I cannot but think that there should be great changes in this establishment, and that gradually the punishment, which undoubtedly is intended, should be made to fall on the prisoners. "Look at the prisoners' rations!" the soldiers say in Bermuda when they complain of their own; and who can answer them?
I cannot understand why the island governor should have authority in the prison. He from his profession can know little or nothing about prisons, and even for his own work,—or no work, is generally selected either from personal favour or from military motives, whereas the prison governor is selected, probably with much care, for his specialities in that line. And it must be as easy and as quick for the prison governor to correspond with the Home Office as for the island governor to correspond with the Colonial Office. There has undoubtedly been mischief done by the antagonism of different authorities. It would seem reasonable that all such establishments should be exclusively under the Home Office.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CONCLUSION.
From Bermuda I took a sailing vessel to New York, in company with a rather large assortment of potatoes and onions. I had declared during my unlucky voyage from Kingston to Cuba that no consideration should again tempt me to try a sailing vessel, but such declarations always go for nothing. A man in his misery thinks much of his misery; but as soon as he is out of it it is forgotten, or becomes matter for mirth. Of even a voyage in a sailing vessel one may say that at some future time it will perhaps be pleasant to remember that also. And so I embarked myself along with the potatoes and onions on board the good ship 'Henrietta.'
Indeed, there is no other way of getting from Bermuda to New York; or of going anywhere from Bermuda—except to Halifax and St. Thomas, to which places a steamer runs once a month. In going to Cuba I had been becalmed, starved, shipwrecked, and very nearly quaranteened. In going to New York I encountered only the last misery. The doctor who boarded us stated that a vessel had come from Bermuda with a sick man, and that we must remain where we were till he had learnt what was the sick man's ailment. Our skipper, who knew the vessel in question, said that one of their crew had been drunk in Bermuda for two or three days, and had not yet worked it off. But the doctor called again in the course of the day, and informed us that it was intermittent fever. So we were allowed to pass. It does seem strange that sailing vessels should be subjected to such annoyances. I hardly think that one of the mail steamers going into New York would be delayed because there was a case of intermittent fever on board another vessel from Liverpool.
It is not my purpose to give an Englishman's ideas of the United States, or even of New York, at the fag end of a volume treating about the West Indies. On the United States I should like to write a volume, seeing that the government and social life of the people there—of that people who are our children—afford the most interesting phenomena which we find as to the new world;—the best means of prophesying, if I may say so, what the world will next be, and what men will next do. There, at any rate, a new republic has become politically great and commercially active; whereas all other new republics have failed in those points, as in all others. But this cannot be attempted now.
From New York I went by the Hudson river to Albany, and on by the New York Central Railway to Niagara; and though I do not mean to make any endeavour to describe that latter place as such descriptions should be—and doubtless are and have been—written, I will say one or two words which may be of use to any one going thither.
The route which I took from New York would be, I should think, the most probable route for Englishmen. And as travellers will naturally go up the Hudson river by day, and then on from Albany by night train,[*] seeing that there is nothing to be seen at Albany, and that these trains have excellent sleeping accommodation—a lady, or indeed a gentleman, should always take a double sleeping-berth, a single one costs half a dollar, and a double one a dollar. This outlay has nothing to do with the travelling ticket;—it will follow that he, she, or they will reach Niagara at about 4 a.m.