Sunday, October 2, 2011

On the 18th of September, I left Baltimore in company with Major-General Bell, C.B., and Mr. Lamy, who was well acquainted with the Western States: stopping one night at Altoona, in order that we might cross by daylight the fine passes of the Alleganies, which are traversed by bold gradients, and remarkable cuttings, second only in difficulty and extent to those of the railroad across the Sommering.

So far as my observation extends, no route in the United States can give a stranger a better notion of the variety of scenery and of resources, the vast extent of territory, the difference in races, the prosperity of the present, and the probable greatness of the future, than the line from Baltimore by Harrisburg and Pittsburg to Chicago, traversing the great States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. Plain and mountain, hill and valley, river and meadow, forest and rock, wild tracts through which the Indian roamed but a few years ago, lands covered with the richest crops; rugged passes, which Salvator would have peopled with shadowy groups of bandits; gentle sylvan glades, such as Gainsborough would have covered with waving corn; the hum of mills, the silence of the desert and waste, sea-like lakes whitened by innumerable sails, mighty rivers carving their way through continents, sparkling rivulets that lose their lives amongst giant wheels: seams and lodes of coal, iron, and mineral wealth, cropping out of desolate mountain sides; busy, restless manufacturers and traders alternating with stolid rustics, hedges clustering with grapes, mountains whitening with snow; and beyond, the great Prairie stretching away to the backbone of inhospitable rock, which, rising from the foundations of the world, bar the access of the white man and civilisation to the bleak inhospitable regions beyond, which both are fain as yet to leave to the savage and wild beast.

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 rattle-snakes, 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.” And so, after breakfast, we set out, but the rain came down so densely that we were driven to the house of a farmer, and finally we returned to our sleeping carriage for the day. I never fired a shot nor put a gun to my shoulder, nor am I sure that any of my companions killed a bird.

The rain fell with violence all day, and at night the gusts of wind shook the carriage like a ship at sea. We were sitting at table after dinner, when the door at the end of the carriage opened, and a man, in a mackintosh dripping wet, advanced with unsteady steps along the centre of the carriage, between the beds, and taking off his hat, in the top of which he searched diligently, stood staring with lack-lustre eyes from one to the other of the party, till Colonel Foster exclaimed, “Well, sir, what do you want?”

“What do I want,” he replied, with a slight thickness of speech, “which of you is the Honourable Lord William Russell, correspondent of the London Times? That’s what I want.”

I certified to my identity; whereupon, drawing a piece of paper out of his hat, he continued, “Then I arrest you, Honourable Lord William Russell, in the name of the people of the Commonwealth of Illinois,” and thereupon handed me a document, declaring that one, Morgan, of Dwight, having come before him that day and sworn that I, with a company of men and dogs, had unlawfully assembled, and by firing shots, and by barking and noise, had disturbed the peace of the State of Illinois, he, the subscriber or justice of the peace, as named and described, commanded the constable Podgers, or whatever his name was, to bring my body before him to answer to the charge.

Now this town of Dwight was a good many miles away, the road was declared by those who knew it to be very bad, the night was pitch dark, the rain falling in torrents, and as the constable, drawing out of his hat paper after paper with the names of impossible persons upon them, served subpoenas on all the rest of the party to appear next morning, the anger of Colonel Foster could scarcely be restrained, by kicks under the table and nods and becks and wreathed smiles from the rest of the party. “This is infamous! It is a political persecution!” he exclaimed, whilst the keeper joined in chorus, declaring he never heard of such a proceeding before in all his long experience of the prairie, and never knew there was such an act in existence. The Irishmen in the hut added that the informer himself generally went out shooting every Sunday. However, I could not but regret I had given the fellow an opportunity of striking at me, and though I was the only one of the party who raised an objection to our going out at all, I was deservedly suffering for the impropriety—to call it here by no harsher name.

The constable, a man of a liquid eye and a cheerful countenance, paid particular attention meantime to a large bottle upon the table, and as I professed my readiness to go the moment he had some refreshment that very wet night, the stern severity becoming a minister of justice, which marked his first utterances, was sensibly mollified; and when Mr. ____ proposed that he should drive back with him and see the prosecutor, he was good enough to accept my written acknowledgment of the service of the writ, and promise to appear the following morning, as an adequate discharge of his duty—combined with the absorption of some Bourbon whisky—and so retired.

Mr. _____ returned late at night, and very angry. It appears that the prosecutor—who is not a man of very good reputation, and whom his neighbours were as much astonished to find the champion of religious observances as they would have been if he was to come forward to insist on the respect due to the seventh commandment —with the insatiable passion for notoriety, which is one of the worst results of American institutions, thought he would gain himself some little reputation by causing annoyance to a man so unpopular as myself. He and a companion having come from Dwight for the purpose, and hiding in the neighbourhood, had, therefore, devoted their day to lying in wait and watching our party; and as they were aware in the railway carriage I was with Colonel Foster, they had no difficulty in finding out the names of the rest of the party. The magistrate being his relative, granted the warrant at once; and the prosecutor, who was in waiting for the constable, was exceedingly disappointed when he found that I had not been dragged through the rain.

Next morning, a special engine which had been ordered up by telegraph appeared alongside the car; and a short run through a beautiful country brought us to the prairie town of Dwight. The citizens were astir—it was a great day—and as I walked with Colonel Forster, all the good people seemed to be enjoying an unexampled treat in gazing at the stupendous criminal. The court-house, or magistrate’s office, was suitable to the republican simplicity of the people of Dwight; for the chamber of justice was on the first floor of a house over a store, and access was obtained to it by a ladder from the street to a platform, at the top of which I was ushered into the presence of the court—a plain white-washed room. I am not sure there was even an engraving of George Washington on the walls. The magistrate in a full suit of black, with his hat on, was seated at a small table; behind him a few books, on plain deal shelves, provided his fund of legal learning. The constable, with a severer visage than that of last night, stood upon the right hand; three sides of the room were surrounded by a wall of stout honest Dwightians, among whom I produced a profound sensation, by the simple ceremony of taking off my hat, which they no doubt considered a token of the degraded nature of the Britisher, but which moved the magistrate to take off his head-covering; whereupon some of the nearest removed theirs, some putting them on again, and some remaining uncovered; and then the informations were read, and on being asked what I had to say, I merely bowed, and said I had no remarks to offer. But my friend, Colonel Foster, who had been churning up his wrath and forensic lore for some time, putting one hand under his coat tail, and elevating the other in the air, with modulated cadences, poured out a fine oratorical flow which completely astonished me, and whipped the audience morally off their legs completely. In touching terms he described the mission of an illustrious stranger, who had wandered over thousands of miles of land and sea to gaze upon the beauties of those prairies which the Great Maker of the Universe had expanded as the banqueting tables for the famishing millions of pauperised and despotic Europe. As the representative of an influence which the people of the great State of Illinois should wish to see developed, instead of contracted, honoured instead of being insulted, he had come among them to admire the grandeur of nature, and to behold with wonder the magnificent progress of human happiness and free institutions. (Some thumping of sticks, and cries of “Bravo, that’s so,” which warmed the Colonel into still higher flights). I began to feel if he was as great in invective as he was in eulogy, it was well he had not lived to throw a smooth pebble from his sling at Warren Hastings. As great indeed! Why, when the Colonel had drawn a beautiful picture of me examining coal deposits — investigating strata — breathing autumnal airs, and culling flowers in unsuspecting innocence, and then suddenly denounced the serpent who had dogged my steps, in order to strike me down with a justice’s warrant, I protest it is doubtful, if he did not reach to the most elevated stage of vituperative oratory, the progression of which was marked by increasing thumps of sticks, and louder murmurs of applause, to the discomfiture of the wretched prosecutor. But the magistrate was not a man of imagination; he felt he was but elective after all; and so, with his eye fixed upon his book, he pronounced his decision, which was that I be amerced in something more than half the maximum fine fixed by the statute, some five-and-twenty shillings or so, the greater part to be spent in the education of the people, by transfer to the school fund of the State.

As I was handing the notes to the magistrate, several respectable men coming forward exclaimed, “Pray oblige us, Mr. Russell, by letting us pay the amount for you; this is a shameful proceeding.” But thanking them heartily for their proffered kindness, I completed the little pecuniary transaction and wished the magistrate good morning, with the remark that I hoped the people of the State of Illinois would always find such worthy defenders of the statutes as the prosecutor, and never have offenders against their peace and morals more culpable than myself. Having undergone a severe scolding from an old woman at the top of the ladder, I walked to the train, followed by a number of the audience, who repeatedly expressed their extreme regret at the little persecution to which I had been subjected. The prosecutor had already made arrangements to send the news over the whole breadth of the Union, which was his only reward; as I must do the American papers the justice to say that, with a few natural exceptions, those which noticed the occurrence unequivocally condemned his conduct.

That evening, as we were planning an extension of our sporting tour, the mail rattling by deposited our letters and papers, and we saw at the top of many columns the startling words, “Grand Advance Of The Union Army.” “McClellan Marching On Richmond.” “Capture Of Munson’s Hill.” “Retreat of the Enemy— 30,000 men Seize Their Fortifications.” Not a moment was to be lost; if I was too late, I never would forgive myself. Our carriage was hooked on to the return train, and at 8 o’clock p.m. I started on my return to Washington, by way of Cleveland.

At half-past 3 on the 1st October the train reached Pittsburg, just too late to catch the train for Baltimore; but I continued my journey at night, arriving at Baltimore after noon, and reaching Washington at 6 p.m. on the 2nd of October.