10 A Night Steamer on the Potomac River. Virginia Road, and a Black Driver

CHAPTER IX
A NIGHT STEAMER ON THE POTOMAC RIVER.  VIRGINIA ROAD, AND A BLACK DRIVER.  RICHMOND.  BALTIMORE.  THE HARRISBURG MAIL, AND A GLIMPSE OF THE CITY.  A CANAL BOAT

We were to proceed in the first instance by steamboat; and as it is usual to sleep on board, in consequence of the starting-hour being four o’clock in the morning, we went down to where she lay, at that very uncomfortable time for such expeditions when slippers are most valuable, and a familiar bed, in the perspective of an hour or two, looks uncommonly pleasant.

It is ten o’clock at night: say half-past ten: moonlight, warm, and dull enough.  The steamer (not unlike a child’s Noah’s ark in form, with the machinery on the top of the roof) is riding lazily up and down, and bumping clumsily against the wooden pier, as the ripple of the river trifles with its unwieldy carcase.  The wharf is some distance from the city.  There is nobody down here; and one or two dull lamps upon the steamer’s decks are the only signs of life remaining, when our coach has driven away.  As soon as our footsteps are heard upon the planks, a fat negress, particularly favoured by nature in respect of bustle, emerges from some dark stairs, and marshals my wife towards the ladies’ cabin, to which retreat she goes, followed by a mighty bale of cloaks and great-coats.  I valiantly resolve not to go to bed at all, but to walk up and down the pier till morning.

I begin my promenade—thinking of all kinds of distant things and persons, and of nothing near—and pace up and down for half-an-hour.  Then I go on board again; and getting into the light of one of the lamps, look at my watch and think it must have stopped; and wonder what has become of the faithful secretary whom I brought along with me from Boston.  He is supping with our late landlord (a Field Marshal, at least, no doubt) in honour of our departure, and may be two hours longer.  I walk again, but it gets duller and duller: the moon goes down: next June seems farther off in the dark, and the echoes of my footsteps make me nervous.  It has turned cold too; and walking up and down without my companion in such lonely circumstances, is but poor amusement.  So I break my staunch resolution, and think it may be, perhaps, as well to go to bed.

I go on board again; open the door of the gentlemen’s cabin and walk in.  Somehow or other—from its being so quiet, I suppose—I have taken it into my head that there is nobody there.  To my horror and amazement it is full of sleepers in every stage, shape, attitude, and variety of slumber: in the berths, on the chairs, on the floors, on the tables, and particularly round the stove, my detested enemy.  I take another step forward, and slip on the shining face of a black steward, who lies rolled in a blanket on the floor.  He jumps up, grins, half in pain and half in hospitality; whispers my own name in my ear; and groping among the sleepers, leads me to my berth.  Standing beside it, I count these slumbering passengers, and get past forty.  There is no use in going further, so I begin to undress.  As the chairs are all occupied, and there is nothing else to put my clothes on, I deposit them upon the ground: not without soiling my hands, for it is in the same condition as the carpets in the Capitol, and from the same cause.  Having but partially undressed, I clamber on my shelf, and hold the curtain open for a few minutes while I look round on all my fellow-travellers again.  That done, I let it fall on them, and on the world: turn round: and go to sleep.

I wake, of course, when we get under weigh, for there is a good deal of noise.  The day is then just breaking.  Everybody wakes at the same time.  Some are self-possessed directly, and some are much perplexed to make out where they are until they have rubbed their eyes, and leaning on one elbow, looked about them.  Some yawn, some groan, nearly all spit, and a few get up.  I am among the risers: for it is easy to feel, without going into the fresh air, that the atmosphere of the cabin is vile in the last degree.  I huddle on my clothes, go down into the fore-cabin, get shaved by the barber, and wash myself.  The washing and dressing apparatus for the passengers generally, consists of two jack-towels, three small wooden basins, a keg of water and a ladle to serve it out with, six square inches of looking-glass, two ditto ditto of yellow soap, a comb and brush for the head, and nothing for the teeth.  Everybody uses the comb and brush, except myself.  Everybody stares to see me using my own; and two or three gentlemen are strongly disposed to banter me on my prejudices, but don’t.  When I have made my toilet, I go upon the hurricane-deck, and set in for two hours of hard walking up and down.  The sun is rising brilliantly; we are passing Mount Vernon, where Washington lies buried; the river is wide and rapid; and its banks are beautiful.  All the glory and splendour of the day are coming on, and growing brighter every minute.

At eight o’clock, we breakfast in the cabin where I passed the night, but the windows and doors are all thrown open, and now it is fresh enough.  There is no hurry or greediness apparent in the despatch of the meal.  It is longer than a travelling breakfast with us; more orderly, and more polite.

Soon after nine o’clock we come to Potomac Creek, where we are to land; and then comes the oddest part of the journey.  Seven stage-coaches are preparing to carry us on.  Some of them are ready, some of them are not ready.  Some of the drivers are blacks, some whites.  There are four horses to each coach, and all the horses, harnessed or unharnessed, are there.  The passengers are getting out of the steamboat, and into the coaches; the luggage is being transferred in noisy wheelbarrows; the horses are frightened, and impatient to start; the black drivers are chattering to them like so many monkeys; and the white ones whooping like so many drovers: for the main thing to be done in all kinds of hostlering here, is to make as much noise as possible.  The coaches are something like the French coaches, but not nearly so good.  In lieu of springs, they are hung on bands of the strongest leather.  There is very little choice or difference between them; and they may be likened to the car portion of the swings at an English fair, roofed, put upon axle-trees and wheels, and curtained with painted canvas.  They are covered with mud from the roof to the wheel-tire, and have never been cleaned since they were first built.

The tickets we have received on board the steamboat are marked No. 1, so we belong to coach No. 1.  I throw my coat on the box, and hoist my wife and her maid into the inside.  It has only one step, and that being about a yard from the ground, is usually approached by a chair: when there is no chair, ladies trust in Providence.  The coach holds nine inside, having a seat across from door to door, where we in England put our legs: so that there is only one feat more difficult in the performance than getting in, and that is, getting out again.  There is only one outside passenger, and he sits upon the box.  As I am that one, I climb up; and while they are strapping the luggage on the roof, and heaping it into a kind of tray behind, have a good opportunity of looking at the driver.

He is a negro—very black indeed.  He is dressed in a coarse pepper-and-salt suit excessively patched and darned (particularly at the knees), grey stockings, enormous unblacked high-low shoes, and very short trousers.  He has two odd gloves: one of parti-coloured worsted, and one of leather.  He has a very short whip, broken in the middle and bandaged up with string.  And yet he wears a low-crowned, broad-brimmed, black hat: faintly shadowing forth a kind of insane imitation of an English coachman!  But somebody in authority cries ‘Go ahead!’ as I am making these observations.  The mail takes the lead in a four-horse waggon, and all the coaches follow in procession: headed by No. 1.

By the way, whenever an Englishman would cry ‘All right!’ an American cries ‘Go ahead!’ which is somewhat expressive of the national character of the two countries.

The first half-mile of the road is over bridges made of loose planks laid across two parallel poles, which tilt up as the wheels roll over them; and in the river.  The river has a clayey bottom and is full of holes, so that half a horse is constantly disappearing unexpectedly, and can’t be found again for some time.

But we get past even this, and come to the road itself, which is a series of alternate swamps and gravel-pits.  A tremendous place is close before us, the black driver rolls his eyes, screws his mouth up very round, and looks straight between the two leaders, as if he were saying to himself, ‘We have done this often before, but now I think we shall have a crash.’  He takes a rein in each hand; jerks and pulls at both; and dances on the splashboard with both feet (keeping his seat, of course) like the late lamented Ducrow on two of his fiery coursers.  We come to the spot, sink down in the mire nearly to the coach windows, tilt on one side at an angle of forty-five degrees, and stick there.  The insides scream dismally; the coach stops; the horses flounder; all the other six coaches stop; and their four-and-twenty horses flounder likewise: but merely for company, and in sympathy with ours.  Then the following circumstances occur.

Black Driver (to the horses).  ‘Hi!’

Nothing happens.  Insides scream again.

Black Driver (to the horses).  ‘Ho!’

Horses plunge, and splash the black driver.

Gentleman inside (looking out).  ‘Why, what on airth—’

Gentleman receives a variety of splashes and draws his head in again, without finishing his question or waiting for an answer.

Black Driver (still to the horses).  ‘Jiddy!  Jiddy!’

Horses pull violently, drag the coach out of the hole, and draw it up a bank; so steep, that the black driver’s legs fly up into the air, and he goes back among the luggage on the roof.  But he immediately recovers himself, and cries (still to the horses),

‘Pill!’

No effect.  On the contrary, the coach begins to roll back upon No. 2, which rolls back upon No. 3, which rolls back upon No. 4, and so on, until No. 7 is heard to curse and swear, nearly a quarter of a mile behind.

Black Driver (louder than before).  ‘Pill!’

Horses make another struggle to get up the bank, and again the coach rolls backward.

Black Driver (louder than before).  ‘Pe-e-e-ill!’

Horses make a desperate struggle.

Black Driver (recovering spirits).  ‘Hi, Jiddy, Jiddy, Pill!’

Horses make another effort.

Black Driver (with great vigour).  ‘Ally Loo!  Hi.  Jiddy, Jiddy.  Pill.  Ally Loo!’

Horses almost do it.

Black Driver (with his eyes starting out of his head).  ‘Lee, den.  Lee, dere.  Hi.  Jiddy, Jiddy.  Pill.  Ally Loo.  Lee-e-e-e-e!’

They run up the bank, and go down again on the other side at a fearful pace.  It is impossible to stop them, and at the bottom there is a deep hollow, full of water.  The coach rolls frightfully.  The insides scream.  The mud and water fly about us.  The black driver dances like a madman.  Suddenly we are all right by some extraordinary means, and stop to breathe.

A black friend of the black driver is sitting on a fence.  The black driver recognises him by twirling his head round and round like a harlequin, rolling his eyes, shrugging his shoulders, and grinning from ear to ear.  He stops short, turns to me, and says:

‘We shall get you through sa, like a fiddle, and hope a please you when we get you through sa.  Old ‘ooman at home sa:’ chuckling very much.  ‘Outside gentleman sa, he often remember old ‘ooman at home sa,’ grinning again.

p. 112‘Ay ay, we’ll take care of the old woman.  Don’t be afraid.’

The black driver grins again, but there is another hole, and beyond that, another bank, close before us.  So he stops short: cries (to the horses again) ‘Easy.  Easy den.  Ease.  Steady.  Hi.  Jiddy.  Pill.  Ally.  Loo,’ but never ‘Lee!’ until we are reduced to the very last extremity, and are in the midst of difficulties, extrication from which appears to be all but impossible.

And so we do the ten miles or thereabouts in two hours and a half; breaking no bones, though bruising a great many; and in short getting through the distance, ‘like a fiddle.’

This singular kind of coaching terminates at Fredericksburgh, whence there is a railway to Richmond.  The tract of country through which it takes its course was once productive; but the soil has been exhausted by the system of employing a great amount of slave labour in forcing crops, without strengthening the land: and it is now little better than a sandy desert overgrown with trees.  Dreary and uninteresting as its aspect is, I was glad to the heart to find anything on which one of the curses of this horrible institution has fallen; and had greater pleasure in contemplating the withered ground, than the richest and most thriving cultivation in the same place could possibly have afforded me.

In this district, as in all others where slavery sits brooding, (I have frequently heard this admitted, even by those who are its warmest advocates:) there is an air of ruin and decay abroad, which is inseparable from the system.  The barns and outhouses are mouldering away; the sheds are patched and half roofless; the log cabins (built in Virginia with external chimneys made of clay or wood) are squalid in the last degree.  There is no look of decent comfort anywhere.  The miserable stations by the railway side, the great wild wood-yards, whence the engine is supplied with fuel; the negro children rolling on the ground before the cabin doors, with dogs and pigs; the biped beasts of burden slinking past: gloom and dejection are upon them all.

In the negro car belonging to the train in which we made this journey, were a mother and her children who had just been purchased; the husband and father being left behind with their old owner.  The children cried the whole way, and the mother was misery’s picture.  The champion of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, who had bought them, rode in the same train; and, every time we stopped, got down to see that they were safe.  The black in Sinbad’s Travels with one eye in the middle of his forehead which shone like a burning coal, was nature’s aristocrat compared with this white gentleman.

It was between six and seven o’clock in the evening, when we drove to the hotel: in front of which, and on the top of the broad flight of steps leading to the door, two or three citizens were balancing themselves on rocking-chairs, and smoking cigars.  We found it a very large and elegant establishment, and were as well entertained as travellers need desire to be.  The climate being a thirsty one, there was never, at any hour of the day, a scarcity of loungers in the spacious bar, or a cessation of the mixing of cool liquors: but they were a merrier people here, and had musical instruments playing to them o’ nights, which it was a treat to hear again.

The next day, and the next, we rode and walked about the town, which is delightfully situated on eight hills, overhanging James River; a sparkling stream, studded here and there with bright islands, or brawling over broken rocks.  Although it was yet but the middle of March, the weather in this southern temperature was extremely warm; the peech-trees and magnolias were in full bloom; and the trees were green.  In a low ground among the hills, is a valley known as ‘Bloody Run,’ from a terrible conflict with the Indians which once occurred there.  It is a good place for such a struggle, and, like every other spot I saw associated with any legend of that wild people now so rapidly fading from the earth, interested me very much.

The city is the seat of the local parliament of Virginia; and in its shady legislative halls, some orators were drowsily holding forth to the hot noon day.  By dint of constant repetition, however, these constitutional sights had very little more interest for me than so many parochial vestries; and I was glad to exchange this one for a lounge in a well-arranged public library of some ten thousand volumes, and a visit to a tobacco manufactory, where the workmen are all slaves.

I saw in this place the whole process of picking, rolling, pressing, drying, packing in casks, and branding.  All the tobacco thus dealt with, was in course of manufacture for chewing; and one would have supposed there was enough in that one storehouse to have filled even the comprehensive jaws of America.  In this form, the weed looks like the oil-cake on which we fatten cattle; and even without reference to its consequences, is sufficiently uninviting.

Many of the workmen appeared to be strong men, and it is hardly necessary to add that they were all labouring quietly, then.  After two o’clock in the day, they are allowed to sing, a certain number at a time.  The hour striking while I was there, some twenty sang a hymn in parts, and sang it by no means ill; pursuing their work meanwhile.  A bell rang as I was about to leave, and they all poured forth into a building on the opposite side of the street to dinner.  I said several times that I should like to see them at their meal; but as the gentleman to whom I mentioned this desire appeared to be suddenly taken rather deaf, I did not pursue the request.  Of their appearance I shall have something to say, presently.

On the following day, I visited a plantation or farm, of about twelve hundred acres, on the opposite bank of the river.  Here again, although I went down with the owner of the estate, to ‘the quarter,’ as that part of it in which the slaves live is called, I was not invited to enter into any of their huts.  All I saw of them, was, that they were very crazy, wretched cabins, near to which groups of half-naked children basked in the sun, or wallowed on the dusty ground.  But I believe that this gentleman is a considerate and excellent master, who inherited his fifty slaves, and is neither a buyer nor a seller of human stock; and I am sure, from my own observation and conviction, that he is a kind-hearted, worthy man.

The planter’s house was an airy, rustic dwelling, that brought Defoe’s description of such places strongly to my recollection.  The day was very warm, but the blinds being all closed, and the windows and doors set wide open, a shady coolness rustled through the rooms, which was exquisitely refreshing after the glare and heat without.  Before the windows was an open piazza, where, in what they call the hot weather—whatever that may be—they sling hammocks, and drink and doze luxuriously.  I do not know how their cool rejections may taste within the hammocks, but, having experience, I can report that, out of them, the mounds of ices and the bowls of mint-julep and sherry-cobbler they make in these latitudes, are refreshments never to be thought of afterwards, in summer, by those who would preserve contented minds.

There are two bridges across the river: one belongs to the railroad, and the other, which is a very crazy affair, is the private property of some old lady in the neighbourhood, who levies tolls upon the townspeople.  Crossing this bridge, on my way back, I saw a notice painted on the gate, cautioning all persons to drive slowly: under a penalty, if the offender were a white man, of five dollars; if a negro, fifteen stripes.