Clair flats, and out into broad Lake Huron; there, off Thunder Bay, a
gale met us, and for hours we swayed between life and death.
The season for pleasure travelling was over; my fellow-passengers,
with one exception, were of that class of Americans who dressed in
cheap imitations of fine clothes, are forever travelling,
travelling,--taking the steamers not from preference, but because they
are less costly than an all-rail route. The thin, listless men, in
ill-fitting black clothes and shining tall hats, sat on the deck in
tilted chairs hour after hour silent and dreary; the thin listless
women, clad in raiment of many colors, remained on the fixed sofas in
the cabin hour after hour, silent and weary. At meals they ate
indiscriminately everything within range, but continued the same, a
weary, dreary, silent band. The one exception was an old man, tall
and majestic, with silvery hair and bright, dark eyes, dressed in the
garb of a Roman Catholic priest, albeit slightly tinged with frontier
innovations. He came on board at Detroit, and as soon as we were
under way he exchanged his hat for a cloth cap embroidered with Indian
bead-work; and when the cold air, precursor of the gale, struck us on
Huron, he wrapped himself in a large capote made of skins, with the
fur inward.
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