Faulkner and Douglass, from quite different perspectives, describe the complex ways that wagons and boats of various sorts were used in the South. Thorpe and Twain picture Mississippi river traffic. Irving talks about carriages and mule carts in Spain. Thoreau describes the infrastructure of travel on New England rivers and canals, as well as the stage coaches and railroads which come to the rivers' banks. Bryant conveys impressions of the railroad in its early stages.
Author: William Faulkner (1897-1962)
Title: Absalom! Absalom!
Date: 1936
Systems: Wagons, steamboat
Context: 1833 to 1910, Mississippi
Mississippi in the 1830s, when Thomas Sutpen creates his plantation and his empire, had a "river full of steamboats" and gamblers "bent on throwing away their cotton and slaves before the boat reached New Orleans" (Ch. 1). A few twelve-mile trips by wagon between the fictional town of Jefferson and Sutpen's Hundred are described several times in the novel as they echo and resonate in the character's memories. Jefferson in the 1830s had six buildings including the blacksmith and livery stable. With "the proceeds of a business which he had brought to Jefferson ten years ago in a single wagon," several West Indian blacks, and a virtually-kidnapped French architect, he builds a mansion in which the odd group lives without furniture. Then Thomas takes four ox-drawn wagons back to the river and returns "with windows and doors and the spits and pots in the kitchen and the crystal chandeliers in the parlors and the furniture and the curtains and the rugs," installed by "his now somewhat tamed negroes." In the tavern, they say, "This time he stole the whole durn steamboat" (Ch. 2). His bride, Ellen Coldfield, is taken to the plantation in a carriage, a vehicle with greater prestige than the earlier wagons, and once their household is established she uses a carriage for "the weekly ritual of store to store" in Jefferson, which now has twenty shops (Ch. 3). The Civil War forces Rosa Coldfield, Ellen's sister and Thomas' second wife, to use a mule and buggy, a step down in dignity. "[T]he dustcloud in which the buggy moved not blowing away because it had been raised by no wind and was supported by no air but evoked, materialized about them, instantaneous and eternal, cubic foot for cubic foot of dust to cubic foot for cubic foot of horse and buggy" (Ch. 7).
Later in the novel we hear, third hand, of the Sutpen family's travel in a "lopsided two wheeled cart and two spavined oxen" from Virginia to Mississippi in 1817, a trip which takes "weeks and months, maybe a year, since he became confused about his age" (Ch. 7). This contrasts with Christmas trips taken by Sutpen's acknowledged son, Henry, and his bastard son, Charles Bon, from the University of Mississippi to the plantation on fine horses and steamboats in the War years (Ch. 8).
Edition used: New York: Modern Library, 1964.
Author: Frederick Douglass (1818-1895)
Title: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave; Written By Himself
Date: 1845
Systems: Sailing ships
Context: 1820s-1830s, Easton and Baltimore, Maryland; New Bedford, Mass.; New York
Douglass was born a slave in the Chesapeake Bay region, and his various masters depended on Baltimore markets for sale of their crops. For this reason ships and ship-building appear frequently in Douglass's narrative. Passage by sloop marks each significant transition from plantation to city to plantation (and master to master to master). In shipyards Douglass learns to read and write and to caulk ships, the two skills that make his escape to freedom possible.
Perhaps for these reasons, when Douglass dramatizes the pivotal moment in which he vows to end his slavery or end his life, he imagines his freedom both literally and metaphorically as the freedom of sailing: "Get caught or get clear, I'll try it ... I will take to the water. This very bay shall yet bear me into freedom" (Ch. 10).
A view of sails on the bay here provides the occasion for what is by any measure an important rhetorical moment in the tradition of the slave narrative. Here, when the slave's hard-won and therefore acute consciousness of his condition forces the commitment to freedom-whatever-the-price, the new emotional and intellectual vantage point is made to correspond exactly with an elevated geographical perspective ("I have often ... stood all alone upon the lofty banks of that noble bay") and a heightened diction and prose style ("I would pour out my soul's complaint, in my rude way, with an apostrophe to the moving multitude of ships").
Not only is this a stylistic departure for Douglass in this text, but an imaginative one as well. In a long passage, the narrator addresses the ships as if they are sensible beings whose freedom he envies: "You are loosed from your moorings, and are free; I am fast in my chains, and am a slave!" The merriment, gallantry, even nobility he attributes to these ships, "freedom's swift-winged angels," allows a momentary (and highly rhetorical) lament over his humanity - "O, why was I born a man, of whom to make a brute! The glad ship is gone; she hides in the dim distance..."
Undoubtedly much more could be ferreted out of this passage for comment. The most pertinent conclusion about these personified ships is, of course, that Douglass's text hereby accents the extent to which the very possibility of travel they offer provides a nagging reminder of the slave's immobility.
[There's more: when ruminating on the first moments of freedom in a free state, Douglass describes "the indescribable" as the feeling of an unarmed captain who is saved from the pursuit of a pirate ship by the intervention of a "friendly man-of-war" (Ch. 11)]
Douglass is careful to record the name of the vessel and captain each time he is transferred via sloop from Baltimore to Easton, Easton to Baltimore. He also includes the traveling time (24 hours). He takes three such rides on board the Sally Lloyd, the Wild Cat and the Amanda. These were obviously important details; he is remembering trips when he was age 8-16.
Lastly, three shipyards are crucial to the narrative. In one, Douglass discovers that by watching the carpenters cut and mark the wood for ships, he can learn to write the first letters of Larboard, Starboard, Forward, and Aft. In doing so he proves an old master correct about negroes and literacy - "you give a nigger an inch, he'll take an ell." He cleverly parlays these first marks into an entire alphabet.
He learns ship-building in Baltimore (Ch. 10) doing errands for carpenters on Man-of-Wars to be sold to Mexico (this would be in the early 1830s). He eventually learns ship-caulking, a skill that enables him to eventually hire his own time. That added measure of independence allows him to risk an escape in 1841.
The shipyard passages are of interest in that they record different phases of working-class racism in the early nineteenth-century. Douglass acquires an eagerness for freedom after two Irish workers counsel him to escape north. Several years later white fear of black competition creates a policy of job segregation and an atmosphere of racial hatred - in a resulting fight, Douglass nearly loses an eye. Finally, once Douglass overcomes all the obstacles to freedom and arrives in New Bedford, Massachusetts, he discovers that only white caulkers get positions on Massachusetts wharfs. (He appends a note in 1845 saying that "colored persons can now get employment at calking in New Bedford - a result of anti-slavery effort.")
Edition used: New York: Signet, 1968.
Author: Thomas Bangs Thorpe (1815-1878)
Title: "The Big Bear of Arkansas"
Date: 1841
Systems: Mississippi steamboat
Context: Contemporary, Mississippi river valley
On the Mississippi steamboat, people take trips of from one to two thousand miles in length amidst a group of heterogeneous passengers. Men come from all states and from other countries; "Here may be seen, jostling together, the wealthy Southern planter and the peddler of tin-ware from New England - the Northern merchant and the Southern jockey - a venerable bishop, and a desperate gambler." The Invincible is what is called a "'high-pressure-and-beat-everything'" steamboat. After celebrating the boat and America's wonderful mixture of peoples, the story settles down to a telling of the story about the bear.
Edition used: Eugene Current-Garcia and Bert Hitchcock, eds. American Short Stories, 5th ed. Glenview: Scott, Foresman, 1990.
Author: Mark Twain [Samuel L. Clemens] (1835-1910)
Title: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Date: 1884-5 Written: 1879-85
Systems: Paddle boat
Context: Circa 1834 to 1844, Mississippi river
The central drama of the novel is Huck and Jim floating down the Mississippi River from Missouri to Arkansas or northern Louisiana. Along the way they confront a variety of river traffic, notably paddle boats, two of which which are shown wrecked on a sand bar (Ch. 12), running over the raft (Ch. 16). and blown up (Ch. 32).
Drifting with the current in the raft gives little sense of motion (Ch. 15). The raft with Huck and Jim aboard is a microcosm "what you want, above all things, on a raft, is for everybody to be satisfied, and feel right and kind toward the others" (Ch. 19).
Edition used: Berkeley: University of California Press, Mark Twain Library, 1985.
Author: Washington Irving (1783-1859)
Title: Tales of the Alhambra
Date: 1832
Systems: Mule-driven carriage, horses
Context: Contemporary, travel in Spain
Known as the "Spanish sketch book," this volume of tales begins with a long chapter on Irving's journey in 1829 from Seville to Granada. Accompanied by "a friend, a member of the Russian Embassy at Madrid," and a servant, Irving undertakes a leisurely and eventful trip by horseback between the two cities. The dangers of the mountainous roads are discussed at length, particularly the frequent predations of robbers. The precautions taken to evade the robbers are described, as are the travel arrangements in general, including the hiring of the horses and servant. Mule caravans, used to transport local products to the larger cities, are also described. Overall, Irving provides a romantic account of the Spanish countryside and of the horsemen and muleteers that traverse the roads. The journey ends in Granada, where Irving takes up residence and collects the tales that make up the bulk of the book. The last (very brief) chapter describes his departure, which is undertaken in a two-wheeled vehicle that resembles "a covered cart."
Edition used: Leon, Spain: Editorial Everest, 1986.
Author: Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Title: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
Date: 1849 Written: 1846-49
Systems: Train, canal
Context: 1839, central New England (Massachusetts, New Hampshire)
Thoreau's week with his brother involves a leisurely trip up the two New England rivers to Mount Washington. Rivers, "the natural highways of all nations," let the Thoreaus see the conflux of roads, canals, and railroads along the way, and sets up an implied contrast between natural and man-made pathways. "The river is by far the most attractive highway, and those boatmen who have spent twenty or twenty-five years on it must have had a much fairer, more wild and memorable experience than the dusty and jarring one of the teamster who has driven, during the same time, on the roads which run parallel with the stream" ("Tuesday"). Being on the river lets them behold the country "privately." "Other roads do some violence to Nature, and bring the traveler to stare at her, but the river steals into the scenery it traverses without intrusion, silently creating and adorning it, and is as free to come and go as the zephyr" ("Wednesday").
The Eastern states' canal age is winding down in the decade since the Thoreaus' trip in 1839. "Since our voyage the railroad on the bank has been extended, and there is now but little boating on the Merrimack. All kinds of produce and stores were formerly conveyed by water, but now nothing is carried up the stream… The locks are fast wearing out, and will soon be impassible, since the tolls will not pay the expense of repairing them, and so in a few years there will be an end of boating on this river." At low water, the channel is cleared and deepened by "mowing the weeds in mid-channel" ("Tuesday").
The many falls and rapids of the Merrimack river are bypassed by an elaborate canal system. At Billerica Falls on the Concord, one brother runs along the tow path while the other keeps the cord off the shore with a pole. "This canal, which is the oldest in the country, and has even an antique look beside the more modern railroads." The Merrimack is navigable for "vessels of burden" for twenty miles; by canal boats as far as Concord, New Hampshire. A small steamboat went between Lowell and Nashua before the railroad. The river is a major commercial pathway, but now "its real vessels are railroad cars, and its true and main stream, flowing by an iron channel farther south, may be traced by a long line of vapor amid the hills, which no morning wind ever disperses, to where it empties into the sea at Boston.… Instead of the scream of a fish hawk scaring the fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, arousing a country to its progress" ("Sunday").
Near Litchfield is a place where the sand is ten to twelve feet deep; the rumor is that it had been overgrazed by sheep thirty or forty years ago. That scene is immediately contrasted with another impact of humans on the landscape. "Lawsuits, as we hear, have in come cases grown out of these causes. Railroads have been made through certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms into deserts, and the company has had to pay the damages." This chapter gives extensive details on the canal boats: they only cost $200; they are managed by two men who use iron-tipped poles or sails, if possible. They can carry up to sixteen cords of wood or 16,000 bricks - chiefly from up-river to the coastal towns. The boatmen "have the constantly varying panorama of the shore to relieve the monotony of their labor… they thus glided noiselessly from town to town, with all their furniture about them" ("Tuesday").
The river is traversed by several ferries. One "was as busy as a beaver dam, and all the world seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack River at this particular point, waiting to get set over, - children with their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke loose and constable with warrant, travelers from distant lands to distant lands, men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a bar." Thoreau imagines this as the classic Styx, two travelers as Virgil and Dante. "Many of these Monday men are ministers, no doubt… They cross each other's routes all the country over like woof and warp, making a garment of loose texture." The Thoreaus cross over the ferry chain; later they have to duck under overhead cables ("Monday").
This atmosphere is quite relaxing. At one point Thoreau playfully recommends that people would be better off taking two days to build a small boat to cross the river rather than looking for a ferry or a bridge ("Tuesday"). Later, we "lock ourselves through in some retired place." With no lock-man present, one brother takes the easy task of opening the gate to watch the lock fill. "These old gray structures, with their quiet arms stretched over the river in the sun, appeared like natural objects in the scenery, and the kingfisher and sandpiper alighted on them as readily as on stakes and rocks" ("Wednesday").
The stage coach is a symbol of conservative, New England culture. "Sometimes we saw the river a quarter or half a mile distant, and the parti-colored Concord stage, with its cloud of dust, its van of earnest traveling faces, and its rear of dusty trunks, reminding us that the country had its places of rendezvous for restless Yankee men" ("Tuesday").
Away from the river, while walking, "I have climbed several higher mountains without guide or path, and have found, as might be expected, that it takes only more time and patience commonly than to travel the smoothest highway.… So far as my experience goes, travelers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the way" ("Tuesday").
Edition used: Boston: Houghton Mifflin Sentry Edition, 1961.
Author: William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
Title: Poems by William Cullen Bryant
Date: 1849
Systems: Railways, carriage
Context: 1820s and 1830s, Rhode Island and New York
"A Meditation on Rhode-Island Coal" anticipates the effects of the early coal age on both land and sea, and recognizes the role American resources would have upon that age.
For thou shalt forge vast railways, and shalt heat The hissing rivers into steam, and drive Huge masses from thy mines, on iron feet, Walking their steady way, as if alive, Northward, till everlasting ice besets thee, And south as far as the grim Spaniard lets thee. Thou shalt make mighty engines swim the sea, Like its own monsters - boats that for a guinea Will take a man to Havre - and shalt be The moving soul of many a spinning-jenny.
"Noon" also picks up the motif of the "iron horse," and emphasizes the social and sensory effect that the engine has on the environment:
… a mingled sound Of jarring wheels, and iron hoofs that clash Upon the stony ways, and hammer-clang, And creak of engines lifting ponderous bulks, And calls and cries, and tread of eager feet, Innumerable, hurrying to and fro, Noon, in that mighty mart of nations, brings No pause to toil and care.
Unlike some other early celebrators, Bryant's prophetic tone does not see the steam age as solving basic social problems.
Edition used: Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1849.
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