First impressions of the New World on two travellers from the Old, in the autumn of 1858

by Isabella Strange Trotter

The noble mansion of England's representative is a cube of brick-work painted dark-brown, equal in size, and very much resembling in appearance, our own D. P. H.; but standing in a melancholy street, without the appendages of green-house, conservatory, and gate, as in that choice London mansion. The Honourable Secretary's apartment was downstairs in the area, and the convenience of its proximity to the kitchen, with the thermometer at 85° in the shade, as it was to-day, was doubtless duly appreciated by him, he having just arrived from Turin. We found him waiting for us, and he accompanied us to the President's residence, called the White House. It is a handsome but unpretending building, not like its neighbours, of marble, but painted to look like stone; the public reception-rooms are alone shown, but a good-natured servant let us see the private rooms, and took us out on a sort of terrace behind, where we had a lovely view of the Potomac. The house is situated in a large garden, opposite to which, on the other side of the road, is a handsome, and well-kept square. The house has no pretensions about it, but would be considered a handsome country house in England; and the inside is quite in keeping, and well furnished. The furniture is always renewed when a new President takes possession; and as this is the case every four years, it cannot well become shabby.

In a line directly opposite the back of the house, and closing up the view at the end of the gardens, stands the monument which is being erected to Washington. This, when finished, is to be a circular colonnaded building, 250 feet in diameter, and 100 feet high, from which is to spring an obelisk 70 feet wide at the base, and 500 feet high, so that, when completed, the whole will be as high as if our monument in London were placed on the top of St. Paul's. At present nothing but its ugly shaft is built, which has anything but a picturesque appearance, and it is apparently likely to remain in this condition, as it is not allowed to be touched by any but native republican hands, here a rather scarce commodity. It is being built of white stone, one of the many kinds found in this country. By the by, we omitted to state, in describing the Capitol, that the balustrades of the staircases, and a good deal of ornamental work about the building, are of marble, from a quarry lately discovered in Tennessee, of a beautiful darkish lilac ground, richly grained with a shade of its own colour; it is very valuable, costing seven dollars per cubic foot.

From the President's house we went to the Observatory, which, though unpretending in its external appearance, is said to be the finest in the world next to the one at St. Petersburgh; so at least says the Washington Guide Book, for I like to give our authority for what we ourselves should not have supposed to be the case. Mr. Erskine introduced himself, and then us, to Lieutenant Maury, who is at the head of it, and is well known as a writer on meteorological subjects. He is a most agreeable man, and we talked much about the comet, meteoric stones, &c.; we asked him what he thought of Professor Silliman's notion about the comet's tail being an electric phenomenon, but he seemed to think little was known on the subject. He said this comet had never been seen before, and might never return again, as its path seemed parabolic, and not elliptical; but he said that what was peculiarly remarkable about it was the extreme agitation observed in the tail, and even in the nucleus, the motion appearing to be vibratory. With regard to meteoric stones, he said the one we saw at New Haven, though of such a prodigious size, being 200 lbs. heavier than the one in the British Museum, was a fragment only of a larger stone. We asked permission to go to the top of the observatory, and at a hint from papa, I expressed the great desire I had to see Venus by daylight, through the great telescope; whereupon, he sent for Professor B——, and asked him to take us up to the observatory, and to direct the great telescope to Venus. We mounted accordingly, and I was somewhat alarmed when the whole room in which we were placed, began to revolve upon its axis.

Setting the telescope takes some minutes, and the Professor ejected us from the room at the top of the building on to a balcony, from which we had a most lovely view of the neighbouring country. By means of a very good small telescope placed on a swivel, we could see most distinctly the Military Retreat (the Chelsea of America), beautifully situated upon a high hill about three miles off. We saw also through this telescope the Smithsonian Institute, which we were glad to be able to study in this way in detail, as we found we should not have time to go to it. It is a very large building of the architecture of the twelfth century, and the only attempt at Mediæval architecture which we have seen in the United States.

The view of the Potomac and of the hill and buildings of George Town was very extensive and remarkable; but before we had feasted our eyes sufficiently on it, we were summoned to see one of the most lovely sights I ever witnessed. Though it was mid-day, and the sun was shining most brilliantly, we saw the exquisitely sharp crescent of Venus in the pale sky, and about half the apparent size of the moon. The object-glass of the instrument was divided into squares, and she passed rapidly across the field of the telescope, sailing, as it were, in ether; by the slightest motion of a tangent-screw of great length, we were able to bring her back as often as we liked, to the centre of the field. This mechanical process might, however, have been rendered unnecessary, had the machinery attached to the instrument been wound up; for when this is the case, if the telescope is directed to any star or point in the heavens, it continues to point to it for the whole twenty-four hours in succession, the machine revolving round in the plane to which it is set. The instrument is a very powerful one, and, like the smaller one we looked through before, was made by Fraunhofer, a famous optician at Munich. There are some other very wonderful instruments which we had not time to see, as we had to make desperate haste to get some dinner, and be off by the late train to Baltimore. But before I take leave of this subject, I must return for a minute or two to that most perfectly lovely creature Venus. She was a true crescent; we could imagine we saw the jagged edge of the inner side of the crescent, but the transition from the planet to the delicate sky was so gradual, that as far as this inner edge was concerned, this was probably only imagination. Her colouring on this jagged side was of the most transparent silvery hue. The outer edge was very sharply defined against the sky, and her colour shaded off on this side to a pale golden yellow with a red or pink tint in it; this being the side she was presenting to the sun. No words can express her beauty. She is the planet that I told you lately looked so very large.

On our way to the station, and in our drives about the town, we had an opportunity of seeing the City of Washington. The town was originally laid out by Washington himself, and divided off into streets, or rather wide avenues, which are crossed by other streets of great breadth; but though the streets are named, in many of them no houses are yet built, and those that are have a mean appearance, owing to their being unsuited in height to the great width of the streets, which are in many cases, I should think, three times the width of Portland Place, and long in proportion. Notwithstanding, therefore, the beauty of the public buildings, the town greatly disappointed us.

On our arrival at Baltimore this evening, Mr. Garrett, the principal director of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, called upon us and brought with him Mr. Henry Tyson, the chief engineer, or as he is called, the master of machinery of the road, whom he was kind enough to appoint to go with us as far as Wheeling, the western terminus of the line.

This is the most remarkable railway in America for the greatness of the undertaking and the difficulties encountered in passing the Alleghanies, which the projectors of the road could only do by crossing the range at a height of 2700 feet, a project that most people looked upon as visionary. We are to start to-morrow morning at eight o'clock.

Wheeling, Oct. 21st.—We have accomplished the great feat of passing the Alleghanies, and Mr. Tyson has proved a Cicerone of unequalled excellence, from his great attention to us, added to his knowledge of the country, and his talents, which are of no ordinary kind. He is the engineer who has invented, or at least constructed on a new plan, the locomotives which are used upon this road: but besides being a very clever engineer, he is remarkably well read in general literature, and has a wonderful memory for poetry and a great knowledge of botany.