Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 7.djvu/108

88 black waiters. Dean Pitferge informed me that the number of passengers on board was more than four thousand, reckoning fifteen hundred emigrants stowed away in the lower part of the steamship.

Supper finished, we retired to our comfortable cabin.

At eleven o'clock I was aroused by a slight shock. The St. John had stopped. The captain, finding it impossible to proceed in the darkness, had given orders to heave to, and the enormous boat, moored in the channel, slept tranquilly at anchor.

At four o'clock in the morning the St. John resumed her course. I got up and went out under one of the verandas. The rain had ceased, the fog cleared off, the water appeared, then the shores; the right bank, dotted with green trees and shrubs, which gave it the appearance of a long cemetery; in the background rose high hills, closing in the horizon by a graceful line; the left bank, on the contrary, was flat and marshy.

Dr. Pitferge had just joined me under the veranda.

"Good-morning, friend," said he, after having drawn a good breath of air; "do you know we shall not be at Albany in time to catch the train, thanks to that wretched fog. This will modify my programme."

"So much the worse, Doctor, for we must be economical with our time."

"Right; we may expect to reach Niagara Falls at night instead of in the evening. That is not my fault, but we must be resigned."

The St. John, in fact, did not moor off the Albany quay before eight o'clock. The train had left, so we were obliged to wait till half-past one. In consequence of this delay we were able to visit the curious old city, which forms the legislative center of the State of New York; the lower town, commercial and thickly populated, on the right bank of the Hudson, and the high town, with its brick houses, public buildings, and its very remarkable museum of fossils. One might almost have thought it a large quarter of New York transported to the side of this hill, up which it rises in the shape of an amphitheater.

At one o'clock, after having breakfasted, we went to the station, which was without any barrier or officials. The train simply stopped in the middle of the street, like an