American Notes eBook

The beauty and freshness of this calm retreat, in the very dawn and greenness of summer — it was then the beginning of June — were exquisite indeed.  Leaving it upon the sixth, and returning to New York, to embark for England on the succeeding day, I was glad to think that among the last memorable beauties which had glided past us, and softened in the bright perspective, were those whose pictures, traced by no common hand, are fresh in most men’s minds; not easily to grow old, or fade beneath the dust of Time:  the Kaatskill Mountains, Sleepy Hollow, and the Tappaan Zee.

CHAPTER XVI — THE PASSAGE HOME

I never had so much interest before, and very likely I shall never have so much interest again, in the state of the wind, as on the long-looked-for morning of Tuesday the Seventh of June.  Some nautical authority had told me a day or two previous, ’anything with west in it, will do;’ so when I darted out of bed at daylight, and throwing up the window, was saluted by a lively breeze from the north-west which had sprung up in the night, it came upon me so freshly, rustling with so many happy associations, that I conceived upon the spot a special regard for all airs blowing from that quarter of the compass, which I shall cherish, I dare say, until my own wind has breathed its last frail puff, and withdrawn itself for ever from the mortal calendar.

The pilot had not been slow to take advantage of this favourable weather, and the ship which yesterday had been in such a crowded dock that she might have retired from trade for good and all, for any chance she seemed to have of going to sea, was now full sixteen miles away.  A gallant sight she was, when we, fast gaining on her in a steamboat, saw her in the distance riding at anchor:  her tall masts pointing up in graceful lines against the sky, and every rope and spar expressed in delicate and thread-like outline:  gallant, too, when, we being all aboard, the anchor came up to the sturdy chorus ‘Cheerily men, oh cheerily!’ and she followed proudly in the towing steamboat’s wake:  but bravest and most gallant of all, when the tow-rope being cast adrift, the canvas fluttered from her masts, and spreading her white wings she soared away upon her free and solitary course.

In the after cabin we were only fifteen passengers in all, and the greater part were from Canada, where some of us had known each other.  The night was rough and squally, so were the next two days, but they flew by quickly, and we were soon as cheerful and snug a party, with an honest, manly-hearted captain at our head, as ever came to the resolution of being mutually agreeable, on land or water.