saw the Britannia after I stepped from her deck back to the small
steamer that had taken us to her. "How little I thought" (were the last
lines of his first American letter), "the first time you mounted the
shapeless coat, that I should have such a sad association with its back
as when I saw it by the paddle-box of that small steamer!"

FOOTNOTES:

[42] See _ante_, p. 123.

[43] See _ante_, p. 244.

CHAPTER XIX.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.

1842.

Rough Passage--A Steamer in a Storm--Resigned
to the Worst--Of Himself and
Fellow-travelers--The Atlantic from Deck--The
Ladies' Cabin--Its Occupants--Card-playing on
the Atlantic--Ship-news--A Wager--Halifax
Harbor--Ship aground--Captain Hewitt--Speaker
of House of Assembly--Ovation to C. D.--Arrival
at Boston--Incursion of Editors--At Tremont
House--The Welcome--Deputations--Dr. Channing
to C. D.--Public Appearances--A Secretary
engaged--Bostonians--General
Characteristics--Personal Notices--Perils of
Steamers--A Home-thought--American
Institutions--How first impressed--Reasons for
the Greeting--What was welcomed in C. D.--Old
World and New World--Daniel Webster as to C.
D.--Channing as to C. D.--Subsequent
Disappointments--New York Invitation to
Dinner--Fac-similes of Signatures--Additional
Fac-similes--New York Invitation to
Ball--Fac-similes of Signatures--Additional
Fac-similes.

THE first lines of that letter were written as soon as he got sight of
earth again, from the banks of Newfoundland, on Monday, the 17th of
January, the fourteenth day from their departure: even then so far from
Halifax that they could not expect to make it before Wednesday night, or
to reach Boston until Saturday or Sunday. They had not been fortunate in
the passage. During the whole voyage the weather had been
unprecedentedly bad, the wind for the most part dead against them, the
wet intolerable, the sea horribly disturbed, the days dark, and the
nights fearful. On the previous Monday night it had blown a hurricane,
beginning at five in the afternoon and raging all night. His description
of the storm is published, and the peculiarities of a steamer's behavior
in such circumstances are hit off as if he had been all his life a
sailor. Any but so extraordinary an observer would have described a
s