Maiden Voyages (7 page)

The old part of Dixonville, that around the ferry, is built upon a bed of cream-colored sand, abounding in fleas. The banks of the river are dotted with little copses and slightly broken. The northern one rises into a high bluff, which, just below the ferry, crowds up to the water’s edge, and bears upon its face an occasional tree or shrub. On the southern side, the bluff bends away from the termination of the ledge, and sweeping inland, leaves a low track, the rear of which is broken by bushy gullies that come down from the height above, and terminate in the sand-bed before spoken of.

I was set down here, at another very filthy house. But that which so disgusted me on first entering, I soon found to be one of the least objectionable features of the establishment. The landlord was one of that class of people in whom all national and other distinctions are lost in the ineffaceable brand of villainy that is stamped upon them. One would never pause to inquire whether he were American, English, Irish, or Dutch. You felt conscious of the presence of a villain; one of those universal prowlers, whose business it is to prey upon society, and who, when it will be most advantageous, prosecute their schemes alone, and when otherwise, surround themselves with a gang of ruffians, whose less disguised vices form a barrier between their leader and public indignation. He had a calm, imperturbable face, which, whenever he saw that his designs were detected, assumed an expression of the most profound meekness and resignation, as if its owner would say, I know your thoughts wrong me, but what then? I can bear even that!

I asked to be shown at once to a private room, and furnished with water and other things necessary to comfort, after a very warm and dusty ride. He escorted me to one adjoining the parlor. “But sir,” said
I, observing boots, hats, et cet., standing about, “this appears to be a gentleman’s room.”

“Yes, it is occupied by a gentleman, but he’s out, and won’t be here till night.”

“Have you no room unoccupied?” I inquired. “Besides, there is no lock on the door!”

“You need not fear interruption,” he replied; “I would give you the parlor, but we shall want to pass through there, and you can spend an hour here without any fear of being disturbed.”

“Very well, sir. Be so good as to send me the water and towels immediately.”

They were brought at the expiration of ten minutes, by a gross creature, who united the characters of mistress, housekeeper, and servant, to the miscreant landlord. Her whole person and manner were of the most disgusting description. She deposited her burthen, and then placing a hand on each side of her ungainly person, posted herself against the door, and commenced taking a deliberate survey of myself and my proceedings. I waited a moment, and finding that she intended to remain as long as her convenience or pleasure would permit, inquired if it formed any part of her orders to remain? “No; but didn’t I want some help?”

“Not at all; the most effectual way of serving me will be to remove yourself as quickly as possible from my sight.”

She disappeared, and I barricaded the door with trunks, chairs, and whatever else I could place against it. I had scarcely completed the task, when some person came rapidly up-stairs and through the hall, and seized the handle of the door with a violent push.

“Open this door,” exclaimed a harsh voice, accompanying the words with another push, that made the fortifications tremble. I now added my own strength to the other securities, and informed the person that a lady and stranger was occupying the room for a very short period only, and that she presumed he would, as a gentleman, only require to be informed of this to be induced to leave her in peaceable possession; or, if anything were wrong, to seek the landlord, who had placed her there. To this he replied, that any person who was in his room must leave it
in a shorter space of time than it would be proper to describe; and that he would see the landlord where it was supposed to be much hotter than it was there, before he would go after him on any such business. I now saw that I had done him great wrong, in supposing him accessible to any arguments that would touch a man or a gentleman, and, therefore, changed my ground.

“Sir,” said I, “I shall not leave this room until I am ready, which will be a much longer time than you name. If you retire, and permit me, unmolested, to accomplish what I came here for, your room shall be vacated in fifteen minutes. If you remain there, I remain here; and I have, beside my personal strength, the aid of two very heavy trunks, and a rifle, placed against the door at about the height of a man’s head. If you are not already acquainted with its contents, there is every chance that you will become so, if you open this door by violence.” Muttering some terrific curses, he retreated down the stairs, and I proceeded to make my toilet, in a trepidation which shamefully belied my stout words. It was completed in a very short time, but even before it was done the door was again rudely assailed, and the inquiry made whether I “was not yet ready.” I replied, that I should leave the room the first moment after I was ready, and that these visits, so far from facilitating my preparation, interrupted them entirely. Again the steps retreated, and, in a few moments, I removed the trunks and rifle, and walked into the parlor. At the same moment the wretch came up-stairs, and entered his room. He was a well-dressed, gentlemanly-looking person, and, strange to say, wore a wide crepe band on his hat! He peered sharply into the parlor as he passed, remained in his room about the fourth of a minute without closing the door, and then disappeared down the stairs, and lounged away the evening about the bar-room and door of the house.

Everything I now saw convinced me that I was in a den of the foulest iniquity; but imagination, stimulated as it was by fear, did not conceive the half of what I afterward learnt to be true of the vile people who consorted there. This place is the Vicksburg of Illinois, and the enterprising proprietors of the mail line had chosen the headquarters of the gamblers, counterfeiters, horse thieves, et cet., as the most fitting place of entertainment for their passengers. I afterward learned that there was
an excellent house kept in the upper part of the town, remote from the pestiferous atmosphere of these wretches, but, being a stranger, I had no opportunity of profiting by it. The people who live here are persons whose daily business is the stealing of horses, the manufacture of counterfeit money, et cet.; and such was their strength at the period spoken of, that although the better population of the place, of which I was informed there was a highly respectable body, held them in the abhorrence which their acts merited, they could make no demonstration against them without endangering their own and the lives of their families. Sometimes, exasperated beyond all forbearance by their enormities, the citizens were driven to some feeble measure of self-defence; and, at this time, there was a set of counterfeiter’s tools under execution. But these movements generally ended in some tacit compromise, by which the villains were left to pursue their iniquity as before.

One instance of the recklessness in crime, exhibited by the wretches referred to in the last chapter, was related to me. A settler, who had opened a prairie farm some miles below the town, became the owner of a very beautiful pair of horses. One morning they were both missing. He at once started in pursuit, went directly up to the town, and, a few miles on his way, discovered one of them lying dead by the road-side. It appeared that, for some reason, the robbers wanted but one, and, as the other followed his companion, they had shot him down to relieve themselves of his presence. These, and many more incidents, evincing the most shocking depravity, were related to me after I had escaped.

But meantime my desire to reach the residence of my friends that night, increased every moment. I therefore sent for the landlord, and inquired the distance to C——. By the way I should observe that he added to the various callings already specified, some pretensions to the practice of medicine, and that I had accidentally heard him speak to one of his comrades in the passage, of having but recently returned from a visit to one of his patients, about four miles above the place for which I inquired. The name, however, when I mentioned it, seemed entirely new to him. He mused a moment, and said that really he could not tell. It might be between twenty and thirty miles down the river. There had been a little place settled down there somewhere, about a
year before, perhaps he could find some gentleman about the house who could inform me.

“Let the distance be what it may,” I said. “I wish to go there tonight.”

“To-night! that is impossible. We could not send you there to-night on any terms. In the morning I may find it possible to take you, or procure an opportunity for you to go with some person that is traveling that way.”

“As you are ignorant of the distance,” I said, “you cannot name your charge until you ascertain it.”

“No, though I think it would be reasonable to say five dollars.”

I had paid but six dollars for the previous one hundred miles. “Do you know the distance to ——,” naming the place which he had visited that day.

“Not exactly, but I think it is about—”

“You mean to say that you have never measured it with the chain, but having been there today, you could doubtless form a tolerably correct estimate.”

He said that he had spoken of visiting a patient somewhere in the neighborhood of that place, it might be within half a dozen miles or so. I replied that it was useless to attempt deception in so small and obvious a matter; that I would willingly pay an exorbitant charge to get from his house that moment; but as it was impossible, I should make up my mind to endure a night in it. “Let me hear from you,” I said, “at the earliest hour in the morning, in reference to my departure; and now, if you will oblige me by showing me the room I am to occupy to-night, I shall require nothing more.”

“You are to sleep here,” he replied, “there is no other room unoccupied.”

“But this door has no lock, and if I am to judge of my security, from that which you promised in the first instance, I shall sit up all night.”

Oh, there would not be the least necessity for anything of the kind. This was the parlor—it was never entered but by transient guests, and if any came, they could be shown to another room. He begged I would feel perfectly assured, and apologized in the humblest manner for the interruption I had experienced in the other room. The gentleman who
occupied it had not seen him, and he did not know who might be in it or what they were doing. He regretted, et cet.

To this I replied, I should place no reliance on his promise, having found it worthy of none, but take good care to secure myself, and thus we parted.

It should be remarked here as evidence of a degree of civilized feeling among these ruffians, that they felt themselves wholly unworthy the presence of a virtuous woman, and never expected one to appear at table with them. It was not the custom of the house, so the female before referred to informed me, for ladies to appear at the first table.

“And pray where do ladies take their meals,” I inquired, “when they are so unfortunate as to be obliged to eat here?”

“If they are in a hurry to go, we
tote
it up
hyur
to ’em; if they ain’t, they wait and go to the second table!”

“And who sits at the second table?”

“Mr. ——, the landlord, and I, and the drivers and so on.”

A delightful circle, truly! I made no attempt to get a meal that day, though I had eaten nothing since early breakfast at P.

Making the best security I could, by placing the bedstead against the door, I prepared to retire.

The room was excessively warm, and had a stench which rendered it intolerable, except the window were thrown wide open. The bed itself would have been pronounced soiled by a jury of Irish landladies; I resolved, however, to make the best of the necessity which held me there, and addressed myself to rest with an earnestness which was well rewarded by seven hours of uninterrupted oblivion.

(1831–1892)

from
UNTRODDEN PEAKS AND UNFREQUENTED VALLEYS
:
A MIDSUMMER RAMBLE IN THE DOLOMITES

So we go on, always in the green shade of the forest, till we come to a little group of cottages known collectively as the Casa di San Marco; a name recalling the old days of Venetian sovereignty, and still marking the frontier between Italy and Austria. Here, there being no officials anywhere about, we pass unquestioned under the black and yellow pole, and so arrive in a few moments at the opening point of the new government road which old Ghedina had given us directions to follow as far as it went.