Another blast.
"We've waked the watchman, however. That's something done."
Another blast.
"Never knew such people. Why, Lazarus was far easier to raise."
The best testimony that I can bear to the skill with which travelling is conducted on such roads as these, and also in steam-boats, is the fact that I travelled upwards of ten thousand miles in the United States, by land and water, without accident. I was twice nearly overturned; but never quite.
It has been seen what the mail routes are like in the south; and I have mentioned that greater progress has been made in other means of transport than might have been expected. I referred to the new rail-roads which are being opened in various directions. I saw few circumstances in the south with which I was so well pleased. By the free communication which will thus be opened, much sectional prejudice will be dispelled: the inferiority of slave to free labour will be the more speedily brought home to every man's convictions; and new settlers, abhorring slavery, will come in and mix with the present population; be the laws regarding labour what they may.
The only rail-roads completed in the south, when I was there, were the Charleston and Augusta one, two short ones in the States of Alabama and Mississippi, and one of five miles from Lake Pontchartrain to New Orleans. There is likely to be soon a magnificent line from Charleston to Cincinnati; and the line from Norfolk, Virginia, to New York, is now almost uninterrupted.
The quarter of an hour employed in reaching New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain was one of the most delightful seasons in all my travels. My notion of a swamp was corrected for ever. It was the end of April; and the flowering reeds and tropical shrubs made the whole scene one gay garden. It was odd to be passing through a gay garden on a rail-road. Green cypress grew out of the clear water everywhere; and there were acres of blue and white iris; and a thousand rich, unknown blossoms waving over the pools. A negro here and there emerged from a flowery thicket, pushing himself on a raft, or in a canoe, through the reeds. The sluggish bayou was on one side; and here and there, a group of old French houses on the other. It was like skimming, as one does in dreams, over the meadows of Sicily, or the plains of Ceylon.
That which may be seen on either hand of the Charleston and Augusta rail-road is scarcely less beautiful; but my journeys on it were by far the most fatiguing of any I underwent in the country. The motion and the noise are distracting. Whether this is owing to its being built on piles, in many places; whether the fault is in the ground or the construction, I do not know. Almost all the rail-road travelling in America is very fatiguing and noisy. I was told that this was chiefly owing to the roads being put to use as soon as finished, instead of the work being left to settle for some months. How far this is true, I do not pretend to say. The rail-roads which I saw in progress were laid on wood instead of stone. The patentee discovered that wood settles after frost more evenly than stone. The original cost, in the State of New York, is about two thousand dollars per mile.
One great inconvenience of the American rail-roads is that, from wood being used for fuel, there is an incessant shower of large sparks, destructive to dress and comfort, unless all the windows are shut; which is impossible in warm weather. Some serious accidents from fire have happened in this way; and, during my last trip on the Columbia and Philadelphia rail-road, a lady in the car had a shawl burned to destruction on her shoulders; and I found that my own gown had thirteen holes in it; and my veil, with which I saved my eyes, more than could be counted.