Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847. Various
p>Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847
NORTH AMERICA, SIBERIA, AND RUSSIA. 1
The circumnavigation of the world is now a matter of ordinary occurrence to our bold mariners: and after a few years it will be a sort of summer excursion to our steamers. We shall have the requisitions of the Travellers' Club more stringent as the sphere of action grows wider; and no man will be eligible who has not paid a visit to Pekin, or sunned himself in Siam.
But a circuit of the globe on terra firma is, we believe, new. Sir George Simpson will have no competitor, that we have ever heard, to claim from him the honour of having first galloped right a-head—from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Pacific to the British Channel. One or two slight divergencies of some thousand miles down the smooth and sunny bosom of the Pacific, are to be reckoned as mere episodes: but Sir George soon recovers his course, plunges in through the regions of the polar star; defies time, trouble, and Tartary; marches in the track of tribes, of which all but the names have expired; follows the glories of conquerors, whose bones have mingled five hundred years ago with the dust of the desert; gives a flying glance on one side towards the Wall of China, and on the other towards the Arctic Circle; still presses on, till he reaches the confines of the frozen civilisation of the Russian empire; and sweeps along, among bowing governors and prostrate serfs,—still but emerging from barbarism—until he does homage to the pomp of the Russian court, and finally lands in the soil of freedom, funds, and the income tax.
What the actual object of all this gyration may have been, is not revealed, nor, probably, revealable by a "Governor of the Hudson's Bay territories," who, having the fear of other governors before his eyes, dedicates his two handsome volumes to "The Directors of the Hudson's Bay Company;" but the late negotiations on Oregon, the Russian interest in the new empire rising on the shore of the Northern Pacific, the vigorous efforts of Russia to turn its Siberian world into a place of human habitancy, and the unexpected interest directed to those regions by the discovery of gold deposits which throw the old wealth of the Spanish main into the shade, might be sufficient motives for the curiosity of an individual of intelligence, and for the anxious inquiries of a great company, bordering on two mighty powers in North America, both of them more remarkable for the vigour of their ambition than for the reverence of their hunters and fishers for the jus gentium.
Those volumes, then, will supply a general and a very well conceived estimate of immense tracts of the globe, hitherto but little known to the English public. The view is clear, quick, and discriminative. The countries of which it gives us a new knowledge are probably destined to act with great power on our interests, some as the rivals of our commerce, some as the depôts of our manufactures, and some as the recipients of that overflow of population which Europe is now pouring out from all her fields on the open wilderness of the world.
This spread of emigration to the north is a curious instance of the reflux of the human tide; for, from the north evidently was Europe originally peopled. Japhet was a powerful propeller; and often as he has dwelt in the tents of Shem, he is likely to overwhelm the whole territory of the southern brother once more. The Turk, the Egyptian, the man of Asia Minor, the man of Thrace, will yet be but tribes in that army of the new Xerxes which, pouring from Moscow, and impelled from St Petersburg, will renew the invasions of Genghiz and Tamerlane, and try the civilized strength of the west against the wild courage and countless multitudes of Tartary. Into this strange, but important, and prospectively powerful country, we now follow the traveller. Embarking from Liverpool in the Caledonia, a vessel of 1300 tons and 450 horse power, he was amply prepared to face the perils of the most stormy of all oceans, the Atlantic. The run across lad the usual fortunes of all voyages, and within a week after their departure from terra firma they saw a whale, who saw them with rather more indifference, for he lay lounging on the surface until the steamer had nearly run over him. At last he dived down, and was seen no more. Next day, while there was so little wind, that all their light canvass was set, they saw the phenomenon of a ship under close-reefed topsails. This apparent timidity was laughed at by some of the passengers, but the more experienced guessed that the vessel had come out of a gale, of which they were likely to have a share before long, a conjecture which was soon verified.
On the morning of the 9th day, the captain, discovering that the barometer had fallen between two and three inches during the night, due preparations were of course made to meet the storm. It came on in the afternoon, a hurricane. Then followed the usual havock of boats and canvass, the surges making a clean breach over the deck; the passengers, of course, gave themselves up for lost, and even the crew are said to have been pretty nearly of the same opinion. However, the wind went down at last, the sea grew comparatively smooth, and in twenty-four hours more, they found themselves on the banks of Newfoundland. The writer thinks that it was fortunate for them that the storm had not caught them in the short swell of these shallow waters, as was probably the case of the President, whose melancholy fate so long excited, and still excites a feeling of surprise and sorrow in the public mind.
It was lost in this very storm. Next day came another of the sea wonders. The cry of land started them all from the dinner table; but the land happened to be an immense field of ice, which, with the inequalities of its surface and the effect of refraction, presented some appearance of a wooded country. On that night the cry of "Light a-head," while they were still several hundred miles from land, excited new astonishment. "All the knowing ones" clearly distinguished a magnificent revolver. The paddles were accordingly stopped to have a cast of the lead, but in another half hour it was ascertained that the revolver was a newly risen star.
At length land was really seen, and after a run of fourteen days, they cast anchor in the harbour of Halifax. But as Boston was their true destination they steered for it at once. Their progress had been rapid, for they entered Boston Bay in thirty-six hours from Halifax, a distance of 390 miles. Boston is more English looking than New York. The gently undulating shores of the bay, highly cultivated, bring to memory the green hills of England, and within the town the buildings and the inhabitants have a peculiarly English air.
As speed was an object, the party immediately left the town by the railway, passing through Lowell and reaching Nashua. This is one of the rapid growths of America. In 1819 this place was a village of but nineteen houses. It now contains 19,000 inhabitants, with churches, hotels, prisons, and banks. Here the party went off in two detachments, one in a sleigh with six horses, and the other rattled along in a coach-and-four. At the next stage the author exchanged the coach for a sleigh, a matter of no great importance to the world, but which may be mentioned as a caution against rash changes. For the first few miles the new conveyance went on merrily, and the passengers congratulated themselves on their wisdom. We must now let him speak for himself.
"The sun, as the day advanced, kept thawing the snow, till at last, on coming to a deep drift, we were repeatedly obliged to get out, sometimes walking up to the knees, and sometimes helping to lift the vehicle out of the snow. However, at length we fairly stuck fast, in spite of all our hauling and pushing. The horses struggled and plunged to no purpose, excepting that the leaders, after breaking part of their tackle, galloped off over the hills and far away, leaving us to kick our heels in the slush, till they were brought back after a chase of several miles."
The road now passed through Vermont, the state of green mountains. The country appeared striking; and Montpelier, where they breakfasted, seems to be a very pretty place, looking more the residence of hereditary ease and luxury, than the capital of a republic of thrifty graziers. It is, in fact, an assemblage of villas; the wide streets run between rows of trees, and the houses, each in its own little garden, are shaded by verandas.
In that very pleasant little book, the "Miseries of Human Life," one of those small calamities is, the being called at the wrong hour to go off in the wrong coach from a Yorkshire inn. Time and the railroad have changed all this in England, but in America we have the primitive misery well described.
The author, after forty-two hours of hard jolting, goes to bed at one o'clock to obtain a little repose, leaving orders to be called at five in the morning. He is wrapt in the profoundest of all possible slumbers, when a peal of blows is heard at his door. "In spite, however, of laziness, and a cold morning to boot," he says, "I had completed the operations of washing