The Following Remarks Were Lately Made To Me By A Liberal And Enlightened
American On The Misapprehensions Of British Observers:
- "The great fault
of English travellers in this land very often is that they see all things
through spectacles
Which have been graduated to the age and narrow local
dimensions of things in England; and because things here are new, and all
that is good, instead of being concentrated into a narrow space so as to
be seen at one glance, is widely diffused so as not to be easily gauged -
because, in other words, it is the spring here and not the autumn, and our
advance has the step of youth instead of the measured walk of age; and
because our refinements have not the precise customs to which they have
been accustomed at home, they turn away in mighty dissatisfaction. There
are excellences in varieties, and things which differ may both be good."
CHAPTER XX.
The America - A gloomy departure - An ugly night - Morning at Halifax - Our
new passengers - Babies - Captain Leitch - A day at sea - Clippers and
steamers - A storm - An Atlantic moonlight - Unpleasant sensations - A gale -
Inkermann - Conclusion.
On reaching Boston I found that my passage had been taken in the Cunard
steamer America, reputed to be the slowest and wettest of the whole
line. Some of my kind American friends, anxious to induce me to remain for
the winter with them, had exaggerated the dangers and discomforts of a
winter-passage; the December storms, the three days spent in crossing the
Newfoundland Banks, steaming at half-speed with fog-bells ringing and
foghorns blowing, the impossibility of going on deck, and the
disagreeableness of being shut up in a close heated saloon. It was with
all these slanders against the ship fresh in my recollection that I saw
her in dock on the morning of my leaving America, her large, shapeless,
wall-sided hull looming darkly through a shower of rain. The friends who
had first welcomed me to the States accompanied me to the vessel,
rendering my departure from them the more regretful, and scarcely had I
taken leave of them when a gun was fired, the lashings were cast off, and
our huge wheels began their ceaseless revolutions.
It was in some respects a cheerless embarkation. The Indian summer had
passed away; the ground was bound by frost; driving showers of sleet were
descending; and a cold, howling, wintry wind was sweeping over the waters
of Massachusetts Bay. We were considerably retarded between Boston and
Halifax by contrary winds. I had retired early to my berth to sleep away
the fatigues of several preceding months, and was awoke about midnight by
the most deafening accumulation of sounds which ever stunned my ears. I
felt that I was bruised, and that the berth was unusually hard and cold;
and, after groping about in the pitch-darkness, I found that I had been
thrown out of it upon the floor, a fact soon made self-evident by my being
rolled across the cabin, a peculiarly disagreeable course of locomotion.
It was impossible to stand or walk, and in crawling across to my berth I
was assailed by my portmanteau, which was projected violently against me.
Further sleep for some hours was impossible.
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