We managed to arrive about an hour and a half after it had passed; and, therefore, no alternative remained but to adjourn to the little inn, and fortify ourselves for the trial with such good things as mine host of the "Culverley" could produce. It had now settled down to a regular fall of snow, and we began to feel anxious about the chances of proceeding.
Harrisburg may be very pretty and interesting in fine weather, but it was a desolately dreary place to anticipate being snowed-up at in winter, although situated on the banks of the lovely Susquehana: accordingly, I asked mine host when the next train would pass. He replied, with grammatical accuracy, "It should pass about four to-morrow morning; but when it will I am puzzled to say.—What's your opinion, Colonel?" he added; and, turning round, I observed the distinguished military authority seated on one chair, and his legs gracefully pendent over the back of another. In his sword-hand, he wielded a small clasp-knife, which did the alternate duty of a toothpick and a whittler,[[K]] for which latter amusement he kept a small stick in his left hand to operate upon; and the floor bore testimony to his untiring zeal. When the important question was propounded to him, he ceased from his whittling labours, and, burying the blade deep between his ivories, looked out of the window with an authoritative air, apparently endeavouring, first, to ascertain what depth of snow was on the ground, and then, by an upward glance, to calculate how much more was likely to follow. Having duly weighed these points, and having perfected the channel between his ivories, he sucked the friendly blade, and replied, with a stoical indifference—which, considering my anxiety, might almost be styled heartless—"I guess, if it goes on snowing like this, you'll have no cars here to-morrow at all." Then, craning up to the heavens, as if seeking for the confirmation of a more terrible prophecy, he added, "By the looks of it, I think the gem'men may be fixed here for a week." Having delivered himself of the foregoing consolatory observation, and duly discharged a shower of Virginia juice on the floor, the military authority resumed his whittling labours with increased vigour. His occupation involuntarily carried my mind across the water to a country-house, where I had so often seen an old blind friend amusing himself, by tearing up paper into small pieces, to make pillows for the poor. If the gallant Colonel would only substitute this occupation for whittling, what good might he not do in Harrisburg!
I am happy to say that my Job's comforter turned out a false prophet; snow soon gave place to sleet, and sleet to rain, and before midnight the muck was complete. Next morning, at three, we got into the 'bus, and soon after four the cars came in, and we found ourselves once more en route for Pittsburg. I think this was about the most disagreeable day's journey I ever had. The mixture of human and metallic heat, the chorus of infantine squallers—who kept responding to one another from all parts of the car, like so many dogs in an eastern city—and the intervals filled up by the hissing on the stove of the Virginia juice, were unpleasant enough; but even the elements combined against us. The rain and the snow were fighting together, and producing that slushiness of atmosphere which obscures all scenery; added to which, the unfortunate foreknowledge that we were doomed to fifteen or sixteen hours of these combinations of misery, made it indeed a wretched day. My only resource was to open a window, which the moment I attempted, a hulking fellow, swaddled up in coats and comforters, and bursting with health, begged it might be closed as "It was so cold:" the thermometer, I am sure, was ranging, within the car, from ninety to a hundred degrees. He then tried to hector and bully, and finding that of no use, he appealed to the guard. I claimed my right, and further pleaded the necessity of fresh air, not merely for comfort, but for very life. As my friend expressed the same sentiments, the cantankerous Hector was left to sulk; and I must own to a malicious satisfaction, when, soon after, two ladies came in, and seating themselves on the bench abreast of mine, opened their window, and placed Hector in a thorough draught, which, while gall and wormwood to him, was balm of Gilead to me. As I freely criticise American habits, &c., during my travels, it is but just I should state, that Hector was the only one of his countrymen I ever met who was wilfully offensive and seemed to wish to insult.
The engineering on this road was so contrived, that we had to go through an operation, which to me was quite novel—viz., being dragged by wire ropes up one of the Alleghany hills, and eased down the other side. The extreme height is sixteen hundred feet; and it is accomplished by five different stationary engines, each placed on a separate inclined plane, the highest of which is two thousand six hundred feet above the level of the sea. The want of proper arrangement and sufficient hands made this a most dilatory and tedious operation. Upon asking why so 'cute and go-ahead a people had tolerated such bad engineering originally, and such dilatory arrangements up to the present hour, I was answered, "Oh, sir, that's easily explained; it is a government road and a monopoly, but another road is nearly completed, by which all this will be avoided; and, as it is in the hands of a company, there will be no delay then."—How curious it is, the way governments mess such things when they undertake them! I could not help thinking of the difference between our own government mails from Marseilles to Malta, &c., and the glorious steamers of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, that carry on the same mails from Malta.—But to return from my digression.
I was astonished to see a thing like a piece of a canal-boat descending one of these inclined planes on a truck; nor was my astonishment diminished when I found that it really was part of a canal-boat, and that the remaining portions were following in the rear. The boats are made, some in three, some in five compartments; and, being merely forelocked together, are easily carried across the hill, from the canal on one side to the continuation thereof on the other.[[L]]
A few hours after quitting these planes, we came to the end of the railway, and had to coach it over a ten-mile break in the line. It was one of those wretched wet days which is said to make even an old inhabitant of Argyleshire look despondingly,—in which county, it will be remembered that, after six weeks' incessant wet, an English traveller, on asking a shepherd boy whether it always rained there, received the consoling reply of, "No, sir—it sometimes snaws." The ground was from eight to eighteen inches deep in filthy mud; the old nine-inside stages—of which more anon—were waiting ready; and as there were several ladies in the cars, I thought the stages might be induced to draw up close to the scantily-covered platform to take up the passengers; but no such idea entered their heads. I imagine such an indication of civilization would have been at variance with their republican notions of liberty; and the fair ones had no alternative but to pull their garments up to the altitude of those of a ballet-dancer, and to bury their neat feet and well-turned ankles deep, deep, deep in the filthy mire. But what made this conduct irresistibly ludicrous—though painful to any gentleman to witness—was the mockery of make-believe gallantry exhibited, in seating all the ladies before any gentleman was allowed to enter; the upshot of which was, that they gradually created a comparatively beaten path for the gentlemen to get in by. One pull of the rein and one grain of manners would have enabled everybody to enter clean and dry; yet so habituated do the better classes appear to have become to this phase of democracy, that no one remonstrated on behalf of the ladies or himself.
The packing completed, a jolting ride brought us again to the railway cars; and in a few hours more—amid the cries of famishing babes and sleepy children, the "hush-hushes" of affectionate mammas, the bustle of gathering packages, and the expiring heat of the poisonous stove—we reached the young Birmingham of America about 10 P.M., and soon found rest in a comfortable bed, at a comfortable hotel.
If you wish a good idea of Pittsburg, you should go to Birmingham, and reduce its size, in your imagination, to one-fourth the reality; after which, let the streets of this creation of your fancy be "top-dressed" about a foot deep with equal proportions of clay and coal-dust; then try to realize in your mind the effect which a week's violent struggle between Messrs. Snow and Sleet would produce, and you will thus be enabled to enjoy some idea of the charming scene which Pittsburg presented on the day of my visit. But if this young Birmingham has so much in common with the elder, there is one grand feature it possesses which the other wants. The Ohio and Monongahela rivers form the delta on which it is built, and on the bosom of the former the fruits of its labour are borne down to New Orleans, viâ the Mississippi—a distance of two thousand and twenty-five miles exactly. Coal and iron abound in the neighbourhood; they are as handy, in reality, as the Egyptian geese are in the legend, where they are stated to fly about ready roasted, crying, "Come and eat me!" Perhaps, then, you will ask, why is the town not larger, and the business not more active? The answer is simple. The price of labour is so high, that they cannot compote with the parent rival; and the ad valorem duty on iron, though it may bring in a revenue to the government, is no protection to the home trade. What changes emigration from the Old World may eventually produce, time alone can decide; but it requires no prophetic vision to foresee that the undeveloped mineral riches of this continent must some day be worked with telling effect upon England's trade. I must not deceive you into a belief that the Ohio is always navigable. So far from that being the case, I understand that, for weeks and months even, it is constantly fordable. As late as the 23rd of November, the large passage-boats were unable to make regular passages, owing to their so frequently getting aground; and the consequence was, that we were doomed to prosecute our journey to Cincinnati by railroad, to my infinite—but, as my friend said, not inexpressible—regret.
Noon found us at the station, taking the last bite of fresh air before we entered the travelling oven. Fortunately, the weather was rather finer than it had been, and more windows were open. There is something solemn and grand in traversing, with the speed of the wind, miles and miles of the desolate forest. Sometimes you pass a whole hour without any—the slightest—sign of animal life: not a bird, nor a beast, nor a being. The hissing train rattles along; the trumpet-tongued whistle—or rather horn—booms far away in the breeze, and finds no echo; the giant monarchs of the forest line the road on either side, like a guard of Titans, their nodding heads inquiring, as it were curiously, why their ranks were thinned, and what strange meteor is that which, with clatter and roar, rushes past, disturbing their peaceful solitude. Patience my noble friends; patience, I say. A few short years more, and many of you, like your deceased brethren, will bend your proud heads level with the dust, and those giant limbs, which now kiss the summer sun and dare the winter's blast, will feed that insatiate meteor's stomach, or crackle beneath some adventurous pioneer's soup-kettle. But, never mind; like good soldiers in a good cause, you will sacrifice yourselves for the public good; and possibly some of you may be carved into figures of honour, and dance triumphantly on the surge's crest in the advance post of glory on a dashing clipper's bows, girt with a band on which is inscribed, in letters of gold, the imperishable name of Washington or Franklin.
Being of a generous disposition, I have thrown out these hints in the hopes some needy American author may make his fortune, and immortalize his country, by writing "The Life and Adventures of the Forest Monarch;" or, as the public like mystery, he might make a good hit by entitling it "The Child of the Woods that danced on the Wave." Swift has immortalized a tub; other authors have endeavoured to immortalize a shilling, and a halfpenny. Let that great country which professes to be able to "whip creation" take a noble subject worthy of such high pretensions.