Travelling along the banks of the Susquehannah, the visitor, however, is neither permitted to admire the works of nature in silence, or to express his admiration of the energy of man in his own way. The tyranny of public opinion is upon him. He must admit that he never saw anything so wonderful in his life; that there is nothing so beautiful anywhere else; no fields so green, no rivers so wide and deep, no bridges so lofty and long; and at last he is inclined to shut himself up, either in absolute grumpy negation, or to indulge in hopeless controversy. An American gentleman is as little likely as any other well-bred man to force the opinions or interrupt the reveries of a stranger; but if third-class Esquimaux are allowed to travel in first-class carriages, the hospitable creatures will be quite likely to insist on your swallowing train oil, eating blubber, or admiring snow drifts, as the finest things in the world. It is infinitely to the credit of the American people that actual offence is so seldom given and is still more rarely intended—always save and except in the one particular, of chewing tobacco. Having seen most things that can irritate one’s stomach, and being in company with an old soldier, I little expected that any excess of the sort could produce disagreeable effects; but on returning from this excursion, Mr. Lamy and myself were fairly driven out of a carriage, on the Pittsburg line, in utter loathing and disgust, by the condition of the floor. The conductor, passing through, said, “You must not stand out there, it is against the rules; you can go in and smoke,” pointing to the carriage. “In there!” exclaimed my friend, “why, it is too filthy to put a wild beast into.” The conductor looked in for a moment, nodded his head, and said, “Well, I concede it is right bad; the citizens are going it pretty strong,” and so left us.
The scenery along the Juniata is still more picturesque than that of the valley of the Susquehannah. The borders of the route across the Alleganies have been described by many a writer; but notwithstanding the good fortune which favoured us, and swept away the dense veil of vapours on the lower ranges of the hills, the landscape scarcely produced the effect of scenery on a less extended scale, just as the scenery of the Himalayas is not so striking as that of the Alps, because it is on too vast a scale to be readily grasped.
Pittsburg, where we halted next night, on the Ohio, is certainly, with the exception of Birmingham, the most intensely sooty, busy, squalid, foul-housed, and vile-suburbed city I have ever seen. Under its perpetual canopy of smoke, pierced by a forest of blackened chimneys, the ill-paved streets, swarm with a streaky population whose white faces are smutched with soot streaks—the noise of vans and drays which shake the houses as they pass, the turbulent life in the thoroughfares, the wretched brick tenements,—built in waste places on squalid mounds, surrounded by heaps of slag and broken brick—all these gave the stranger the idea of some vast manufacturing city of the Inferno; and yet a few miles beyond, the country is studded with beautiful villas, and the great river, bearing innumerable barges and steamers on its broad bosom, rolls its turbid waters between banks rich with cultivated crops.
The policeman at Pittsburg station—a burly Englishman—told me that the war had been of the greatest service to the city. He spoke not only from a policeman’s point of view, when he said that all the rowdies, Irish, Germans, and others had gone off to the war, but from the manufacturing stand-point, as he added that wages were high, and that the orders from contractors were keeping all the manufacturers going. “It is wonderful,” said he, “what a number of the citizens come back from the South, by rail, in these new metallic coffins.”
A long, long day, traversing the State of Indiana by the Fort Wayne route, followed by a longer night, just sufficed to carry us to Chicago. The railway passes through a most uninteresting country, which in part is scarcely rescued from a state of nature by the hand of man; but it is wonderful to see so much done, when one hears that the Miami Indians and other tribes were driven out, or, as the phrase is, “removed,” only twenty years ago—“conveyed, the wise called it”—to the reserves.
From Chicago, where we descended at a hotel which fairly deserves to be styled magnificent, for comfort and completeness, Mr. Lamy and myself proceeded to Racine, on the shores of Lake Michigan, and thence took the rail for Freeport, where I remained for some days, going out in the surrounding prairie to shoot in the morning, and returning at nightfall. The prairie chickens were rather wild. The delight of these days, notwithstanding bad sport, cannot be described, nor was it the least ingredient in it to mix with the fresh and vigorous race who are raising up cities on these fertile wastes. Fortunately for the patience of my readers, perhaps, I did not fill my diary with the records of each day’s events, or of the contents of our bags; and the note-book in which I jotted down some little matters which struck me to be of interest has been mislaid; but in my letters to England I gave a description of the general aspect of the country, and of the feelings of the people, and arrived at the conclusion that the tax-gatherer will have little chance of returning with full note-books from his tour in these districts. The dogs which were lent to us were generally abominable; but every evening we returned in company with great leather-greaved and jerkined-men, hung round with belts and hooks, from which were suspended strings of defunct prairie chickens. The farmers were hospitable, but were suffering from a morbid longing for a failure of crops in Europe, in order to give some value to their corn and wheat, which literally cumbered the earth.
Freeport! Who ever heard of it? And yet it has its newspapers, more than I dare mention, and its big hotel lighted with gas, its billiard-rooms and saloons, magazines, railway stations, and all the proper paraphernalia of local self-government, with all their fierce intrigues and giddy factions.
From Freeport our party returned to Chicago, taking leave of our excellent friend and companion Mr. George Thompson, of Racine. The authorities of the Central Illinois Railway, to whose courtesy and consideration I was infinitely indebted, placed at our disposal a magnificent sleeping carriage; and on the morning after our arrival, having laid in a good stock of supplies, and engaged an excellent sporting guide and dogs, we started, attached to the regular train from Chicago, until the train stopped at a shunting place near the station of Dwight, in the very centre of the prairie. We reached our halting-place, were detached, and were shot up a siding in the solitude, with no habitation in view, except the wood shanty, in which lived the family of the Irish overseer of this portion of the road—a man happy in the possession of a piece of gold which he received from the Prince of Wales, and for which, he declared, he would not take the amount of the National Debt.
The sleeping carriage proved most comfortable quarters. After breakfast in the morning, Mr. Lamy, Col. Foster, Mr. ——, of the Central Illinois rail, the keeper, and myself, descending the steps of our moveable house, walked in a few strides to the shooting grounds, which abounded with quail, but were not so well peopled by the chickens. The quail were weak on the wing, owing to the lateness of the season, and my companions grumbled at their hard luck, though I was well content with fresh air, my small share of birds, and a few American hares. Night and morning the train rushed by, and when darkness settled down upon the prairie, our lamps were lighted, dinner was served in the carriage, set forth with inimitable potatoes cooked by the old Irishwoman. From the dinner-table it was but a step to go to bed. When storm or rain rushed over the sea-like plain, I remained in the carriage writing, and after a long spell of work, it was inexpressibly pleasant to take a ramble through the flowering grass and the sweet-scented broom, and to go beating through the stunted under-cover, careless of rattlesnakes, whose tiny prattling music I heard often enough without a sight of the tails that made it.
One rainy morning, the 29th September, I think, as the sun began to break through drifting rain clouds, I saw my companions preparing their guns, the sporting chaperon Walker filling the shot flasks, and making all the usual arrangements for a day’s shooting. “You don’t mean to say you are going out shooting on a Sunday!” I said. “What, on the prairies!” exclaimed Colonel Foster. “Why, of course we are; there’s nothing wrong in it here. What nobler temple can we find to worship in than lies around us? It is the custom of the people hereabouts to shoot on Sundays, and it is a work of necessity with us; for our larder is very low.”