The Conversations In The Cars Are Well Worth A Traveller's Attention.
They
are very frequently on politics, but often one hears stories such as the
world has become familiarised with from the early pages of Barnum's
Autobiography, abounding in racy anecdote, broad humour, and cunning
imposition.
At Erie we changed cars, and I saw numerous emigrants sitting
on large blue boxes, looking disconsolately about them; the Irish
physiognomy being the most predominant. They are generally so dirty that
they travel by themselves in a partially lighted van, called the
Emigrants' car, for a most trifling payment. I once got into one by
mistake, and was almost sickened by the smell of tobacco, spirits, dirty
fustian, and old leather, which assailed my olfactory organs. Leaving
Erie, beyond which the lake of the same name stretched to the distant
horizon, blue and calm like a tideless sea, we entered the huge forests on
the south shore, through which we passed, I suppose, for more than 100
miles.
My next neighbour was a stalwart, bronzed Kentucky farmer, in a palm-leaf
hat, who, strange to say, never made any demonstrations with his bowie-
knife, and, having been a lumberer in these forests, pointed out all the
objects of interest.
The monotonous sublimity of these primeval woods far exceeded my
preconceived ideas. We were locked in among gigantic trees of all
descriptions, their huge stems frequently rising without a branch for a
hundred feet; then breaking into a crown of the most luxuriant foliage.
There were walnut, hickory, elm, maple, beech, oak, pine, and hemlock
trees, with many others which I did not know, and the only undergrowth, a
tropical-looking plant, with huge leaves, and berries like bunches of
purple grapes.
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