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.
