North America Volume II Part 5

I went out twice to Benton barracks, as the camp of wooden huts was called, which General Fremont had erected near the fair-ground of the city. This fair-ground, I was told, had been a pleasant place. It had been constructed for the recreation of the city, and for the purpose of periodical agricultural exhibitions. There is still in it a pretty ornamented cottage, and in the little garden a solitary Cupid stood dismayed by the dirt and ruin around him. In the fair-green are the round buildings intended for show cattle and agricultural implements, but now given up to cavalry horses and Parrott guns. But Benton barracks are outside the fair-green. Here on an open s.p.a.ce, some half-mile in length, two long rows of wooden sheds have been built, opposite to each other, and behind them are other sheds used for stabling and cooking-places. Those in front are divided, not into separate huts, but into chambers capable of containing nearly two hundred men each. They were surrounded on the inside by great wooden trays, in three tiers,--and on each tray four men were supposed to sleep. I went into one or two while the crowd of soldiers was in them, but found it inexpedient to stay there long. The stench of those places was foul beyond description. Never in my life before had I been in a place so horrid to the eyes and nose as Benton barracks.

The path along the front outside was deep in mud. The whole s.p.a.ce between the two rows of sheds was one field of mud, so slippery that the foot could not stand. Inside and outside every spot was deep in mud. The soldiers were mud-stained from foot to sole. These volunteer soldiers are in their nature dirty, as must be all men brought together in numerous bodies without special appliances for cleanliness, or control and discipline as to their personal habits.

But the dirt of the men in the Benton barracks surpa.s.sed any dirt that I had hitherto seen. Nor could it have been otherwise with them.

They were surrounded by a sea of mud, and the foul hovels in which they were made to sleep and live were fetid with stench and reeking with filth. I had at this time been joined by another Englishman, and we went through this place together. When we inquired as to the health of the men, we heard the saddest tales,--of three hundred men gone out of one regiment, of whole companies that had perished, of hospitals crowded with fevered patients. Measles had been the great scourge of the soldiers here,--as it had also been in the army of the Potomac. I shall not soon forget my visits to Benton barracks. It may be that our own soldiers were as badly treated in the Crimea; or that French soldiers were treated worse on their march into Russia. It may be that dirt, and wretchedness, disease and listless idleness, a descent from manhood to habits lower than those of the beasts, are necessary in warfare. I have sometimes thought that it is so; but I am no military critic and will not say. This I say,--that the degradation of men to the state in which I saw the American soldiers in Benton barracks, is disgraceful to humanity.

General Halleck was at this time commanding in Missouri, and was himself stationed at St. Louis; but his active measures against the rebels were going on to the right and to the left. On the left sh.o.r.e of the Mississippi, at Cairo, in Illinois, a fleet of gun-boats was being prepared to go down the river, and on the right an army was advancing against Springfield, in the south-western district of Missouri, with the object of dislodging Price, the rebel guerilla leader there, and, if possible, of catching him. Price had been the opponent of poor General Lyon who was killed at Wilson's Creek, near Springfield, and of General Fremont, who during his hundred days had failed to drive him out of the State. This duty had now been intrusted to General Curtis, who had for some time been holding his head-quarters at Rolla, halfway between St. Louis and Springfield.

Fremont had built a fort at Rolla, and it had become a military station. Over 10,000 men had been there at one time, and now General Curtis was to advance from Rolla against Price with something above that number of men. Many of them, however, had already gone on, and others were daily being sent up from St. Louis. Under these circ.u.mstances my friend and I, fortified with a letter of introduction to General Curtis, resolved to go and see the army at Rolla.

On our way down by the railway we encountered a young German officer, an aide-de-camp of the Federals, and under his auspices we saw Rolla to advantage. Our companions in the railway were chiefly soldiers and teamsters. The car was crowded and filled with tobacco smoke, apple peel, and foul air. In these cars during the winter there is always a large lighted stove, a stove that might cook all the dinners for a French hotel, and no window is ever opened. Among our fellow-travellers there was here and there a west-country Missouri farmer going down, under the protection of the advancing army, to look after the remains of his chattels,--wild, dark, uncouth, savage-looking men. One such hero I specially remember, as to whom the only natural remark would be that one would not like to meet him alone on a dark night. He was burly and big, unwashed and rough, with a black beard, shorn some two months since. He had sharp, angry eyes, and sat silent, picking his teeth with a bowie knife. I met him afterwards at the Rolla hotel, and found that he was a gentleman of property near Springfield. He was mild and meek as a sucking dove, asked my advice as to the state of his affairs, and merely guessed that things had been pretty rough with him. Things had been pretty rough with him. The rebels had come upon his land. House, fences, stock, and crop were all gone. His homestead had been made a ruin, and his farm had been turned into a wilderness. Everything was gone.

He had carried his wife and children off to Illinois, and had now returned, hoping that he might get on in the wake of the army till he could see the debris of his property. But even he did not seem disturbed. He did not bemoan himself or curse his fate. "Things were pretty rough," he said; and that was all that he did say.

It was dark when we got into Rolla. Everything had been covered with snow, and everywhere the snow was frozen. We had heard that there was an hotel, and that possibly we might get a bedroom there. We were first taken to a wooden building, which we were told was the head-quarters of the army, and in one room we found a colonel with a lot of soldiers loafing about, and in another a provost-marshal attended by a newspaper correspondent. We were received with open arms, and a suggestion was at once made that we were no doubt picking up news for European newspapers. "Air you a son of the Mrs.

Trollope?" said the correspondent. "Then, sir, you are an accession to Rolla." Upon which I was made to sit down, and invited to "loaf about" at the head-quarters as long as I might remain at Rolla.

Shortly, however, there came on a violent discussion about waggons.

A general had come in and wanted all the colonel's waggons, but the colonel swore that he had none, declared how bitterly he was impeded with sick men, and became indignant and reproachful. It was Brutus and Ca.s.sius again; and as we felt ourselves in the way, and anxious moreover to ascertain what might be the nature of the Rolla hotel, we took up our heavy portmanteaux--for they were heavy--and with a guide to show us the way, started off through the dark and over the hill up to our inn. I shall never forget that walk. It was up hill and down hill, with an occasional half-frozen stream across it. My friend was impeded with an enormous cloak lined with fur, which in itself was a burden for a coalheaver. Our guide, who was a clerk out of the colonel's office, carried an umbrella and a small dressing-bag, but we ourselves manfully shouldered our portmanteaux. Sydney Smith declared that an Englishman only wasted his time in training himself for gymnastic apt.i.tudes, seeing that for a shilling he could always hire a porter. Had Sydney Smith ever been at Rolla he would have written differently. I could tell at great length how I fell on my face in the icy snow, how my friend stuck in the frozen mud when he essayed to jump the stream, and how our guide walked on easily in advance, encouraging us with his voice from a distance. Why is it that a stout Englishman bordering on fifty finds himself in such a predicament as that? No Frenchman, no Italian, no German, would so place himself, unless under the stress of insurmountable circ.u.mstances. No American would do so under any circ.u.mstances. As I slipped about on the ice and groaned with that terrible fardle on my back, burdened with a dozen shirts, and a suit of dress clothes, and three pair of boots, and four or five thick volumes, and a set of maps, and a box of cigars, and a washing-tub, I confessed to myself that I was a fool. What was I doing in such a galley as that? Why had I brought all that useless lumber down to Rolla? Why had I come to Rolla, with no certain hope even of shelter for a night? But we did reach the hotel; we did get a room between us with two bedsteads.

And, pondering over the matter in my mind, since that evening, I have been inclined to think that the stout Englishman is in the right of it. No American of my age and weight will ever go through what I went through then; but I am not sure that he does not in his accustomed career go through worse things even than that. However, if I go to Rolla again during the war, I will at any rate leave the books behind me.

What a night we spent in that inn! They who know America will be aware that in all hotels there is a free admixture of different cla.s.ses. The traveller in Europe may sit down to dinner with his tailor and shoemaker; but if so, his tailor and shoemaker have dressed themselves as he dresses, and are prepared to carry themselves according to a certain standard, which in exterior does not differ from his own. In the large Eastern cities of the States, such as Boston, New York, and Washington, a similar practice of life is gradually becoming prevalent. There are various hotels for various cla.s.ses, and the ordinary traveller does not find himself at the same table with a butcher fresh from the shambles. But in the West there are no distinctions whatever. "A man's a man for a' that" in the West, let the "a' that" comprise what it may of coa.r.s.e attire and unsophisticated manners. One soon gets used to it. In that inn at Rolla was a public room, heated in the middle by a stove, and round that we soon found ourselves seated in a company of soldiers, farmers, labourers, and teamsters. But there was among them a general;--not a fighting, or would-be fighting general of the present time, but one of the old-fashioned local generals,--men who held, or had once held, some fabulous generalship in the State militia.

There we sat, cheek by jowl with our new friends, till nearly twelve o'clock, talking politics and discussing the war. The General was a stanch Unionist, having, according to his own showing, suffered dreadful things from secessionist persecutors since the rebellion commenced. As a matter of course everybody present was for the Union.

In such a place one rarely encounters any difference of opinion.

The General was very eager about the war, advocating the immediate abolition of slavery, not as a means of improving the condition of the southern slaves, but on the ground that it would ruin the southern masters. We all sat by, edging in a word now and then, but the General was the talker of the evening. He was very wrathy, and swore at every other word. "It was pretty well time," he said, "to crush out this rebellion, and by ---- it must and should be crushed out; General Jim Lane was the man to do it, and by ---- General Jim Lane would do it!" and so on. In all such conversations the time for action has always just come, and also the expected man. But the time pa.s.ses by as other weeks and months have pa.s.sed before it, and the new General is found to be no more successful than his brethren. Our friend was very angry against England. "When we've polished off these accursed rebels, I guess we'll take a turn at you. You had your turn when you made us give up Mason and Slidell, and we'll have our turn by-and-by." But in spite of his dislike to our nation he invited us warmly to come and see him at his home on the Missouri river. It was, according to his showing, a new Eden,--a Paradise upon earth.

He seemed to think that we might perhaps desire to buy a location, and explained to us how readily we could make our fortunes. But he admitted in the course of his eulogiums that it would be as much as his life was worth for him to ride out five miles from his own house.

In the meantime the teamsters greased their boots, the soldiers snored, those who were wet took off their shoes and stockings, hanging them to dry round the stove, and the western farmers chewed tobacco in silence and ruminated. At such a house all the guests go in to their meals together. A gong is sounded on a sudden, close behind your ears; accustomed as you may probably be to the sound you jump up from your chair in the agony of the crash, and by the time that you have collected your thoughts the whole crowd is off in a general stampede into the eating room. You may as well join them; if you hesitate as to feeding with so rough a lot of men, you will have to sit down afterwards with the women and children of the family, and your lot will then be worse. Among such cla.s.ses in the western States the men are always better than the women. The men are dirty and civil, the women are dirty and uncivil.

On the following day we visited the camp, going out in an ambulance and returning on horseback. We were accompanied by the General's aide-de-camp, and also, to our great gratification, by the General's daughter. There had been a hard frost for some nights, but though the cold was very great there was always heat enough in the middle of the day to turn the surface of the ground into glutinous mud; consequently we had all the roughness induced by frost, but none of the usually attendant cleanliness. Indeed, it seemed that in these parts nothing was so dirty as frost. The mud stuck like paste and encompa.s.sed everything. We heard that morning that from sixty to seventy baggage-waggons had "broken through," as they called it, and stuck fast near a river in their endeavour to make their way on to Lebanon. We encountered two generals of brigade, General Siegel, a German, and General Ashboth, an Hungarian, both of whom were waiting till the weather should allow them to advance. They were extremely courteous, and warmly invited us to go on with them to Lebanon and Springfield, promising to us such accommodation as they might be able to obtain for themselves. I was much tempted to accept the offer; but I found that day after day might pa.s.s before any forward movement was commenced, and that it might be weeks before Springfield or even Lebanon could be reached. It was my wish, moreover, to see what I could of the people, rather than to scrutinize the ways of the army.

We dined at the tent of General Ashboth, and afterwards rode his horses through the camp back to Rolla. I was greatly taken with this Hungarian gentleman. He was a tall, thin, gaunt man of fifty, a pure-blooded Magyar as I was told, who had come from his own country with Kossuth to America. His camp circ.u.mstances were not very luxurious, nor was his table very richly spread; but he received us with the ease and courtesy of a gentleman. He showed us his sword, his rifle, his pistols, his chargers, and daguerreotype of a friend he had loved in his own country. They were all the treasures that he carried with him,--over and above a chess-board and a set of chessmen which sorely tempted me to accompany him in his march.

In my next chapter, which will, I trust, be very short, I purport to say a few words as to what I saw of the American army, and therefore I will not now describe the regiments which we visited. The tents were all encompa.s.sed by snow, and the ground on which they stood was a bed of mud; but yet the soldiers out here were not so wretchedly forlorn, or apparently so miserably uncomfortable, as those at Benton barracks. I did not encounter that horrid sickly stench, nor were the men so pale and wobegone. On the following day we returned to St.

Louis, bringing back with us our friend the German aide-de-camp. I stayed two days longer in that city, and then I thought that I had seen enough of Missouri;--enough of Missouri at any rate under the present circ.u.mstances of frost and secession. As regards the people of the West, I must say that they were not such as I expected to find them. With the Northerns we are all more or less intimately acquainted. Those Americans whom we meet in our own country, or on the Continent, are generally from the North, or if not so they have that type of American manners which has become familiar to us. They are talkative, intelligent, inclined to be social, though frequently not sympathetically social with ourselves; somewhat _soi-disant_, but almost invariably companionable. As the traveller goes southward into Maryland and Washington, the type is not altered to any great extent. The hard intelligence of the Yankee gives place gradually to the softer, and perhaps more polished manner of the Southern. But the change thus experienced is not so great as is that between the American of the western and the American of the Atlantic States.

In the West I found the men gloomy and silent,--I might almost say sullen. A dozen of them will sit for hours round a stove, speechless.

They chew tobacco and ruminate. They are not offended if you speak to them, but they are not pleased. They answer with monosyllables, or, if it be practicable, with a gesture of the head. They care nothing for the graces,--or shall I say, for the decencies of life? They are essentially a dirty people. Dirt, untidiness, and noise, seem in nowise to afflict them. Things are constantly done before your eyes, which should be done and might be done behind your back. No doubt we daily come into the closest contact with matters which, if we saw all that appertains to them, would cause us to shake and shudder. In other countries we do not see all this, but in the western States we do. I have eaten in Bedouin tents, and have been ministered to by Turks and Arabs. I have sojourned in the hotels of old Spain and of Spanish America. I have lived in Connaught, and have taken up my quarters with monks of different nations. I have, as it were, been educated to dirt, and taken out my degree in outward abominations.

But my education had not reached a point which would enable me to live at my ease in the western States. A man or woman who can do that may be said to have graduated in the highest honours, and to have become absolutely invulnerable, either through the sense of touch, or by the eye, or by the nose. Indifference to appearances is there a matter of pride. A foul shirt is a flag of triumph. A craving for soap and water is as the wail of the weak and the confession of cowardice. This indifference is carried into all their affairs, or rather this manifestation of indifference. A few pages back, I spoke of a man whose furniture had been sold to pay a heavy tax raised on him specially as a secessionist; the same man had also been refused the payment of rent due to him by the Government, unless he would take a false oath. I may presume that he was ruined in his circ.u.mstances by the strong hand of the northern army. But he seemed in nowise to be unhappy about his ruin. He spoke with some scorn of the martial law in Missouri, but I felt that it was esteemed a small matter by him that his furniture was seized and sold. No men love money with more eager love than these western men, but they bear the loss of it as an Indian bears his torture at the stake. They are energetic in trade, speculating deeply whenever speculation is possible; but nevertheless they are slow in motion, loving to loaf about. They are slow in speech, preferring to sit in silence, with the tobacco between their teeth. They drink, but are seldom drunk to the eye; they begin at it early in the morning, and take it in a solemn, sullen, ugly manner, standing always at a bar; swallowing their spirits, and saying nothing as they swallow it. They drink often, and to great excess; but they carry it off without noise, sitting down and ruminating over it with the everlasting cud within their jaws. I believe that a stranger might go into the West, and pa.s.sing from hotel to hotel through a dozen of them, might sit for hours at each in the large everlasting public hall, and never have a word addressed to him. No stranger should travel in the western States, or indeed in any of the States, without letters of introduction. It is the custom of the country, and they are easily procured. Without them everything is barren; for men do not travel in the States of America as they do in Europe, to see scenery and visit the marvels of old cities which are open to all the world. The social and political life of the Americans must const.i.tute the interest of the traveller, and to these he can hardly make his way without introductions.

I cannot part with the West without saying in its favour that there is a certain manliness about its men, which gives them a dignity of their own. It is shown in that very indifference of which I have spoken. Whatever turns up the man is still there,--still unsophisticated and still unbroken. It has seemed to me that no race of men requires less outward a.s.sistance than these pioneers of civilization. They rarely amuse themselves. Food, newspapers, and brandy-smashes suffice for life; and while these last, whatever may occur, the man is still there in his manhood. The fury of the mob does not shake him, nor the stern countenance of his present martial tyrant. Alas! I cannot stick to my text by calling him a just man. Intelligence, energy, and endurance are his virtues. Dirt, dishonesty, and morning drinks are his vices.

All native American women are intelligent. It seems to be their birthright. In the eastern cities they have, in their upper cla.s.ses, superadded womanly grace to this intelligence, and consequently they are charming as companions. They are beautiful also, and, as I believe, lack nothing that a lover can desire in his love. But I cannot fancy myself much in love with a western lady, or rather with a lady in the West. They are as sharp as nails, but then they are also as hard. They know, doubtless, all that they ought to know, but then they know so much more than they ought to know. They are tyrants to their parents, and never practise the virtue of obedience till they have half-grown-up daughters of their own. They have faith in the destiny of their country, if in nothing else; but they believe that that destiny is to be worked out by the spirit and talent of the young women. I confess that for me Eve would have had no charms had she not recognized Adam as her lord. I can forgive her in that she tempted him to eat the apple. Had she come from the West country she would have ordered him to make his meal, and then I could not have forgiven her.

St. Louis should be, and still will be, a town of great wealth. To no city can have been given more means of riches. I have spoken of the enormous mileage of water-communication of which she is the centre.

The country around her produces Indian corn, wheat, gra.s.ses, hemp, and tobacco. Coal is dug even within the boundaries of the city, and iron-mines are worked at a distance from it of a hundred miles. The iron is so pure, that it is broken off in solid blocks, almost free from alloy; and as the metal stands up on the earth's surface in the guise almost of a gigantic metal pillar, instead of lying low within its bowels, it is worked at a cheap rate, and with great certainty.

Nevertheless, at the present moment, the iron-works of Pilot k.n.o.b, as the place is called, do not pay. As far as I could learn, nothing did pay, except government contracts.

CHAPTER VI.

CAIRO AND CAMP WOOD.

To whatever period of life my days may be prolonged, I do not think that I shall ever forget Cairo. I do not mean Grand Cairo, which is also memorable in its way, and a place not to be forgotten,--but Cairo in the State of Illinois, which by native Americans is always called Caaro. An idea is prevalent in the States, and I think I have heard the same broached in England, that a popular British author had Cairo, State of Illinois, in his eye when under the name of Eden he depicted a chosen, happy spot on the Mississippi river, and told us how certain English emigrants fixed themselves in that locality, and there made light of those little ills of life which are incident to humanity even in the garden of the valley of the Mississippi. But I doubt whether that author ever visited Cairo in mid-winter, and I am sure that he never visited Cairo when Cairo was the seat of an American army. Had he done so, his love of truth would have forbidden him to presume that even Mark Tapley could have enjoyed himself in such an Eden.

I had no wish myself to go to Cairo, having heard it but indifferently spoken of by all men; but my friend with whom I was travelling was peremptory in the matter. He had heard of gun-boats and mortar-boats, of forts built upon the river, of Columbiads, Dahlgrens, and Parrotts, of all the pomps and circ.u.mstance of glorious war, and entertained an idea that Cairo was the nucleus or pivot of all really strategetic movements in this terrible national struggle. Under such circ.u.mstances I was as it were forced to go to Cairo, and bore myself, under the circ.u.mstances, as much like Mark Tapley as my nature would permit. I was not jolly while I was there certainly, but I did not absolutely break down and perish in its mud.

Cairo is the southern terminus of the Illinois central railway. There is but one daily arrival there, namely, at half-past four in the morning, and but one despatch, which is at half-past three in the morning. Everything is thus done to a.s.sist that view of life which Mark Tapley took when he resolved to ascertain under what possible worst circ.u.mstances of existence he could still maintain his jovial character. Why anybody should ever arrive at Cairo at half-past four A.M., I cannot understand. The departure at any hour is easy of comprehension. The place is situated exactly at the point at which the Ohio and the Mississippi meet, and is, I should say, merely guessing on the matter, some ten or twelve feet lower than the winter level of the two rivers. This gives it naturally a depressed appearance, which must have much aided Mark Tapley in his endeavours.

Who were the founders of Cairo I have never ascertained. They are probably buried fathoms deep in the mud, and their names will no doubt remain a mystery to the latest ages. They were brought thither, I presume, by the apparent water privileges of the place; but the water privileges have been too much for them, and by the excess of their powers have succeeded in drowning all the capital of the early Cairovians, and in throwing a wet blanket of thick, moist, glutinous dirt over all their energies.

The free State of Illinois runs down far south between the slave States of Kentucky to the east, and of Missouri to the west, and is the most southern point of the continuous free-soil territory of the Northern States. This point of it is a part of a district called Egypt, which is as fertile as the old country from whence it has borrowed a name; but it suffers under those afflictions which are common to all newly-settled lands which owe their fertility to the vicinity of great rivers. Fever and ague universally prevail. Men and women grow up with their lantern faces like spectres. The children are prematurely old; and the earth which is so fruitful is hideous in its fertility. Cairo and its immediate neighbourhood must, I suppose, have been subject to yearly inundation before it was "settled up."

At present it is guarded on the sh.o.r.es of each river by high mud banks, built so as to protect the point of land. These are called the levees, and do perform their duty by keeping out the body of the waters. The sh.o.r.e between the banks is, I believe, never above breast deep with the inundation; and from the circ.u.mstances of the place, and the soft, half-liquid nature of the soil, this inundation generally takes the shape of mud instead of water.

Here, at the very point, has been built a town. Whether the town existed during Mr. Tapley's time I have not been able to learn. At the period of my visit, it was falling quickly into ruin; indeed I think I may p.r.o.nounce it to have been on its last legs. At that moment a galvanic motion had been pumped into it by the war movements of General Halleck, but the true bearings of the town, as a town, were not less plainly to be read on that account. Every street was absolutely impa.s.sable from mud. I mean that in walking down the middle of any street in Cairo a moderately framed man would soon stick fast and not be able to move. The houses are generally built at considerable intervals and rarely face each other, and along one side of each street a plank boarding was laid, on which the mud had acc.u.mulated only up to one's ankles. I walked all over Cairo with big boots, and with my trousers tucked up to my knees; but at the crossings I found considerable danger, and occasionally had my doubts as to the possibility of progress. I was alone in my work, and saw no one else making any such attempt. A few only were moving about, and they moved in wretched carts, each drawn by two miserable, floundering horses. These carts were always empty, but were presumed to be engaged in some way on military service. No faces looked out at the windows of the houses, no forms stood in the doorways. A few shops were open, but only in the drinking shops did I see customers.

In these silent, muddy men were sitting,--not with drink before them, as men sit with us,--but with the cud within their jaws, ruminating.

Their drinking is always done on foot. They stand silent at a bar, with two small gla.s.ses before them. Out of one they swallow the whisky, and from the other they take a gulp of water, as though to rinse their mouths. After that, they again sit down and ruminate. It was thus that men enjoyed themselves at Cairo.

I cannot tell what was the existing population of Cairo. I asked one resident; but he only shook his head and said that the place was about "played out." And a miserable play it must have been. I tried to walk round the point on the levees, but I found that the mud was so deep and slippery on that which protected the town from the Mississippi, that I could not move on it. On the other, which forms the bank of the Ohio, the railway runs, and here was gathered all the life and movement of the place. But the life was galvanic in its nature, created by a war-galvanism of which the shocks were almost neutralized by mud.

As Cairo is of all towns in America the most desolate, so is its hotel the most forlorn and wretched. Not that it lacked custom. It was so full that no room was to be had on our first entry from the railway cars at five A.M., and we were reduced to the necessity of washing our hands and faces in the public wash-room. When I entered it the barber and his a.s.sistants were asleep there, and four or five citizens from the railway were busy at the basins. There is a fixed resolution in these places that you shall be drenched with dirt and drowned in abominations, which is overpowering to a mind less strong than Mark Tapley's. The filth is paraded and made to go as far as possible. The stranger is spared none of the elements of nastiness.

I remember how an old woman once stood over me in my youth, forcing me to swallow the gritty dregs of her terrible medicine-cup. The treatment I received in the hotel at Cairo reminded me of that old woman. In that room I did not dare to brush my teeth lest I should give offence; and I saw at once that I was regarded with suspicion when I used my own comb instead of that provided for the public.

At length we got a room, one room for the two. I had become so depressed in spirits that I did not dare to object to this arrangement. My friend could not complain much, even to me, feeling that these miseries had been produced by his own obstinacy. "It is a new phase of life," he said. That, at any rate, was true. If nothing more be necessary for pleasurable excitement than a new phase of life, I would recommend all who require pleasurable excitement to go to Cairo. They will certainly find a new phase of life. But do not let them remain too long, or they may find something beyond a new phase of life. Within a week of that time my friend was taking quinine, looking hollow about the eyes, and whispering to me of fever and ague. To say that there was nothing eatable or drinkable in that hotel, would be to tell that which will be understood without telling. My friend, however, was a cautious man, carrying with him comfortable tin pots, hermetically sealed, from Fortnum & Mason's; and on the second day of our sojourn we were invited by two officers to join their dinner at a Cairo eating-house. We ploughed our way gallantly through the mud to a little shanty, at the door of which we were peremptorily demanded by the landlord to scrub ourselves before we entered with the stump of an old broom. This we did, producing on our nether persons the appearance of bread which has been carefully spread with treacle by an economic housekeeper. And the proprietor was right, for had we not done so, the treacle would have run off through the whole house. But after this we fared royally. Squirrel soup and prairie chickens regaled us. One of our new friends had laden his pockets with champagne and brandy; the other with gla.s.ses and a corkscrew; and as the bottle went round, I began to feel something of the spirit of Mark Tapley in my soul.

But our visit to Cairo had been made rather with reference to its present warlike character, than with any eye to the natural beauties of the place. A large force of men had been collected there, and also a fleet of gun-boats. We had come there fortified with letters to generals and commodores, and were prepared to go through a large amount of military inspection. But the bird had flown before our arrival; or rather the body and wings of the bird, leaving behind only a draggled tail and a few of its feathers. There were only a thousand soldiers at Cairo when we were there;--that is, a thousand stationed in the Cairo sheds. Two regiments pa.s.sed through the place during the time, getting out of one steamer on to another, or pa.s.sing from the railway into boats. One of these regiments pa.s.sed before me down the slope of the river-bank, and the men as a body seemed to be healthy. Very many were drunk, and all were mud-clogged up to their shoulders and very caps. In other respects they appeared to be in good order. It must be understood that these soldiers, the volunteers, had never been made subject to any discipline as to cleanliness. They wore their hair long. Their hats or caps, though all made in some military form and with some military appendance, were various and ill-a.s.sorted. They all were covered with loose, thick, blue-gray great-coats, which no doubt were warm and wholesome, but which from their looseness and colour seemed to be peculiarly susceptible of receiving and showing a very large amount of mud.

Their boots were always good; but each man was shod as he liked.

Many wore heavy over-boots coming up the leg;--boots of excellent manufacture, and from their cost, if for no other reason, quite out of the reach of an English soldier; boots in which a man would be not at all unfortunate to find himself hunting; but from these, or from their high-lows, shoes, or whatever they might wear, the mud had never been even sc.r.a.ped. These men were all warmly clothed, but clothed apparently with an endeavour to contract as much mud as might be possible.

The generals and commodores were gone up the Ohio river and up the Tennessee in an expedition with gun-boats, which turned out to be successful, and of which we have all read in the daily history of this war. They had departed the day before our arrival, and though we still found at Cairo a squadron of gun-boats,--if gun-boats go in squadrons,--the bulk of the army had been moved. There was left there one regiment and one colonel, who kindly described to us the battles he had fought, and gave us permission to see everything that was to be seen. Four of these gun-boats were still lying in the Ohio, close under the terminus of the railway with their flat, ugly noses against the muddy bank, and we were shown over two of them. They certainly seemed to be formidable weapons for river warfare, and to have been "got up quite irrespective of expense." So much, indeed, may be said for the Americans throughout the war. They cannot be accused of parsimony. The largest of these vessels, called the "Benton," had cost 36,000. These boats are made with sides sloping inwards, at an angle of 45 degrees. The iron is two-and-a-half inches thick, and it has not, I believe, been calculated that this will resist cannon shot of great weight, should it be struck in a direct line. But the angle of the sides of the boat makes it improbable that any such shot should strike them; and the iron, bedded as it is upon oak, is supposed to be sufficient to turn a shot that does not hit it in a direct line. The boats are also roofed in with iron, and the pilots who steer the vessel stand encased, as it were, under an iron cupola.

I imagine that these boats are well calculated for the river service, for which they have been built. Six or seven of them had gone up the Tennessee river the day before we reached Cairo, and while we were there they succeeded in knocking down Fort Henry, and in carrying off the soldiers stationed there and the officer in command. One of the boats, however, had been penetrated by a shot which made its way into the boiler, and the men on deck, six, I think, in number, were scalded to death by the escaping steam. The two pilots up in the cupola were destroyed in this terrible manner. As they were altogether closed in by the iron roof and sides, there was no escape for the steam. The boats, however, were well made and very powerfully armed, and will, probably, succeed in driving the secessionist armies away from the great river banks. By what machinery the secessionist armies are to be followed into the interior is altogether another question.

But there was also another fleet at Cairo, and we were informed that we were just in time to see the first essay made at testing the utility of this armada. It consisted of no less than thirty-eight mortar-boats, each of which had cost 1700. These mortar-boats were broad, flat-bottomed rafts, each constructed with a deck raised three feet above the bottom. They were protected by high iron sides, supposed to be proof against rifle b.a.l.l.s, and when supplied had been furnished each with a little boat, a rope, and four rough sweeps or oars. They had no other furniture or belongings, and were to be moved either by steam tugs or by the use of the long oars which were sent with them. It was intended that one 13-inch mortar, of enormous weight, should be put upon each, that these mortars should be fired with twenty-three pounds of powder, and that the sh.e.l.l thrown should, at a distance of three miles, fall with absolute precision into any devoted town which the rebels might hold on the river banks. The grandeur of the idea is almost sublime. So large an amount of powder had, I imagine, never then been used for the single charge in any instrument of war; and when we were told that thirty-eight of them were to play at once on a city, and that they could be used with absolute precision, it seemed as though the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah could not be worse than the fate of that city. Could any city be safe when such implements of war were about upon the waters?

But when we came to inspect the mortar-boats, our misgivings as to any future destination for this fleet were relieved, and our admiration was given to the smartness of the contractor who had secured to himself the job of building them. In the first place they had all leaked till the s.p.a.ces between the bottoms and the decks were filled with water. This s.p.a.ce had been intended for ammunition, but now seemed hardly to be fitted for that purpose. The officer who was about to test them by putting a mortar into one and by firing it off with twenty-three pounds of powder, had the water pumped out of a selected raft, and we were towed by a steam-tug from their moorings a mile up the river, down to the spot where the mortar lay ready to be lifted in by a derrick. But as we turned on the river, the tug-boat which had brought us down, was unable to hold us up against the force of the stream. A second tug-boat was at hand, and with one on each side we were just able, in half-an-hour, to recover the 100 yards which we had lost down the river. The pressure against the stream was so great, owing partly to the weight of the raft, and partly to the fact that its flat head buried itself in the water, that it was almost immoveable against the stream, although the mortar was not yet on it.

It soon became manifest that no trial could be made on that day, and so we were obliged to leave Cairo without having witnessed the firing of the great gun. My belief is that very little evil to the enemy will result from those mortar-boats, and that they cannot be used with much effect. Since that time they have been used on the Mississippi, but as yet we do not know with what result. Island No. 10 has been taken, but I do not know that the mortar-boats contributed much to that success. The enormous cost of moving them against the stream of the river is in itself a barrier to their use.

When we saw them--and then they were quite new--many of the rivets were already gone. The small boats had been stolen from some of them, and the ropes and oars from others. There they lay, thirty-eight in number, up against the mud-banks of the Ohio, under the boughs of the half-clad, melancholy forest trees, as sad a spectacle of reckless prodigality as the eye ever beheld. But the contractor who made them no doubt was a smart man.

This armada was moored on the Ohio against the low, reedy bank, a mile above the levee, where the old unchanged forest of nature came down to the very edge of the river, and mixed itself with the shallow overflowing waters. I am wrong in saying that it lay under the boughs of the trees, for such trees do not spread themselves out with broad branches. They stand thickly together, broken, stunted, spongy with rot, straight and ugly, with ragged tops and shattered arms, seemingly decayed, but still ever renewing themselves with the rapid moist life of luxuriant forest vegetation. Nothing to my eyes is sadder than the monotonous desolation of such scenery. We, in England, when we read and speak of the primeval forests of America, are apt to form pictures in our minds of woodland glades, with spreading oaks and green mossy turf beneath,--of scenes than which nothing that G.o.d has given us is more charming. But these forests are not after that fashion; they offer no allurement to the lover, no solace to the melancholy man of thought. The ground is deep with mud, or overflown with water. The soil and the river have no defined margins. Each tree, though full of the forms of life, has all the appearance of death. Even to the outward eye they seem to be laden with ague, fever, sudden chills, and pestilential malaria.

When we first visited the spot we were alone, and we walked across from the railway line to the place at which the boats were moored.

They lay in treble rank along the sh.o.r.e, and immediately above them an old steam-boat was fastened against the bank. Her back was broken, and she was given up to ruin,--placed there that she might rot quietly into her watery grave. It was mid-winter, and every tree was covered with frozen sleet and small particles of snow which had drizzled through the air; for the snow had not fallen in hearty, honest flakes. The ground beneath our feet was crisp with frost, but traitorous in its crispness; not frozen manfully so as to bear a man's weight, but ready at every point to let him through into the fat, glutinous mud below. I never saw a sadder picture, or one which did more to awaken pity for those whose fate had fixed their abodes in such a locality. And yet there was a beauty about it too,--a melancholy, death-like beauty. The disordered ruin and confused decay of the forest was all gemmed with particles of ice. The eye reaching through the thin underwood could form for itself picturesque shapes and solitary bowers of broken wood, which were bright with the opaque brightness of the h.o.a.r-frost. The great river ran noiselessly along, rapid, but still with an apparent lethargy in its waters. The ground beneath our feet was fertile beyond compare, but as yet fertile to death rather than to life. Where we then trod man had not yet come with his axe and his plough; but the railroad was close to us, and within a mile of the spot thousands of dollars had been spent in raising a city which was to have been rich with the united wealth of the rivers and the land. Hitherto fever and ague, mud and malaria, had been too strong for man, and the dollars had been spent in vain.

The day, however, will come when this promontory between the two great rivers will be a fit abode for industry. Men will settle there, wandering down from the North and East, and toil sadly, and leave their bones among the mud. Thin, pale-faced, joyless mothers will come there, and grow old before their time; and sickly children will be born, struggling up with wan faces to their sad life's labour.

But the work will go on, for it is G.o.d's work; and the earth will be prepared for the people, and the fat rottenness of the still living forest will be made to give forth its riches.

We found that two days at Cairo were quite enough for us. We had seen the gun-boats and the mortar-boats, and gone through the sheds of the soldiers. The latter were bad, comfortless, damp, and cold; and certain quarters of the officers, into which we were hospitably taken, were wretched abodes enough; but the sheds of Cairo did not stink like those of Benton barracks at St. Louis, nor had illness been prevalent there to the same degree. I do not know why this should have been so, but such was the result of my observation. The locality of Benton barracks must, from its nature, have been the more healthy, but it had become by art the foulest place I ever visited.

Throughout the army it seemed to be the fact, that the men under canvas were more comfortable, in better spirits, and also in better health than those who were lodged in sheds. We had inspected the Cairo army and the Cairo navy, and had also seen all that Cairo had to show us of its own. We were thoroughly disgusted with the hotel, and retired on the second night to bed, giving positive orders that we might be called at half-past two, with reference to that terrible start to be made at half-past three. As a matter of course we kept dozing and waking till past one, in our fear lest neglect on the part of the watcher should entail on us another day at this place; of course we went fast asleep about the time at which we should have roused ourselves; and of course we were called just fifteen minutes before the train started. Everybody knows how these things always go.

And then the pair of us, jumping out of bed in that wretched chamber, went through the mockery of washing and packing which always takes place on such occasions;--a mockery indeed of washing, for there was but one basin between us! And a mockery also of packing, for I left my hair-brushes behind me! Cairo was avenged in that I had declined to avail myself of the privileges of free citizenship which had been offered to me in that barber's shop. And then, while we were in our agony, pulling at the straps of our portmanteaux and swearing at the faithlessness of the boots, up came the clerk of the hotel--the great man from behind the bar--and scolded us prodigiously for our delay.

"Called! We had been called an hour ago!" Which statement, however, was decidedly untrue, as we remarked, not with extreme patience. "We should certainly be late," he said; "it would take us five minutes to reach the train, and the cars would be off in four." n.o.body who has not experienced them can understand the agonies of such moments,--of such moments as regards travelling in general; but none who have not been at Cairo can understand the extreme agony produced by the threat of a prolonged sojourn in that city. At last we were out of the house, rushing through the mud, slush, and half-melted snow, along the wooden track to the railway, laden with bags and coats, and deafened by that melancholy, wailing sound, as though of a huge polar she-bear in the pangs of travail upon an iceberg, which proceeds from an American railway-engine before it commences its work. How we slipped and stumbled, and splashed and swore, rushing along in the dark night, with b.u.t.tons loose, and our clothes half on! And how pitilessly we were treated! We gained our cars, and even succeeded in bringing with us our luggage; but we did not do so with the sympathy, but amidst the derision of the bystanders. And then the seats were all full, and we found that there was a lower depth even in the terrible deep of a railway train in a western State. There was a second-cla.s.s carriage, prepared, I presume, for those who esteemed themselves too dirty for a.s.sociation with the aristocracy of Cairo; and into this we flung ourselves. Even this was a joy to us, for we were being carried away from Eden. We had acknowledged ourselves to be no fitting colleagues for Mark Tapley, and would have been glad to escape from Cairo even had we worked our way out of the place as a.s.sistant-stokers to the engine-driver. Poor Cairo! unfortunate Cairo! "It is about played out!" said its citizen to me. But in truth the play was commenced a little too soon. Those players have played out; but another set will yet have their innings, and make a score that shall perhaps be talked of far and wide in the western world.

We were still bent upon army inspection, and with this purpose went back from Cairo to Louisville in Kentucky. I had pa.s.sed through Louisville before, as told in my last chapter, but had not gone south from Louisville towards the Green River, and had seen nothing of General Buell's soldiers. I should have mentioned before that when we were at St. Louis, we asked General Halleck, the officer in command of the northern army of Missouri, whether he could allow us to pa.s.s through his lines to the South. This he a.s.sured us he was forbidden to do, at the same time offering us every facility in his power for such an expedition if we could obtain the consent of Mr. Seward, who at that time had apparently succeeded in engrossing into his own hands, for the moment, supreme authority in all matters of Government. Before leaving Washington we had determined not to ask Mr. Seward, having but little hope of obtaining his permission, and being unwilling to encounter his refusal. Before going to General Halleck we had considered the question of visiting the land of Dixie without permission from any of the men in authority. I ascertained that this might easily have been done from Kentucky to Tennessee, but that it could only be done on foot. There are very few available roads running North and South through these States. The railways came before roads; and even where the railways are far asunder, almost all the traffic of the country takes itself to them, preferring a long circuitous conveyance with steam, to short distances without.

Consequently such roads as there are run laterally to the railways, meeting them at this point or that, and thus maintaining the communication of the country. Now the railways were of course in the hands of the armies. The few direct roads leading from North to South were in the same condition, and the bye-roads were impa.s.sable from mud. The frontier of the North therefore, though very extended, was not very easily to be pa.s.sed, unless, as I have said before, by men on foot. For myself I confess that I was anxious to go South; but not to do so without my coats and trousers, or shirts and pocket-handkerchiefs. The readiest way of getting across the line,--and the way which was I believe the most frequently used,--was from below Baltimore in Maryland by boat across the Potomac. But in this there was a considerable danger of being taken, and I had no desire to become a state-prisoner in the hands of Mr. Seward under circ.u.mstances which would have justified our Minister in asking for my release only as a matter of favour. Therefore when at St. Louis, I gave up all hopes of seeing "Dixie" during my present stay in America. I presume it to be generally known that Dixie is the negro's heaven, and that the southern slave States, in which it is presumed that they have found a Paradise, have since the beginning of the war been so named.

We remained a few days at Louisville, and were greatly struck with the natural beauty of the country around it. Indeed, as far as I was enabled to see, Kentucky has superior attractions as a place of rural residence for an English gentleman, to any other State in the Union.