land taken up, I presume, for a
long period; that is to say, not until the West is so over-peopled that
a reflux is compelled to fall back into the Eastern States, and the
crowded masses, like the Gulf-stream, find vent to the northward and
eastward.

Set off by coach, long before day-light. There is something very
gratifying when once you _are up_, in finding yourself up before the
sun; you can repeat to yourself, "How doth the little busy bee," with
such satisfaction. Some few stars still twinkled in the sky, winking
like the eyelids of tired sentinels, but soon they were relieved, one
after another, by the light of morning.

It was still dark when we started, and off we went, up hill and down
hill--short steep _pitches_, as they term them here--at a furious rate.
There was no level ground; it was all undulating, and very trying to the
springs. But an American driver stops at nothing; he will flog away
with six horses in hand; and it is wonderful how few accidents happen:
but it is very fatiguing, and one hundred miles of American travelling
by stage, is equal to four hundred in England.

There is much amusement to be extracted from the drivers of these
stages, if you will take your seat with them on the front, which few
Americans do, as they prefer the inside. One of the drivers, soon after
we had changed our team, called out to the off-leader, as he flanked her
with his whip. "Go along, you _no-tongued_ crittur!"

"Why _no-tongued_?" enquired I.

"Well, I reckon she has no tongue, having bitten it off herself, I was
going to say--but it wasn't exactly that, neither."

"How was it, then?"

"Well now, the fact is, that she is awful ugly," (ill-tempered); "she
bites like a badger, and kicks up as high as the church-steeple. She's
an almighty crittur to handle. I was trying to hitch her under-jaw
like, with the halter, but she worretted so, that I could only hitch her
tongue: she ran back, the end of the halter was fast to the ring, and so
she left her tongue in the hitch--that's a _fact_!"

"I wonder it did not kill her; didn't she bleed very much? How does she
contrive to eat her corn?"

"Well, now, she bled pretty considerable--but not to speak off. I did
keep her _one day_ in the stable, because I thought she might feel
_queer_; since that she has worked in the team every day; and she'll eat
her peck of corn with any horse in the stable. But her tongue is out,
that's certain--so _she'll tell no