On The Whole, We Slept On Board Four Nights, And Lived On Board As Many Days.

I cannot say that the life was comfortable, though I do not know that it could be made more so by any care on the part of the boat owners.

My first complaint would be against the great heat of the cabins. The Americans, as a rule, live in an atmosphere which is almost unbearable by an Englishman. To this cause, I am convinced, is to be attributed their thin faces, their pale skins, their unenergetic temperament - unenergetic as regards physical motion - and their early old age. The winters are long and cold in America, and mechanical ingenuity is far extended. These two facts together have created a system of stoves, hot-air pipes, steam chambers, and heating apparatus so extensive that, from autumn till the end of spring, all inhabited rooms are filled with the atmosphere of a hot oven. An Englishman fancies that he is to be baked, and for awhile finds it almost impossible to exist in the air prepared for him. How the heat is engendered on board the river steamers I do not know, but it is engendered to so great a degree that the sitting-cabins are unendurable. The patient is therefore driven out at all hours into the outside balconies of the boat, or on to the top roof - for it is a roof rather than a deck - and there, as he passes through the air at the rate of twenty miles an hour, finds himself chilled to the very bones.

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