This was our first experience of American railways. There is no distinction of classes in the railway company's fares, but greater luxury is obtained by travelling in the drawing-room or sleeping car. The former belong to the Wagner, the latter to the Pullman Company, who make a separate charge, which is levied by the special conductor. This is his only duty, except to make himself a nuisance, and generally objectionable. The beds are made up by an obliging coloured porter. The cars are very long, and run on sixteen wheels. There is communication through the train, but it is only used by the condescendingly grand officials and the numerous news and fruit vendors who torment you with repeated exhibitions of their varied wares. The windows are so large, that if opened dust and grit from the slack coal burnt by the engines smother everything, so that with the car full (and they hold from twenty to thirty) the atmosphere becomes terribly oppressive. In winter, and when the stoves are lighted it is even worse. The Americans are very proud of their railway system, but after travelling over most of their lines, it is impossible to see that we have much to learn from them. The traffic is conducted in a very happy-go-lucky style. There is an absence of civility, with a superabundance of officials, and a porter is not to be met with. The traveller must carry his hand-luggage himself. The system of checking the baggage is, however, admirable. A brass check attached to the trunk ensures its going safely to any destination, however distant, and only being given up on presentation of the duplicate, which is in possession of the passenger.
Our journey lay through the smiling valley of the Mohawk River. The operation of hay-making was going on in many of the fields we passed. The hay was cut, raked, turned over, unloaded, and stacked by machinery—the most convincing proof of the absence of hand-labour. Throughout the vast continent of America, from the farms of the east to the cattle ranches of the west, there is the same cry for labour. Still greater is the demand for domestic servants. American girls think nothing of serving in a "store" or at a railway buffet, or even in an hotel. They have their freedom at certain hours, and when their work is done they are their own mistresses; but domestic service they look upon as degrading. It is almost wholly confined to Irish immigrants. A gentleman told us of a large mountain hotel where the waiting during the summer months of the season was done by an entire school of young ladies, who at the end of the time returned with their "salaries" (the term of "wages" is never used) to pay for their winter's schooling.
At Syracuse we experienced for the first time the strange custom of running the train through a street in the heart of the city. Many lives are annually lost, and terrible accidents occur frequently at the level crossings. "Look out for the locomotive" is on a large sign-board, but the public depend more upon the shrill whistle or the ringing of the engine bell. The effect of these engine bells is very melodious when, deep-toned and loud-voiced, coming and going in a station they chime to each other.
Friday, July 18th, Clifton House, Niagara Falls.—"What a moment in a lifetime is that in which we first behold Niagara!" And it is difficult with a very feeble pen to say anything superior to such a commonplace platitude, even when in the presence of one of Nature's most glorious works.
Notwithstanding all written and said, imagined or described, Niagara cannot be put into words; cannot be conveyed to the imagination through the usual medium of pen and paper; can only be seen to be—even then but partially—understood.
There is a blue river, two miles wide, without ripple or ruffle on the surface, coming down from a great lake, pursuing its even course. There are breakers ahead—little clouds, then white foam sprayed into mid-air. The contagion spreads, until on the whole surface of the river are troubled waves, noisily hurrying down, down, with ever-increasing velocity, to the great Canadian fall. The mockery of those few yards of clear, still water! In a suction green as an uncut emerald, a volume of water, twenty fathoms deep, is hurled over a precipice 160 feet high. One hundred million tons of water pass over every hour, with a roar that can be heard ten miles away, and a reverberation that shakes the very earth itself, into the seething cauldron below, shrouded in an eternal mist:—"There is neither speech nor language, but their voices are heard."
In a minor key the American waters repeat the mighty cannonade, and blending their voices, mirror the sea-green colour of the wooded precipices as they flow on their onward course. Long serpent trails of foam alone bear witness to the late convulsion.
The gorge is narrowing; the waters are compressed into a smaller space; they are angry, and jostle each other. They hiss, they swirl; they separate to rush together in shooting shower of spray, and so struggle through the Rapids.
A gloomy pool, with darkling precipices of purple rocks, forms a basin. The waters are rushing too surely into that iron-bound pool. The current is checked and turned back on itself, to meet the oncoming stream. A mighty Whirlpool forms. The waters divide under the current, and one volume returns to eddy and swirl helplessly against the great barrier, whilst the other volume, more happy, finds a cleft, broadened now into a wide gateway, and gurgling and laughing to itself, glides away on a smooth course, to lose its volume in Lake Ontario. What a world-renown that stream will always have—a short course full of awful incident.
On the 25th of July, 1883, Captain Webb was drowned while attempting to swim the rapids. Diving from a small boat about 300 yards above the new cantilever bridge, he plunged into the stream. The force of the current turned him over several times; then he threw up his arms and sank, crushed to death, it is supposed, by the pressure of the water. The enterprising owners of the restaurant at the rapids, have arranged with his widow to come over during the season to sell photographs opposite the spot where her husband perished.