I landed at Burlington, a thriving modern town, prettily situated below some wooded hills, on a bay, the margin of which is pure white sand, Here, as at nearly every town, great and small, in the United States, there was an excellent hotel. No people have such confidence in the future as the Americans. You frequently find a splendid hotel surrounded by a few clapboard houses, and may feel inclined to smile at the incongruity. The builder looks into futurity, and sees that in two years a thriving city will need hotel accommodation; and seldom is he wrong. The American is a gregarious animal, and it is not impossible that an hotel, with a table- d'hôte, may act as a magnet. Here I joined Mr. and Mrs. Alderson, and travelled with them to Albany, through Vermont and New York. The country was hilly, and more suited for sheep-farming than for corn. Water- privileges were abundant in the shape of picturesque torrents, and numerous mills turned their capabilities to profitable account. Our companions were rather of a low description, many of them Germans, and desperate tobacco-chewers. The whole floor of the car was covered with streams of tobacco-juice, apple-cores, grape-skins, and chestnut-husks.
We crossed the Hudson River, and spent the night at Delaval's, at Albany. The great peculiarity of this most comfortable hotel is, that the fifty waiters are Irish girls, neatly and simply dressed. They are under a coloured manager, and their civility and alacrity made me wonder that the highly-paid services of male waiters were not more frequently dispensed with. The railway ran along the street in which the hotel is situated. From my bedroom window I looked down into the funnel of a locomotive, and all night long was serenaded with screams, ringing of bells, and cries of "All aboard" and "Go ahead."
Albany, the capital of the State of New York, is one of the prettiest towns in the Union. The slope on which it is built faces the Hudson, and is crowned by a large state-house, the place of meeting for the legislature of the Empire State. The Americans repudiate the "centralization" principle, and for wise reasons, of which the Irish form a considerable number, they almost invariably locate the government of each state, not at the most important or populous town, but at some inconsiderable place, where the learned legislators are not in danger of having their embarrassments increased by deliberating under the coercion of a turbulent urban population. Albany has several public buildings, and a number of conspicuous churches, and is a very thriving place. The traffic on the river between it and New York is enormous. There is a perpetual stream of small vessels up and down. The Empire City receives its daily supplies of vegetables, meat, butter, and eggs from its neighbourhood. The Erie and Champlain canals here meet the Hudson, and through the former the produce of the teeming West pours to the Atlantic. The traffic is carried on in small sailing sloops and steamers. Sometimes a little screw-vessel of fifteen or twenty tons may be seen to hurry, puffing and panting, up to a large vessel and drag it down to the sea; but generally one paddle-tug takes six vessels down, four being towed behind and one or two lashed on either side. As both steamers and sloops are painted white, and the sails are perfectly dazzling in their purity, and twenty, thirty, and forty of these flotillas may be seen in the course of a morning, the Hudson river presents a very animated and unique appearance. It is said that everybody loses a portmanteau at Albany: I was more fortunate, and left it without having experienced the slightest annoyance.
On the other side of the ferry a very undignified scramble takes place for the seats on the right side of the cars, as the scenery for 130 miles is perfectly magnificent. "Go ahead" rapidly succeeded "All aboard," and we whizzed along this most extraordinary line of railway, so prolific in accidents that, when people leave New York by it, their friends frequently request them to notify their safe arrival at their destination. It runs along the very verge of the river, below a steep cliff, but often is supported just above the surface of the water upon a wooden platform. Guide-books inform us that the trains which run on this line, and the steamers which ply on the Hudson, are equally unsafe, the former from collisions and "upsets," the latter from "bustings-up;" but most people prefer the boats, from the advantage of seeing both sides of the river.
The sun of a November morning had just risen as I left Albany, and in a short time beamed upon swelling hills, green savannahs, and waving woods fringing the margin of the Hudson. At Coxsackie the river expands into a small lake, and the majestic Catsgill Mountains rise abruptly from the western side. The scenery among these mountains is very grand and varied. Its silence and rugged sublimity recall the Old World: it has rocky pinnacles and desert passes, inaccessible eminences and yawning chasms. The world might grow populous at the feet of the Catsgills, but it would leave them untouched and unprofaned in their stern majesty. From this point for a hundred miles the eyes of the traveller are perfectly steeped in beauty, which, gathering and increasing, culminates at West Point, a lofty eminence jutting upon a lake apparently without any outlet. The spurs of mountain ranges which meet here project in precipices from five to fifteen hundred feet in height; trees find a place for their roots in every rift among the rocks; festoons of clematis and wild-vine hang in graceful drapery from base to summit, and the dark mountain shadows loom over the lake-like expanse below. The hand wearies of writing of the loveliness of this river. I saw it on a perfect day. The Indian summer lingered, as though unwilling that the chilly blasts of winter should blight the loveliness of this beauteous scene. The gloom of autumn was not there, but its glories were on every leaf and twig. The bright scarlet of the maple vied with the brilliant berries of the rowan, and from among the tendrils of the creepers, which were waving in the sighs of the west wind, peeped forth the deep crimson of the sumach. There were very few signs of cultivation; the banks of the Hudson are barren in all but beauty. The river is a succession of small wild lakes, connected by narrow reaches, bound for ever between abrupt precipices. There are lakes more beauteous than Loch Katrine, softer in their features than Loch Achray, though like both, or like the waters which glitter beneath the blue sky of Italy. Along their margins the woods hung in scarlet and gold—high above towered the purple peaks—the blue waters flashed back the rays of a sun shining from an unclouded sky—the air was warm like June—and I think the sunbeams of that day scarcely shone upon a fairer scene. At mid-day the Highlands of Hudson were left behind—the mountains melted into hills—the river expanded into a noble stream about a mile in width—the scarlet woods, the silvery lakes, and the majestic Catsgills faded away in the distance; and with a whoop, and a roar, and a clatter, the cars entered into, and proceeded at slackened speed down, a long street called Tenth Avenue, among carts, children, and pigs.
True enough, we were in New York, the western receptacle not only of the traveller and the energetic merchant, but of the destitute, the friendless, the vagabond, and in short of all the outpourings of Europe, who here form a conglomerate mass of evil, making America responsible for their vices and their crimes. Yet the usual signs of approach to an enormous city were awanting—dwarfed trees, market-gardens, cockney arbours, in which citizens smoke their pipes in the evening, and imagine themselves in Arcadia, rows of small houses, and a murky canopy of smoke. We had steamed down Tenth Avenue for two or three miles, when we came to a standstill where several streets met. The train was taken to pieces, and to each car four horses or mules were attached, which took us for some distance into the very heart of the town, racing apparently with omnibuses and carriages, till at last we were deposited in Chambers Street, not in a station, or even under cover, be it observed. My baggage, or "plunder" as it is termed, had been previously disposed of, but, while waiting with my head disagreeably near to a horse's nose, I saw people making distracted attempts, and futile ones as it appeared, to preserve their effects from the clutches of numerous porters, many of them probably thieves. To judge from appearances, many people would mourn the loss of their portmanteaus that night.
New York deserves the name applied to Washington, "the city of magnificent distances." I drove in a hack for three miles to my destination, along crowded, handsome streets, but I believe that I only traversed a third part of the city.
It possesses the features of many different lands, but it has characteristics peculiarly its own; and as with its suburbs it may almost bear the name of the "million-peopled city," and as its growing influence and importance have earned it the name of the Empire City, I need not apologise for dwelling at some length upon it in the succeeding chapter.
CHAPTER XVI.
Position of New York—Externals of the city—Conveyances— Maladministration—The stores—The hotels—Curiosities of the hospital— Ragged schools—The bad book—Monster schools—Amusements and oyster saloons—Monstrosities—A restaurant—Dwelling-houses—Equipages—Palaces —Dress—Figures—Manners—Education—Domestic habits—The ladies—The gentlemen—Society—Receptions—Anti-English feeling—Autographs—The "Buckram Englishman."