Twenty-four hours later, at two o'clock in the morning, I was wakened in my cabin by a violent shock. The Hercule had just run aground in the dangerous waters of the Bahama Channel. Whatever the weather may be, the running aground of a huge body like a hundred gun ship is a serious matter. To crown our disgrace, the corvette La Favorite, which sailed in company with us and had followed us blindly, ran aground at the same instant. Luckily it was almost calm, and the great Hercule lay quietly on the sand like a stranded whale. Whenever the least suspicion of a swell came, she gave a shudder, a sort of wag of her tail, which was very alarming. If the swell increased she would soon go to pieces, and every boat we had to launch would never be enough to save the crew. It was one of those anxious moments in a sailor's life when each man makes it his business to conceal his own feelings. We set hard to work to get down a big anchor on the deep-water side. Once it was down and the cable taut, we began to lighten the ship, pouring all the water overboard, and getting ready to put the guns over the side. Then daylight came, and showed us our real position. A long way off we could see a low island on the coast of Florida, called Looe-Key. The dawn also showed us, in the offing, the British corvette Pearl, commanded by our pleasant comrade of some days before, Lord Clarence Paget, who had sailed from Havana at the same time as we ourselves. As soon as he perceived our position he hurried to our assistance, and steering with all the decision and seafaring good sense of the British sailor, he got as close as possible to us, put down his two anchors at once, and came to us, saying, "I bring you the only thing I can, a fixed point to work on."
We thanked him cordially, but, just at that moment, thanks to our having lightened the ship, and also to the tide, which fortunately began to rise, the Hercule swayed for a few minutes on her sandy bed, and then began to float. A sigh of relief broke from every breast, especially from those of the captain and the unlucky officer of the watch, whose carelessness had been the original cause of the accident.
A few hours more, and everything but a trifling leak had been put to rights, and we were on our way to the United States—to a new country, a young nation, which attracted me as by instinctive sympathy. On our very arrival in the Chesapeake river, I came across a characteristic trait. "Can you speak French?" I asked the pilot who hailed us. Instantly he answered me, in English, "No, I only speak American!" The claim to separate nationality extended even to the language.
Shortly afterwards I went ashore, and, armed with an itinerary, kindly drawn up for me by Michel Chevalier, in which he had mentioned all he advised my seeing, both as to men and things, during the short time at my disposal, I started on a hasty tour through that splendid country. That first glimpse of America fulfilled all my expectations, and delighted me. A young country it was in very deed. Nature itself, to my European eyes, had a pureness of atmosphere, a richness of vegetation, a freshness, a general air of youth, unknown in our older countries. Man too, in his gait, in his independence of mind, and his boldness of enterprise, betrayed an exuberant vigour of which our populations, enervated by disappointing experiences, and crushed by routine as they are, have grown incapable.
As I desired to get from Norfolk in Virginia to Washington, I started by the Roanoke Railway, on the first day of my trip, and thus crossed an immense marsh, the "Dismal Swamp." The rails we ran on being laid open-work fashion on huge piles fifteen feet above the marsh, the whole road rocked under the weight of the engine, so much as to disturb the waters of the swamp and startle the numberless snakes and turtles inhabiting it. It was a most novel sensation. Further on, betwixt Baltimore and Philadelphia, the train having to cross an arm of the sea, steamed on full pace; the engine, uncoupling itself, ran ahead on to a siding, while our train was carried by its own impetus on to the upper deck of a steam ferry-boat, moored at the end of the line. It stopped exactly at the right spot, and while the boat crossed the arm of the sea, we went below and dined at a splendid buffet on the lower deck, waited on by the prettiest of barmaids.
Further on yet, between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, in that rich Allegheny country where the coal-beds lie on the surface, and coal costs five francs a ton, and whence petroleum oil was soon to gush forth, the travelling was done by canal in the flat country, and by funicular railways in the mountains, by means of boats built in sections which hooked together on the water, and were taken apart when there was a question of climbing up inclined planes. All public works and means of communication were full of daring things like these, while in Europe (I speak of the year 1838) we were still at our first timorous essays at railway travelling.
I travelled through Virginia, passing by all those spots where four and twenty years later I was to watch the bloodiest battles of the War of Secession, that first and awful convulsion of the great Republic's manhood. Reaching Washington, I was most courteously received by President Van Buren. How often since then I have been back at the White House, under Presidents Tyler, Buchanan, and Lincoln! How many a curious scene I have witnessed there, under the rule of the last-named President, rich as it was in dramatic incident! During that first stay of mine at Washington I made the acquaintance of three of the greatest men in the United States—Calhoun, Webster, and Clay—Calhoun of Carolina, the impassioned Southerner; Webster, the eloquent representative of New England Puritanism; and Clay of Kentucky, with his angular face and powerful frame, and a curious mixture of extreme gentleness and energy in his manner and ways—the very type of the Western population, the advance-guard of civilization. I was present at several sittings of the Senate, and heard these gentlemen speak with an authority which seemed to fascinate their auditors. Washington as a city, did not interest me at all—bits of town, scattered about in an ocean of dust, which later on I knew as an ocean of mud; hotels crowded with canvassers, all devouring so hurriedly at table d'hote time, that the first arrivals were rising from table when the last ones were sitting down, and all this amidst a noise of jaws that reminded me of the dogs being fed in a kennel; the whole population, whether politicians or canvassers, chewing and spitting everywhere; little society or none at all, save that formed by the foreign diplomats, most of them clever men, but bored by their isolation, and consequently disposed to see everything around them with unfavouring eyes. One of the chief members of this society at the time of my sojourn was the British Minister, Mr. Fox, a diplomatist of the old school, past master in forms, and proprieties, and social refinements—everything that the English sum up in the word "proper." I was told that one day as he was leaning against the chimney-piece in a drawing-room where dancing was going on, in deep conversation with I know not what other personage, an American couple came and stood just in front of him in a country-dance. Soon the young man began to show signs of anxiety; his voice grew thick, his cheeks swelled alternately, and he cast anxious glances at the chimney-piece. At last he could hold on no longer, and with the most admirable precision, he shot all the juice of his quid into the fireplace just between Mr. Fox and his interlocutor. "Fine shot, sir!" the old diplomat contented himself with saying, with a bow. It may have been that little incidents of this kind cast a chill on international relations!
[Illustration with caption: southern scout]
Philadelphia delighted me. It is a cheerful town, with streets planted with fine trees. The prison there, the first built on the solitary system, occupied me for a whole day. I went over every corner of it, in the company of the directors, and of any other officials who could inform me on the subject. It will be known to my readers that the system in this prison, at the time of which I write, was that of absolute seclusion in cells—complete isolation in fact—during the whole term of sentence. Soon afterwards I visited Auburn Prison, in New York State, where the condemned person was subjected to a different regime,—cells at night, but work in common, though in silence, during the day. I have been over many prisons since, for I have always held that the management of such places is a pretty reliable thermometer of the moral condition of the country to which they belong. I know of some foul ones in states which set up to be very civilized. In France we are lamentably behindhand in the matter. Though we have some prisons which are model, we have a great many more which are shamefully behind the times. For my own part, I have come to the conclusion, from all I have seen and heard, that seclusion in cells at night, with work in common during the daytime in small easily managed workshops, or better still, in the open air as at Portland Prison in England, is the penitentiary system which offers the fewest drawbacks. I say drawbacks, for no such system can offer advantages. All the holding forth of philanthropists about the sad fate of criminals is empty noise. A prison must be a place of punishment; it can never be an abode of reformation, nor of reclamation.
Let us pass, from the prisons, to Mr. Norris's great steam engine, and especially locomotive engine works, which Michel Chevalier had told me to be sure to go and see; and most interesting, truly, they were. Great improvements in the construction of locomotives originated in these works. Mr. Norris had also had a very original and exceedingly American idea—to make a great orchestra of musical instruments played by steam instead of by human lungs. I heard, or at all events I was told I heard, the "Hunting Chorus" in Robin Hood performed by this orchestra, in which the conductor's baton was replaced by a tap. It was horrible!