Louisville is the commercial city of the State, and stands on the Ohio. It is another great town, like all the others, built with high stores, and great houses and stone-faced blocks. I have no doubt that all the building speculations have been failures, and that the men engaged in them were all ruined. But there, as the result of their labor, stands a fair great city on the southern banks of the Ohio. Here General Buell held his headquarters, but his army lay at a distance. On my return from the West I visited one of the camps of this army, and will speak of it as I speak of my backward journey. I had already at this time begun to conceive an opinion that the armies in Kentucky and in Missouri would do at any rate as much for the Northern cause as that of the Potomac, of which so much more had been heard in England.
While I was at Louisville the Ohio was flooded. It had begun to rise when I was at Cincinnati, and since then had gone on increasing hourly, rising inch by inch up into the towns upon its bank. Ivisited two suburbs of Louisville, both of which were submerged, as to the streets and ground floors of the houses. At Shipping Port, one of these suburbs, I saw the women and children clustering in the up-stairs room, while the men were going about in punts and wherries, collecting drift-wood from the river for their winter's firing. In some places bedding and furniture had been brought over to the high ground, and the women were sitting, guarding their little property. That village, amid the waters, was a sad sight to see; but I heard no complaints. There was no tearing of hair and no gnashing of teeth; no bitter tears or moans of sorrow. The men who were not at work in the boats stood loafing about in clusters, looking at the still rising river, but each seemed to be personally indifferent to the matter. When the house of an American is carried down the river, he builds himself another, as he would get himself a new coat when his old coat became unserviceable. But he never laments or moans for such a loss. Surely there is no other people so passive under personal misfortune!
Going from Louisville up to St. Louis, I crossed the Ohio River and passed through parts of Indiana and of Illinois, and, striking the Mississippi opposite St. Louis, crossed that river also, and then entered the State of Missouri. The Ohio was, as I have said, flooded, and we went over it at night. The boat had been moored at some unaccustomed place. There was no light. The road was deep in mud up to the axle-tree, and was crowded with wagons and carts, which in the darkness of the night seemed to have stuck there. But the man drove his four horses through it all, and into the ferry-boat, over its side. There were three or four such omnibuses, and as many wagons, as to each of which I predicted in my own mind some fatal catastrophe. But they were all driven on to the boat in the dark, the horses mixing in through each other in a chaos which would have altogether incapacitated any English coachman. And then the vessel labored across the flood, going sideways, and hardly keeping her own against the stream. But we did get over, and were all driven out again, up to the railway station in safety. On reaching the Mississippi about the middle of the next day, we found it frozen over, or rather covered from side to side with blocks of ice which had forced their way down the river, so that the steam-ferry could not reach its proper landing. I do not think that we in England would have attempted the feat of carrying over horses and carriages under stress of such circumstances. But it was done here. Huge plankings were laid down over the ice, and omnibuses and wagons were driven on. In getting out again, these vehicles, each with four horses, had to be twisted about, and driven in and across the vessel, and turned in spaces to look at which would have broken the heart of an English coachman. And then with a spring they were driven up a bank as steep as a ladder! Ah me! under what mistaken illusions have I not labored all the days of my youth, in supposing that no man could drive four horses well but an English stage coachman! I have seen performances in America--and in Italy and France also, but above all in America--which would have made the hair of any English professional driver stand on end.
And in this way I entered St. Louis.