John Milton Binckley, June 1859 Travel Diary, Page 33

[John Milton Binckley, June 1859 Travel Diary, page 33. Many thanks to William Myers, Mary Davy, Sally Young and Sue Davis for their ongoing research collaboration; specifically to William for providing scans of the original document, and in turn many thanks to Peter Johnston Binckley and Patricia D'Arcy "Trish" Binckley (1951-2007), at the source. This is my rough transcription. Extra paragraph breaks inserted for easier reading.]

[continued] Right at this spot, viewed from another quarter, I view for the first time, when a small boy, that beautiful work of art, a steamboat. I was on the West looking East, it was sunset, and the skit and Earth were painted with a softer and dreamier loveliness in the waveless stream. 

On its bosom, the full radiance of sun gilded white and green stood slowly floating, a beautiful object, reflected in the water.

Endwise to my view, I did not see that it was longer than its height, and the expression "walks the water like a thing of life" [Lord Byron] was perhaps never so beautifully appropriate, even in the poet's mind or before his observation. 

Shortly, it puffed steam, sounded her bell, broke the still water with her paddles, turned in side view and came booming down the stream toward me. I was alone, but shouted out with admiration and joy.

At the Gainesville Depot, we don't pass any elegant part of the city, but it is seen to me to be greatly enlarged, beautified and embellished. 

[to be continued.]  

[John Milton Binckley (1831-1878).]