American Notes for General Circulation

by Dickens, Chales

  wind, are all in fierce contention for the mastery - that every

  plank has its groan, every nail its shriek, and every drop of water

  in the great ocean its howling voice - is nothing. To say that all

  is grand, and all appalling and horrible in the last degree, is

  nothing. Words cannot express it. Thoughts cannot convey it.

  Only a dream can call it up again, in all its fury, rage, and

  passion.

  And yet, in the very midst of these terrors, I was placed in a

  situation so exquisitely ridiculous, that even then I had as strong

  a sense of its absurdity as I have now, and could no more help

  laughing than I can at any other comical incident, happening under

  circumstances the most favourable to its enjoyment. About midnight

  we shipped a sea, which forced its way through the skylights, burst

  open the doors above, and came raging and roaring down into the

  ladies' cabin, to the unspeakable consternation of my wife and a

  little Scotch lady - who, by the way, had previously sent a message

  to the captain by the stewardess, requesting him, with her

  compliments, to have a steel conductor immediately attached to the

  top of every mast, and to the chimney, in order that the ship might

  not be struck by lightning. They and the handmaid before

  mentioned, being in such ecstasies of fear that I scarcely knew

  what to do with them, I naturally bethought myself of some

  restorative or comfortable cordial; and nothing better occurring to

  me, at the moment, than hot brandy-and-water, I procured a tumbler

  full without delay. It being impossible to stand or sit without

  holding on, they were all heaped together in one corner of a long

  sofa - a fixture extending entirely across the cabin - where they

  clung to each other in momentary expectation of being drowned.

  When I approached this place with my specific, and was about to

  administer it with many consolatory expressions to the nearest

  sufferer, what was my dismay to see them all roll slowly down to

  the other end! And when I staggered to that end, and held out the

  glass once more, how immensely baffled were my good intentions by

  the ship giving another lurch, and their all rolling back again! I

  suppose I dodged them up and down this sofa for at least a quarter

  of an hour, without reaching them once; and by the time I did catch

  them, the brandy-and-water was diminished, by constant spilling, to

  a teaspoonful. To complete the group, it is necessary to recognise

  in this disconcerted dodger, an individual very pale from seasickness,

  who had shaved his beard and brushed his hair, last, at

  Liverpool: and whose only article of dress (linen not included)

  were a pair of dreadnought trousers; a blue jacket, formerly

  admired upon the Thames at Richmond; no stockings; and one slipper.

  Of the outrageous antics performed by that ship next morning; which

  made bed a practical joke, and getting up, by any process short of

  falling out, an impossibility; I say nothing. But anything like

  the utter dreariness and desolation that met my eyes when I

  literally 'tumbled up' on deck at noon, I never saw. Ocean and sky

  were all of one dull, heavy, uniform, lead colour. There was no

  extent of prospect even over the dreary waste that lay around us,

  for the sea ran high, and the horizon encompassed us like a large

  black hoop. Viewed from the air, or some tall bluff on shore, it

  would have been imposing and stupendous, no doubt; but seen from

  the wet and rolling decks, it only impressed one giddily and

  painfully. In the gale of last night the life-boat had been

  crushed by one blow of the sea like a walnut-shell; and there it

  hung dangling in the air: a mere faggot of crazy boards. The

  planking of the paddle-boxes had been torn sheer away. The wheels

  were exposed and bare; and they whirled and dashed their spray

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  Dickens, Charles - American Notes for General Circulation

  about the decks at random. Chimney, white with crusted salt;

  topmasts struck; storm-sails set; rigging all knotted, tangled,

  wet, and drooping: a gloomier picture it would be hard to look

  upon.

  I was now comfortably established by courtesy in the ladies' cabin,

  where, besides ourselves, there were only four other passengers.

  First, the little Scotch lady before mentioned, on her way to join

  her husband at New York, who had settled there three years before.

  Secondly and thirdly, an honest young Yorkshireman, connected with

  some American house; domiciled in that same city, and carrying

  thither his beautiful young wife to whom he had been married but a

  fortnight, and who was the fairest specimen of a comely English

  country girl I have ever seen. Fourthy, fifthly, and lastly,

  another couple: newly married too, if one might judge from the

  endearments they frequently interchanged: of whom I know no more

  than that they were rather a mysterious, run-away kind of couple;

  that the lady had great personal attractions also; and that the

  gentleman carried more guns with him than Robinson Crusoe, wore a

  shooting-coat, and had two great dogs on board. On further

  consideration, I remember that he tried hot roast pig and bottled

  ale as a cure for sea-sickness; and that he took these remedies

  (usually in bed) day after day, with astonishing perseverance. I

  may add, for the information of the curious, that they decidedly

  failed.

  The weather continuing obstinately and almost unprecedentedly bad,

  we usually straggled into this cabin, more or less faint and

  miserable, about an hour before noon, and lay down on the sofas to

  recover; during which interval, the captain would look in to

  communicate the state of the wind, the moral certainty of its

  changing to-morrow (the weather is always going to improve tomorrow,

  at sea), the vessel's rate of sailing, and so forth.

  Observations there were none to tell us of, for there was no sun to

  take them by. But a description of one day will serve for all the

  rest. Here it is.

  The captain being gone, we compose ourselves to read, if the place

  be light enough; and if not, we doze and talk alternately. At one,

  a bell rings, and the stewardess comes down with a steaming dish of

  baked potatoes, and another of roasted apples; and plates of pig's

  face, cold ham, salt beef; or perhaps a smoking mess of rare hot

  collops. We fall to upon these dainties; eat as much as we can (we

  have great appetites now); and are as long as possible about it.

  If the fire will burn (it WILL sometimes) we are pretty cheerful.

  If it won't, we all remark to each other that it's very cold, rub

  our hands, cover ourselves with coats and cloaks, and lie down

  again to doze, talk, and read (provided as aforesaid), until

  dinner-time. At five, another bell rings, and the stewardess

  reappears with another dish of potatoes - boiled this time - and

  store of hot meat of various kinds: not forgetting the roast pig,

  to be taken medicinally. We sit down at table again (rather more

  cheerfully than before); prolong the meal with a rathe
r mouldy

  dessert of apples, grapes, and oranges; and drink our wine and

  brandy-and-water. The bottles and glasses are still upon the

  table, and the oranges and so forth are rolling about according to

  their fancy and the ship's way, when the doctor comes down, by

  special nightly invitation, to join our evening rubber:

  immediately on whose arrival we make a party at whist, and as it is

  a rough night and the cards will not lie on the cloth, we put the

  tricks in our pockets as we take them. At whist we remain with

  exemplary gravity (deducting a short time for tea and toast) until

  eleven o'clock, or thereabouts; when the captain comes down again,

  in a sou'-wester hat tied under his chin, and a pilot-coat: making

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  Dickens, Charles - American Notes for General Circulation

  the ground wet where he stands. By this time the card-playing is

  over, and the bottles and glasses are again upon the table; and

  after an hour's pleasant conversation about the ship, the

  passengers, and things in general, the captain (who never goes to

  bed, and is never out of humour) turns up his coat collar for the

  deck again; shakes hands all round; and goes laughing out into the

  weather as merrily as to a birthday party.

  As to daily news, there is no dearth of that commodity. This

  passenger is reported to have lost fourteen pounds at Vingt-et-un

  in the saloon yesterday; and that passenger drinks his bottle of

  champagne every day, and how he does it (being only a clerk),

  nobody knows. The head engineer has distinctly said that there

  never was such times - meaning weather - and four good hands are

  ill, and have given in, dead beat. Several berths are full of

  water, and all the cabins are leaky. The ship's cook, secretly

  swigging damaged whiskey, has been found drunk; and has been played

  upon by the fire-engine until quite sober. All the stewards have

  fallen down-stairs at various dinner-times, and go about with

  plasters in various places. The baker is ill, and so is the

  pastry-cook. A new man, horribly indisposed, has been required to

  fill the place of the latter officer; and has been propped and

  jammed up with empty casks in a little house upon deck, and

  commanded to roll out pie-crust, which he protests (being highly

  bilious) it is death to him to look at. News! A dozen murders on

  shore would lack the interest of these slight incidents at sea.

  Divided between our rubber and such topics as these, we were

  running (as we thought) into Halifax Harbour, on the fifteenth

  night, with little wind and a bright moon - indeed, we had made the

  Light at its outer entrance, and put the pilot in charge - when

  suddenly the ship struck upon a bank of mud. An immediate rush on

  deck took place of course; the sides were crowded in an instant;

  and for a few minutes we were in as lively a state of confusion as

  the greatest lover of disorder would desire to see. The

  passengers, and guns, and water-casks, and other heavy matters,

  being all huddled together aft, however, to lighten her in the

  head, she was soon got off; and after some driving on towards an

  uncomfortable line of objects (whose vicinity had been announced

  very early in the disaster by a loud cry of 'Breakers a-head!') and

  much backing of paddles, and heaving of the lead into a constantly

  decreasing depth of water, we dropped anchor in a strange

  outlandish-looking nook which nobody on board could recognise,

  although there was land all about us, and so close that we could

  plainly see the waving branches of the trees.

  It was strange enough, in the silence of midnight, and the dead

  stillness that seemed to be created by the sudden and unexpected

  stoppage of the engine which had been clanking and blasting in our

  ears incessantly for so many days, to watch the look of blank

  astonishment expressed in every face: beginning with the officers,

  tracing it through all the passengers, and descending to the very

  stokers and furnacemen, who emerged from below, one by one, and

  clustered together in a smoky group about the hatchway of the

  engine-room, comparing notes in whispers. After throwing up a few

  rockets and firing signal guns in the hope of being hailed from the

  land, or at least of seeing a light - but without any other sight

  or sound presenting itself - it was determined to send a boat on

  shore. It was amusing to observe how very kind some of the

  passengers were, in volunteering to go ashore in this same boat:

  for the general good, of course: not by any means because they

  thought the ship in an unsafe position, or contemplated the

  possibility of her heeling over in case the tide were running out.

  Nor was it less amusing to remark how desperately unpopular the

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  Dickens, Charles - American Notes for General Circulation

  poor pilot became in one short minute. He had had his passage out

  from Liverpool, and during the whole voyage had been quite a

  notorious character, as a teller of anecdotes and cracker of jokes.

  Yet here were the very men who had laughed the loudest at his

  jests, now flourishing their fists in his face, loading him with

  imprecations, and defying him to his teeth as a villain!

  The boat soon shoved off, with a lantern and sundry blue lights on

  board; and in less than an hour returned; the officer in command

  bringing with him a tolerably tall young tree, which he had plucked

  up by the roots, to satisfy certain distrustful passengers whose

  minds misgave them that they were to be imposed upon and

  shipwrecked, and who would on no other terms believe that he had

  been ashore, or had done anything but fraudulently row a little way

  into the mist, specially to deceive them and compass their deaths.

  Our captain had foreseen from the first that we must be in a place

  called the Eastern passage; and so we were. It was about the last

  place in the world in which we had any business or reason to be,

  but a sudden fog, and some error on the pilot's part, were the

  cause. We were surrounded by banks, and rocks, and shoals of all

  kinds, but had happily drifted, it seemed, upon the only safe speck

  that was to be found thereabouts. Eased by this report, and by the

  assurance that the tide was past the ebb, we turned in at three

  o'clock in the morning.

  I was dressing about half-past nine next day, when the noise above

  hurried me on deck. When I had left it overnight, it was dark,

  foggy, and damp, and there were bleak hills all round us. Now, we

  were gliding down a smooth, broad stream, at the rate of eleven

  miles an hour: our colours flying gaily; our crew rigged out in

  their smartest clothes; our officers in uniform again; the sun

  shining as on a brilliant April day in England; the land stretched

  out on either side, streaked with light patches of snow; white

  wooden houses; people at their doors; telegraphs working; flags

  hoisted; wharfs appearing; ships; quays crowded with people;

  distant noises; shouts; men and boys running down steep places

  towards the pier: a
ll more bright and gay and fresh to our unused

  eyes than words can paint them. We came to a wharf, paved with

  uplifted faces; got alongside, and were made fast, after some

  shouting and straining of cables; darted, a score of us along the

  gangway, almost as soon as it was thrust out to meet us, and before

  it had reached the ship - and leaped upon the firm glad earth

  again!

  I suppose this Halifax would have appeared an Elysium, though it

  had been a curiosity of ugly dulness. But I carried away with me a

  most pleasant impression of the town and its inhabitants, and have

  preserved it to this hour. Nor was it without regret that I came

  home, without having found an opportunity of returning thither, and

  once more shaking hands with the friends I made that day.

  It happened to be the opening of the Legislative Council and

  General Assembly, at which ceremonial the forms observed on the

  commencement of a new Session of Parliament in England were so

  closely copied, and so gravely presented on a small scale, that it

  was like looking at Westminster through the wrong end of a

  telescope. The governor, as her Majesty's representative,

  delivered what may be called the Speech from the Throne. He said

  what he had to say manfully and well. The military band outside

  the building struck up "God save the Queen" with great vigour

  before his Excellency had quite finished; the people shouted; the

  in's rubbed their hands; the out's shook their heads; the

  Government party said there never was such a good speech; the

  Opposition declared there never was such a bad one; the Speaker and

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  members of the House of Assembly withdrew from the bar to say a

  great deal among themselves and do a little: and, in short,

  everything went on, and promised to go on, just as it does at home

  upon the like occasions.

  The town is built on the side of a hill, the highest point being

  commanded by a strong fortress, not yet quite finished. Several

  streets of good breadth and appearance extend from its summit to

  the water-side, and are intersected by cross streets running

  parallel with the river. The houses are chiefly of wood. The

  market is abundantly supplied; and provisions are exceedingly

  cheap. The weather being unusually mild at that time for the