THE STEAMBOAT.
DELAWARE.—NEWCASTLE.—RAILROAD.—FRENCH-TOWN.—ELK RIVER.—NORTH POINT.—BAY OF CHESAPEAKE.—BALTIMORE.
Quitting one of these great seaports by the ordinary conveyance of steamboat, early on a fine winter morning, is at once an amusing and interesting event.
Hastily summoned by your servant, who, himself not over early, bustles up to your bedside with "Just five minutes after six o'clock, sir," you start from a slumber that has been for some time back uneasy enough, broken up by visions of steamboats, locomotives, canvass-back ducks, Nott's stoves, and crowded cabin-tables.
At the first shake out you jump, well aware how peremptory is the steamer's bell above all other belles,—make hasty toilet, and bustle into the hall, where a few half-burned candles yet outface the daylight; and here you find a dozen newly-awakened miserables like yourself, equipped for some steamer.
The waiter inquires if you would like a cup of coffee, which as a matter of course you accept; and, hurrying after him into the next room, you are yet in the act of blowing and sipping your Mocha, which for once you find sufficiently hot, when a friend pops his head in to say that the baggage-cart is off, and your latest second of time come. Remedy there is none; a delay of one minute is fatal, since no timekeeper is so punctual as an American steamer anywhere north of the Potomac.
Out you trudge, great-coated, muffled up in fur and shawl, to find the street silent and untrodden, except by a straggler or twain bending their steps hurriedly towards Chestnut. As you turn out of South-third into this great thoroughfare you observe an immediate change; the stragglers preceding you have mingled with the main current, and are quickly confounded amidst a confused jumble of men, women, and children, carts, coaches, and wheelbarrows, pressing in long columns of march down towards the Delaware.
In the distance may be seen, curling from below, wavy pillars of dense black smoke, intermingled with vicious-looking lines of thin whitish vapour, which rush through and tower high over the more sluggish smoke with a savage, hissing sound that almost drowns the bell, now tolling a last summons.