Part 42

FOOTNOTE:

The Indian name "Niagara" signifies Thunder-water.

ERIE CANAL.

PACKET-BOAT.--HEAT.--CEDAR SWAMP, LONG SWAMP, AND MUSQUITO SWAMP.--UTICA.

This day, up to the meridian, had been temperately warm, but not in the least sultry or unbearable. The boat was exceedingly clean, not over-crowded; and I sat down within its neat cabin, anticipating a couple of days' quiet travel, which, if a little monotonous, would be at least unattended by the fatigue and dust of a stage journey between this and Utica.

The boat for a few hours went on merrily; the eternal forest closed about us, and the sound of our horses' feet alone broke upon its silence. Towards evening the heat became great, and after sunset the southern sky began to give forth continuous sheets of flame, along whose pale surface would occasionally dart lines of red forked lightning, whilst the breeze gradually died away. My first idea was, that we were about to be favoured with a refreshing storm of rain and thunder; but vain were my hopes: I watched and listened, but no drop fell, no sound was heard.

Meantime, the heat increased as the night closed in: the little cots, however, were duly hung one below another along the sides of the cabin. I had procured an upper berth, with a window by my side; and having exhausted my patience, and wearied my sight watching the fiery sky, I at last ventured to creep below. Although a hotter atmosphere can hardly be imagined, I slept tolerably sound; but, on waking, found myself anything but refreshed. The sun was not yet above the horizon when I crept forth on to the deck: it was that hour of morning which, of all others, one expects to be invigorating and cool, as indeed it usually is in all climates; but here, enclosed within the banks of the canal, and surrounded by swamp and forest, there was no morning air for us. My mind was made up to leave the boat at the first place where a stage might be procured.

All this day the air absolutely stood still. At our places of halt we were joined by men who had left the stages in consequence of those vehicles not being able to travel. Our pace was reduced considerably; and the cattle, although in excellent condition, were terribly distressed. At Lockport we found business nearly at a stand-still; the thermometer was at 110 degrees of Fahrenheit. We passed several horses dead upon the banks of the canal, and were compelled to leave one or two of our own in a dying state. Here more persons joined than we could well accommodate, and I found positively that all movement by the stage route was at an end, forty horses having fallen on the line the day previous. To attempt abiding in any of the places along the canal, I was assured would be an exchange for the worse; so the only course was to endure the "ills we had," and certainly these did not become the lighter through practice. Towards the second night our progress became tediously slow, for it appeared to grow hot in proportion as the evening advanced.

The south-western sky was again banked up by black clouds, from which the sheet lightning never ceased to burst. Under other circumstances the scene would have been viewed as one of infinite grandeur; but, at present, every consideration became absorbed by our sufferings, for to this the affair really amounted.

This night I found it impossible to look in upon the cabin; I therefore made a request to the captain that I might be permitted to have a mattress on deck: but this, he told me, could not be; there was an existing regulation which positively forbade sleeping upon the deck of a canal packet; indeed, he assured me that this could only be done at the peril of life, with the certainty of catching fever and ague. I appeared to submit to his well-meant arguments; but inwardly resolved, coute qui coute, not to sleep within the den below, which exhibited a scene of suffocation and its consequences that defies description.

I got my cloak up, filled my hat with cigars, and, planting myself about the centre of the deck, here resolved, malgre dews and musquitoes, to weather it through the night.

"What is this name of the country we are now passing?" I inquired of one of the boatmen who joined me about the first hour of morning.

"Why sir, this is called the Cedar Swamp," answered the man, to whom I handed a cigar, in order to retain his society and create more smoke, weak as was the defence against the hungry swarms surrounding us on all sides.

"We have not much more of this Cedar Swamp to get through, I hope?" inquired I, seeking for some consolatory information.

"About fifty miles more, I guess," was the reply of my companion, accompanying each word with a sharp slap on the back of his hand, or on his cheek or forehead.

"Thank Heaven!" I involuntarily exclaimed, drawing my cloak closer about me, although the heat was killing; "we shall after that escape in some sort, I hope, from these legions of musquitoes?"

"I guess not quite," replied the man; "they are as thick, if not thicker, in the Long Swamp."

"The Long Swamp!" I repeated: "what a horrible name for a country! Does the canal run far through it?"

"No, not so very far, only about eighty miles."

"We've then done with swamps, I hope, my friend?" I inquired, as he kept puffing and slapping on with unwearied constancy.

"Why, yes, there's not a heap more swamp, that is to say, not close to the line, till we come to within about forty miles of Utica."

"And is that one as much infested with these infernal insects as are the Cedar and Long Swamps."

"I guess that is the place above all for musquitoes," replied the man grinning. "Thim's the real gallinippers, emigrating north for the summer all the way from the Balize and Red River. Let a man go to sleep with his head in a cast-iron kettle among thim chaps, and if their bills don't make a watering-pot of it before morning, I'm d----d. They're strong enough to lift the boat out of the canal, if they could only get underneath her."

I found these swamps endless as Banquo's line: would they had been shadows only; but alas! they were yet to be encountered, horrible realities not to be evaded. I closed my eyes in absolute fear, and forbore further inquiry.

Here I remained throughout the whole night, dozing a little between whiles, but never foregoing my cigar for a minute. Towards daylight the dew descended like rain, but brought with it no coolness to earth or man: it felt exactly as though it had been boiled the day before, and had not been left long enough to get cool.

During this day many of our men frequently threw themselves overboard, clothes and all on, that is, in shirt and trousers, these being all of habiliment that could be worn; I really feared that some of them who had been a little too free in their cold applications, that is, of iced water and brandy, would have gone mad.

This blessing of ice we were seldom many hours without, the poorest hovel on the canal being commonly provided with it in sufficient abundance to give us a supply. The inhabitants, I found, were suffering from the unusual continuance of heat as much as strangers: at night they built huge fires of pine before their doors, so that the thick smoke might penetrate the dwelling, and scour the infernal musquitoes out of it. At these fires we would find the poor women sitting in the smoke at the risk of suffocation; pale, haggard, with their hair neglected and dishevelled, looking like worn-out ghosts rather than living beings. The oldest inhabitants on the line of the canal assured us they never remembered any heat of three days' continuance which could compare to this; and I believe them, since no man could long endure such a visitation.

This evening our condition was in no way improved, except that we heard the sound and felt the presence of a strong current of northerly wind; but it blew as though issuing from a furnace, and afforded no present relief. The sky continued to show "fiery off," and the musquitoes of that ilk did credit to the genealogy my informant ascribed to them: but there is a period beyond which even suffering ceases; this happy insensibility I had attained; and when after midnight we were landed at Utica, I felt as though I could have slept soundly and well even beneath the heated deck of our canal packet.