Page:The Englishwoman in America (IA englishwomaninam00birdrich).pdf/182

banks, and offices appear in every direction. Altogether Detroit is a very pleasing place, and, from its position, bids fair to be a very important one.

I had to leave the friends whose acquaintance and kindness rendered Detroit so agreeable to me, in the middle of a very interesting conversation. Before ten at night I found myself on an apparently interminable wharf, creeping between cart-wheels and over bales of wool to the Mayflower steamer, which was just leaving for Buffalo.

Passing through the hall of the Mayflower, which was rather a confused and dimly-lighted scene, I went up to the saloon by a very handsome staircase with elaborate bronze balustrades. My bewildered eyes surveyed a fairy scene, an eastern palace, a vision of the Arabian Nights. I could not have believed that such magnificence existed in a ship; it impressed me much more than anything I have seen in the palaces of England.

The Mayflower was a steam-ship of 2200 tons burthen, her length 336 feet, and her extreme breadth 60. She was of 1000 horse-power, with 81-inch cylinders, and a stroke of 12 feet. I speak of her in the past tense, because she has since been totally cast away in a storm on Lake Erie. This lake boars a very bad character, and persons are warned not to venture upon it at so stormy a season of the year as September, but, had the weather been very rough, I should not have regretted my voyage in so splendid a steamer.

The saloon was 300 feet long; it had an arched roof and Gothic cornice, with a moulding below of gilded grapes and vine-leaves. It was 10 feet high, and the