First Impressions of the New World | Page 5

in America. It differs but little from our own, and was followed by a not very striking sermon. The Holy Communion was afterwards administered, and it was a comfort to us to join in it on this our first Sunday in America. The cadets filled the centre of the chapel, and are a very good-looking set of youths, wearing a pretty uniform, the jacket being pale grey with large silver buttons. We dined at four o'clock at the table d'h?te, in a room capable of holding about four hundred. We sat next to the landlord, who carved at one of the long tables. The dinner was remarkably well cooked in the French style, but most deficient in quantity, and we rose from table nearly as hungry as we sat down. Some of the ladies appeared at dinner in evening dresses, with short sleeves (made very short) and low bodies, a tulle pelerine being stretched tight over their bare necks. In some cases the hair was dressed with large ornamental pins and artificial flowers, as for an evening party. We met them out walking later in the evening, with light shawls or visites on their shoulders, no bonnets, and large fans in their hands. This toilette was fully accounted for by the heat, the thermometer being at 80�� in the shade. Many of the younger women were very pretty, and pleasing in their manners.
We left West Point early on Monday morning, the 6th, taking the steamboat back to New York, leaving William to pursue his journey to the White Mountains and Montreal alone, and we are to meet him again at Boston next week. The steamboat was well worth seeing, being a wonderful floating house or palace, three stories high, almost consisting of two or three large saloons, much gilt and decorated, and hung with prints and filled with passengers. The machinery rises in the centre of the vessel, as high nearly as the funnel. We went at the rate of twenty miles an hour. We again enjoyed the beauties of the river, and could this time see both sides, which we were unable to do on the railway, by which means too we saw many pretty towns and villas which we had missed on Saturday. We were back at the hotel by twelve o'clock, and are to make our next move to-morrow afternoon to Newport, a sea-bathing place, a little way north of this. We are doing this at the strong recommendation of Lord Napier, who says, at this time of the year Newport is worth seeing, as giving a better idea of an American watering-place than Saratoga, where the season is now drawing to a close.
We have now become more familiar with this place, and I think are beginning to feel the total want of interest of any sort beyond a general admiration of the handsome wide streets and well-built houses. The Brevoort House is in the fifth avenue, which, in point of fashion, answers to Belgrave Square with us, and consists of a long line of houses of large dimensions. A friend, who accompanied us in our drive yesterday evening, pointed out many of the best of them as belonging to button-makers, makers of sarsaparilla, and rich parvenus, who have risen from the shop counter. He took us to his own house in this line, which was moderate in size, and prettily fitted up. He is a collector of pictures, and has one very fine oil painting of a splendid range of mountainous scenery, in the Andes. It is by Church, a rising young American, whose view of the Falls of Niagara was exhibited this year in London. We have made frequent use of the omnibus here; the fares are half the price of the London ones, and the carriages are very clean and superior in every way to ours. Great trust is shown in the honesty of the passengers, there being no one to receive payment at the door, but a notice within directs the money to be paid to the driver, which is done through a hole in the roof, and he presents his fingers to receive it, without apparently knowing how many passengers have entered. We frequently meet woolly-headed negroes in our walks, and they seem to form a large proportion of the servants, both male and female, and of porters and the like. We are disappointed in the fruit. The peaches are cheap, and in great quantities, but they are very inferior to ours in flavour, and the melons are also tasteless. The water-melons are cut in long slices and sold in the streets, and the people eat them as they walk along. The great luxury of the place is ice, which travels about the streets in carts, the blocks being three or four