Life and liberty in America; . welve hundred miles of itsmonotonous course. The cities, too, appear to be all builtupon the same model. The long rectangular streets, the mon-ster quadrangular hotels, the neat new chapels and flaringstores, seem repeated every where, with little or no valuationsof aggregate or detail, and the people have the same look, thesame swagger, the same costume, the same speech, so that thetraveler, not being startled at CAery hundred or two hundredmiles of his course, as in Europe, by the apparition of a newuniform, a new style of building, by being addressed in a newl
Life and liberty in America; . welve hundred miles of itsmonotonous course. The cities, too, appear to be all builtupon the same model. The long rectangular streets, the mon-ster quadrangular hotels, the neat new chapels and flaringstores, seem repeated every where, with little or no valuationsof aggregate or detail, and the people have the same look, thesame swagger, the same costume, the same speech, so that thetraveler, not being startled at CAery hundred or two hundredmiles of his course, as in Europe, by the apparition of a newuniform, a new style of building, by being addressed in a newlanguage by waiters or officials, or by seeing new and imfa-miliar names over the shop doors and at the corners of thestreets, forgets the enormousness of the distances that he ispassing through, or only remembers them by their tedious-ness. But, though the scenery of the Mississippi has but lit-tle attraction after the first few hours, the incidents that oc-cur by day and night are novel enough to interest and instruct mm^imfu. FROM ST. LOUIS TO NEW ORLEANS. 155 every traveler who has his eyes open and his wits about foremost among these incidents are the lading or discharg-ing of cargo, and the taking in of wood. The steamers inva-riably burn wood, for coal is too dear for this purpose. Oneither bank of the Mississippi, as the traveler is borne downits steady current, he may observe at every four or five milesdistance piles of wood. These are cut by the negroes for theirmasters, the owners of the forests and the plantations, andheaped near the shore for the convenience of the a steamer requires wood, it touches at any one of thesepoints, takes what it wants, and either leaves the money or anote of what has been taken, to be settled hereaftei. Some-times the planter will be glad to take corn or pork in ex-change ; and if it be inconvenient to him to leave a negro orany other person in charge to take the chance of a passingboat, he leaves a notification of
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1850, bookidlifelibertyi, bookyear1859
