Wanderings in South America

by Charles Waterton

Broadway is the principal street. It is three miles and a half long. I am at a loss to know where to look for a street in any part of the world which has so many attractions as this. There are no steam-engines to annoy you by filling the atmosphere full of soot and smoke; the houses have a stately appearance; while the eye is relieved from the perpetual sameness, which is common in most streets, by lofty and luxuriant trees.

Nothing can surpass the appearance of the American ladies when they take their morning walk from twelve to three in Broadway. The stranger will at once see that they have rejected the extravagant superfluities which appear in the London and Parisian fashions, and have only retained as much of those costumes as is becoming to the female form. This, joined to their own just notions of dress, is what renders the New York ladies so elegant in their attire. The way they wear the Leghorn hat deserves a remark or two. With us the formal hand of the milliner binds down the brim to one fixed shape, and that none of the handsomest. The wearer is obliged to turn her head full ninety degrees before she can see the person who is standing by her side. But in New York the ladies have the brim of the hat not fettered with wire or tape or ribbon, but quite free and undulating; and by applying the hand to it they can conceal or expose as much of the face as circumstances require. This hiding and exposing of the face, by the by, is certainly a dangerous movement, and often fatal to the passing swain. I am convinced, in my own mind, that many a determined and unsuspecting bachelor has been shot down by this sudden manoeuvre before he was aware that he was within reach of the battery.

The American ladies seem to have an abhorrence (and a very just one, too) of wearing caps. When one considers for a moment that women wear the hair long, which Nature has given them both for an ornament and to keep the head warm, one is apt to wonder by what perversion of good taste they can be induced to enclose it in a cap. A mob-cap, a lace-cap, a low cap, a high cap, a flat cap, a cap with ribbons dangling loose, a cap with ribbons tied under the chin, a peak-cap, an angular cap, a round cap and a pyramid cap! How would Canova's Venus look in a mob-cap? If there be any ornament to the head in wearing a cap, it must surely be a false ornament. The American ladies are persuaded that the head can be ornamented without a cap. A rosebud or two, a woodbine, or a sprig of eglantine look well in the braided hair; and if there be raven locks, a lily or a snowdrop may be interwoven with effect.

Now that the packets are so safe, and make such quick passages to the United States, it would be as well if some of our head milliners would go on board of them in lieu of getting into the diligence for Paris. They would bring back more taste and less caricature. And if they could persuade a dozen or two of the farmer's servant-girls to return with them, we should soon have proof-positive that as good butter and cheese may be made with the hair braided up, and a daisy or primrose in it, as butter and cheese made in a cap of barbarous shape, washed, perhaps, in soapsuds last new moon.

New York has very good hotels and genteel boarding-houses. All charges included, you do not pay above two dollars a day. Little enough, when you consider the capital accommodations and the abundance of food.

In this city, as well as in others which I visited, everybody seemed to walk at his ease. I could see no inclination for jostling, no impertinent staring at you, nor attempts to create a row in order to pick your pocket. I would stand for an hour together in Broadway to observe the passing multitude. There is certainly a gentleness in these people both to be admired and imitated. I could see very few dogs, still fewer cats, and but a very small proportion of fat women in the streets of New York. The climate was the only thing that I had really to find fault with; and as the autumn was now approaching I began to think of preparing for warmer regions.

Strangers are apt to get violent colds on account of the sudden change of the atmosphere. The noon would often be as warm as tropical weather and the close of day cold and chilly. This must sometimes act with severity upon the newly-arrived stranger, and it requires more care and circumspection than I am master of to guard against it. I contracted a bad and obstinate cough which did not quite leave me till I had got under the regular heat of the sun near the equator.

I may be asked, was it all good-fellowship and civility during my stay in the United States? Did no forward person cause offence? Was there no exhibition of drunkenness or swearing or rudeness? or display of conduct which disgraces civilised man in other countries? I answer, very few indeed: scarce any worth remembering, and none worth noticing. These are a gentle and a civil people. Should a traveller now and then in the long run witness a few of the scenes alluded to, he ought not, on his return home, to adduce a solitary instance or two as the custom of the country. In roving through the wilds of Guiana I have sometimes seen a tree hollow at heart, shattered and leafless, but I did not on that account condemn its vigorous neighbours, and put down a memorandum that the woods were bad; on the contrary, I made allowances: a thunderstorm, the whirlwind, a blight from heaven might have robbed it of its bloom and caused its present forbidding appearance. And in leaving the forest I carried away the impression that, though some few of the trees were defective, the rest were an ornament to the wilds, full of uses and virtues, and capable of benefiting the world in a superior degree.

A man generally travels into foreign countries for his own ends, and I suspect there is scarcely an instance to be found of a person leaving his own home solely with the intention of benefiting those amongst whom he is about to travel. A commercial speculation, curiosity, a wish for information, a desire to reap benefit from an acquaintance with our distant fellow-creatures are the general inducements for a man to leave his own fireside. This ought never to be forgotten, and then the traveller will journey on under the persuasion that it rather becomes him to court than expect to be courted, as his own interest is the chief object of his travels. With this in view he will always render himself pleasant to the natives; and they are sure to repay his little acts of courtesy with ample interest, and with a fund of information which will be of great service to him.

While in the United States I found our Western brother a very pleasant fellow; but his portrait has been drawn in such different shades by different travellers who have been through his territory, that it requires a personal interview before a correct idea can be formed of his true colours. He is very inquisitive; but it is quite wrong on that account to tax him with being of an impertinent turn. He merely interrogates you for information, and, when you have satisfied him on that score, only ask him in your turn for an account of what is going on in his own country and he will tell you everything about it with great good humour and in excellent language. He has certainly hit upon the way (but I could not make out by what means) of speaking a much purer English language than that which is in general spoken on the parent soil. This astonished me much; but it is really the case. Amongst his many good qualities he has one unenviable and, I may add, a bad propensity: he is immoderately fond of smoking. He may say that he learned it from his nurse, with whom it was once much in vogue. In Dutch William's time (he was a man of bad taste) the English gentleman could not do without his pipe. During the short space of time that Corporal Trim was at the inn inquiring after poor Lefevre's health, my Uncle Toby had knocked the ashes out of three pipes. "It was not till my Uncle Toby had knocked the ashes out of his third pipe," etc. Now these times have luckily gone by, and the custom of smoking amongst genteel Englishmen has nearly died away with them. It is a foul custom; it makes a foul mouth, and a foul place where the smoker stands. However, every nation has its whims. John Bull relishes stinking venison; a Frenchman depopulates whole swamps in quest of frogs; a Dutchman's pipe is never out of his mouth; a Russian will eat tallow-candles; and the American indulges in the cigar. "De gustibus non est disputandum."