Little Turrets Are Better Than This, Or Even Brown
Battlements Made Of Mortar.
Except in America I do not remember to
have seen these vicious bits of white timber - timber painted white -
plastered on to the fronts and sides of red brick houses.
Again we went on by rail to Buffalo. I have traveled some
thousands of miles by railway in the States, taking long journeys
by night and longer journeys by day; but I do not remember that
while doing so I ever made acquaintance with an American. To an
American lady in a railway car I should no more think of speaking
than I should to an unknown female in the next pew to me at a
London church. It is hard to understand from whence come the laws
which govern societies in this respect; but there are different
laws in different societies, which soon obtain recognition for
themselves. American ladies are much given to talking, and are
generally free from all mauvaise honte. They are collected in
manner, well instructed, and resolved to have their share of the
social advantages of the world. In this phase of life they come
out more strongly than English women. But on a railway journey, be
it ever so long, they are never seen speaking to a stranger.
English women, however, on English railways are generally willing
to converse: they will do so if they be on a journey; but will not
open their mouths if they be simply passing backward and forward
between their homes and some neighboring town. We soon learn the
rules on these subjects; but who make the rules? If you cross the
Atlantic with an American lady you invariably fall in love with her
before the journey is over. Travel with the same woman in a
railway car for twelve hours, and you will have written her down in
your own mind in quite other language than that of love.
And now for Buffalo, and the elevators. I trust I have made it
understood that corn comes into Buffalo, not only from Chicago, of
which I have spoken specially, but from all the ports round the
lakes: Racine, Milwaukee, Grand Haven, Port Sarnia, Detroit,
Toledo, Cleveland, and many others. At these ports the produce is
generally bought and sold; but at Buffalo it is merely passed
through a gateway. It is taken from vessels of a size fitted for
the lakes, and placed in other vessels fitted for the canal. This
is the Erie Canal, which connects the lakes with the Hudson River
and with New York. The produce which passes through the Welland
Canal - the canal which connects Lake Erie and the upper lakes with
Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence - is not transhipped, seeing that
the Welland Canal, which is less than thirty miles in length, gives
a passage to vessels of 500 tons. As I have before said,
60,000,000 bushels of breadstuff were thus pushed through Buffalo
in the open months of the year 1861.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 147 of 277
Words from 75635 to 76138
of 143277
