Border and Bastille | Page 8

in the South if she and their batteries should meet: few then dared to
insinuate a doubt about Charleston's certain fall, when once the leaguer
was fairly mustered for assault. Grave doubts were now expressed as to
the seaworthiness of all the new iron-clads, though their advocates
could point to a sister of the unhappy Monitor, which had survived a
great part of the same storm. That they all must be more unsafe in
really rough weather than the crankiest of our old "coffin brigs," seems
quite ascertained now: the fact of their being unable to make headway
through a heavy sea unless towed by a consort, speaks for itself. The
immediate cause of the Monitor's foundering (according to Captain
Worden's account, which my informant had from his own lips) was a
leak sprung, where her protruding stern-armour, coming down flat on
the waves with every plunge of the vessel, became loosened from the
main hull; but, for some time before this was discovered, she seems to
have spent more minutes under than above the water, and nothing alive

could have stood unlashed for a second on her deck. So great was the
public disappointment, that the tribe of false prophets--whose cry of
"Go up to Ramoth Gilead, and prosper," deafens us here, not less,
usually in defeat than in success--did for awhile abate their blatancy;
while Ericsson--most confident of projectors--spake softly, below his
breath, as he suggested faint excuse and encouragement.
The news from the West--hourly improving, and more clearly
confirmed--were hardly welcomed, as they deserved, and scarcely
counter-balanced the naval disaster. It was not long, however, before
Rosecrans the Invincible came in for his full share of credit--perhaps
not more than he merited. Few other Federal commanders can claim
that epithet; and, though some people persisted in considering
Murfreesburg a Pyrrhic victory, it is certain that he held his ground
manfully, and eventually advanced, where defeat, or even a retrograde
movement, would have been simply ruin.
On the fifth day our small company were scattered--each going his own
way, east, north, and south--while the Parisian abode in New York still.
CHAPTER II.
CONGRESSIA.
Of two lines to Philadelphia I selected the longest, wishing to see the
harbor, down which a steamer takes passengers as far as Amboy; but
the Powers of the Air were unpropitious again: it never ceased blowing,
from the moment we went on board a very unpleasant substitute for the
regular passage-boat, till we landed on the railway pier. My first
experience of American travel was not attractive. The crazy old craft
puffed and snorted furiously, but failed to persuade any one that she
was doing eight miles an hour; the grime of many years lay thick on her
dusky timbers--dust under cover, and mud where the wet swept in, and
her close, dark cabins were stifling enough to make you, after five
minutes of vapor-bathing, plunge eagerly into the bitter weather outside.
Indeed, there was not much to see, for the track lies on the inner and
uglier side of Staten Island. The last few miles lead through marshes,

with nothing taller growing than reeds and osiers.
For an hour or so after leaving Amboy, you look out on a country
thickly populated, well cultivated, and trimly fenced, bearing a strong
resemblance to parts of our own eastern counties. We passed through
one wood, in height of trees, sweep of ground, color of soil, and build
of boundary-fence, so exactly like a certain cover in Norfolk similarly
bisected by the rail, that I could have picked out the precise spot where,
many a time and oft, I have waited for the "rocketers." But the
character of the landscape soon changed; loose, sprawling "zigzags"
usurped the place of neat squared posts and rails; the stunted woodland
stretched farther afield, with rarer breaks of clearing; and the low
hill-ranges, behind which the watery sun soon absconded, looked
drearily bare in the distance.
It was pleasant, from the ferry boat, which was our last change, to meet
the lights of Philadelphia, gleaming out on the broad dark
Susquehanna.
I can say little of that staid, opulent, intensely respectable city--not
even if the imputation of dullness, cast upon her by the more mercurial
South, be a slander; for the few hours of my stay there were spent
almost entirely with my Asiatic friend, whose invitations and
inducements to a longer sojourn were very hard to resist. But I was
impatient to get on (as men will be who cannot see their arm's-length
into the future), and at midnight I started again for Washington.
My recollections of that journey are the reverse of roseate. The
atmosphere of the cars--windows hermetic, and stoves red-hot--made
one look back regretfully on the milder inferno of the passage-boat; the
acrid apple-odor was more pungently nauseating;