In 1827, Basil Hall was a commander in the Royal British Navy whose journals and writings from abroad had been adored for his unusually minute descriptions. As public sentiment in Britain turned towards increasing critique of the United States and America’s burgeoning modernization and stumbling financial futures, Hall traveled to the former colonies, recording what he found on his journeys through New England.
Hall’s journey, recorded in Travels in America, paint a fascinating view of 19th Century America, one that paid particular attention to the changing environment, industrialization and advances in agricultural techniques, and a sharp, often self-deprecating sense of humor. Selections of Travels in America were included in The Erie Canal Reader: 1790-1950, published by Syracuse University Press, and are excerpted below. The passage, written in 1827 of the year, depicts the party’s journey north through central New York as they approach the Great Lakes.
On the 19th of June we reached the village of Syracuse, through the very centre [sic] of which the Erie Canal passes. During the drive we had the opportunities of seeing the land in various stages of its progress from the dense, black, tangled, native forest—up to the highest stages of cultivation with wheat and barley waving over it: or from that melancholy and very hopeless-looking state of things, when the tress are laid prostrate upon the earth, one upon top of another, and a miserable log-hut is the only symptom of man’s residence — to such gay and thriving places as Syracuse; with fine broad streets, large and commodious houses, gay shops, and stage coaches waggons [sic] and gigs flying past, all in a bustle. In the centre of the village, we could see from our windows the canal thickly covered with freight boats and packets glancing silently past, and shooting like arrows through the bridges, some of which were of stone, and some of painted wood. The canal at this place has bee mad of double it ordinary width, and being bent into an agreeable degree of curvature, to suit the turn of the streets, the formality is removed as well as the ditch-like appearance which generally belongs to canals. The water, also, is made to rise almost level with the towing path, which improves the effect. I was amused by seeing amongst the throng of loaded boats, a gaily-painted vessel lying in state, with the words Cleopatra’s Barge painted in large characters on the broadside.
In the course of 50 miles travelling, we came repeatedly in sight of almost every successive period of agricultural advancement through which America has run, or is actually running […] In merely passing along the road, it was of course difficult to form any conjecture as to how much of the country was cleared; especially as new settlers naturally cling to canals, roads, and lakes, and it was such settlers only that we saw. Sometimes our track lay through a thick forest for a mile or two; though, generally speaking, the country for some distance on both sides of the road was thickly strewed with houses. Every now and then we came to villages, consisting of several hundred houses and in the middle I observed that there were always several churches surmounted by spires, painted with some showy colour, and giving a certain degree of liveliness or finish to scenes in other respects rude enough. In general, however, it must be owned, there prevailed an uncomfortable appearance of bleakness or rawness, and a total absence of picturesque beauty in these villages; whose dreary aspect was much heighted by the black sort of gigantic wall formed of the abrupt edge of the forest, choked up with underwood, now for the first time exposed to the light of the sun.
The cleared spaces, however, as they are called, looked to our eyes not less desolate, being studded over with innumerable great black stumps; or , which was more deplorable still, with tall scorched branchless stems of trees, which had undergone the barbarous operation known by the name of girdling. An American settler can hardly conceive the horror with which a foreigner beholds such numbers of magnificent trees standing round him with their throats cut, the very Banquos of the murdered forest! The process of girdling is this: a circular cut or ring, two or three inches deep, is made with an ax quite round the tree at about five feet from the ground. This, of course, puts an end to vegetable life; and the destruction of the tree being accelerated by the action of fire, these wretched trunks in a year or two present the most miserable objects of decrepitude that can be conceived, The purpose, however, of the farmer is gained, and that is all he can be expected to look to. His corn crop is no longer overshadowed by the leaves of these unhappy trees, which, in process of time, are cut down and split into railings or sawed into billets of firewood,—and their misery is at an end.
Even in the cultivated fields, the tops of the stumps were not seen poking their black snouts above the young grain, like a shoal of seals. Not a single hedge or wall was to be seen in those places, all the enclosures being made of split logs, built one upon the top of another in a zig-zag fashion, like what the ladies call a Vandyke border. These are named snake fences, and are certainly the most ungraceful-looking things I ever saw.
Most of the houses are built of rough unbarked logs, nicked at the ends so as to fit closely and firmly; and roofed with planks. The better sort of dwellings, however, are made of squared timbers framed together neatly enough, and boarded over, at the sides and ends; and then roofed with shingles, which are a sort of oblong wooden slates. The houses are generally left unpainted, and being scattered about without order, look more like a collection of great packing boxes, than the human residences which the eye is accustomed to see in old countries. In the more cleared and longer settled parts of the country, we saw many detached houses, which might almost be called villas, very neatly got up, with rows of wooden columns in front, shaded by tree and tall shrubs running round and across the garden, which was prettily fenced in, and embellished with a profusion of flowers.
Sometimes a whole village, such as that of Whitesborough, was composed entirely of these detached villas; and as most of the houses were half hid in the thick foliage of the elm-trees round them, they looked cool and comfortable when compared with the new and half-burnt, and in many places burning country, only a few miles off.
The villages of Utica stands a step in the progressive scale of civilization, for it has several church spires rising over it, and at no great distance an institution, called Hamilton College, intended, I was told, for the higher branches of science. We also visited Syracuse, a village with extensive salt-works close to it; and had numerous opportunities examining the Erie canal, and the great high-road to Buffalo;—so that what with towns and cities, Indians, forests, cleared and cultivated lands, girdled trees, log-houses, painted churches, villas, canals, and manufactories, and hundreds of thousands of human beings starting into life all within the ken of one day’s rapid journey, there was plenty of stuff for the imagination to work upon.
It has been the fashion of travelers in America, I am told—for I have read no travels in that country—to ridicule the practice of giving to known and inconsiderable villages, the names of places long hallowed in classical recollections. I was disposed, however, at one time to think, that there was nothing absurd in that matter. I do not deny that, on first looking at the map, and more particularly on hearing stage-drivers and stage-passenger, talking of Troy, Ithaca and Rome, and still more when I heard them speaking of the towns of Cicero, Homer, or Manlius, an involuntary smile found its way to the lips, followed often by a good hearty laugh. The oddity and incongruity of the thing were much heightened by the admixture of such modern appellations as Truxton, Sullivan, and Tompkins, jumbled up with the Indian names of Onondaga, Oneida, and Chitteningo [sic].
A little longer personal acquaintance with the subject, however, led me to a different conclusion. All those uncourteous, and at first irrepressible feelings of ridicule, were, I hoped, quite eradicated; and I tried to fancy that there was something very interesting, almost amiable, in any circumstances, no mater how trivial, which contributed to show, even indirectly, that these descendants of ours were still willing to keep up the old and generous recollections of their youth; and although they had broken the cords of national union, they were sill disposed to bind themselves to us, by the ties of classical sentiment at least. For these reasons, then, I was inclined to approve, in theory, of taste which had appropriated the ancient names alluded to. I had also a sort of hope, that the mere use of the words would insensibly blend with their present occupations and so keep alive some traces of the old spirit, described to me as fast molting away.
By that same train of friendly reasoning, I was led to imagine it possible that the adoption of such names as Auburn, “Lovelies village of the plain,”—Port Byron, and the innumerable Londons, Dublins, Edinburghs, and so on, were indicative of a latent or lingering kindliness towards the old country. The notion, that it was degrading to the venerable Roman names to fix them upon these mushroom towns in the wilderness I combated, I flattered myself, somewhat adroitly, on the principle that, so far the memory of Ithaca or Syracuse, or any such place, being degraded by the appropriation, the honour rather lay with the ancients, who, it is the fashion to take for granted enjoyed a less amount of freedom and intelligence than their modern namesake.
“Let us,” I said one day, to a friend who was impugning these doctrines, “Let us take Syracuse for example, which in the year 1820 consisted of one house, one mill, and one tavern: now in 1827, it holds fifteen hundred inhabitants, ahs two large churches, innumerable wealthy shops filled with goods, brought there by water-carriage from every corner of the globe; two large and splendid hotels; many dozens of grocery stores or whisky-shops; several busy printing presses, from ne of which issues a weekly newspaper; a daily post from the east, the south, and the west; had a broad canal running through its bosom;—in short, it is a great and free city. Where is this to be matched,” I exclaimed, “In ancient Italy or Greece?”
It grieves me much, however, to have the ungracious task forced upon me of entirely demolishing my own plausible handiwork. But truth renders it necessary to declare, that after a longer acquaintance with all these matters, I discovered that I was all in the wrong, and that there was not a word of sense in what i had uttered with so much studied candour. What is the most provoking proof that this fine doctrine of profitable associations was practically absurd is the fact that even i myself, though comparatively so little acquainted with the classical sounding places in question, have, alas! seen and heard enough of them to have nearly all my classical recollections swept away by the contact. Now, therefore, whenever I meet with the name of a Roman city, or an author, or a general, instead of having my thoughts carried back, as heretofore, to the regions of antiquity, I am transported forthwith, in imagination, to the post-road on my way to Lake Erie, and my joints and bones turn sore at the bare recollection of joltings, and other nameless vulgar annoyances by a day and by night, which, I much ear, will outlive all the classical knowledge of my juvenile days…
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