In case the expression is new to the reader, I beg to inform him that to "whittle" is to cut little chips of wood—if, when the fit comes on, no stick is available, the table is sometimes operated on.
I believe the plan of making the canal-boats in sections is original; but the idea of dragging them up inclines to avoid expenses of lockage, &c., is of old date, having been practised as far back as 1792, upon a canal in the neighbourhood of Colebrook Dale, where the boats were raised by stationary engines up two inclines, one of 207 feet, and the other of 126 feet. I believe this is the first instance of the adoption of this plan, and the engineers were Messrs. Reynolds and Williams. The American inclines being so much greater, the dividing the boat into sections appears to me an improvement.
CHAPTER IX.
Scenes Ashore and Afloat.
A trip on a muddy river, whose banks are fringed with a leafless forest resembling a huge store of Brobdignagian stable brooms, may be favourable to reflection; but, if description be attempted, there is danger lest the brooms sweep the ideas into the muddy water of dulness. Out of consideration therefore to the reader, we will suppose ourselves disembarked at Louisville, with the intention of travelling inland to visit the leviathan wonder—the would-be rival to Niagara,—yclept "The Mammoth Cave." Its distance from Louisville is ninety-five miles. There is no such thing as a relay of horses to be met with—at all events, it is problematical; therefore, as the roads were execrable, we were informed it would take us two long days, and our informant strongly advised us to go by the mail, which only employs twenty-one hours to make the ninety-five miles' journey. There was no help for it; so, with a sigh of sad expectation, I resigned myself to my fate, of which I had experienced a short foretaste on my way to Pittsburg. I then inquired what lions the town offered to interest a traveller. I found there was little in that way, unless I wished to go through the pig-killing, scalding, and cutting process again; but stomach and imagination rebelled at the bare thought of a second edition of the bloody scene, so I was fain to content myself with the novelty of the tobacco pressing; and, as tobacco is the favourite bonbon of the country, I may as well describe the process which the precious vegetable goes through ere it mingles with the human saliva.
A due admixture of whites and blacks assemble together, and, damping the tobacco, extract all the large stems and fibres, which are then carefully laid aside ready for export to Europe, there to be cooked up for the noses of monarchs, old maids, and all others who aspire to the honour and glory of carrying a box—not forgetting those who carry it in the waistcoat-pocket, and funnel it up the nose with a goose-quill. How beautifully simple and unanswerable is the oft-told tale, of the reply of a testy old gentleman who hated snuff as much as a certain elderly person is said to hate holy-water—when offered a pinch by an "extensive" young man with an elaborate gold-box. "Sir," said the indignant patriarch, "I never take the filthy stuff! If the Almighty had intended my nostrils for a dust-pan, he would have turned them the other way."—But I wander from the subject. We will leave the fibre to find its way to Europe and its noses, and follow the leaf to America and its mouths. In another apartment niggers and whites re-pick the fibres out more carefully, and then roll up the pure loaf in a cylindrical shape, according to the measure provided for the purpose. It is then taken to another apartment, and placed in duly prepared compartments under a strong screw-press, by which operation it is transformed from a loose cylinder to a well squashed parallelogram. It is hard work, and the swarthy descendants of Ham look as if they were in a vapour-bath, and doubtless bedew the leaf with superfluous heat.
After the first pressing, it goes to a more artistic old negro, who, with two buckets of water—one like pea-soup, the other as dark as if some of his children had been boiled down in it—and armed with a sponge of most uninviting appearance, applies these liquids with most scientific touch, thereby managing to change the colour, and marble it, darken it, or lighten it, so as to suit the various tastes. This operation completed, and perspiring negroes screwing down frantically, it is forced into the box prepared for its reception, which is imbedded in a strong iron-bound outer case during the process, to prevent the more fragile one from bursting under the pressure. All this over, and the top fixed, a master-painter covers it with red and black paint, recording its virtues and its charms. What a pity it could not lie in its snug bed for ever! But, alas! fate and the transatlantic Anglo-Saxon have decreed otherwise. Too short are its slumbers, too soon it bursts again, to suffer fresh pressure under the molars of the free and enlightened, and to fall in filthy showers over the length and breadth of the land, deluging every house and every vehicle to a degree that must be seen to be believed, and filling the stranger with much wonder, but far more disgust. I really think it must be chewing tobacco which makes the Americans so much more restless, so much more like armadillos than any other nation. It often has excited my wonder, how the more intelligent and civilized portion of the community, who do not generally indulge in the loathsome practice, can reconcile themselves to the annoyance of it as kindly as they do. Habit and necessity are powerful masters.