Our
Companions Were Rather Of A Low Description, Many Of Them Germans, And
Desperate Tobacco-Chewers.
The whole floor of the car was covered with
streams of tobacco-juice, apple-cores, grape-skins, and chestnut-husks.
We crossed the Hudson River, and spent the night at Delaval's, at Albany.
The great peculiarity of this most comfortable hotel is, that the fifty
waiters are Irish girls, neatly and simply dressed. They are under a
coloured manager, and their civility and alacrity made me wonder that the
highly-paid services of male waiters were not more frequently dispensed
with. The railway ran along the street in which the hotel is situated.
From my bedroom window I looked down into the funnel of a locomotive, and
all night long was serenaded with screams, ringing of bells, and cries of
"All aboard" and "Go ahead."
Albany, the capital of the State of New York, is one of the prettiest
towns in the Union. The slope on which it is built faces the Hudson, and
is crowned by a large state-house, the place of meeting for the
legislature of the Empire State. The Americans repudiate the
"centralization" principle, and for wise reasons, of which the Irish form
a considerable number, they almost invariably locate the government of
each state, not at the most important or populous town, but at some
inconsiderable place, where the learned legislators are not in danger of
having their embarrassments increased by deliberating under the coercion
of a turbulent urban population. Albany has several public buildings, and
a number of conspicuous churches, and is a very thriving place. The
traffic on the river between it and New York is enormous. There is a
perpetual stream of small vessels up and down. The Empire City receives
its daily supplies of vegetables, meat, butter, and eggs from its
neighbourhood. The Erie and Champlain canals here meet the Hudson, and
through the former the produce of the teeming West pours to the Atlantic.
The traffic is carried on in small sailing sloops and steamers. Sometimes
a little screw-vessel of fifteen or twenty tons may be seen to hurry,
puffing and panting, up to a large vessel and drag it down to the sea; but
generally one paddle-tug takes six vessels down, four being towed behind
and one or two lashed on either side. As both steamers and sloops are
painted white, and the sails are perfectly dazzling in their purity, and
twenty, thirty, and forty of these flotillas may be seen in the course of
a morning, the Hudson river presents a very animated and unique
appearance. It is said that everybody loses a portmanteau at Albany: I was
more fortunate, and left it without having experienced the slightest
annoyance.
On the other side of the ferry a very undignified scramble takes place for
the seats on the right side of the cars, as the scenery for 130 miles is
perfectly magnificent. "Go ahead" rapidly succeeded "All aboard," and we
whizzed along this most extraordinary line of railway, so prolific in
accidents that, when people leave New York by it, their friends frequently
request them to notify their safe arrival at their destination. It runs
along the very verge of the river, below a steep cliff, but often is
supported just above the surface of the water upon a wooden platform.
Guide-books inform us that the trains which run on this line, and the
steamers which ply on the Hudson, are equally unsafe, the former from
collisions and "upsets," the latter from "bustings-up;" but most people
prefer the boats, from the advantage of seeing both sides of the river.
The sun of a November morning had just risen as I left Albany, and in a
short time beamed upon swelling hills, green savannahs, and waving woods
fringing the margin of the Hudson. At Coxsackie the river expands into a
small lake, and the majestic Catsgill Mountains rise abruptly from the
western side. The scenery among these mountains is very grand and varied.
Its silence and rugged sublimity recall the Old World: it has rocky
pinnacles and desert passes, inaccessible eminences and yawning chasms.
The world might grow populous at the feet of the Catsgills, but it would
leave them untouched and unprofaned in their stern majesty. From this
point for a hundred miles the eyes of the traveller are perfectly steeped
in beauty, which, gathering and increasing, culminates at West Point, a
lofty eminence jutting upon a lake apparently without any outlet. The
spurs of mountain ranges which meet here project in precipices from five
to fifteen hundred feet in height; trees find a place for their roots in
every rift among the rocks; festoons of clematis and wild-vine hang in
graceful drapery from base to summit, and the dark mountain shadows loom
over the lake-like expanse below. The hand wearies of writing of the
loveliness of this river. I saw it on a perfect day. The Indian summer
lingered, as though unwilling that the chilly blasts of winter should
blight the loveliness of this beauteous scene. The gloom of autumn was not
there, but its glories were on every leaf and twig. The bright scarlet of
the maple vied with the brilliant berries of the rowan, and from among the
tendrils of the creepers, which were waving in the sighs of the west wind,
peeped forth the deep crimson of the sumach. There were very few signs of
cultivation; the banks of the Hudson are barren in all but beauty. The
river is a succession of small wild lakes, connected by narrow reaches,
bound for ever between abrupt precipices. There are lakes more beauteous
than Loch Katrine, softer in their features than Loch Achray, though like
both, or like the waters which glitter beneath the blue sky of Italy.
Along their margins the woods hung in scarlet and gold - high above towered
the purple peaks - the blue waters flashed back the rays of a sun shining
from an unclouded sky - the air was warm like June - and I think the
sunbeams of that day scarcely shone upon a fairer scene.
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