The Land of Contrasts: A Briton's View of His American Kin

by James F. Muirhead

When I left England in September, 1888, we sailed down the Mersey on one of those absolutely perfect autumn days, the very memory of which is a continual joy. I remarked on the beauty of the weather to an American fellow-passenger. He replied, half in fun, "Yes, this is good enough for England; but wait till you see our American weather!" As luck would have it, it was raining heavily when we steamed up New York harbour, and the fog was so dense that we could not see the statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, though we passed close under it. The same American passenger had expatiated to me during the voyage on the merits of the American express service. "You have no trouble with porters and cabs, as in the Old World; you simply point out your trunks to an express agent, give him your address, take his receipt, and you will probably find your trunks at the house when you arrive." We reached New York on a Saturday; I confidently handed over my trunk to a representative of the Transfer Company about 9 A.M., hied to my friend's house in Brooklyn, and saw and heard nothing more of my trunk till Monday morning!

Such was the way in which two of my most cherished beliefs about America were dissipated almost before I set foot upon her free and sacred soil! It is, however, only fair to say that if I had assumed these experiences to be really characteristic, I should have made a grievous mistake. It is true that I afterwards experienced a good many stormy days in the United States, and found that the predominant weather in all parts of the country was, to judge from my apologetic hosts, the "exceptional;" but none the less I revelled in the bright blue, clear, sunny days with which America is so abundantly blessed, and came to sympathise very deeply with the depression that sometimes overtakes the American exile during his sojourn on our fog-bound coasts. So, too, I found the express system on the whole what our friend Artemus Ward calls "a sweet boon." Certainly it is as a rule necessary, in starting from a private house, to have one's luggage ready an hour or so before one starts one's self, and this is hardly so convenient as a hansom with you inside and your portmanteau on top; and it is also true that there is sometimes (especially in New York) a certain delay in the delivery of one's belongings. In nine cases out of ten, however, it was a great relief to get rid of the trouble of taking your luggage to or from the station, and feel yourself free to meet it at your own time and will. It was not often that I was reduced to such straits as on one occasion in Brooklyn, when, at the last moment, I had to charter a green-grocer's van and drive down to the station in it, triumphantly seated on my portmanteau.

The check system on the railway itself deserves almost unmitigated praise, and only needs to be understood to be appreciated. On arrival at the station the traveller hands over his impedimenta to the baggage master, who fastens a small metal disk, bearing the destination and a number, to each package, and gives the owner a duplicate check. The railway company then becomes responsible for the luggage, and holds it until reclaimed by presentation of the duplicate check. This system avoids on the one hand the chance of loss and trouble in claiming characteristic of the British system, and on the other the waste of time and expense of the Continental system of printed paper tickets. On arrival at his destination the traveller may hurry to his hotel without a moment's delay, after handing his check either to the hotel porter or to the so-called transfer agent, who usually passes through the train as it reaches an important station, undertaking the delivery of trunks and giving receipts in exchange for checks.

Besides the city express or transfer companies, the chief duty of which is to convey luggage from the traveller's residence to the railway station or vice versa, there are also the large general express companies or carriers, which send articles all over the United States. One of the most characteristic of these is the Adams Express Company, the widely known name of which has originated a popular conundrum with the query, "Why was Eve created?" This company began in 1840 with two men, a boy, and a wheelbarrow; now it employs 8,000 men and 2,000 wagons, and carries parcels over 25,000 miles of railway. The Wells, Fargo & Company Express operates over 40,000 miles of railway.

Coaching in America is, as a rule, anything but a pleasure. It is true that the chance of being held up by "road agents" is to-day practically non-existent, and that the spectacle of a crowd of yelling Apaches making a stage-coach the pin-cushion for their arrows is now to be seen nowhere but in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. But the roads! No European who has done much driving in the United States can doubt for one moment that the required Man of the Hour is General Wade.[31] Even in the State of New York I have been in a stage that was temporarily checked by a hole two feet deep in the centre of the road, and that had to be emptied and held up while passing another part of the same road. In Virginia I drove over a road, leading to one of the most frequented resorts of the State, which it is simple truth to state offered worse going than any ordinary ploughed field. The wheels were often almost entirely submerged in liquid mud, and it is still a mystery to me how the tackle held together. To be jolted off one's seat so violently as to strike the top of the carriage was not a unique experience. Nor was the spending of ten hours in making thirty miles with four horses. In the Yellowstone one of the coaches of our party settled down in the midst of a slough of despond on the highway, from which it was finally extricated backwards by the combined efforts of twelve horses borrowed from the other coaches. Misery makes strange bedfellows, and the ingredients of a Christmas pudding are not more thoroughly shaken together or more inextricably mingled than stage-coach passengers in America are apt to be. The difficulties of the roads have developed the skill, courage, and readiness of the stage-coach men to an extraordinary degree, and I have never seen bolder or more dexterous driving than when California Bill or Colorado Jack rushed his team of four young horses down the breakneck slopes of these terrible highways. After one particularly hair-raising descent the driver condescended to explain that he was afraid to come down more slowly, lest the hind wheels should skid on the smooth rocky outcrop in the road and swing the vehicle sideways into the abyss. In coming out of the Yosemite, owing to some disturbance of the ordinary traffic arrangements our coach met the incoming stage at a part of the road so narrow that it seemed absolutely impossible for the two to pass each other. On the one side was a yawning precipice, on the other the mountain rose steeply from the roadside. The off-wheels of the incoming coach were tilted up on the hillside as far as they could be without an upset. In vain; our hubs still locked. We were then allowed to dismount. Our coach was backed down for fifty yards or so. Small heaps of stones were piled opposite the hubs of the stationary coach. Our driver whipped his horses to a gallop, ran his near-wheels over these stones so that their hubs were raised above those of the near-wheels of the other coach, and successfully made the dare-devil passage, in which he had not more than a couple of inches' margin to save him from precipitation into eternity. I hardly knew which to admire most—the ingenuity which thus made good in altitude what it lacked in latitude, or the phlegm with which the occupants of the other coach retained their seats throughout the entire episode.

The Englishman arriving in Boston, say in the middle of the lovely autumnal weather of November, will be surprised to find a host of workmen in the Common and Public Garden busily engaged in laying down miles of portable "plank paths" or "board walks," elevated three or four inches above the level of the ground. A little later, when the snowy season has well set in, he will discover the usefulness of these apparently superfluous planks; and he will hardly be astonished to learn that the whole of the Northern States are covered in winter with a network of similar paths. These gangways are made in sections and numbered, so that when they are withdrawn from their summer seclusion they can be laid down with great precision and expedition. No statistician, so far as I know, has calculated the total length of the plank paths of an American winter; but I have not the least doubt that they would reach from the earth to the moon, if not to one of the planets.

The river and lake steamboats of the United States are on the average distinctly better than any I am acquainted with elsewhere. The much-vaunted splendours of such Scottish boats as the "Iona" and "Columba" sink into insignificance when compared with the wonderful vessels of the line plying from New York to Fall River. These steamers deserve the name of floating hotel or palace much more than even the finest ocean-liner, because to their sumptuous appointments they add the fact that they are, except under very occasional circumstances, floating palaces and not reeling or tossing ones. The only hotel to which I can honestly compare the "Campania" is the one at San Francisco in which I experienced my first earthquake. But even the veriest landsman of them all can enjoy the passage of Long Island Sound in one of these stately and stable vessels, whether sitting indoors listening to the excellent band in one of the spacious drawing-rooms in which there is absolutely no rude reminder of the sea, or on deck on a cool summer night watching the lights of New York gradually vanish in the black wake, or the moon riding triumphantly as queen of the heavenly host, and the innumerable twinkling beacons that safeguard our course. And when he retires to his cabin, pleasantly wearied by the glamour of the night and soothed by the supple stability of his floating home, he will find his bed and his bedroom twice as large as he enjoyed on the Atlantic, and may let the breeze enter, undeterred by fear of intruding wave or breach of regulation. If he takes a meal on board he will find the viands as well cooked and as dexterously served as in a fashionable restaurant on shore; he may have, should he desire it, all the elbow-room of a separate table, and nothing will suggest to him the confined limits of the cook's galley or the rough-and-ready ways of marine cookery.

Little inferior to the Fall River boats are those which ascend the Hudson from New York to Albany, one of the finest river voyages in the world; and worthy to be compared with these are the Lake Superior steamers of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Among the special advantages of these last are the device by which meals are served in the fresh atmosphere of what is practically the upper deck, the excellent service of the neat lads who officiate as waiters and are said to be often college students turning an honest summer penny, and the frequent presence in the bill of fare of the Coregonus clupeiformis, or Lake Superior whitefish, one of the most toothsome morsels of the deep. Most of the other steamboat lines by which I travelled in the United States and Canada seemed to me as good as could be expected under the circumstances. There is, however, certainly room for improvement in some of the boats which ply on the St. Lawrence, and the Alaska service will probably grow steadily better with the growing rush of tourists.

Another wonderful instance of British conservatism is the way in which we have stuck to the horrors of our own ferry-boat system long after America has shown us the way to cross a ferry comfortably. It is true that the American steam ferry-boats are not so graceful as ours, looking as they do like Noah's arks or floating houses, and being propelled by the grotesque daddy-long-leg-like arrangement of the walking-beam engine. They are, however, far more suitable for their purpose. The steamer as originally developed was, I take it, intended for long (or at any rate longish) voyages, and was built as far as possible on the lines of a sailing-vessel. The conservative John Bull never thought of modifying this shape, even when he adopted the steamboat for ferries such as that across the Mersey from Liverpool to Birkenhead. He still retained the sea-going form, and passengers had either to remain on a lofty deck, exposed to the full fury of the elements, or dive down into the stuffy depths of an unattractive cabin. As soon, however, as Brother Jonathan's keen brain had to concern itself with the problem, he saw the topsy-turvyness of this arrangement. Hence in his ferry-boats there are no "underground" cabins, no exasperating flights of steps. We enter the ferry-house and wait comfortably under shelter till the boat approaches its "slip," which it does end on. The disembarking passengers depart by one passage, and as soon as they have all left the boat we enter by another. A roadway and two side-walks correspond to these divisions on the boat, which we enter on the level we are to retain for the passage. In the middle is the gangway for vehicles, to the right and left are the cabins for "ladies" and "gentlemen," each running almost the whole length of the boat. There is a small piece of open deck at each end, and those who wish may ascend to an upper deck. These long-drawn-out cabins are simply but suitably furnished with seats like those in a tramway-car or American railway-carriage. The boat retraces its course without turning round, as it is a "double-ender." On reaching the other side of the river we simply walk out of the boat as we should out of a house on the street-level. The tidal difficulty is met by making the landing-stage a floating one, and of such length that the angle it forms with terra firma is never inconvenient.

A Swiss friend of mine, whose ocean steamer landed him on the New Jersey shore of the North River, actually entered the cabin of the ferry-boat under the impression that it was a waiting-room on shore. The boat slipped away so quietly that he did not discover his mistake until he had reached the New York side of the river; and then there was no more astonished man on the whole continent!