CHAPTER X
NORTH AMERICA, 1888
In the autumn of 1887 Godman went to spend the winter in Mexico, where he was then employing collectors of birds and insects, to increase his knowledge of the natural history of Central America on which, in company with his lifelong friend Osbert Salvin, he was then preparing the great work of his life. He invited me and Mrs. Elwes to join him, which we very willingly did, as I had never visited America before and as we were able to leave our children in the best of charge. We started on February 4th, 1888, in the Cunard s.s. Etruria for New York, and landed after a calm winter passage on February 12th. New York was full of half-melted snow, but the bright sunshine and clear air free from smoke made our short stay there not disagreeable.
After some arguing I arranged at Messrs. Cook’s office what was then known as a round trip ticket, covering something like 8,000 miles of rail¬ way at a cost of about forty-five pounds for each ticket, to which had to be added the extra cost of Pullman cars averaging about five dollars each for every twenty-four hours’ journey. Sleeping cars were then as good and as comfortable as they are now, but in the south and west there were no dining cars and we provided ourselves with a well-stocked tea-basket which proved of the greatest use, not only to ourselves but to our fellow passengers. We stopped a day at Reading, Pennsylvania, where I visited Mr. Herman Strecker, whose large collection of butterflies was very interesting. In those days the American system was universal in all hotels, and as the cost of rooms and the choice of anything you liked to order from a most varied and excellent bill of fare was from three to five dollars a day in the best hotels, we did not find travelling nearly so costly as it has now become. We then went on to Philadelphia, where we visited Wanamaker’s great store, which had all the counters arranged in con¬ centric circles connected by tubes with the cashiers of the different de¬ partments, above whom sat the manager in a central office from which he could see all over the whole of the vast store, in which every kind of goods were sold at what now seem fabulously low prices.
We then went on to Pittsburgh, where we visited the Rev. Mr. Holland, who was then forming a great collection for the University. In the hotel everything was heated by natural gas, and the hotel manager showed us the most interesting kitchen where this gas was the only source of heat.
From Pittsburgh we took the Sunset Express train to New Orleans and were able to secure what is called the Parlour, where by paying for three tickets two passengers can have a room all to themselves.
After passing through Cincinnati we crossed the Kentucky river by a bridge then said to be the highest railway bridge but one in the United States, and in the afternoon were stopped in a wild forest covered country at a small station called Glen Mary, Tennessee, where there had been a fall of roof in the tunnel, which had to be repaired before the train could
pass. Whilst waiting here a shooting affray took place in a saloon close
131
