part of human nature : as much a part of it as any
other love or hope that is our common portion : let
them, for me, stand openly revealed among the
ribald and licentious ; the very idiots know that
theij are not on the Immortal road, and will despise
them, and avoid them readily.

Leaving the Shaker village with a hearty dislike
of the old Shakers, and a hearty pity for the young
ones : tempered by the strong probability of their
running away as they grow older and wiser, which
they not uncommonly do : we returned to Lebanon,
and so to Hudson, by the way we had come upon
the previous day. There we took steamboat down
the North River towards New York, but stopped,
some four hours' journey short of it, at West Point,
where we remained that night, and all next day, and
next night too.

In this beautiful place : the fairest among the fair
and lovely Highlands of the North River : shut in
by deep green heights and ruined forts, and looking
down upon the distant town of Newburgh, along a
glittering path of sunlit water, with here and there
a skiff, whose white sail often bends on some new
tack as sudden flaws of wind come down upon her
from the gullies in the hills : hemmed in, besides,
all round, with memories of Washington and events
of the revolutionary war : is the Military School of
America.

It could not stand on more appropriate ground,
and any ground more beautiful can hardly be. The
course of education is severe, but well devised and
manly. Through June, July, and August, the young



318 AMERICAN NOTES.

men encamp upon the spacious plain whereon the
college stands ; and all the year their military exer-
cises are performed there daily. The term of study
at this institution, which the State requires from all
cadets, is four years ; but, whether it be from the
rigid nature of the discipline, or the national impa-
tience of restraint, or both causes combined, not
more than half the number who begin their studies
here ever remain to finish them.

The number of cadets being about equal to that
of the members of Congress, one is sent here from
every Congressional district : its members influen-
cing the selection. Commissions in the service are
distributed on the same principle. The dwellings
of the various Professors are beautifully situated;
and there is a most excellent hotel for strangers,
though it has the two drawbacks of being a total-
abstinence house (wines and spirits being forbidden
to the students), and of serving the public meals at
rather uncomfortable hours ; to wit, breakfast at
seven, dinner at one, and supper at sunset.

The beauty and freshness of this calm retreat, in
the very dawn and greenness of summer — it was
then the beginning of June — were exqviisite indeed.
Leaving it upon the sixth, and returning to New
York, to embark for England on the succeeding
day, I was glad to think that among the last memo-
rable beauties which had glided past us, and softened
in the bright perspective, were those whose pictures,
traced by no common hand, are fresh in most men's
minds ; not easily to grow old, or fade beneath the
dust of Time: the Kaatskill Mountains, Sleepy
Hollow, and the Tappaan Zee.



CHAPTER XVI.

THE PASSAGE HOME.

I NEVER had SO much interest before, and very-
likely I shall never have so much interest again, in
the state of the wind as on the long-looked-for
morning of Tuesday, the Seventh of June. Some
nautical authority had told me, a day or two pre-
vious, " Anything with west in it will do ; " so when
I darted out of bed at daylight, and, throwing up
the window, was saluted by a lively breeze from the
northwest, which had sprung up in the night, it
came upon me so freshly, rustling with so many
happy associations, that I conceived upon the spot
a special regard for all airs blowing from that quar-
ter of the compass, which I shall cherish, I dare
say, until my own wind has breathed its last frail
puff, and withdrawn itself forever from the mortal
calendar.

The pilot had not been slow to take advantage of
this favorable weather, and the ship, which yester-
day had been in such a crowded dock that she
might have retired from trade for good and all, for
any chance she seemed to have of going to sea, was
now full sixteen miles away. A gallant sight she was,
when we, fast gaining on her in a steamboat, saw

319



320 AMERICAN NOTES

her in the distance riding at anchor ; her tall masts
pointing up in graceful lines against the sky, and
every rope and spar expressed in delicate and thread-
like outline : gallant, too, when, we being all aboard,
the anchor came up to the sturdy chorus, " Cheerily,
men, oh, cheerily ! " and she followed proudly in the
towing steamboat's wake : but bravest and most
gallant of all when the tow-rope being cast adrift,
the canvas fluttered from her masts, and, spreading
her white wings, she soared away upon her free and
solitary course.

In the after-cabin we were only fifteen passengers
in all, and the greater part were from Canada, where
some of us had known each otlier. The night was
rough and squally, so were the next two days, but
they flew by quickly, and we were soon as cheerful
and as snug a party, with an honest, manly-hearted
captain at our head, as ever came to the resolution
of being mutually agreeable, on land or water.

We breakfasted at eight, lunched at twelve,
dined at three, and took our tea at half-past seven.
We had abundance of amusements, and dinner was
not the least among them : firstly, for its own sake ;
secondly, because of its extraordinary length : its
duration, inclusive of all the long pauses between
the courses, being seldom less than two hours and a
half ; which was a subject of never-failing entertain-
ment. By way of beguiling the tediousness of these
banquets, a select association was formed at the
lower end of the table, below the mast, to whose
distinguished president modesty forbids me to make
any further allusion, which, being a very hilarious
and jovial institution, was (prejudice apart) in high
favor with the rest of the community, and particu-



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 321

larly with a black steward, who lived for three
weeks in a broad grin at the marvellous humor of
these incorporated worthies.

Then we had chess for those who played it, whist,
cribbage, books, backgammon, and shovelboard. In
all weathers, fair or foul, calm or windy, we were
every one on deck, walking up and down in pairs,
lying in the boats, leaning over the side, or chatting
in a lazy group together. We had no lack of music,
for one played the accordion, another the violin,
and another (who usually began at six o'clock a.m.)
the key-bugle : the combined effect of which instru-
ments, when they all played different tunes, in
different parts of the ship, at the same time, and
within hearing of each other, as they sometimes did
(everybody being intensely satisfied with his own
performance), was sublimely hideous.

When all these means of entertainment failed, a
sail would heave in sight; looming, perhaps, the
very spirit of a ship, in the misty distance, or pass-
ing us so close that through our glasses we could
see the people on her decks, and easily make out
her name, and whither she was bound. For hours
together we could watch the dolphins and porpoises
as they rolled and leaped and dived around the
vessel ; or those small creatures ever on the wing,
the Mother Carey's chickens, which had borne us
company from New York Bay, and for a whole fort-
night fluttered about the vessel's stern. For some
days we had a dead calm, or very light winds,
during which the crew amused themselves with
fishing, and hooked an unlucky dolphin, who ex-
pired, in all his rainbow colors, on the deck : an event
of such importance in our barren calendar, that
21



322 AMEIilCAN NOTES

afterwards we dated from the dolphin, and made
the day on which he died an era.

Besides all this, when we were five or six days
out, there began to be much talk of icebergs, of
which wandering islands an unusual number had
been seen by the vessels that had come into New
York a day or two before we left that port, and of
whose dangerous neighborhood we were warned by
the sudden coldness of the weather, and the sinking
of the mercury in the barometer. While these
tokens lasted, a double lookout was kept, and many
dismal tales were whispered, after dark, of ships
that had struck upon the ice and gone down in the
night ; but the wind obliging us to hold a southward
course, we saw none of them, and the weather soon
grew bright and warm again.

The observation every day at noon, and the sub-
sequent working of the vessel's course, was, as may
be supposed, a feature in our lives of paramount
importance ; nor were there wanting (as there never
are) sagacious doubters of the captain's calculations,
who, so soon as his back was turned, would, in the
absence of compasses, measure the chart with bits
of string, and ends of pocket-handkerchiefs, and
points of snuffers, and clearly prove him to be
wrong by an odd thousand miles or so. It was very
edifying to see these unbelievers shake their heads
and frown, and hear them hold forth strongly upon
navigation : not that they knew anything about it,
but that they always mistrusted the captain in calm
weather, or when the wind was adverse. Indeed,
the mercury itself is not so variable as this class
of passengers, whom you will see, when the ship is
going nobly through the water, quite pale with



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 323

admiration, swearing that the captain beats all
captains ever known, and even hinting at subscrip-
tions for a piece of plate ; and who, next morning,
when the breeze has lulled, and all the sails hang
useless in the idle air, shake their despondent heads
again, and say, with screwed-up lips, they hope that
the captain is a sailor — but they shrewdly doubt him.

It even became an occupation in the calm to
wonder when the wind ivould spring up in the favor-
able quarter, where, it was clearly shown by all the
rules and precedents, it ought to have sprung up
long ago. The first mate, who whistled for it zeal-
ously, was much respected for his perseverance, and
was regarded, even by the unbelievers, as a first-rate
sailor. Many gloomy looks would be cast upward
through the cabin skylights at the flapping sails
while dinner was in progress; and some, growing
bold in ruefulness, predicted that we should land
about the middle of July. There are always on
board ship a Sanguine One and a Despondent One.
The latter character carried it hollow at this period
of the voyage, and triumphed over the Sanguine
One at every meal, by inquiring where he supposed
the Great Western (which left New York a week
after us) was now: and where he supposed the
Cunard steam-packet was now : and what he thought
of sailing vessels as compared with steamships now :
and so beset his life with pestilent attacks of that
kind, that he, too, was obliged to affect despondency
for very peace and quietude.

These were additions to the list of entertaining
incidents, but there was still another source of in-
terest. We carried in the steerage nearly a hundred
passengers : a little world of poverty : and, as we



324 A]MERICAN NOTES

came to know individuals among them by sight,
from looking down upon the deck where they took
the air in the daytime, and cooked their food, and
very often ate it too, we became curious to know
their histories, and with what expectations they had
gone out to America, and on what errands they
were going home, and what their circumstances
were. The information we got on these heads from
the carpenter, wlio had charge of these people, was
often of the strangest kind. Some of them had
been in America but three days, some but three
mouths, and some had gone out in the last vo3-age
of that very ship in which they were now returning
home. Others had sold their clothes to raise the
passage-money, and had hardly rags to cover them ;
others had no food, and lived upon the cliarity of
the rest : and one man, it was discovered nearly at
the end of the voyage, not before — for he kept his
secret close, and did not court compassion — had
had no sustenance whatever but the bones and
scraps of fat he took from the plates used in the
after-cabin dinner, when they were put out to be
washed.

The whole system of shipping and conveying
these unfortunate persons is one that stands in
need of thorough revision. If any class deserve to
be protected and assisted by the Government, it is
that class who are banished from their native land
in search of the bare means of subsistence. All
that could be done for these poor people by the
great compassion and humanity of the captain and
officers was done, but they require much more. The
law is bound, at least upon the English side, to see
that too many of them are not put on board one



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 325

ship : and that their accommodations are decent :
not demoralizing and profligate. It is bound, too,
in common humanity, to declare that no man shall
be taken on board without his stock of provisions
being previously inspected by some proper officer,
and pronounced moderately sufficient for his sup-
port upon the voyage. It is bound to provide, or to
require that there be provided, a medical attendant ;
whereas in these ships there are none, though sick-
ness of adults, and deaths of children, on the pass-
age are matters of the very commonest occurrence.
Above all, it is the duty of any Government, be it
monarchy or republic, to interpose and put an end
to that system by Avhich a firm of traders in emi-
grants purchase of the owners the whole 'tweeu-
decks of a ship, and send on board as many
wretched people as they can lay hold of, on any
terms they can get, without the smallest reference
to the conveniences of the steerage, the number of
berths, the slightest separation of the sexes, or any-
thing but their own immediate profit. Nor is even
this the worst of the vicious system : for, certain
crimping agents of these houses, who have a per-
centage on all the passengers they inveigle, are con-
stantly travelling about those districts where poverty
and discontent are rife, and tempting the credulous
into more misery, by holding out monstrous induce-
ments to emigration which can never be realized.

The history of every family we had on board was
pretty much the same. After hoarding up, and
borrowing, and begging, and selling everything to
pay the passage, they had gone out to New York,
expecting to find its streets paved with gold ; and
had found them paved with very hard and very real



326 AIHERICAN NOTES

stones. Enterprise was dull ; laborers were not
wanted; jobs of work were to be got, but the pay-
ment Avas not. They were coming back, even poorer
than they went. One of them was carrying an
open letter from a young English artisan, who had
been in New York a fortnight, to a friend near
Manchester, whom he strongly urged to follow him.
One of the officers brought it to me as a curiosity.
" This is the country, Jem," said the writer. " I
like America. There is no despotism here ; that's
the great thing. Employment of all sorts is going
a-begging, and wages are capital. You have only
to choose a trade, Jem, and be it. I haven't made
choice of one yet, but I shall soon. At j^'^^sent,
I JiavenH quite made up my mind whether to he a
carpenter or a tailor.^^

There was yet another kind of passenger, and but
one more, who, in the calm and the light winds,
was a constant theme of conversation and observa-
tion among us. This was an English sailor, a smart,
thorough-built, English man-of-war's man from his
hat to his shoes, who was serving in the American
navy, and, having got leave of absence, was on his
way home to see his friends. When he presented
himself to take and pay for his passage, it had been
suggested to him that, being an able seaman, he
might as well work it and save the money, but this
piece of advice he very indignantly rejected: say-
ing, " He'd be damned but for once he'd go aboard
ship as a gentleman." Accordingly, they took his
money, but he no sooner came aboard than he stowed
his kit in the forecastle, arranged to mess with the
crew, and, the very first time the hands were turned
up, went aloft like a cat, before anybody. And all



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 327

through the passage there he was, first at the braces,
outermost on the yards, perpetual!}^ lending a hand
everywhere, but always with a sober dignity in his
manner, and a sober grin on his face, which plainly
said, " I do it as a gentleman. For my own pleasure,
mind you ! "

At length and at last, the promised wind came up
in right good earnest, and away we went before it,
with every stitch of canvas set, slashing through
the water nobly. There was a grandeur in the
motion of the splendid ship, as, overshadowed by
her mass of sails, she rode at a furious pace upon
the waves, which filled one with an indescribable
sense of pride and exultation. As she plunged into
a foaming valley, how I loved to see the green
waves, bordered deep with white, come rushing on
astern, to buoy her upward at their pleasure, and
curl about her as she stooped again, but always own
her for their haughty mistress still ! On, on we
flew, with changing lights upon the water, being
now in the blessed region of fleecy skies ; a bright
sun lighting us by day, and a bright moon by night ;
the vane pointing directly homeward, alike the
truthful index to the favoring wind and to our
cheerful hearts ; until at sunrise, one fair Monday
morning — the twenty-seventh of June, I shall not
easily forget the day — there lay before us old Cape
Clear, God bless it, showing, in the mist of early
morning, like a cloud : the brightest and most wel-
come cloud, to us, that ever hid the face of Heaven's
fallen sister — Home.

Dim speck as it was in the wide prospect, it made
the sunrise a more cheerful sight, and gave to it
that sort of human interest which it seems to want



328 AMERICAN NOTES

at sea. There, as elsewhere, the return of day is
inseparable from some sense of renewed hope and
gladness ; but the light shining on the dreary waste
of water, and showing it in all its vast extent of
loneliness, presents a solemn spectacle, which even
night, veiling it in darkness and uncertainty, does
not surpass. The rising of the moon is more in
keeping with the solitary ocean ; and has an air of
melancholy grandeur, which, in its soft and gentle
influence, seems to comfort while it saddens. I
recollect, when I was a very young child, having a
fancy that the reflection of the moon in water was
a path to heaven, trodden by the spirits of good
people on their way to God ; and this old feeling
often came over me again, when I watched it on a
tranquil night at sea.

The wind was very light on this same Monday
morning, but it was still in the right quarter, and
so, by slow degrees, we left Cape Clear behind, and
sailed along within sight of the coast of Ireland.
And how merry we all were, and how loyal to the
George Washington, and how full of mutual con-
gratulations, and how venturesome in predicting
the exact hour at which we should arrive at Liver-
pool, may be easily imagined and readily understood.
Also, how heartily we drank the captain's health
that day at dinner ; and how restless we became
about packing up ; and how two or three of the
most sanguine spirits rejected the idea of going to
bed at all that night as something it was not worth
while to do, so near the shore, but went neverthe-
less, and slept soundly ; and how to be so near our
journey's end was like a pleasant dream, from which
one feared to wake.



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 329

The friendly breeze freshened again next day, and
on we went once more before it gallantly ; descry-
ing now and then an English ship going homeward
under shortened sail, while we, with every inch of
canvas crowded on, dashed gayly past, and left her
far behind. Towards evening the weather turned
hazy, with a drizzling rain ; and soon became so
thick, that we sailed, as it were, in a cloud. Still
we swept onward like a phantom ship, and many an
eager eye glanced up to where the Lookout on the
mast kept Avatch for Holyhead.

At length his long-expected cry was heard, and at
the same moment there shone out from the haze and
mist ahead a gleaming light, which presently was
gone, and soon returned, and soon was gone again.
Whenever it came back, the eyes of all on board
brightened and sparkled like itself : and there we
all stood, watching this revolving light upon the
rock at Holyhead, and praising it for its brightness
and its friendly warning, and lauding it, in short,
above all other signal lights that ever were dis-
played, until it once more glimmered faintly in the
distance, far behind us.

Then, it was time to fire a gun for a pilot ; and,
almost before its smoke had cleared away, a little
boat with a light at her masthead came bearing
down upon us, through the darkness, swiftly. And
presently, our sails being backed, she ran alongside ;
and the hoarse pilot, wrapped and muffled in pea-
coats and shawls to the very bridge of his weather-
ploughed-up nose, stood bodily among us on the
deck. And I think, if that pilot had wanted to
borrow fifty pounds for an indefinite period on no
security, we should have engaged to lend it him,



330 AMERICAN NOTES.

among us, before his boat had dropped astern, or,
(which is the same thing) before every scrap of news
in the paper he brought with him had become the
common property of all on board.

We turned in pretty late that night, and turned
out pretty early next morning. By six o'clock we
clustered on the deck, prepared to go ashore ; and
looked upon the spires and roofs, and smoke, of
Liverpool. By eight we all sat down in one of its
hotels, to eat and drink together for the last time.
And by nine we had shaken hands all round, and
broken up our social company forever.

The country, by the railroad, seemed, as we rat-
tled through it, like a luxuriant garden. The beauty
of the fields (so small they looked !), the hedgerows,
and the trees ; the pretty cottages, the beds of flow-
ers, the old churchyards, the antique houses, and
every well-known object ; the exquisite delights of
that one journey crowding, in the short compass of
a summer's day, the joy of many years, and winding
up with Home, and all that makes it dear ; no tongue
can tell, or pen of mine describe.



CHAPTER XVII.

SLAVERY.

The upholders of slavery in America — of the
atrocities of which system I shall not write one
word for which I have not ample proof and warrant
— may be divided into three great classes.

The first are those more moderate and rational
owners of human cattle who have come into the
possession of them as so many coins in their trad-
ing capital, but who admit the frightful nature of
the Institution in the abstract, and perceive the
dangers to society with which it is fraught : dan-
gers which, however distant they may be, or howso-
ever tardy in their coming on, are as certain to fall
upon its guilty head as is the Day of Judgment.

The second consists of all those owners, breeders,
users, buyers, and sellers of slaves, who will, until
the bloody chapter has a bloody end, own, breed,
use, buy, and sell them at all hazards ; who dog-
gedly deny the horrors of the system, in the teeth of
such a mass of evidence as never was brought to bear
on any other subject, and to which the experience
of every day contributes its immense amount ; who
would, at this or any other moment, gladly involve
America in a war, civil or foreign, provided that

331



332 AlVIERICAiT NOTES

it had for its sole end and object tlie assertion of
their right to perpetuate slavery, and to whip and
work and torture slaves, unquestioned by any human
authorit}', and unassailed by any human power ; who,
when they speak of Freedom, mean the Freedom to
oppress their kind, and to be savage, merciless, and
cruel ; and of Avhom every man on his own ground,
in Republican America, is a more exacting, and a
sterner, and a less responsible despot than the Caliph
Haroun Alraschid in his angry robe of scarlet.

The third, and not the least numerous or influ-
ential, is composed of all that delicate gentility
which cannot bear a superior, and cannot brook an
equal ; of that class whose Eepublicanism means,
" I will not tolerate a man above me : and, of those
below, none must approach too near ; " whose pride,
in a land where voluntary servitude is shunned as