We paid a visit, too, to the Naval Arsenal. A very nice little arsenal it was, in a bad situation, but admirably arranged, and only put in that particular place to serve as a sort of school of elementary instruction to the ignorance of Congress, and interest its members in naval matters. When I say Congress, I should rather say the Chamber of Representatives. In the United States the Senate is the body which has the real power, and which actually governs. This assembly, very few in numbers, especially at the time of which I speak, chosen by the Chamber, and of which the members were almost invariably re-elected, had leisure to learn the necessities of administrative government and to become a permanent body, whose action was both lasting and intelligent, like the Council of Ten at Venice or the committee of the Comedie Franjaise. But the Representative Chamber, full as it was of journalists, who had never studied anything beyond the art of attracting subscriptions to their papers, knew nothing whatever. Luckily it only formed a second wheel in the Constitution, but, in spite of that fact, anything likely to add to its enlightenment was useful.
I left Washington highly gratified with my reception, but glad to have got it over, and carried away a most agreeable recollection of our minister, M. de Bacourt, a most delightfully witty man—a family virtue, it would seem, to judge by his niece and grand-niece, Madame de Mirabeau and Madame de Martel (Gyp).
From Washington I went to Buffalo, the train running off the rails on the way, and that, too, on a viaduct, on which the engine, having broken through the roadway, was hung up in the framework, like a fly in a spider's web. I was anxious to go, via the great lakes, to Green Bay on Lake Michigan, and thence starting from Mackinaw, the old Indian Michillimackinac, to follow up the track of our officers and soldiers and missionaries, who pushed on till they discovered the Mississippi.
[Illustration: a large ship on a river]
It was in 1672 that Talon, the Superintendent of "La Nouvelle France," having heard from the Indians of the existence of a great river, sent out an expedition to discover it under Father Marquette, who had great influence over the Indian tribes. Crossing the great lakes, he landed at Green Bay, and pushing westwards, he soon reached the "Father of Waters." It was for Green Bay that I too embarked, at Buffalo, on Lake Erie, on board the staunch steamer Columbus, the last boat to go to that place so late in the season (in mid-winter). Our boat was staunch indeed, some consolation for the slowness of her pace. Of this she soon gave us proof, for she ran with an awful shock, going eight knots an hour in the dark, on to a reef of rocks, stopped short, and heeled over. A big wave caught her and lifted her a second time; there was another bump. But with the third wave she got across the reef. I rushed towards the engine, thinking everything must be smashed and the side of the ship gaping open. But no, not at all!
The captain, who had been taken aback for a moment, merely sent his quid from one cheek to the other, without saying a word. The whole thing was over. And, indeed, that was not the only unforeseen incident during our voyage. We spent one whole night aground in the St. Clair Lake. Nothing I can say will give any idea of the recklessness with which the ship was navigated. To begin with, there were no charts; you went at haphazard, according to information that had come down by tradition, and yet these lakes are really small oceans, with currents, and fogs, and squalls coming off the coasts, just like the sea. The navigation must have been just the same in 1679, when Lassalle, an officer in the Canadian army, launched the first ship, which he called the Griffon, in honour of the griffin in the arms of his commanding officer, the Marquis de Frontenac.
To danger by sea must be added danger by fire for our staunch Columbus. The boilers were heated with wood—aloewood—out of which pencils and cigar-boxes are made. It made a very pleasant smell, but being piled up pell mell in the hold, against the furnaces, it caught fire several times in my presence, and the stokers would just throw a little water on it to put it out. On the deck the very high pressure engine worked exposed and unprotected, amidst sheep and oxen and packages of all kinds, which were frequently shot against it by the roll of the waves, and above the whole there rose two stories of cabins, built of light planking, as thin as paper, quite incapable of standing against the most moderate seas, but which caught the wind, and made the ship exceedingly unsteady. During a squall, luckily for us a short one, which caught us on Lake Michigan, in the middle of the night, the whole fabric began to give way. I was woke by the water coming in and the crackling sound of the damage going on in all directions. So I got up, and found all the Americans on board wearing lifebelts, and greeting me with the remark, "Sir, you are a sailor, but there are more risks on our lakes than on the ocean!" and quite right they were.
It was a long passage, and we put in to several places on our way. First into Detroit, formerly the French Fort Pontchartrain, and now become the capital of Michigan State. Opposite Detroit runs the Canadian shore, to which we are borne by a steam ferry boat, and where the same contrast strikes me as at Niagara. On the American side I find a very pretty town, with all the comforts of civilisation, a scene of hard-working activity. On the Canadian shore I see a village of poor cottages, surrounded with apple orchards, like a village in Normandy, in front of which the red sentry marches up and down, as stiff as an automaton. The inhabitants of the said village, French both in feature and appearance, hurried up in delight when they heard us speaking the language of their forefathers. "It's the only tongue we know. We don't want our children to learn any other!" And yet they have been English for over a century! A strange contrast, indeed, this fidelity to the memory of their national origin, to their not less sincere fidelity to the conquering regime, which assures to them the right of willing their property as they choose, and has freed them from the administrative tyranny which seems, unfortunately, to cling to us under every regime.
From Detroit we went up the St. Clair River to Lake Huron. The great river was a magnificent sight, with its banks covered with mighty forests in all the splendour of their autumnal colouring. Here and there, on the American side, stood some log cabin, an emigrant's first shelter. Then we would come on a sawmill, that first of all necessaries in such a country. On the British side now and again, we saw Indian wigwams, Huron or Chippewa. At the entrance of Lake Huron bad weather came on; it snowed, and we took shelter in a bay, where we moored the ship to the shore close to one of those American forts that fringe the Indian frontier. They are all alike, these forts; a battlemented wall of thick planks, with banquettes for riflemen, and loopholed for heavier guns. Within each are the barracks and the officers' quarters. This particular fort was called Fort Gratiot. In 1688 its name was Fort St. Joseph, and it had a French garrison, commanded by Baron de Houtou. During this stoppage we had an amusing adventure. Our only fellow passengers on the Columbus, some five or six in number, were an American officer on his way to take command at Fort Winnepeg; a Methodist missionary and his wife, who spent the day singing hymns together, and retired to their cabin at night with all the eagerness of the most enthusiastic fondness; a young dressmaker going to join her family at Green Bay; and finally, Miss Mary, the chambermaid, a handsome, fair, freckled girl, liked by everybody on board. Tired of being on shipboard, the whole band of passengers, male and female, and Miss Mary into the bargain, went off to walk and amuse themselves on shore. Suddenly the people in the fort got wind of our presence. The major commanding and his officers hastened up, asking where the prince was, and invited us all into the fort, to rest and refresh ourselves with them. It was impossible to refuse such a kind and cordial invitation. It was equally impossible to break up our party—that would have been unmannerly, and contrary to American ideas of propriety and equality alike. So we entered a drawing-room, in which the wives and daughters of the officers quartered in the fort were assembled. They seemed to falter for a moment, when they beheld our lady companions. They scanned the Methodist and his wife, and took their measure at once But the dressmaker and Miss Mary, hanging on the arms of two of my companions, seemed to puzzle them. Anyhow they hastened towards them, took them by the hand, led them to the place of honour on the sofa, and began the conversation with "Do you speak English?" I don't recollect now how it all went off, but I know we were soon back on board, Miss Mary and all, under a salute of twenty-one guns.
Mackinaw, a small wooded island, with high shores, and a fort over which the stars and stripes of the Union floated, looked very picturesque as we approached it. There was a ruin on one side of the American guard-house, to which we lost no time in climbing through the woods. It was the old French fort, and our hearts swelled at the thought that the French flag was the first to float over this little Gibraltar, when, some hundred and sixty years previously, our officers took possession of this magnificent country in the name of their king.