pper epoch," said a writer in "Harper's
Magazine" for January, 1884, "was an epoch to be proud of; and we were
proud of it. The New York newspapers abounded in such headlines as
these: 'Quickest Trip on Record,' 'Shortest Passage to San Francisco,'
'Unparalleled Speed,' 'Quickest Voyage Yet,' 'A Clipper as is a
Clipper,' 'Extraordinary Dispatch,' 'The Quickest Voyage to China,' 'The
Contest of the Clippers,' 'Great Passage from San Francisco,' 'Race
Round the World.'" Runs of three hundred and even three hundred and
thirty miles a day were not uncommon feats of those clipper ships, a
rate of speed far surpassing the achievement of the steam-propelled
vessels of the period.

When Charles Dickens first came to New York, in 1842, it was after a
transatlantic journey that had landed him at Boston. There is extant a
picture of the cabin that he occupied on the "Britannia" on the trip
across that throws an interesting light on the limitations and
inconveniences to which early Fifth Avenue was subjected when it visited
the old world. Leaving Boston on a February afternoon, Dickens proceeded
by rail to Worcester. The next morning another train carried him to
Springfield. The next stop was Hartford, a distance of only twenty-five
miles. But at that time of the year, Dickens records, the roads were so
bad that the journey would probably have occupied ten or twelve hours.
So progress was accomplished by means of the waters of the Connecticut
River, in a boat that the Englishman described as so many feet short,
and so many feet narrow, with a cabin apparently for a certain
celebrated dwarf of the period, yet somehow containing the ubiquitous
American rocking chair. Going from Hartford to New Haven consumed three
hours of train travel; and, rising early after a night's rest, Dickens
went on board the Sound packet bound for New York. That was the first
American steamboat of any size that he had seen, and he wrote that, to
an Englishman, it was less like a steamboat than a huge floating bath,
and that its cabin, to his unaccustomed eyes, seemed about as long as
the Burlington Arcade. From the deck of this packet he first viewed
Hell's Gate, the Hog's Back, the Frying Pan, and other notorious
localities attractive to readers of the Diedrich Knickerbocker History.
When, later, Dickens left New York for Philadelphia, he wrote of the
journey as being made by railroad and two ferries, and occupying between
five and six hours.

The ten ye