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The American blockading squadron, which had undertaken the almost impossible task of stopping all traffic along 3,000 miles of coast, consisted of nearly a hundred vessels of different sorts and sizes bonâ-fide men-of-war, captured blockade-runners, unemployed steam-packets, with many other vessels pressed into government service.
One or two long lines of dark, curling smoke floating among the distant clouds, pointed out the course of the continental steam-packets bound east or west. The atmosphere was soft and summer-like. The hum of the busy town, far below us, came up on the air like the drone of insects, mingled with the soft chimes from the Church of St. John.
We often read of our grandfathers' astonishment at the steam-packets that crossed the Atlantic in a fortnight, but they seem to have slid into the habit of travelling by rail almost as a matter of course, much as their descendants have taken to touring in motor-cars. Willis the observant, however, has left on record his sensations during his first journey by rail.
It is kept in a much better state for navigation, so far as the depth of water is concerned, than the old canal, which from inattention is gradually shoaling in places; consequently the regular steam-packets which ply between Elizabeth City and Norfolk, as well as steamers whose destinations are further north, have given up the use of the Dismal Swamp Canal, and now go round through Albemarle Sound up the North River, thence by a six-mile cut into Currituck Sound, up North Landing River, and through the new canal to the Elizabeth River and into Chesapeake Bay.
He told us what 'is grandmamma, 'oo was a lady an' went to sea in stick-and string-batteaus, had told him about steam. He throwed in his own prayers for the 'ealth an' safety of all steam-packets an' their officers. Then he give us several distinct orders.
This reached him at last, and probably impressed him, no less than his ministers, as "the greatest of all possible deliverances, both to his majesty and the country". He proceeded to Dublin in one of the earliest steam-packets, and secluded himself until "the corpse of his wife was supposed to have left England". He then plunged into a round of festivities, and pleased all classes of Irishmen by his affable and condescending manners.
Twenty years ago eighty canal-boats furnished the navigation service between Beaucaire and Lyons; a score of steam-packets has displaced them all. Certainly commerce is the gainer; but what has become of the boating-population? Has it been transferred from the boats to the packets? No: it has gone where all superseded industries go, it has vanished.
Our Indian ivory for some years back, instead of being shipped by way of the Cape for England, has, in order to save time, been sent by the Red Sea to Suez, and thence conveyed, generally on the backs of camels, across the Desert to Alexandria, where it is again shipped on board the Oriental steam-packets for Southampton, and conveyed by railway to London.
I shall make a Thermopylae of the corner of one of them, defend it with my cutlass against the coast-guard until my brave companions have sheered off, then dive into the darkness, and regain my Susan's arms. The South-Eastern Company have brought Pavilionstone into such vogue, with their tidal trains and splendid steam-packets, that a new Pavilionstone is rising up.
By traveling overland to Rio, Lewis caught the newest and finest of the big steam-packets plying between Buenos Aires and Southampton. This old world of his had been moving apace in more ways than one. The years since, with his father, he had made this same trip were comparatively few, but during them progress had more than taken a long stride; it had crossed a line.
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