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"CHAMPION STEAMER, UP THE ST. LAWRENCE,
"Thursday, September 4, 1851.
"Owing to the locomotive habits of the people, the hotels of America are more extensive and more systematized than ours. One of their features is the system of charging a fixed sum per day, which covers all the annoying extras of English hotel bills. On entering an hotel, you write your name and address in a book, have the number of your bedroom placed opposite your name, and receive a key, which, when you go out you leave in the office. The breakfast, lunch, dinner, and tea, take place at stated hours, and are managed with great precision and discipline.
"At the 'United States Hotel,' Saratoga, the waiters are blacks, and are commanded by a black maitre d'hotel. On dinner being served, the gong is sounded, and each guest takes his appointed place. All being seated, the maitre d'hotel claps his hands, and in an instant, at one coup, the covers are nipped away, as if with the same hand, by waiters stationed at regular distances around the tables. Then the serious work of eating commences. If any embarrassment arises, a clap of the hand calls attention to it, and a sign directs its immediate remedy. Then, as each course is finished, another clap stations the waiters again at their old places, and at a wave of the hand all the dishes skip off the table. Then, the table being cleared of dinner dishes, the whole posse of waiters march two and two round the tables, and leave the room by a side door. In a few seconds they return again in the same order, each man bearing three dishes, and fall again into their places. Then, all eyes being fixed upon the maitre d'hotel, clap one, and down goes one dish from the hands of each waiter all along the tables. Clap two brings down dish the second; and clap three drops the third. And at a table of nearly 400 persons all are thus served with dessert, as before they had been with each course, in about half a moment, and each at the same time. Even in changing knives, forks, and plates, a system is adopted. A portion of the waiters, obeying a sign, fall out of line, and divide into threes; one of each three bears the plates, one the knives, and one the forks; and each party goes round its allotted length of table. Black No. 1 dots down a plate opposite each person; No. 2 plants a knife on one side of it; No. 3 puts down a fork on the other side. The men do this with an even regularity of movement, and a gravity which is quite amusing. All this rapid and regular action drives dinner on amazingly; indeed, it almost hurries you. In fifty minutes all is over, and the table cleared. The Americans, who seem to know the value of time, generally get up and decamp immediately after the last mouthful, which is perhaps a sensible plan.
"At Saratoga we found a party of Indians. Eighteen of these children of the forest, who had been down to New York to sell toys and ornaments, which they manufacture in the winter, were on their return home, and were encamped outside the village during Sunday. They showed little of the costume of their tribe, or rather, I suppose I should say, want of costume; one man wearing a pair of red plush breeches, and some of the women having bonnets. Still there were the features, the attitudes, and the language of the aborigines. We visited their camp at night, a collection of gipsy-like tents, and conversed with one or two of them, which led others to steal out and listen. I say steal out, for it was only upon turning round, that I became aware that we were suddenly almost surrounded. One man spoke very good English. He said they were Oneidas, or as he pronounced it 'Onidehs,' and were going back to their country, where they would remain with their tribe, about two hundred and eighty of whom were left, till next year, and then come down again.
"On Sunday evening I witnessed another and a very different spectacle. A Methodist preacher came into the village in a little four-wheeled car, with a square black hood over it, and preached from his car, on what is termed by the common voice 'Nigger abolition.' He was accompanied by a young woman and a very pretty little child, who both sat behind him. He soon got an audience, amongst whom were several men from the Southern States. He denounced slavery in no very measured terms, and soon provoked the Southern men to interject—'Why don't you go into the South?' 'Why, Sir,' was the reply, 'you know, it would be as much as my life is worth.' 'Nonsense! we will give you five hundred dollars to go, and you shall be safe.' 'To what State, Sir?' 'Georgia,' replied one voice; 'Alabama,' another; 'North Carolina,' another. 'Why,' was the rejoinder, 'three of our preachers were expelled from those very States not a month ago.' 'Your niggers here are free, and they are worse off than ours; why don't you mend their condition first?' And so the attack and reply went on (this was Sunday evening) for half an hour, amidst laughter, jeers, and the occasional propulsion, by fellows behind, of some unlucky lad or other against the poor preacher's horse; a movement which endangered the woman and child especially, but which appeared to give great satisfaction to many, and which no one interfered in any manner to prevent. I left the spot in disgust. I have seen, however, as much petty intolerance at home. I returned from my walk in time to hear the preacher pronounce his benediction, in the midst of which there arose a hideous yell: three or four boys were shot against the horse, and the car was nearly overthrown; after which a shouting multitude followed the retreating abolitionist for some distance, to harass and annoy him, as he drove with difficulty away.
"On Monday morning, recruited by the previous day's rest, I left Saratoga, and travelled forty-one miles by railway through a partially cleared, and, in many parts, very beautiful country, to Whitehall, which is at the southern end of Lake Champlain, where we took a steamer, a nice, orderly, and comfortable boat, and steamed to Rouse's Point, 132 miles further. The scenery of the lake is very beautiful. The ruins of the old fortress of Ticonderoga rise upon it, standing upon a steep rocky headland, and commanding the lake, which narrows at this point; a wide expanse of water swelling out both above and below. Ticonderoga was taken from the French by the English, by the use of artillery fired down from the mountain above it. In the American war of independence it was taken from us by surprise by one Colonel Ethen Allen. It is reported that Allen awakened the commandant, who was in bed, and told him to surrender. 'By what authority?' said the half- awakened officer. 'By the authority of the Lord Jehovah and the Continental Congress,' replied Allen.
"About the middle of the lake is the thriving town of Burlington, the chief town of Vermont. Here we stopped to take in passengers, and were pleased with the bustle and activity of the place. The wharf was crowded; and, as the day was hot, straw hats and shirt-sleeves, also the mitigated form of comfort—viz., coat and trousers without waistcoat—were abundant.
"It was dusk when we arrived at Rouse's Point, and we had not so good a view as I could have wished of the extensive wharves and landings; the boat, 300 feet long, built to carry over whole trains; and the extensive station works of the Northern or Ogdensburgh Railroad, which is just opened. 'I had been introduced, at Saratoga, to the superintendent of this line, Colonel Schlatter, by Mr. Van Ransellaer, of the Saratoga and Washington line. Both these gentlemen were very polite, and gave me orders to pass over their railways when I pleased. The Ogdensburgh line extends from Rouse's Point to Ogdensburgh, near the head of Lake Ontario. It forms, with other lines, a complete system from Boston and New York to Lake Ontario, and has many difficult and extensive works in its course.
"From Rouse's Point we took the Champlain and St. Lawrence line, opened two days ago, and at Isle aux Noix passed into British-American territory, and heard the old French patois of the 'habitans' of that locality, from the mouths of a crowd of curious people awaiting the arrival of the train. At La Prairie we joined the ferry boat, an immense vessel as usual, and dropped down the St. Lawrence for nine miles, to Montreal, where I got to bed at Donnegana's hotel, at one o'clock on Tuesday morning, desperately tired.