The news from the West--hourly improving, and more clearly
confirmed--were hardly welcomed, as they deserved, and scarcely
counter-balanced the naval disaster. It was not long, however, before
Rosecrans the Invincible came in for his full share of credit--perhaps
not more than he merited. Few other Federal commanders can claim that
epithet; and, though some people persisted in considering Murfreesburg a
Pyrrhic victory, it is certain that he held his ground manfully, and
eventually advanced, where defeat, or even a retrograde movement, would
have been simply ruin.
On the fifth day our small company were scattered--each going his own
way, east, north, and south--while the Parisian abode in New York still.
CHAPTER II.
CONGRESSIA.
Of two lines to Philadelphia I selected the longest, wishing to see the
harbor, down which a steamer takes passengers as far as Amboy; but the
Powers of the Air were unpropitious again: it never ceased blowing, from
the moment we went on board a very unpleasant substitute for the regular
passage-boat, till we landed on the railway pier. My first experience of
American travel was not attractive. The crazy old craft puffed and
snorted furiously, but failed to persuade any one that she was doing
eight miles an hour; the grime of many years lay thick on her dusky
timbers--dust under cover, and mud where the wet swept in, and her
close, dark cabins were stifling enough to make you, after five minutes
of vapor-bathing, plunge eagerly into the bitter weather outside.
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