The Englishwoman in America - Isabella Lucy Bird (best short novels of all time TXT) 📗

water. A gale was blowing, and drove the surf upon the platform, and the spray against the windows, giving such a feeling of insecurity, that for a moment I wished myself in one of our "'coon sentry-boxes." The cars were very full after leaving Cleveland, but I contrived to sleep soundly till awakened by the intense cold which attends dawn.

It was a glorious morning. The rosy light streamed over hills covered with gigantic trees, and park-like glades watered by the fair Ohio. There were bowers of myrtle, and vineyards ready for the vintage, and the rich aromatic scent wafted from groves of blossoming magnolias told me that we were in a different clime, and had reached the sunny south. And before us, placed within a perfect amphitheatre of swelling hills, reposed a huge city, whose countless spires reflected the beams of the morning sun--the creation of yesterday--Cincinnati, the "_Queen City of the West_." I drove straight to Burnet House, almost the finest edifice in the town, and after travelling a thousand miles in forty-two hours, without either water or a hair-brush, it was the greatest possible luxury to be able to remove the accumulations of soot, dust, and cinders of two days and nights. I spent three days at Clifton, a romantic village three miles from Cincinnati, at the hospitable house of Dr. Millvaine, the Bishop of Ohio; but it would be an ill return for the kindness which I there experienced to give details of my visit, or gratify curiosity by describing family life in one of the "homes of the New World."



CHAPTER VII.

The Queen City continued--Its beauties--Its inhabitants human and equine-- An American church--Where chairs and bedsteads come from--Pigs and pork--A peep into Kentucky--Popular opinions respecting slavery--The curse of America.

The important towns in the United States bear designations of a more poetical nature than might be expected from so commercial a people. New York is the Empire City--Philadelphia the City of Brotherly Love-- Cleveland the Forest City--Chicago the Prairie City--and Cincinnati the Queen City of the West. These names are no less appropriate than poetical, and none more so than that applied to Cincinnati. The view from any of the terraced heights round the town is magnificent. I saw it first bathed in the mellow light of a declining sun. Hill beyond hill, clothed with the rich verdure of an almost tropical clime, slopes of vineyards just ready for the wine-press, [Footnote: Grapes are grown in such profusion in the Southern and Western States, that I have seen damaged bunches thrown to the pigs. Americans find it difficult to understand how highly this fruit is prized in England. An American lady, when dining at Apsley House, observed that the Duke of Wellington was cutting up a cluster of grapes into small bunches, and she wondered that this illustrious man should give himself such unnecessary trouble. When the servant handed round the plate containing these, she took them all, and could not account for the amused and even censuring looks of some of the other guests, till she heard that it was expected that she should have helped herself to one bunch only of the hothouse treasure.] magnolias with their fragrant blossoms, and that queen of trees the beautiful ilanthus, the "tree of heaven" as it is called; and everywhere foliage so luxuriant that it looked as if autumn and decay could never come. And in a hollow near us lay the huge city, so full of life, its busy hum rising to the height where I stood; and 200 feet below, the beautiful cemetery, where its dead await the morning of the resurrection. Yet, while contrasting the trees and atmosphere here with the comparatively stunted, puny foliage of England, and the chilly skies of a northern clime, I thought with Cowper respecting my own dear, but far distant land--

"England, with all thy faults I love thee still--My country!--
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies,
And fields without a flower, for warmer France
With all her vines, nor for Ausonia's groves,
Her golden fruitage, or her myrtle bowers."

The change in the climate was great from that in which I had shivered a week before, with a thermometer at 33 in the sun; yet I did not find it oppressive here at 105 in the shade, owing to the excessive dryness of the air. The sallow complexions of the New Englanders were also exchanged for the fat ruddy faces of the people of Ohio, the "_Buckeyes_," as their neighbours designate them. The town of Cincinnati, situated on the navigable stream of the Ohio, 1600 miles from the sea, is one of the most remarkable monuments of the progress of the West. A second Glasgow in appearance, the houses built substantially of red brick, six stories high --huge sign-boards outside each floor denoting the occupation of its owner or lessee--heavily-laden drays rumbling along the streets--quays at which steamboats of fairy architecture are ever lying--massive warehouses and rich stores--the side walks a perfect throng of foot-passengers--the roadways crowded with light carriages, horsemen with palmetto hats and high-peaked saddles, galloping about on the magnificent horses of Kentucky--an air of life, wealth, hustle, and progress--are some of the characteristics of a city which stands upon ground where sixty years ago an unarmed white man would have been tomahawked as he stood. The human aspect is also curious. Palmetto hats, light blouses, and white trowsers form the prevailing costume, even of the clergy, while Germans smoke chibouks and luxuriate in their shirt-sleeves--southerners, with the enervated look arising from residence in a hot climate, lounge about the streets--dark-browed Mexicans, in _sombreras_ and high slashed boots, dash about on small active horses with Mamelouk bits--rovers and adventurers from California and the Far West, with massive rings in their ears, swagger about in a manner which shows their country and calling, and females richly dressed are seen driving and walking about, from the fair- complexioned European to the negress or mulatto. The windows of the stores are arranged with articles of gaudy attire and heavy jewellery, suited to the barbaric taste of many of their customers; but inside I was surprised to find the richest and most elegant manufactures of Paris and London. A bookseller's store, an aggregate of two or three of our largest, indicated that the culture of the mind was not neglected.

The number of carriages, invariably drawn by two horses, astonished me. They were the "_red horses_" of Kentucky and the jet black of Ohio, splendid, proud looking animals, looking as if they could never tire or die. Except the "trotting baskets" and light waggons, principally driven by "swells" or "Young Americans," all the vehicles were covered, to preserve their inmates from the intense heat of the sun. In the evening hundreds, if not thousands, of carriages are to be seen in the cemetery and along the roads, some of the German ladies driving in low dresses and short sleeves. As everybody who has one hundred yards to go drives or rides, rings are fastened to all the side walks in the town to tether the horses to. Many of the streets are planted with the ilanthus-tree, and frequently one comes upon churches of tasteful architecture, with fretted spires pointing to heaven.

I went upon the Ohio, lessened by long drought into a narrow stream, in a most commodious high-pressure steamboat, and deemed myself happy in returning uninjured; for beautiful and fairy-like as these vessels are, between their own explosive qualities and the "snags and sawyers" of the rivers, their average existence is only five years!

Cincinnati in 1800 was a wooden village of 750 inhabitants; it is now a substantially-built brick town, containing 200,000 people, and thousands of fresh settlers are added every year. There are nearly 50,000 Germans, and I believe 40,000 Irish, who distinctly keep up their national characteristics. The Germans almost monopolise the handicraft trades, where they find a fruitful field for their genius and industry; the Irish are here, as everywhere, hewers of wood and drawers of water; they can do nothing but dig, and seldom rise in the social scale; the Germans, as at home, are a thinking, sceptical, theorising people: in politics, Socialists--in religion, Atheists. The Irish are still the willing and ignorant tools of an ambitious and despotic priesthood. And in a land where no man is called to account for his principles, unless they proceed to physical development, these errors grow and luxuriate. The Germans, in that part of the town almost devoted to themselves, have succeeded in practically abolishing the Sabbath, as they utterly ignore that divine institution even as a day of rest, keeping their stores open the whole day. The creeds which they profess are "Socialism" and "Universalism," and at stated periods they assemble to hear political harangues, and address invocations to universal deity. Skilled, educated, and intellectual, they are daily increasing in numbers, wealth, and political importance, and constitute an influence of which the Americans themselves are afraid.

The Irish are a turbulent class, for ever appealing to physical force, influencing the elections, and carrying out their "clan feuds" and "faction fights." The Germans, finding it a land like their own, of corn and vineyards, have named the streets in their locality in Cincinnati after their towns in the Old World, to which in idea one is frequently carried back.

On Sunday, after passing through this continental portion of the town, I found all was order and decorum in the strictly American part, where the whole population seemed to attend worship of one form or another. The church which I attended was the most beautiful place of worship I ever saw; it had neither the hallowed but comfortless antiquity of our village churches, nor the glare and crush of our urban temples; it was of light Norman architecture, and lighted by windows of rich stained glass. The pews were wide, the backs low, and the doors and mouldings were of polished oak; the cushions and linings were of crimson damask, and light fans for _real use_ were hung in each pew. The pulpit and reading-desk, both of carved oak and of a tulip shape, were placed in front of the communion-rails, on a spacious platform ascended by three steps--this, the steps, and the aisles of the church were carpeted with beautiful Kidderminster carpeting. The singing and chanting were of a very superior description, being managed, as also a very fine-toned organ, by the young ladies and gentlemen of the congregation. The ladies were more richly dressed and in brighter colours than the English, and many of them in their features and complexions bore evident traces of African and Spanish blood. The gentlemen universally wore the moustache and beard, and generally blue or green frock-coats, the collars turned over with velvet. The responses were repeated without the assistance of a clerk, and the whole service was conducted with decorum and effect.

The same favourable description may apply generally to the churches of different denominations in the United States; coldness and discomfort are not considered as incentives to devotion; and the houses of worship are ever crowded with regular and decorous worshippers.

Cincinnati is the outpost of manufacturing civilization, though large, important, but at present unfinished cities are rapidly springing up several hundred miles farther to the west. It has regular freight steamers to New Orleans, St. Louis, and other places on the Missouri and Mississippi; to Wheeling and Pittsburgh, and thence by railway to the great Atlantic cities, Philadelphia and Baltimore, while it is connected with the Canadian lakes by railway and canal to Cleveland. Till I thoroughly understood that Cincinnati is the centre of a circle embracing the populous towns of the south, and the increasing populations of the lake