season of the year they are seldom more
than three weeks making the voyage; and I never will trust myself upon
the wide ocean, if it please Heaven, in a steamer again. When I tell you
all that I observed on board that Britannia, I shall astonish you.
Meanwhile, consider two of their dangers. First, that if the funnel were
blown overboard the vessel must instantly be on fire, from stem to
stern; to comprehend which consequence, you have only to understand that
the funnel is more than 40 feet high, and that at night you see the
solid fire two or three feet above its top. Imagine this swept down by a
strong wind, and picture to yourself the amount of flame on deck; and
that a strong wind is likely to sweep it down you soon learn, from the
precautions taken to keep it up in a storm, when it is the first thing
thought of. Secondly, each of these boats consumes between London and
Halifax 700 tons of coals; and it is pretty clear, from this enormous
difference of weight in a ship of only 1200 tons burden in all, that she
must either be too heavy when she comes out of port, or too light when
she goes in. The daily difference in her rolling, as she burns the coals
out, is something absolutely fearful. Add to all this, that by day and
night she is full of fire and people, that she has no boats, and that
the struggling of that enormous machinery in a heavy sea seems as though
it would rend her into fragments--and you may have a pretty con-sid-erable
damned good sort of a feeble notion that it don't fit nohow; and that it
a'n't calculated to make you smart, overmuch; and that you don't feel
'special bright; and by no means first-rate; and not at all tonguey (or
disposed for conversation); and that however rowdy you may be by natur',
it does use you up com-plete, and that's a fact; and makes you quake
considerable, and disposed toe damn the [)e]ngin[)e]!--All of which
phrases, I beg to add, are pure Americanisms of the first water.

"When we reach Baltimore, we are in the regions of slavery. It exists
there, in its least shocking and most mitigated form; but there it is.
They whisper, here (they dare only whisper, you know, and that below
their breaths), that on that place, and all through the South, there is
a dull gloomy cloud on which the very word seems written. I shall be
able to say, one of these days, that I accepted no public mark of
respect in any place where slavery was;--and that's something.

"The ladies of America are d