January 1856
John Shaw, a native of Boston, Lincolnshire, became a fellow of both the Geological Society and Linnean Society of London. The English physician published five travel books between 1856 and 1861. None was favorably received by the London critics. Ramble was called “at once superficial and pretentious,” and this was mild compared to other criticism. Not only did Dr. Shaw dislike slavery, the common sentiment, but he also saw the South with condescension, yet with candor and humor.
John Shaw, A Ramble Through the United States, Canada, and the West Indies (London: J. F. Hope, 1856), 210–215.
Arrived at Montgomery, in the state of Alabama, a town situate in the middle of a beautiful bog, where, in the summer time, bilious, intermittent, and yellow fevers invariably prevail. It was during the winter season, in the month of January, that the thermometer stood at 70° at Montgomery, and a thunder-storm— such an one as I had never previously seen—having more similarity to a great universal waterfall, accompanied with constant flashes of lightning (not dissimilar to spirit of wine, ignited), is almost without intermission illuminating the town in such a manner that one could only compare it to the rising and setting of the sun in rapid succession. I attended a concert at the Montgomery Hotel, given by four American vocalists. Among the songs sang upon the occasion, was one giving an account of John Bull taxing the tea, with other allusions to the revolutionary times, which called forth not so much applause as I anticipated. Another of them was to the effect of “Put the kettle on;” “Loud blow the bellows;” “If John Bull [the English equivalent of the American Uncle Sam] should come upon our coast, we will give him gunpowder tea”—this latter also failed in eliciting any amount of marked approbation; fully showing that the people of the town were well disposed towards John Bull; and that there, at all events, the war-movement was not popular. The singers, before commencing their performance, made no salutation, and also finished their songs without bowing.
January 10th. Embarked on board the Marengo steam-boat, at Montgomery, in the State of Alabama, and sailed down a river named after the State, a distance of 500 miles, for the sum of £1, with provisions included. This was cheap enough. Travelling in the United States where the passengers do not exist in great numbers, I think may be considered dear. The steam-boat was one with a high-pressure engine, one of the finest I ever saw; and I must confess that the thundering rush of steam, vomited through her capacious pipes, rather startled me the first time I heard it, especially when I pictured to my imagination the possibility of an explosion, an event too frequently resulting from the bad management of these high-pressure steamers. The peculiarity of her construction was not a little interesting; for the accommodations were all above deck, instead of below. The great saloon, which extended from one end of the boat to the other, was very handsomely fitted up, and could not fail in calling forth the admiration of the traveller, especially to a foreigner viewing it for the first time. The berths were differently placed to the Hudson steamers, in having the beds fixed in a small room, with its door and number upon it. The group of passengers was, as might be expected, very various, and even variegated, for some of them wore white blanket coats, embroidered at the edges with blue and scarlet, some in entirely blue coats, and others in red ones. These gentlemen, so remarkable for their variegated costumes, were from the far west. I conversed with many of them without meeting an intentionally rude or disagreeable individual. I was informed that in this mixed group there were gamblers, blacklegs, and other idlers, who are called, in the States, Loafers. I met with the greatest possible politeness and attention from the passengers, especially when I informed them that I was a Britisher, as they designate an Englishman; and I am bound to assert, to do them justice, that, although the Southern gentleman lives in a poorer and less cultivated country than his brethren of the North, and in whose States education has not advanced so much as in the New England States, and where the slave is bought and sold like a pig or a house, yet he is a much more communicative and more agreeable travelling companion than the men of the Northern States. I here experienced, for the first time, an offer to pass or leave a dish at the table—a thing very unusual in the Northern States; or, if it is the custom, I had the misfortune not to have an opportunity of observing it. I came in contact but with one of the ladies, and I am bound to confess that I never, upon any occasion, in any country, fell in with a more agreeable, intelligent, and amiable woman; so much so, that I deeply regretted parting with her.
I observed, sitting opposite to me at meals, a youth with a fine expression of countenance, dressed very shabbily in his white blanket coat, fringed with blue, with long hair flowing wildly over his shoulders, whose appearance, most favorably conjectured, could not have passed for any individual higher in the scale than a working man: afterwards, however, I found this individual bowing away in pretty good style on the violin, and, not content with that display of his musical abilities, further commenced and ended a good piece upon the piano, to the great astonishment as well as delight of the beholders and listeners; proving the difficulty of accurately judging a man from his dress and appearance.
The Alabama, down which I sailed to Mobile, like most of the American rivers, is very tortuous in its course, but differed in another respect, viz. that of unusual narrowness, as well as being bounded by the most monotonous, swampy low ground, filled with trees, from whose branches dangled a long thready mass of vegetable matter (a species of lichen), in some instances more than a foot in length; and so completely and invariably were they furnished with it, that there was scarcely to be found a tree without these waving and floating and most peculiar appendages. This appearance is peculiar to the trees of the Southern States. We passed 500 miles of this most monotonous scene, in a river which, if appropriately named, ought to have been called the liquid-mud river, without observing a decent house on its banks, or a change of scene to relieve the eye, without an inch of cultivated land, nothing but swamp and wood, surrounded and soaked in stagnant water, which contained all the obnoxious sources of those endemic disorders which too powerfully attack both the native and the foreigner. In this river, during the summer season, might be seen the alligator, lazily lolling on logs of wood, as if he were an animal of such delicate constitution as only to be capable of enduring the fresh breezes of summer, at the most enlivening period of the year. This river and the alligator are well matched; for I think it would be with difficulty that one could encounter two uglier things in the domains of universal nature.
I arrived at Mobile early in the morning. I found this climate the most delightful imaginable, although in the summer season it would be certain death for a foreigner to inhale its poisonous atmosphere. I never felt in England during the summer season such an agreeable temperature and climate as I experienced at Mobile at their coldest season of the year. The town is situated not far from the Gulph of Mexico, and is remarkable for possessing a shifting population, like that of a watering place. The Northerners are the great visitors during the winter months, who carry on an extensive speculation in cotton, and who quit the town as soon as the unhealthy season commences.