BETWEEN TWO OCEANS.* THERE are so many books about America
that we do not want another, will probably be the thought of many on taking up this volume. But the same objects are viewed so differently by each traveller, that a certain amount of interest will always be found in any record of travel which faithfully gives the im- pressions of the writer, and not ideas picked up second-hand. Miss Hardy's point of view of things American is that of an English gentlewoman who crosses the Atlantic with good intro- ductions, finds friends wherever she goes, is able to see whatever she likes in the best manner, and who sets forth, moreover, onher journey with a disposition to be pleased, than which, perhaps, there is no better qualification for writing agreeable sketches. This does not mean, however, the bestowal of lavish praise upon
• Between Two Oceans; or, Skerehes of American Travel. By Iza Duffus Hardy. 1 vol. London: Hurst and Blace.ett.
everything. On the contrary, the writer is, as she tells us, " im- partial enough to dwell upon every crumple upon the rose-leaves," her great merit being that she describes so exactly in a few telling words the ordinary conditions and incidents of American travel, that you quite see them all before you, and realise what it will be your fate to do, to suffer, and to enjoy, with a rather alarming glimpse also of what you must spend, should you disport yourself for a few months in some half-dozen or more of the United States.
Miss Hardy went by way of Canada, taking her passage from Liverpool to Quebec in a vessel that carried four or five hundred steerage-passengers, with a due amount of first-class, amongst which latter was a lady with a soul above difficulties who had come on board merely to see her husband off as far as Moville, but made up her mind to accompany him the whole way, and did so with the assistance of boots from the stewardess, a cloak from Smith of Halifax, and a felt hat and ulster from her lord and master, having brought with her nothing but a dressing- bag. A very harmonious party these passengers seem to have been, under the leadership of the genial good-humoured captain, who was also pastor and preacher on board his ship, and devoted his leisure hours to the study of Hebrew ! A universal genius, that captain. Among his other accomplishments he was musical, and quite up to composing either a song or hymn, and singing it to his own accompaniment. Every evening he had a service for the sailors and, steerage-passengers, which Miss Hardy found very impressive, held as it was in a narrow, dingy room, lighted by dim oil-lamps, crowded by people with toil- worn faces, all hanging upon the homely but heart-stirring words of the sailor, who held it to be as much his mission to care for the souls as the bodies of the people confided to him.
After being delighted with the picturesque sights and sounds of Quebec, and the Swiss-like character of its adjacent scenery, our travellers, for they seem to have been two in number, of course go to Niagara, and Miss Hardy is unable to decide whether her first feeling on seeing the falls was one of disappointment or of utter surprise; but a little later, nay, the very same evening, she experiences that strong fascination which a great cataract has for some people, and doubts whether of her own free-will she would ever have made up her mind to leave it.
"The days pass on," she says, "and our untiring eyes drink in the beauties of Niagara in all its varying aspects. One day there is nothing to be seen but a wall of white mist, and the muffled roar of the falls seem to come from a mysterious distance, like echoes of rolling thunder in some other planet. One night we got up at mid- night to see a lunar bow, a mystic perfect arc, spanning the heavens from horizon to horizon like a faintly glimmering scimitar of cold silvery hues, shot with palest shimmers of gold and blue. We watch the rapids and the falls by sun, and moon, and starlight, and never does the charm of this world's wonder pall upon us, rather the spell holds us faster in its power."
Breaking away from it, however, she proceeds with her journey, though in what order she does not say, her book being merely, as her second title tells us, a collection of sketches. Very amusingly she gives the pros and cons of British and American railway travelling ; the spring cushions, the softly cushioned backs, and elbow-rests and locked compartments of the former, are contrasted with the over-heated or draughty trans-Atlantic vehicle full of dust, and "the blackest of blacks," its uncomfortable seats, and its conductor demanding your ticket at every station, but with its sense of freedom and its various arrangements for the refreshment of the inner and outer man. We have just a suspicion that the writer liked the free-and-easy style of travelling best until she experienced what it is totear along the gridiron trestle- work of the Elevated Railroad, where the cars are wider than the track, and you seem to be running full-speed on nothing but the air, thinking that the whole train may not impossibly
topple off its tall posts into the street below, to say nothing of the sharp curves where the engine doubles back as if it were bent upon running into the very carriages it is dragging after it. Of New York the traveller naturally had soon enough, seeing that when she visited it the thermometer stood at 1000 in the shade, this fact being quite enough to account for the "peculiarly enraging character of the eternal brown-stone" buildings, which are pronounced to possess a prim sort of self-consciousness more exasperating than London smoke. Another thing which seems to have struck Miss Hardy very much is the contrast between affluence and misery which is so glaringly apparent in the great American city. She says :— "Most of the streets in the residential quarters of New York are as mach alike as peas in a pod; but the blocks between Fifth and Sixth Avenues have a certain character unshared by their brethren further ease or west. They bear a stamp of the individuality of the great Gotham ; they present a stronger contrast of the diverse lives lived, side by side and yet separate, in a smaller compass than can be found elsewhere. On one hand the aristocracy, the elegance, the wealth, the stately self.possession, the somewhat monotonous dignity of Fifth Avenue. On the other, the plebeian eights and sounds, the carts and vans, the five-cent-oars, the workmen's trains, the street- stalls and lager.beer saloons, the odour of fish, and cabbage, and stale tobacco, the bars, the butchers, the democracy of Sixth Avenue. Side by side, close as parallel, they run, these representatives of the ten and the million, patrician velvet and plebeian corduroy."
Some curious pictures she gives us of the City of the Saints ; seeming positively fascinated by its "strong, young, unpolished" aspect, "pleasant and prepossessing to look upon as a fresh, buxom country lassie, with the rose of health and dew of youth upon her." The Mormon ladies, too, seem to have been found very attractive, though it was by no means easy to get an inside glimpse of the workings of polygamy. One house, however, she found to be a perfect English home, presided over by a pleasant, matronly, English lady, the survivor of two wives, who had, according to her own account, lived together in perfect harmony, as did the sixteen children belonging to both. Miss Hardy's dictum is that the women who can be happy in Mormonism are either such as are by nature mothers rather than wives, or else those of a dreamy, restless character, who yearn towards the Unseen, and feel no abiding-place on earth, and conse- quently are quite content to be "sealed for eternity" in what they call a spiritual marriage. All others, she frankly confesses, are supremely wretched, and she believes that by means of the inpouring of the " Gentile " element into Salt Lake City by the Pacific Railway, Mormonism will die a natural death.
At San Francisco Miss Hardy was brave enough—under escort, of course—to penetrate into China Town. What she saw in the subterranean dens of iniquity there has often been described before ; but her visits to Chinese ladies on New Year's Day, when the streets were gay with coloured lanterns and swarming with Celestials in holiday attire, must have been amusing. She gives also a very good picture of San Francisco life. For ourselves, we like very much her description of the Redwoods and of the second-class big trees, only 300 ft. in height and 15 in diameter. Also we like her journey across the Sierras and "April Days in Colorado."
South Carolina, too, with its tales of the war, is a good sketch, and so is that of the red hills of Georgia. St. Augustine, the oldest city in the States, where one has nothing to do but bask in the sunshine, eat fruit, and indulge in day-dreams in the eastern breeze, must be a pleasant place to lounge away a day in, and a capital place for the artist, with its Spanish population, its quaint architecture, its glorious fruit-trees and flowering creepers, and its plaza crowded with gaily-dressed, happy-looking people. From thence Miss Hardy made her last, and probably her most charming excursion—that of the Ocklawaha River ; but we are not going to forestall the reader's pleasure by saying anything about it. We think, however, that no one will peruse without enjoyment these characteristic little sketches.
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