and employed in the pursuit the whole of their power. If a man was idle or stupid, he employed what power was left him, after so much had been cancelled by his idleness or stupidity. And therefore—for this was his conclusion—if he could produce several blacks, which he was sure he could do, who had accumulated more wealth than anyone present, then they were better men than any of the present company. I say he was theoretically a Negrophilist, because, although he liked the Negro, he liked him best at a distance. In politics, he heldthat clever men, and men with ideas, were the bane of the country. They had already got their constitution and their laws. The people did not want a letter of either altered, or anything added to either. All officers, therefore, elected by the people, whether for the general or the local government, were in the position of servants with written instructions. No one would tolerate a domestic servant who, in the face of his instructions, thought for himself; nor ought the people ever to re-elect a public servant who acted in this way. Indeed he held that no man should ever be re-elected, but that all public offices should be made ‘to go as far as possible’ in bringing into notice deserving young men, and in helping them on a little, and in rewarding in a temporary way those who had exerted themselves on behalf of their party. He was always joking; his jokes consisting of grotesque impossibilities and laughable exaggerations. But his unconscious and unfailing conceit, and his assumptions of omniscience, were as ridiculous as his jokes.
On Sunday Divine Service was celebrated in the saloon. The service was that of the Established Church. The Germans absented themselves. The Americans were all present, and behaved very well, many of them making the responses audibly. The Bishop of Ontario read the prayers, and an English clergyman preached. Some of the Americans proposed to him that he should, as they expressed it, ‘hold another meeting’ in the evening; but it would not have been right to drive the Germans a second time on to the deck.