Our author does not think that the state affords the public as good a commodity of travelling as the public ought to have for the money paid. Each passenger car, he says, pays for locomotive power two cents per mile, for each passenger—for toll two cents a mile for itself, and one cent per mile for each passenger—burthen cars paying half these rates. There is some mistake here or—we are mistaken. The estimated cost of working an engine, including interest and repairs, is sixteen dollars per day—and the daily sum earned is twenty eight dollars—the state clearing twelve dollars per day on each locomotive. Empty cars pay the same toll and power-hire as full ones, which, as Mr. Prolix observes, is unreasonable.
At 4 P. M. our peregrinator went on board a boat to ascend the canal which follows the eastern bank of the Susquehanna. His description of the genus “canal boat,” species “Pioneer Line,” is effective, and will interest our readers.
A canal packet boat is a microcosm that contains almost as many specimens of natural history as the Ark of Noah. It is nearly eighty feet long and eleven wide; and has a house built in it that extends to within six or seven feet of stem and stern. Thirty-six feet in length of said house are used as a cabin by day, and a dormitory by night; the forward twelve feet being nocturnally partitioned off by an opaque curtain, when there are more than four ladies on board, for their accommodation. In front of said twelve feet, there is an apartment of six feet containing four permanent berths and separated from the cabin by a wooden partition, with a door in it; this is called the ladies' dressing room, and is sacred to their uses.
At 9 P. M. the steward and his satellites begin the work of arranging the sleeping apparatus. This consists of a wooden frame six feet long and twenty inches wide, with canvass nailed over it, a thin mattress and sheets, &c. to match. The frame has two metallic points on one side which are inserted into corresponding holes in the side of the cabin, and its horizontality is preserved by little ropes descending from the ceiling fastened to its other side. There are three tiers of these conveniences on each side, making twenty-four for gentlemen, and twelve for ladies, besides the four permanent berths in the ladies' dressing room. The number of berths, however, does not limit the number of passengers; for a packet is like Milton's Pandemonium, and when it is brim full of imps, the inhabitants seem to grow smaller so as to afford room for more poor devils to come in and be stewed; and tables and settees are put into a sleeping fix in the twinkling of a bedpost.
Abaft the cabin is a small apartment four feet square, in which the steward keeps for sale all sorts of potables, and some sorts of eatables. Abaft that is the kitchen, in which there is generally an emancipated or escaped slave from Maryland or Virginia, of some shade between white and black, who performs the important part of cook with great effect. The breakfasts, dinners and suppers are good, of which the extremes cost twenty-five cents each, and the mean thirty-seven and a half.
The passengers can recreate by walking about on the roof of the cabin, at the risque of being decapitated by the bridges which are passed under at short intervals of time. But this accident does not often happen, for the man at the helm is constantly on the watch to prevent such an unpleasant abridgment of the passengers, and gives notice of the approaching danger by crying out ‘bridge.’
This machine, with all that it inherits, is dragged through the water at the rate of three miles and a half per hour by three horses, driven tandem by a dipod with a long whip, who rides the hindmost horse. The rope, which is about one hundred yards in length, is fastened to the side of the roof, at the distance of twenty feet from the bow, in such fashion that it can be loosed from the boat in a moment by touching a spring. The horses are changed once in about three hours and seem very much jaded by their work.
At an hour past midnight Mr. Prolix arrived at Harrisburg, where the boat stops for half an hour to let out and take in passengers. It was pitch dark, however, and nothing was visible from the boat. We miss, therefore, a description of the town, which is cavalierly snubbed by the tourist for containing no more than forty-five hundred inhabitants. He goes to sleep, and awaking at 5 in the morning, finds himself opposite to Duncan's Island. He lands, and takes up his quarters at the hotel of Mrs. Duncan. Unlike the hotels previously described, which were all “elegant, respectable and neat,” this one is merely “neat, elegant and respectable.”
Letter IV is dated from Hallidaysburg. Leaving Duncan's Island at 6, the traveller embarked in the canal packet Delaware, Captain Williams, following the bank of Duncan's Island in a north-western course for about a mile, and then crossing the Juniata over “a substantial aqueduct built of timber and roofed in.” In the course of the day he passed Millerstown, Mexico and Mifflin, arriving at Lewistown before sunset, a distance of about forty miles. Lewistown contains about sixteen hundred inhabitants, some of whom, says Mr. Prolix, make excellent beer. Waynesburg and Hamiltonville were past during the night, and Huntingdon at 7 in the morning. In the course of the day Petersburg, Alexandria and Williamsburg made their appearance, and at 3 P. M. a shower of rain. At half past 6, “the packet glided into the basin at Hallidaysburg.” Here terminates that portion of the Pennsylvania canal which lies east of the Alleghany mountains. Goods destined for the west are taken from the boats and placed in burthen cars, to make their passage over the mountains by means of the Alleghany portage rail road. Mr. Prolix here put up at Moore's hotel, which was not only very “neat, elegant,” &c. but contained at least one vacant room, six feet wide by fourteen long, with a double bed, two chairs, and a wash-stand, “whose cleanliness was as great as its littleness.”
Letter V is headed Bedford Springs, August 7, 1835. At half past 8 on the 6th, “after a good and abundant breakfast,” Mr. P. left Hallidaysburg in a coach and four for these Springs. The distance is thirty-four miles—direction nearly south. In six hours he arrived at Buckstown, a little village consisting of two taverns, a blacksmith's shop, and two or three dwellings. Here our traveller put up at a tavern whose sign displayed the name of P. Amich—probably, quoth Mr. P., a corruption of Peregrini Amicus. Leaving this establishment at 3 P. M. he proceeded eleven miles to the village of Bedford—thence two miles farther to the Springs, of which we have a very pretty description. “The benches,” says Mr. Prolix, “and wooden columns of the pavilion have suffered much from the ruthless ambition of that numerous class of aspirants after immortality who endeavor to cut their way to the temple of fame with their penknives, and inflict the ambitious initials of their illustrious names on every piece of stuff they meet. As a goose delights in its gosling, so does one of these wits in his whittling.”