The Historical Spectator.

A Trip on the National Road in 1832

From Washington I returned to Baltimore, where I ex­peri­enced a renewal of that kindness and hospi­tality, to which, on my former visit, I had been so largely indebted. As the best mode of proceeding to the South, I had been recom­mended to cross from Baltimore to Wheeling, on the Ohio, and there to take steam for New Orleans, as soon as the navi­gation of the river should be reported open. For this intelligence, however, it was necessary to wait in Baltimore, and certainly a more agreeable place of confine­ment could not have been selected.

Fortune favoured me. In a few days the news­papers an­nounced that the ice had broken up, and the Ohio was again navigable. Having had the good fortune to en­counter one of my English fellow-passengers by the New York, like­wise bound for New Orleans, we agreed to travel together, and, on the morning of the 6th of March, before daylight, stepped into the rail-way carriage which was to convey us ten miles on our journey.

The vehicle was of a description somewhat novel. It was, in fact, a wooden house or chamber, somewhat like those used by itinerant showmen in England, and was drawn by a horse at the rate of about four miles an hour. Our progress, therefore, was not rapid, and we were nearly three hours in reaching a place called Ellicot Mills, where we found a wretched break­fast awaiting our arrival.

Having done honour to the meal in a measure rather propor­tioned to our appetites than to the quality of the viands, we embarked in what was called the “Accommo­dation Stage,” so designated, probably, from the absence of every accommo­dation which travellers usually expect in such a vehicle. The country through which we passed was partially covered with snow. The appearance both of the dwelling-houses and the inhab­itants gave indication of poverty, which was confirmed by the rough and stony aspect of the soil wherever it was visible. The coach stopped to dinner at a con­siderable village called Fredericks­town, where the appearance of the enter­tainment was so forbidding, that I found it impossible to eat. My appetite, therefore, was somewhat over­weening when we reached Hagerstown, a place of some magnitude, where we halted for the night, having accomplished a distance of eighty miles.

At three o'clock on the following morning we again started on our journey. The roads were much worse than we had found them on the preceding day, the country was buried deeper in snow, and our progress was in conse­quence slower. The appearance of poverty seemed to increase as we advanced. Here and there a ragged negro slave was seen at work near the wretched log hovel of his master; and the number of deserted dwellings which skirted the road, and of fields suffered to relapse into a state of nature, showed that their former occupants had gone forth in search of a more grateful soil. We breakfasted at Clearspring, a trifling village, and then commenced mounting the eastern ridge of the Alleghanies, called Sideling Mountain. To one who has trodden the passes of the Alps and the Appenines, the Alleghany Mountains present nothing very striking. Indeed, the general character of American mountains is by no means picturesque. They are round and corpulent pro­tuberances, and rarely rise into forms of wild and savage grandeur. But some of the scenes presented by the Alleghanies are very fine. Nature, when undisturbed by man, is never without a beauty of her own. But even in these remote mountain recesses, the marks of wanton havoc are too often visible. Numbers of the trees by the road were scorched and mutilated, with no intelligible object but that of destruc­tion. Objects the most sublime or beauti­ful have no sanctity in the eyes of an American. He is not content with the full power of enjoyment, he must exert the privilege to deface. Our day's journey terminated at Flints­town, a solitary inn, near which is a mineral spring, whereof the passen­gers drank each about a gallon, without experi­encing, as they unanimously declared, effect of any sort. I own I did not regret the inefficiency of the waters.

With the morning of the third day our difficulties commenced. We now approached the loftier ridges of the Alleghanies; the roads became worse, and our progress slower. The scenery was similar in character to that we had already passed. The mountains, from base to summit, were covered with wood, interspersed with great quantities of kalmias, rhodo­dendrons, and other flowering shrubs.

On the day following, our route lay over a ridge called the Savage Mountain. The snow lay deeper every mile of our advance, and at length, on reaching a miserable inn, the landlord informed us, that no carriage, on wheels, had been able to traverse the mountain for six weeks. On inquiring for a sleigh, it then appeared that none was to be had, and the natives all assured us that proceeding, with our present carriage, was impossible. The landlord dilated on the depth of snow, the dangers of the mountain, the darkness of the nights, and strongly urged our taking advantage of his hospitality till the following day. But the passengers were all anxious to push forward, and, as one of them happened to be a proprietor of the coach, the driver very un­willingly determined on making the attempt. We ac­cordingly set forth, but had not gone above a mile, when the coach stuck fast in a snow-drift, which actually buried the horses. In this predica­ment, the whole men and horses of the little village were summoned to our assis­tance, and, after about two hours’ delay, the vehicle was again set free.

We reached the next stage in the hollow of the mountain, without farther accident, and the report as to the state of the roads yet to be travelled, was very unpromising. The majority of the passengers, however, having fortified their courage with copious infusions of brandy, determined not to be delayed by peril of any sort. On we went, therefore; the night was pitchy dark; heavy rain came on, and the wind howled loudly amid the bare and bony arms of the surrounding forest. The road lay along a succes­sion of precipitous descents, down which, by a single blunder of the driver, who was quite drunk, we might at any moment be precipitated. Dangerous as, under these circum­stances, our progress unques­tionably was, the journey was accom­plished in safety; and halting for the night at a petty village, situated between the ridge we had crossed, and another which yet remained to be surmounted, the passengers exchanged congratu­lations on the good fortune which had hitherto attended them.

Before sunrise we were again on the road, and commenced the ascent of Laurel Mountain, which occupied several hours. The view from the summit was fine and extensive, though, perhaps, deficient in variety. We had now sur­mounted the last ridge of the Alleghanies, and calculated on making the rest of our way in compara­tive ease and comfort. This was a mistake. Though we found little snow to the westward of the mountains, the road was most execrable, and the jolting exceeded any thing I had yet experienced. The day’s journev terminated at Washington, a town of con­siderable popula­tion, with a tavern somewhat more comfortable than the wretched and dirty dogholes to which, for some days, we had been condemned.

During our last day's journey we passed through a richer country, but experi­enced no improvement in the road, which is what is called a national one, or, in other words, constructed at the expense of the general government. If intended by Congress to act as an instrument of punishment on their sovereign constituents, it is, no doubt, very happily adapted for the purpose. In its forma­tion all the ordinary prin­ciples of road-making are reversed; and that grateful travellers may be instructed to whom they are indebted for their frac­tures and contusions, a column has been erected to Mr. Clay, on which his claims to the honours of artifex maximus, are duly emblazoned.

The tedium of the journey, however, was enlivened by the presence of a very pretty and communi­cative young lady, returning from a visit in the neigh­bourhood, to Alexandria, the place of her residence. From her I gathered every information with regard to the state of polite society in these tramontane regions. This fair damsel evidently made conquest of a Virginian doctor, who had been our fellow-traveller for several days, and was peculiarly disgusting from an inordinate addiction to the vernacular vices of dram-drinking and tobacco-chewing. Being generally drunk, he spat right and left in the coach, and especially after dark, discharged volleys of saliva, utterly reckless of conse­quences. One night I was wakened from a sound sleep by the outcries of a Quaker, into whose eye he had squirted a whole mouthful of tobacco juice. The pain caused by this offensive appli­cation to so delicate an organ was very great. Broad­brim forgot for the nonce all the equanimity of his cloth; cursed the doctor for a drunken vagabond; and, on reaching our resting-place for the night, I certainly observed that his eye had suffered con­siderable damage. For myself, being a tolerably old traveller, I no sooner discovered the doctor's propensity, than I contrived to gain possession of the seat immediately behind him, and thus for­tunately escaped all annoyance, except that arising from the filthiness of his person, and the brutality of his conversation. About mid-day we reached Browns­ville, a manu­facturing town of considerable size, situated on the Monon­gahela, which, by its junction with the Alleghany, near Pittsburg, forms the Ohio. The appearance of Browns­ville is black and disgusting; its streets are dirty, and unpaved; and the houses present none of the externals of opulence. The river is a fine one, about the size of the Thames, at West­minster; and having crossed it, our route lay for some miles through a pretty and undulating country. At night we reached Wheeling, after a day’s journey of only thirty miles, accomplished with more diffi­culty and incon­venience than we had before experienced.