THE St. John, and its sister ship, the Dean Richmond, are two of the finest steam-ships on the river. They are buildings rather than boats; terraces rise one above another, with galleries and verandahs. One would almost have thought it was a gardener’s floating plantation. There are twenty flag-staffs, fastened with iron tressings, which consolidate the whole building. The two enormous paddle-boxes are painted al fresco, like the tympans in the Church of St. Mark, at Venice. Behind each wheel rises the chimney of the two boilers, the latter placed outside, instead of in the hull of the steam-ship, a good precaution in case of explosion. In the centre, between the paddles, is the machinery, which is very simple, consisting only of a single cylinder, a piston worked by a long cross-beam, which rises and falls like the monstrous hammer of a forge, and a single crank, communicating the movement to the axles of the massive wheels.
Passengers were already crowding on to the deck of the St. John, Dean Pitferge and I went to secure a cabin; we got one which opened into an immense saloon, a kind of gallery with a vaulted ceiling, supported by a succession of Corinthian pillars. Comfort and luxury everywhere, carpets, sofas, ottomans, paintings, mirrors, even gas, made in a small gasometer on board.
At this moment the gigantic engine trembled and began to work. I went on to the upper terraces. At the stern was a gaily painted house, which was the steersman’s room, where four strong men stood at the spokes of the double rudder-wheel. After walking about for a few minutes, I went down on to the deck, between the already heated boilers, from which light blue flames were issuing. Of the Hudson I could see nothing. Night came, and with it a fog thick enough to be cut The St. John snorted in the gloom like a true mastodon; we could hardly catch a glimpse of the lights of the towns scattered along the banks of the river, or the lanterns of ships ascending the dark water with shrill whistles.
At eight o’clock I went into the saloon. The Doctor took me to have supper at a magnificent restaurant placed between the decks, where we were served by an army of black waiters. Dean Pitferge informed me that the number of passengers on board was more than four thousand, reckoning fifteen hundred emigrants stowed away in the lower part of the steam-ship. Supper finished, we retired to our comfortable cabin.
At eleven o’clock I was aroused by a slight shock. The St. John had stopped. The captain, finding it impossible to proceed in the darkness, had given orders to heave-to, and the enormous boat, moored in the channel, slept tranquilly at anchor.
At four o’clock in the morning the St. John resumed her course. I got up and went out under one of the verandahs. The rain had ceased, the fog cleared off, the water appeared, then the shores; the right bank, dotted with green trees and shrubs, which gave it the appearance of a long cemetery; in the background rose high hills, closing in the horizon by a graceful line; the left bank, on the contrary, was flat and marshy.
Dr. Pitferge had just joined me under the verandah.
“Good morning, friend,” said he, after having drawn a good breath of air; “do you know we shall not be at Albany in time to catch the train, thanks to that wretched fog. This will modify my programme.”
“So much the worse, Doctor, for we must be economical with our time.”
“Right; we may expect to reach Niagara Falls at night instead of in the evening. That is not my fault, but we must be resigned.”
The St. John, in fact, did not moor off the Albany quay before eight o’clock. The train had left, so we were obliged to wait till half-past one. In consequence of this delay we were able to visit the curious old city, which forms the legislative centre of the State of New York: the lower town, commercial and thickly populated, on the right bank of the Hudson, and the high town, with its brick houses, public buildings, and its very remarkable museum of fossils. One might almost have thought it a large quarter of New York transported to the side of this hill, up which it rises in the shape of an amphitheatre.
At one o’clock, after having breakfasted, we went to the station, which was without any barrier or officials. The train simply stopped in the middle of the street, like an omnibus; one could get up and down at pleasure. The cars communicate with each other by bridges, which allow the traveller to go from one end of the train to the other. At the appointed time, without seeing either a guard or a porter, without a bell, without any warning, the brisk locomotive, a real gem of workmanship, started, and we were whirled away at the speed of fifty miles an hour. But instead of being boxed up, as one is in European trains, we were at liberty to walk about, buy newspapers and books, without waiting for stations. Refreshment buffets, bookstalls, everything was at hand for the traveller. We were now crossing fields without fences, and forests newly cleared, at the risk of a collision with the felled trees; through new towns, seamed with rails, but still wanting in houses; through cities adorned with the most poetic names of ancient literature—Rome, Syracuse, and Palmyra. It was thus the Mohawk Valley, the land of Fenimore, which belongs to the American novelist, as does the land of Rob Roy to Walter Scott, glided before our eyes. For a moment Lake Ontario, which Cooper has made the scene of action of his master-work, sparkled on the horizon. All this theatre of the grand epopee of Leather Stocking, formerly a savage country, is now a civilized land. The Doctor did not appreciate the change, for he persisted in calling me Hawk’s Eye, and would only answer to the name of Chingachgook.
At eleven o’clock at night we changed trains at Rochester; the spray from the Tennessee cascades fell over the cars in showers. At two o’clock in the morning, after having kept alongside the Niagara for several leagues without seeing it, we arrived at the village of Niagara Falls, and the Doctor conducted me to a magnificent hotel, grandly named “Cataract House.”