Border and Bastille

by George A. Lawrence

I do honestly affirm that, in dilating on the several hardships of my own especial case, I have no idea of enlisting any sympathy, public or private. I simply wish to show what arbitrary oppression can be exercised upon British subjects with perfect impunity by a Government which will maintain quasi-friendly relations with our own just so long as it conforms the standing-ground of a tottering Cabinet. Perhaps, some day or other, as a last peace-offering to the Republican hydra, MM. Seward and Stanton will burn a bishop, and so bring our pacific Foreign Office to bay.

Physical causes prevented my feeling very exhilarated or exultant during my earliest hours of freedom. It was pleasant though to meet an English face at the hotel where I meant to sleep. I had not seen Mr. Austin since we were contemporaries at Oxford; but on the 2d June I had received from him a very kind and courteous note, offering a visit, if it should be acceptable. I need scarcely say how welcome it would have been; but he did not get my written reply till the following Monday—not bad time, either, for the Old Capitol post-office. I dined with Mr. Austin, and at the same table sat General Martindale, military commander at Washington, and Senator Sumner. The former certainly recognized my identity; but he was not the less amicable for that. It was odd to find myself receiving suggestions as to my route, in case I visited Niagara, from the same man who three days before had granted a pass to my friend for his proposed prison visit. I sat some time after dinner in talk with Mr. Sumner. His face is much aged and careworn since I first saw it, some years ago, in England: but his manner retains the polished geniality which made him so great a favorite in most European salons.

The rest of the evening I spent at Percy Anderson's. I much regretted that I could not see Lord Lyons, to express my sense of his unwearied exertions in my behalf; but he was dining out; and it was judged better that I should not risk an apparent infringement of my parole by lingering in Washington an unnecessary hour the next morning, so I was forced to trust my thanks to writing.

I can never forget, while I live, the welcomes which waited me in Baltimore; welcomes much too cordial to be wasted on a discomfited adventurer. Still I was glad to find that those whose opinion was well worth having gave one credit for having deserved success. I was very, very loth to leave my kind friends, though we may perchance forgather again should I outlive my parole, and be enabled to carry out certain half-formed plans of hunting in the Far West. It was only the sternest sense of duty that impelled me to sacrifice to Niagara sixty hours that intervened before June the 13th, when the Inman steamer started, in which I had secured a berth by telegraph.

Twenty-two hours of unbroken rail-travel—partly through the beautiful Susquehannah Valley; partly through the best cultivated lands (about Troy and Elmira) that I saw in the States, whose trim, loose stone walls reminded one of part of the Heythrop and Cotswold countries—brought us to Buffalo. The Company had here so contrived matters that it was absolutely impossible for the traveler to proceed farther that night, or to get at any luggage beyond what he carries in his hand: from Elmira it travels by a route of its own, to which your through-ticket does not apply: the baggage-agent hands it over to you at Niagara the next morning, with a cheerfully placid face, as if rather proud of the satisfactory correctness of the whole arrangement.

I will not add a stone to the descriptive cairn heaped up by generations of tourists in honor of the King-Cataract; simply because it is presumption in any man to pass judgment on that famous scene till he has studied it for more days than I could spare hours. I do not think, the eye is disappointed, even at first sight: after being fully prepared by Church's vivid picture—a very triumph of transparent coloring—you still stand dumb in honest admiration of that one miracle in the midst of wonders—the central curve of the Horse-shoe—where the main current plunges over the verge, without a ripple to break the grandeur of the clear, smooth chrysoprase, flashing back the sunlight through a filmy lace-work of foam. But the ear is certainly dissatisfied: perhaps my acoustics were out of order, as well as other cephalic organs; but it struck me that Niagara hardly made any noise at all. Yet I penetrated under the Fall as far as there is practicable foothold; and listened at all sorts of distances for a deafening roar, which never came.

I started eastward again by that same night's express. I cannot let this, my last experience, pass, without recording my vote on the much-mooted question of American railway travel. The natives, of course, extol the whole system as one of the greatest of their institutions; but I cannot understand any difference of opinion among strangers. The baggage arrangement—except when the Company suffers under an aberration of intellect, such as I have mentioned on the Niagara route—is really convenient, and the commissionaires attached to every train relieve you of all responsibility at your journey's end, by collecting your effects and transporting them to any given direction; but this solitary advantage does not counterbalance other désagrémens. When the weather is such as to allow a true current of air to circulate through the car, the atmosphere is barely endurable; but with stoves at work, and all apertures closed, it soon becomes dangerously oppressive. The German element prevails strongly throughout Yankee-land: perhaps this accounts for the natives' dread of fresh air. Your only chance of escaping from semi-suffocation is to secure a seat next to a window, and keep it open, hardening your heart against all the grumbling of your neighbors, who run through a whole gamut of complaints, in the hope of softening or shaming the Hyperborean. Sometimes you will have to encounter menaces; but, in such a cause, it is surely worth while to do battle to the death; revolver and bowie-knife lose their terrors in the presence of imminent asphyxia. The advocates of the system chiefly insist on the sleeping-cars, and the advantage of passing from one end of the train to the other at your pleasure. On the first of these points, let me say, that few aliens, after one trusting experiment of those stifling berths, will be inclined to repeat it: the atmosphere of a crowded steamboat cabin is pure and fresh by comparison. As for the vaunted promenade—the man who would avail himself thereof, would, probably waltz with grace and comfort to himself on the deck of the Lively Sally in a sea-way: it requires some practice even to stand upright without holding on; the jolting and oscillation are such that I think you take rather more involuntary exercise than on the back of a cantering cover-hack. The pace is not such as to make much amends: from twenty to twenty-five miles an hour is the outside speed even of expresses: and on many lines you ought to calculate the probabilities of arrival by anything rather than the time-tables. Collisions, however, are certainly rare; the most common accident is when the train breaks through one of the crazy wooden bridges, or, obeying the direction of some playfully eccentric pointsman, plunges headlong over an embankment into some peaceful valley below. The steam-signals are very peculiar; the engine never whistles, but indulges in a prolonged bellow, very like the hideous sounds emitted by that hideous semi-brute, yclept the Gong-Donkey, who used to haunt our race-courses some years ago—making weak-minded men start, and strong-minded women scream with his unearthly roaring. When I first heard the hoarse warning-note boom through the night, a shudder of reminiscence came over me, for I used to shrink from that awful creature with a repugnance such as I never felt for any other living thing.

All the weariness of the long night-journey will not prevent a traveler from appreciating the superb Hudson, along whose banks the last part of the road, from Albany, is carried. You are seldom out of sight of the Caatskill range—blue in the distance or dark in the foreground—but the crowning glory of the river are the old cliffs, where the rock soars up sheer from the water's edge, with no more vegetation on its face than will grow in the crevices of ancient walls.

I had scarcely twenty-four hours left for the Imperial City before the Edinburgh sailed. This time I abode at the New York Hotel, where a Baltimorean had already secured quarters. This much, at least, must be conceded to the Yankee capital. In no other town that I know of can a traveler so thoroughly take his ease in his inn. These magnificent caravanserais cast far into the shade the best managed establishments of London, Paris, or Vienna, simply because luxuries enough to satiate any moderate desires, are furnished at fixed prices that need not alarm the most economical traveler. The cuisine at the New York Hotel is really artistic, and the attendance quite perfect. Also is found there a certain Château Margaux of '48: after savoring that rich liquid velvet, you wilt not wonder that the house has long been a favorite with the Southern Sybarites. Things are changed, of course, now, and many of Mr. Cranston's old patrons must now exercise their critical tastes on mountain whisky and ration beef; but the tone of feeling in the establishment remains the same. An out-spoken Republican or Abolitionist would not meet a cordial welcome from the present frequenters of the New York, nor, I think, from its jovial host. Likewise the Empress City can boast that her barbers and iced drinks do actually "beat all creation." After a long journey you are thoroughly disposed to appreciate these scientific tonsors, whose delicacy of manipulation is unequaled in Europe. Only the pen of that eloquent writer, who told the "Times" how he "thirsted in the desert," could do justice to the high-art triumphs of the cunning barkeeper.

"Joe"—of the mirthful eye, and agile hand, and ready repartee—long may you flourish, mitigating the fierce summer thirst of many a parched palate; stimulating withered appetites till they hunger anew for the flesh-pots; warming the heart-cockles of departing voyagers till they laugh the keen breezes of the bay to scorn. With me, at least, gratitude for repeated refreshment shall long keep your memory green—green as the mint-sprays that, when your last "julep" is mingled, should surely be strewn, unsparingly, on your grave.