We had made plans and preparations to board ourselves on the journey. We
always stopped at the farm houses over night, and they were so
hospitable that they gave us all we wanted free. Our supper was
generally of bread and milk, the latter always furnished gratuitously,
and I do not recollect that we were ever turned away from any house
where we asked shelter. There were no hotels, or taverns as they called
them, outside of the towns.
In due time we reached Whitehall, at the head of Lake Champlain, and the
big box in Uncle's wagon proved so heavy over the muddy roads that he
put it in a canal boat to be sent on to Cleveland, and we found it much
easier after this for there were too many mud-holes, stumps and stones
and log bridges for so heavy a load as he had. Our road many times after
this led along near the canal, the Champlain or the Erie, and I had a
chance to see something of the canal boys' life. The boy who drove the
horses that drew the packet boat was a well dressed fellow and always
rode at a full trot or a gallop, but the freight driver was generally
ragged and barefoot, and walked when it was too cold to ride, threw
stones or clubs at his team, and cursed and abused the packet-boy who
passed as long as he was in hearing. Reared as I had been I thought it
was a pretty wicked part of the world we were coming to.
We passed one village of low cheap houses near the canal. The men about
were very vulgar and talked rough and loud, nearly every one with a
pipe, and poorly dressed, loafing around the saloon, apparently the
worse for whisky.
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