Part 8 (1/2)
Once more I must regret that reasonable demands on the reader's patience will not let me dwell with much detail on the incidents and observations of this unusual journey. No man could take such a grand walk and fail to see and learn much of interest. But here was a practical, shrewd, observant gentleman who, just returned from two years in Great Britain, was studying his own countrymen and weighing their condition and ideas by most intelligent standards. The result is that the pages of the journals reflect with unaccustomed fidelity the spirit of those days, and form a series of historical pictures not unworthy our careful attention. Just a glimpse or two by the way, and I am through.
The long-settled towns of Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut appeared to him in the main thrifty and growing. Hartford he found a place of 7,000 inhabitants, ”completely but irregularly built, the streets crooked and dirty, with sidewalks but no pavements.” He pa.s.sed through Wethersfield, ”famous for its quant.i.ties of onions. A church was built here, and its bell purchased,” he records, ”with this vegetable.” New Haven struck him as ”elegant, but not very flouris.h.i.+ng, with 300 students in Yale.”
Walking from twenty-five to thirty-five miles a day, he reached Rye, just over the New York State line, on the ninth day from Boston, and found people burning turf or peat for fuel, the first of this that he had noticed in the United States.
At Harlem Bridge, which crosses to New York Island, he found some fine houses, ”the summer residences of opulent New Yorkers”; and the next day ”set out for New York, seven miles distant, over a perfectly straight and broad road, through a rough, rocky and unpleasing region.” In New York, where he rested a few days, he reviewed his New England walk of 212 miles:
The general aspect of the country is pleasing; inns are provided with the best, the people are kind and attentive. I think I have never seen tables better spread. I pa.s.sed through thirty-six towns on the journey, which are of no mean appearance. I never had a more pleasant or satisfactory excursion. There are a great number of coaches for public conveyance plying on this great road. The fare is $12 for the whole distance. Formerly it was 254 miles between Boston and New York, but the roads are now straightened, which has shortened the distance to 212 miles.
He had experienced a Boston Thanksgiving. In New York, on Thursday, December 18th, he had another one. Thanksgiving then was a matter of State proclamation, as now, but the day had not been given its National character, and in many of the States was not observed at all. We have seen what it was like in Boston. In New York, ”business appears as brisk as on any other laboring day.” The churches, however, were open for service, and our traveler went to hear the Rev. Mr. c.u.mmings in Vanderventer Street, and to contribute to a collection in behalf of the Greeks.
Four days before Christmas he crossed to Hoboken, and trudged his way through New Jersey snow and mud to Philadelphia, which he reached on Christmas. At the theater that night he attended--
a benefit for Mr. Booth of Covent Garden, London, and was filled with admiration for Mr. Booth, but the dancing by Miss Hathwell was shocking in the extreme. The house was for a long time in great uproar, and nothing would quiet them but an a.s.surance from the manager of Mr. Booth's reappearance.
This of course was Junius Brutus Booth. Here is Mr. Lay's pen-picture of Philadelphia seventy-six years ago:
The streets of Philadelphia cross at right angles; are perfectly straight, well-paved but miserably lighted. The sidewalks break with wooden bars on which various things are suspended, and in the lower streets these bars are appropriated for drying the washwomen's clothes. Carpets are shaken in the streets at all hours, and to the annoyance of the pa.s.ser-by. Mr. Peale of the old Philadelphia Museum was lecturing three nights a week on galvanism, and entertaining the populace with a magic lantern.
It is much the same Philadelphia yet.
January 8th, Mr. Lay took his way south to Baltimore, making slow progress because of muddy roads; but he had set out to walk, and so he pushed ahead on to Was.h.i.+ngton, although there were eight coaches daily for the conveyance of pa.s.sengers between the two cities, the fare being $4. The road for part of the way lay through a wilderness. ”The inns generally were bad and the attention to travelers indifferent.”
In Was.h.i.+ngton, which he reached on January 14th, he lost no time in going to the House of Representatives, where he was soon greeted by Albert H. Tracy, whose career in Congress I a.s.sume to be familiar to the reader.
On the day named, the House was crowded to excess with spectators, a great number of whom were ladies, in consequence of Mr. Clay's taking the floor. He spoke for two hours on the subject of internal improvements, and the next day the question of erecting a statue to Was.h.i.+ngton somewhere about the Capitol, was debated warmly.
On his return North, in pa.s.sing through Baltimore, he called on Henry Niles, who as editor of _Niles' Weekly Register_, was to thousands of Americans of that day what Horace Greeley became later on--an oracle; and on January 18th struck out over a fine turnpike road for Pittsburg.
The Pittsburg pike was then the greatest highway to the West. The Erie Ca.n.a.l was nearing completion, and the stage-routes across New York State saw much traffic. Yet the South-Pennsylvania route led more directly to the Ohio region, and it had more traffic from the West to the East than the more northern highways had for years to come. In the eastern part of the State it extends through one of the most fertile and best-settled parts of the United States. Farther west it climbs a forest-clad mountain, winds through picturesque valleys, and from one end of the great State to the other is yet a pleasant path for the modern tourist.
The great Conestoga wagons in endless trains, which our pedestrian seldom lost sight of, have now disappeared. The wayside inns are gone or have lost their early character, and the locomotive has everywhere set a new pace for progress.
When Mr. Lay entered the Blue Ridge section, beyond Chambersburg, he found Dutch almost the only language spoken. The season was at first mild, and as he tramped along the Juniata, it seemed to him like May.
”Land,” he notes, ”is to be had at from $1 to $3 per acre.” It took him seventeen days to walk to Pittsburg. Of the journey as a whole he says:
At Chambersburg the great stage route from Philadelphia unites with the Baltimore road. Taverns on these roads are frequent and nearly in sight of each other. The gates for the collection of tolls differ in distance--some five, others ten, and others twenty-five miles asunder. Notwithstanding the travel is great the stock yields no profit, but, on the contrary, it is a sinking concern on some parts, and several of the companies are in debt for opening the road. About $100 per mile are annually expended in repairs. It cost a great sum to open the road, particularly that portion leading over the mountains and across the valleys.
Taverns are very cheap in their charges; meals are a fourth of a dollar, beds 6 cents, liquors remarkably cheap. Their tables are loaded with food in variety, well prepared and cleanly served up with the kindest attention and smiling cheerfulness. The women are foremost in kind abilities. Beer is made at Chambersburg of an excellent quality and at other places. A good deal of this beverage is used and becoming quite common; it is found at most of the good taverns. Whisky is universally drank and it is most prevalent.
Places for divine service are rarely to be met with immediately on the road. The inhabitants, however, are provided with them not far distant in the back settlements, for almost the whole distance. The weather has been so cold that for the two last days before reaching Pittsburg I could not keep myself comfortable in walking; indeed, I thought several times I might perish.
In Pittsburg he lodged at the old Spread Eagle Tavern, and afterwards at Conrad Upperman's inn on Front Street at $2 a week. He found the city dull and depressed:
The streets are almost deserted, a great number of the houses not tenanted, shops shut, merchants and mechanics failed; the rivers are both banked by ice, and many other things wearing the aspect of decayed trade and stagnation of commerce. Money I find purchases things very low. Flour from this city is sent over the mountains to Philadelphia for $1 per barrel, which will little more than half pay the wagoner's expenses for the 280 miles. Superfine flour was $4.12 in Philadelphia, and coal three cents per bushel. Coal for cooking is getting in use in this city--probably two-thirds the cooking is with coal.
He had had no trouble up to this point in sending his baggage ahead. It was some days before the stage left for Erie. All was at length dispatched, however, and on February 14th he crossed over to Allegheny--I think there was no bridge there then--and marched along, day after day, through Harmony, Mercer and Meadville, his progress much impeded by heavy snow; at Waterford he met his old friend G. A. Elliott, and went to a country dance; and, finally, on February 20th found himself at Mr. Hamot's dinner-table in Erie, surrounded by old friends.
They held him for two days; then, in spite of heavy snow, he set out on foot for Buffalo. Even the faded pages of the old journal which hold the record of these last few days bespeak the eager nervousness which one long absent feels as his wanderings bring him near home. With undaunted spirit, our walker pushed on eastward to the house of Col. N. Bird, two miles beyond Westfield; and the next day, with Col. Bird, drove through a violent snow-storm to Mayville to visit Mr. William Peac.o.c.k--the first ride he had taken since landing in Boston in November of the previous year. But he was known throughout the neighborhood, and his friends seem to have taken possession of him. From Mr. Bird's he went in a stage-sleigh to Fredonia to visit the Burtons. Snow two feet deep detained him in Hanover town, where friends showed him ”some tea-seed bought of a New-England peddler, who left written directions for its cultivation.” ”It's all an imposition,” is Mr. Lay's comment--but what a horde of smooth-tongued tricksters New England has to answer for!
The stage made its way through the drifts with difficulty to the Cattaraugus, where Mr. Lay left it, and stoutly set out on foot once more. For the closing stages of this great journey let me quote direct from the journal: