North America Volume I Part 9

At last we did find ourselves on the prairie, amidst the waving gra.s.s, with the land rolling on before us in a succession of gentle sweeps, never rising so as to impede the view, or apparently changing in its general level,--but yet without the monotony of flatness. We were on the prairie, but still I felt no satisfaction. It was private property--divided among holders and pastured over by private cattle.

Salisbury plain is as wild, and Dartmoor almost wilder. Deer they told me were to be had within reach of Dixon; but for the buffalo one has to go much further afield than Illinois. The farmer may rejoice in Illinois, but the hunter and the trapper must cross the big rivers and pa.s.s away into the western territories before he can find lands wild enough for his purposes. My visit to the corn-fields of Illinois was in its way successful; but I felt as I turned my face eastward towards Chicago that I had no right to boast that I had as yet made acquaintance with a prairie.

All minds were turned to the war, at Dixon as elsewhere. In Illinois the men boasted that as regards the war, they were the leading State of the Union. But the same boast was made in Indiana, and also in Ma.s.sachusetts; and probably in half the States of the North and West.

They, the Illinoisians, call their country the war nest of the West.

The population of the State is 1,700,000, and it had undertaken to furnish sixty volunteer regiments of 1000 men each. And let it be borne in mind that these regiments, when furnished, are really full,--absolutely containing the thousand men when they are sent away from the parent States. The number of souls above named will give 420,000 working men, and if out of these 60,000 are sent to the war, the State, which is almost purely agricultural, will have given more than one man in eight. When I was in Illinois, over forty regiments had already been sent--forty-six if I remember rightly,--and there existed no doubt whatever as to the remaining number. From the next State of Indiana, with a population of 1,350,000, giving something less than 350,000 working men, thirty-six regiments had been sent.

I fear that I am mentioning these numbers usque ad nauseam; but I wish to impress upon English readers the magnitude of the effort made by the States in mustering and equipping an army within six or seven months of the first acknowledgment that such an army would be necessary. The Americans have complained bitterly of the want of English sympathy, and I think they have been weak in making that complaint. But I would not wish that they should hereafter have the power of complaining of a want of English justice. There can be no doubt that a genuine feeling of patriotism was aroused throughout North and West, and that men rushed into the ranks actuated by that feeling--men for whom war and army life, a camp and fifteen dollars a month, would not of themselves have had any attraction. It came to that, that young men were ashamed not to go into the army. This feeling of course produced coercion, and the movement was in that way tyrannical. There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people. During the period of enlistment this tyranny was very strong. But the existence of such a tyranny proves the pa.s.sion and patriotism of the people. It got the better of the love of money, of the love of children, and of the love of progress. Wives who with their bairns were absolutely dependent on their husbands' labours, would wish their husbands to be at the war. Not to conduce, in some special way, towards the war,--to have neither father there, nor brother, nor son,--not to have lectured, or preached, or written for the war,--to have made no sacrifice for the war, to have had no special and individual interest in the war, was disgraceful. One sees at a glance the tyranny of all this in such a country as the States. One can understand how quickly adverse stories would spread themselves as to the opinion of any man who chose to remain tranquil at such a time. One shudders at the absolute absence of true liberty which such a pa.s.sion throughout a democratic country must engender. But he who has observed all this must acknowledge that that pa.s.sion did exist. Dollars, children, progress, education, and political rivalry all gave way to the one strong national desire for the thrashing and crushing of those who had rebelled against the authority of the Stars and Stripes.

When we were at Dixon they were getting up the Dement regiment. The attempt at the time did not seem to be prosperous, and the few men who had been collected had about them a forlorn, ill-conditioned look. But then, as I was told, Dixon had already been decimated and re-decimated by former recruiting colonels. Colonel Dement, from whom the regiment was to be named, and whose military career was only now about to commence, had come late into the field. I did not afterwards ascertain what had been his success, but I hardly doubt that he did ultimately sc.r.a.pe together his thousand men. "Why don't you go?" I said to a burly Irishman who was driving me. "I'm not a sound man, yer honour," said the Irishman. "I'm deficient in me liver." Taking the Irishmen, however, throughout the Union, they had not been found deficient in any of the necessaries for a career of war. I do not think that any men have done better than the Irish in the American army.

From Dixon we went to Chicago. Chicago is in many respects the most remarkable city among all the remarkable cities of the Union.

Its growth has been the fastest and its success the most a.s.sured.

Twenty-five years ago there was no Chicago, and now it contains 120,000 inhabitants. Cincinnati on the Ohio, and St. Louis at the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi, are larger towns; but they have not grown large so quickly nor do they now promise so excessive a development of commerce. Chicago may be called the metropolis of American corn--the favourite city haunt of the American Ceres.

The G.o.ddess seats herself there amidst the dust of her full barns, and proclaims herself a G.o.ddess ruling over things political and philosophical as well as agricultural. Not furrows only are in her thoughts, but free trade also, and brotherly love. And within her own bosom there is a boast that even yet she will be stronger than Mars.

In Chicago there are great streets, and rows of houses fit to be the residences of a new Corn Exchange n.o.bility. They look out on the wide lake which is now the highway for breadstuffs, and the merchant, as he shaves at his window, sees his rapid ventures as they pa.s.s away, one after the other, towards the East.

I went over one great grain store in Chicago possessed by gentlemen of the name of Sturgess and Buckenham. It was a world in itself,--and the dustiest of all the worlds. It contained, when I was there, half a million bushels of wheat--or a very great many, as I might say in other language. But it was not as a storehouse that this great building was so remarkable, but as a channel or a river course for the flooding freshets of corn. It is so built that both railway vans and vessels come immediately under its claws, as I may call the great trunks of the elevators. Out of the railway vans the corn and wheat is clawed up into the building, and down similar trunks it is at once again poured out into the vessels. I shall be at Buffalo in a page or two, and then I will endeavour to explain more minutely how this is done. At Chicago the corn is bought and does change hands, and much of it, therefore, is stored there for some s.p.a.ce of time,--shorter or longer as the case may be. When I was at Chicago, the only limit to the rapidity of its transit was set by the amount of boat accommodation. There were not bottoms enough to take the corn away from Chicago, nor indeed on the railway was there a sufficiency of rolling stock or locomotive power to bring it into Chicago. As I said before, the country was bursting with its own produce and smothered in its own fruits.

At Chicago the hotel was bigger than other hotels, and grander. There were pipes without end for cold water which ran hot, and for hot water which would not run at all. The post-office also was grander and bigger than other post-offices;--though the postmaster confessed to me that that matter of the delivery of letters was one which could not be compa.s.sed. Just at that moment it was being done as a private speculation; but it did not pay, and would be discontinued. The theatre too was large, handsome, and convenient; but on the night of my attendance it seemed to lack an audience. A good comic actor it did not lack, and I never laughed more heartily in my life. There was something wrong too just at that time--I could not make out what--in the const.i.tution of Illinois, and the present moment had been selected for voting a new const.i.tution. To us in England such a necessity would be considered a matter of importance, but it did not seem to be much thought of here. "Some slight alteration probably,"

I suggested. "No," said my informant--one of the judges of their courts--"it is to be a thorough radical change of the whole const.i.tution. They are voting the delegates to-day." I went to see them vote the delegates; but unfortunately got into a wrong place--by invitation--and was turned out, not without some slight tumult. I trust that the new const.i.tution was carried through successfully.

From these little details it may perhaps be understood how a town like Chicago goes on and prospers, in spite of all the drawbacks which are incident to newness. Men in those regions do not mind failures, and when they have failed, instantly begin again. They make their plans on a large scale, and they who come after them fill up what has been wanting at first. Those taps of hot and cold water will be made to run by the next owner of the hotel, if not by the present owner. In another ten years the letters, I do not doubt, will all be delivered. Long before that time the theatre will probably be full. The new const.i.tution is no doubt already at work; and if found deficient, another will succeed to it without any trouble to the State or any talk on the subject through the Union. Chicago was intended as a town of export for corn, and, therefore, the corn stores have received the first attention. When I was there, they were in perfect working order.

From Chicago we went on to Cleveland, a town in the State of Ohio on Lake Erie, again travelling by the sleeping cars. I found that these cars were universally mentioned with great horror and disgust by Americans of the upper cla.s.s. They always declared that they would not travel in them on any account. Noise and dirt were the two objections. They are very noisy, but to us belonged the happy power of sleeping down noise. I invariably slept all through the night, and knew nothing about the noise. They are also very dirty,--extremely dirty,--dirty so as to cause much annoyance. But then they are not quite so dirty as the day cars. If dirt is to be a bar against travelling in America, men and women must stay at home. For myself I don't much care for dirt, having a strong reliance on soap and water and scrubbing brushes. No one regards poisons who carries antidotes in which he has perfect faith.

Cleveland is another pleasant town,--pleasant as Milwaukee and Portland. The streets are handsome, and are shaded by grand avenues of trees. One of these streets is over a mile in length, and throughout the whole of it, there are trees on each side--not little paltry trees as are to be seen on the boulevards of Paris, but spreading elms,--the beautiful American elm which not only spreads, but droops also, and makes more of its foliage than any other tree extant. And there is a square in Cleveland, well sized, as large as Russell Square I should say, with open paths across it, and containing one or two handsome buildings. I cannot but think that all men and women in London would be great gainers if the iron rails of the squares were thrown down, and the gra.s.sy enclosures thrown open to the public. Of course the edges of the turf would be worn, and the paths would not keep their exact shapes. But the prison look would be banished, and the sombre sadness of the squares would be relieved.

I was particularly struck by the size and comfort of the houses at Cleveland. All down that street of which I have spoken, they do not stand continuously together, but are detached and separate; houses which in England would require some fifteen or eighteen hundred a year for their maintenance. In the States, however, men commonly expend upon house rent a much greater proportion of their income than they do in England. With us it is, I believe, thought that a man should certainly not apportion more than a seventh of his spending income to his house rent,--some say not more than a tenth. But in many cities of the States a man is thought to live well within bounds if he so expends a fourth. There can be no doubt as to Americans living in better houses than Englishmen,--making the comparison of course between men of equal incomes. But the Englishman has many more incidental expenses than the American. He spends more on wine, on entertainments, on horses, and on amus.e.m.e.nts. He has a more numerous establishment, and keeps up the adjuncts and outskirts of his residence with a more finished neatness.

These houses in Cleveland were very good,--as indeed they are in most Northern towns; but some of them have been erected with an amount of bad taste that is almost incredible. It is not uncommon to see in front of a square brick house a wooden quasi-Greek portico, with a pediment and Ionic columns, equally high with the house itself.

Wooden columns with Greek capitals attached to the doorways, and wooden pediments over the windows, are very frequent. As a rule these are attached to houses which, without such ornamentation, would be simple, unpretentious, square, roomy residences. An Ionic or Corinthian capital stuck on to a log of wood called a column, and then fixed promiscuously to the outside of an ordinary house, is to my eye the vilest of architectural pretences. Little turrets are better than this; or even brown battlements made of mortar. Except in America I do not remember to have seen these vicious bits of white timber,--timber painted white,--plastered on to the fronts and sides of red-brick houses.

Again we went on by rail,--to Buffalo. I have travelled some thousands of miles by railway in the States, taking long journeys by night and longer journeys by day; but I do not remember that while doing so I ever made acquaintance with an American. To an American lady in a railway car I should no more think of speaking than I should to an unknown female in the next pew to me at a London church.

It is hard to understand from whence come the laws which govern societies in this respect; but there are different laws in different societies, which soon obtain recognition for themselves. American ladies are much given to talking, and are generally free from all _mauvaise honte_. They are collected in manner, well instructed, and resolved to have their share of the social advantages of the world.

In this phase of life they come out more strongly than English women.

But on a railway journey, be it ever so long, they are never seen speaking to a stranger. English women, however, on English railways are generally willing to converse. They will do so if they be on a journey; but will not open their mouths if they be simply pa.s.sing backwards and forwards between their homes and some neighbouring town. We soon learn the rules on these subjects;--but who make the rules? If you cross the Atlantic with an American lady you invariably fall in love with her before the journey is over. Travel with the same woman in a railway car for twelve hours, and you will have written her down in your own mind in quite other language than that of love.

And now for Buffalo, and the elevators. I trust I have made it understood that corn comes into Buffalo, not only from Chicago, of which I have spoken specially, but from all the ports round the lakes: Racine, Milwaukee, Grandhaven, Port Sarnia, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, and many others. At these ports the produce is generally bought and sold; but at Buffalo it is merely pa.s.sed through a gateway. It is taken from vessels of a size fitted for the lakes, and placed in other vessels fitted for the ca.n.a.l. This is the Erie Ca.n.a.l, which connects the lakes with the Hudson River and with New York.

The produce which pa.s.ses through the Welland Ca.n.a.l--the ca.n.a.l which connects Lake Erie and the upper lakes with Lake Ontario and the St.

Lawrence--is not transhipped, seeing that the Welland Ca.n.a.l, which is less than thirty miles in length, gives a pa.s.sage to vessels of 500 tons. As I have before said, 60,000,000 bushels of breadstuff were thus pushed through Buffalo in the open months of the year 1861.

These open months run from the middle of April to the middle of November; but the busy period is that of the last two months,--the time that is which intervenes between the full ripening of the corn and the coming of the ice.

An elevator is as ugly a monster as has been yet produced. In uncouthness of form it outdoes those obsolete old brutes who used to roam about the semi-aqueous world, and live a most uncomfortable life with their great hungering stomachs and huge unsatisfied maws. The elevator itself consists of a big moveable trunk,--moveable as is that of an elephant, but not pliable, and less graceful even than an elephant's. This is attached to a huge granary or barn; but in order to give alt.i.tude within the barn for the necessary moving up and down of this trunk,--seeing that it cannot be curled gracefully to its purposes as the elephant's is curled,--there is an awkward box erected on the roof of the barn, giving some twenty feet of additional height, up into which the elevator can be thrust. It will be understood, then, that this big moveable trunk, the head of which, when it is at rest, is thrust up into the box on the roof, is made to slant down in an oblique direction from the building to the river.

For the elevator is an amphibious inst.i.tution, and flourishes only on the banks of navigable waters. When its head is ensconced within its box, and the beast of prey is thus nearly hidden within the building, the unsuspicious vessel is brought up within reach of the creature's trunk, and down it comes, like a mosquito's proboscis, right through the deck, in at the open aperture of the hole, and so into the very vitals and bowels of the ship. When there, it goes to work upon its food with a greed and an avidity that is disgusting to a beholder of any taste or imagination. And now I must explain the anatomical arrangement by which the elevator still devours and continues to devour, till the corn within its reach has all been swallowed, masticated, and digested. Its long trunk, as seen slanting down from out of the building across the wharf and into the ship, is a mere wooden pipe; but this pipe is divided within. It has two departments; and as the grain-bearing troughs pa.s.s up the one on a pliable band, they pa.s.s empty down the other. The system therefore is that of an ordinary dredging machine; only that corn, and not mud is taken away, and that the buckets or troughs are hidden from sight. Below, within the stomach of the poor bark, three or four labourers are at work, helping to feed the elevator. They shovel the corn up towards its maw, so that at every swallow he should take in all that he can hold.

Thus the troughs, as they ascend, are kept full, and when they reach the upper building they empty themselves into a shoot, over which a porter stands guard, moderating the shoot by a door, which the weight of his finger can open and close. Through this doorway the corn runs into a measure, and is weighed. By measures of forty bushels each, the tale is kept. There stands the apparatus, with the figures plainly marked, over against the porter's eye; and as the sum mounts nearly up to forty bushels he closes the door till the grains run thinly through, hardly a handful at a time, so that the balance is exactly struck. Then the teller standing by marks down his figure, and the record is made. The exact porter touches the string of another door, and the forty bushels of corn run out at the bottom of the measure, disappear down another shoot, slanting also towards the water, and deposit themselves in the ca.n.a.l-boat. The transit of the bushels of corn from the larger vessel to the smaller will have taken less than a minute, and the cost of that transit will have been--a farthing.

But I have spoken of the rivers of wheat, and I must explain what are those rivers. In the working of the elevator, which I have just attempted to describe, the two vessels were supposed to be lying at the same wharf, on the same side of the building, in the same water, the smaller vessel inside the larger one. When this is the case the corn runs direct from the weighing measure into the shoot that communicates with the ca.n.a.l boat. But there is not room or time for confining the work to one side of the building. There is water on both sides, and the corn or wheat is elevated on the one side, and re-shipped on the other. To effect this the corn is carried across the breadth of the building; but, nevertheless, it is never handled or moved in its direction on trucks or carriages requiring the use of men's muscles for its motion. Across the floor of the building are two gutters, or channels, and through these small troughs on a pliable band circulate very quickly. They which run one way, in one channel, are laden; they which return by the other channel are empty.

The corn pours itself into these, and they again pour it into the shoot which commands the other water. And thus rivers of corn are running through these buildings night and day. The secret of all the motion and arrangement consists of course in the elevation. The corn is lifted up; and when lifted up can move itself and arrange itself, and weigh itself, and load itself.

I should have stated that all this wheat which pa.s.ses through Buffalo comes loose, in bulk. Nothing is known of sacks or bags. To any spectator at Buffalo this becomes immediately a matter of course; but this should be explained, as we in England are not accustomed to see wheat travelling in this open, unguarded, and plebeian manner. Wheat with us is aristocratic, and travels always in its private carriage.

Over and beyond the elevators there is nothing specially worthy of remark at Buffalo. It is a fine city, like all other American cities of its cla.s.s. The streets are broad, the "blocks" are high, and cars on tram-ways run all day, and nearly all night as well.

CHAPTER XII.

BUFFALO TO NEW YORK.

We had now before us only two points of interest before we should reach New York,--the Falls of Trenton, and West Point on the Hudson River. We were too late in the year to get up to Lake George, which lies in the State of New York, north of Albany, and is, in fact, the southern continuation of Lake Champlain. Lake George, I know, is very lovely, and I would fain have seen it; but visitors to it must have some hotel accommodation, and the hotel was closed when we were near enough to visit it. I was in its close neighbourhood three years since in June; but then the hotel was not yet opened. A visitor to Lake George must be very exact in his time. July and August are the months,--with perhaps the grace of a week in September.

The hotel at Trenton was also closed, as I was told. But even if there were no hotel at Trenton, it can be visited without difficulty.

It is within a carriage drive of Utica, and there is moreover a direct railway from Utica, with a station at the Trenton Falls. Utica is a town on the line of railway from Buffalo to New York via Albany, and is like all the other towns we had visited. There are broad streets, and avenues of trees, and large shops, and excellent houses.

A general air of fat prosperity pervades them all, and is strong at Utica as elsewhere.

I remember to have been told thirty years ago that a traveller might go far and wide in search of the picturesque, without finding a spot more romantic in its loveliness than Trenton Falls. The name of the river is Canada Creek West; but as that is hardly euphonious, the course of the water which forms the falls has been called after the town or parish. This course is nearly two miles in length, and along the s.p.a.ce of these two miles it is impossible to say where the greatest beauty exists. To see Trenton aright one must be careful not to have too much water. A sufficiency is no doubt desirable, and it may be that at the close of summer, before any of the autumnal rains have fallen, there may occasionally be an insufficiency. But if there be too much, the pa.s.sage up the rocks along the river is impossible.

The way on which the tourist should walk becomes the bed of the stream, and the great charm of the place cannot be enjoyed. That charm consists in descending into the ravine of the river, down amidst the rocks through which it has cut its channel, and in walking up the bed against the stream, in climbing the sides of the various falls, and sticking close to the river till an envious block is reached, which comes sheer down into the water, and prevents further progress. This is nearly two miles above the steps by which the descent is made; and not a foot of this distance but is wildly beautiful. When the river is very low there is a pathway even beyond that block; but when this is the case there can hardly be enough of water to make the fall satisfactory.

There is no one special cataract at Trenton which is in itself either wonderful or pre-eminently beautiful. It is the position, form, colour, and rapidity of the river which give the charm. It runs through a deep ravine, at the bottom of which the water has cut for itself a channel through the rocks, the sides of which rise sometimes with the sharpness of the walls of a stone sarcophagus.

They are rounded too towards the bed, as I have seen the bottom of a sarcophagus. Along the side of the right bank of the river there is a pa.s.sage, which when the freshets come is altogether covered. This pa.s.sage is sometimes very narrow, but in the narrowest parts an iron chain is affixed into the rock. It is slippery and wet, and it is well for ladies when visiting the place to be provided with outside india-rubber shoes, which keep a hold upon the stone. If I remember rightly there are two actual cataracts, one not far above the steps by which the descent is made into the channel, and the other close under a summer-house, near to which the visitors reascend into the wood. But these cataracts, though by no means despicable as cataracts, leave comparatively a slight impression. They tumble down with sufficient violence, and the usual fantastic disposition of their forces; but simply as cataracts, within a day's journey of Niagara, they would be nothing. Up beyond the summer-house the pa.s.sage along the river can be continued for another mile, but it is rough, and the climbing in some places rather difficult for ladies.

Every man, however, who has the use of his legs, should do it, for the succession of rapids, and the twistings of the channels, and the forms of the rocks are as wild and beautiful as the imagination can desire. The banks of the river are closely wooded on each side; and though this circ.u.mstance does not at first seem to add much to the beauty, seeing that the ravine is so deep that the absence of wood above would hardly be noticed, still there are broken clefts ever and anon through which the colours of the foliage show themselves, and straggling boughs and rough roots break through the rocks here and there, and add to the wildness and charm of the whole.

The walk back from the summer-house through the wood is very lovely; but it would be a disappointing walk to visitors who had been prevented by a flood in the river from coming up the channel, for it indicates plainly how requisite it is that the river should be seen from below and not from above. The best view of the larger fall itself is that seen from the wood. And here again I would point out that any male visitor should walk the channel of the river up and down. The descent is too slippery and difficult for bipeds laden with petticoats. We found a small hotel open at Trenton, at which we got a comfortable dinner, and then in the evening were driven back to Utica.

Albany is the capital of the State of New York, and our road from Trenton to West Point lay through that town; but these political State capitals have no interest in themselves. The State legislature was not sitting, and we went on, merely remarking that the manner in which the railway cars are made to run backward and forward through the crowded streets of the town must cause a frequent loss of human life. One is led to suppose that children in Albany can hardly have a chance of coming to maturity. Such accidents do not become the subject of long-continued and strong comment in the States as they do with us; but, nevertheless, I should have thought that such a state of things as we saw there would have given rise to some remark on the part of the philanthropists. I cannot myself say that I saw anybody killed, and therefore should not be justified in making more than this pa.s.sing remark on the subject.

When first the Americans of the Northern States began to talk much of their country, their claims as to fine scenery were confined to Niagara and the Hudson River. Of Niagara, I have spoken, and all the world has acknowledged that no claim made on that head can be regarded as exaggerated. As to the Hudson, I am not prepared to say so much generally, though there is one spot upon it which cannot be beaten for sweetness. I have been up and down the Hudson by water, and confess that the entire river is pretty. But there is much of it that is not pre-eminently pretty among rivers. As a whole it cannot be named with the Upper Mississippi, with the Rhine, with the Moselle, or with the Upper Rhone. The palisades just out of New York are pretty, and the whole pa.s.sage through the mountains from West Point up to Catskill and Hudson is interesting. But the glory of the Hudson is at West Point itself; and thither on this occasion we went direct by railway, and there we remained for two days. The Catskill mountains should be seen by a detour off from the river. We did not visit them because, here again, the hotel was closed. I will leave them therefore for the new handbook which Mr. Murray will soon bring out.

Of West Point there is something to be said independently of its scenery. It is the Sandhurst of the States. Here is their military school, from which officers are drafted to their regiments, and the tuition for military purposes is, I imagine, of a high order. It must, of course, be borne in mind that West Point, even as at present arranged, is fitted to the wants of the old army, and not to that of the army now required. It can go but a little way to supply officers for 500,000 men; but would do much towards supplying them for 40,000.

At the time of my visit to West Point the regular army of the northern States had not even then swelled itself to the latter number.

I found that there were 220 students at West Point; that about forty graduate every year, each of whom receives a commission in the army; that about 120 pupils are admitted every year; and that in the course of every year about eighty either resign, or are called upon to leave on account of some deficiency, or fail in their final examination.

The result is simply this, that one third of those who enter succeeds, and that two thirds fail. The number of failures seemed to me to be terribly large,--so large as to give great ground of hesitation to a parent in accepting a nomination for the college.

I especially inquired into the particulars of these dismissals and resignations, and was a.s.sured that the majority of them take place in the first year of the pupillage. It is soon seen whether or no a lad has the mental and physical capacities necessary for the education and future life required of him, and care is taken that those shall be removed early as to whom it may be determined that the necessary capacity is clearly wanting. If this is done,--and I do not doubt it,--the evil is much mitigated. The effect otherwise would be very injurious. The lads remain till they are perhaps one and twenty, and have then acquired apt.i.tudes for military life, but no other apt.i.tudes. At that age the education cannot be commenced anew, and, moreover, at that age the disgrace of failure is very injurious.

The period of education used to be five years, but has now been reduced to four. This was done in order that a double cla.s.s might be graduated in 1861 to supply the wants of the war. I believe it is considered that but for such necessity as that, the fifth year of education can be ill spared.

The discipline, to our English ideas, is very strict. In the first place no kind of beer, wine, or spirits is allowed at West Point. The law upon this point may be said to be very vehement, for it debars even the visitors at the hotel from the solace of a gla.s.s of beer.

The hotel is within the bounds of the College, and as the lads might become purchasers at the bar, there is no bar allowed. Any breach of this law leads to instant expulsion; or, I should say rather, any detection of such breach. The officer who showed us over the College a.s.sured me that the presence of a gla.s.s of wine in a young man's room would secure his exclusion, even though there should be no evidence that he had tasted it. He was very firm as to this; but a little bird of West Point, whose information, though not official or probably accurate in words, seemed to me to be worthy of reliance in general, told me that eyes were wont to wink when such gla.s.ses of wine made themselves unnecessarily visible. Let us fancy an English mess of young men from seventeen to twenty-one, at which a mug of beer would be felony, and a gla.s.s of wine high treason! But the whole management of the young with the Americans differs much from that in vogue with us. We do not require so much at so early an age, either in knowledge, in morals, or even in manliness. In America, if a lad be under control, as at West Point, he is called upon for an amount of labour, and a degree of conduct, which would be considered quite transcendental and out of the question in England. But if he be not under control, if at the age of eighteen he be living at home, or be from his circ.u.mstances exempt from professorial power, he is a full-fledged man with his pipe apparatus and his bar acquaintances.

And then I was told at West Point how needful and yet how painful it was that all should be removed who were in any way deficient in credit to the establishment. "Our rules are very exact," my informant told me; "but the carrying out of our rules is a task not always very easy." As to this also I had already heard something from that little bird of West Point, but of course I wisely a.s.sented to my informant, remarking that discipline in such an establishment was essentially necessary. The little bird had told me that discipline at West Point had been rendered terribly difficult by political interference. "A young man will be dismissed by the unanimous voice of the Board, and will be sent away. And then, after a week or two, he will be sent back, with an order from Washington, that another trial shall be given him. The lad will march back into the college with all the honours of a victory, and will be conscious of a triumph over the superintendent and his officers." "And is that common?" I asked.

"Not at the present moment," I was told. "But it was common before the war. While Mr. Buchanan, and Mr. Pierce, and Mr. Polk were Presidents, no officer or board of officers then at West Point was able to dismiss a lad whose father was a Southerner, and who had friends among the Government."

Not only was this true of West Point, but the same allegation is true as to all matters of patronage throughout the United States. During the three or four last Presidencies, and I believe back to the time of Jackson, there has been an organized system of dishonesty in the management of all beneficial places under the control of the Government. I doubt whether any despotic court of Europe has been so corrupt in the distribution of places,--that is in the selection of public officers,--as has been the a.s.semblage of statesmen at Washington. And this is the evil which the country is now expiating with its blood and treasure. It has allowed its knaves to stand in the high places; and now it finds that knavish works have brought about evil results. But of this I shall be constrained to say something further hereafter.

We went into all the schools of the College, and made ourselves fully aware that the amount of learning imparted was far above our comprehension. It always occurs to me in looking through the new schools of the present day, that I ought to be thankful to persons who know so much for condescending to speak to me at all in plain English. I said a word to the gentleman who was with me about horses, seeing a lot of lads going to their riding lesson. But he was down upon me, and crushed me instantly beneath the weight of my own ignorance. He walked me up to the image of a horse, which he took to pieces bit by bit, taking off skin, muscle, flesh, nerves and bones, till the animal was a heap of atoms, and a.s.sured me that the anatomy of the horse throughout was one of the necessary studies of the place. We afterwards went to see the riding. The horses themselves were poor enough. This was accounted for by the fact that such of them as had been found fit for military service had been taken for the use of the army.

There is a gallery in the College in which are hung sketches and pictures by former students. I was greatly struck with the merit of many of these. There were some copies from well-known works of art of very high excellence, when the age is taken into account of those by whom they were done. I don't know how far the art of drawing, as taught generally and with no special tendency to military instruction, may be necessary for military training; but if it be necessary I should imagine that more is done in that direction at West Point than at Sandhurst. I found, however, that much of that in the gallery which was good had been done by lads who had not obtained their degree, and who had shown an apt.i.tude for drawing, but had not shown any apt.i.tude for other pursuits necessary to their intended career.