Wednesday, 12th.—Winter has at length arrived in person, and his active bridge-maker is laying for him a firm icy path across the waters. It was reported yesterday that the passage between Staten Island and New Jersey was no longer open, Amboy Creek being thickly frozen from Newark Bay to the Raritan. On reaching the steamboat this morning, I found that the report was a correct one, and that our only practicable passage lay through the Narrows and round the south end of Staten Island. The occasion thus presented of a winter view of the bay quite reconciled me to this more exposed and circuitous route, as it, in truth, amply compensated for it.
It was just seven A.M. when I reached the dock where the boat lay, to all appearance firmly imbedded in thick ice; the river, I perceived, was still pretty clear. Punctual as usual, the bell ceased to clang; the paddle-wheels were vigorously applied; and in a few moments we burst our bonds, thrusting the thick flakes of ice aside, and darting into the clear river free from all farther impediment.
There were very few passengers, and I had the promenade deck to my exclusive use. Although day had not long broke, the clearness and purity of the atmosphere gave to the most distant parts of the landscape an outline cold and distinct, and brought all objects apparently much nearer to each other, and to the looker-on, than they had ever before appeared. The city of Jersey, the woods of Hoboken, and the far-off bluffs of the Palisadoes, were each seen to stand separated and alone; not blended together into one harmonizing mass, as, through the medium of a rich warm atmosphere, I had hitherto viewed them. The effect was for a moment to render this scene, which frequent observation had made familiar, quite strange to me; and at the same time to invest its now separate portions with new and peculiar attractions.
The yet quiet city soon dropped astern; and on a good plan of its streets one might have traced the earliest and most notable of its sections, if not the particular houses, by the thin spiral lines of smoke which curled distinctly high above the chimneys from which they escaped.
We held our course close along the east side of Staten Island; and as we shot by the quarantine establishment, with its hospital and many offices, the sun rose, without one attendant cloud, over the forest heights of Brooklyn, burnishing, as with gold, every window and weathercock opposed to its radiance.
The drooping boughs of the graceful willow tribes, and all the neighbouring shrubs, which only a moment before I had shivered to look upon, bent down, as they appeared, beneath a load of ungenial icicles, were now, as though touched by some enchanter's wand, sparkling and brilliant, reminding one of the diamond-growing trees of young Aladdin's cave.
The Narrows were next passed, but the view seaward was bleak and cheerless: the Neversink hills for the first time appearing to me worthy such a high-sounding distinction. Not a symptom of frost was here, although the wind had ceased to stir the waters of the bay, and to the sun alone was left the task of opposing the advance of the ice-king. Sol, though with diminished powers, had made a glorious rally on this day; for not a thicket or creek within sight but rejoiced in his cheering rays, and gladly owned his supremacy.
The smoothness of the sea enabled our boat to make rapid way; and by a little after ten o'clock we were landed at Amboy, where we found the train awaiting our arrival. As we left our first stage, Hights-town, an accident occurred similar to the one I had, on my last trip southward, seen attended by such fearful consequences. We were proceeding, luckily at a moderate rate, when the axle of the engine-tender broke in two: the car occupied by myself and three others led the van, yet the first intimation we got of the break-down of our tender was our running foul of it with a bump that fairly unshipped us all, pitching the occupiers of the hind-seats head-on into the laps of those vis-à-vis to them. Happily, this was the worst of the present mischance: the engine was speedily arrested, a sound axle drawn from the near car to replace the one fractured, myself and the others belonging to the carriage thus hauled out of the line were stowed in, as supernumeraries, elsewhere, and, after a delay, of some forty minutes, off we bowled again.
Halting for a few moments at Bordentown, where the Delaware steamer waits when the river is practicable, it now spread away below us in a solid mass; and we pursued our journey by the railroad provided for such seasons so far as it was at this time completed, that is, for some eight or nine miles farther on. This point achieved, we discovered a group of the clumsy-looking stage-coaches of the country, to the number of twelve, each having a team of four horses, ready harnessed, standing amongst the trees below.