den, while two gondolas were fitted up
with chambers, and other conveniences, to convey them to Hamburgh;
having a small boat attached to one of them, for the purpose of sending
occasionally on shore. During the time of making these preparations,
there was a grand entertainment given to them at court; they visited all
public places; and accepted invitations to dine with the different
foreign ministers.

The company having embarked with the English coach, baggage, and eleven
male and female servants, they quitted Dresden, and proceeded to
Magdeburg. At every place where they touched, assembled crowds lined the
shore; all so anxious to see the British hero, that they are said to
have remained, in many different stations, two or three days and nights,
purposely to behold him pass. At Magdeburg, where they landed, and
remained one whole day, the King of Prussia had ordered a guard of
honour to attend his lordship. The curiosity of the crowd was here so
great, that the master of the hotel where the party were entertained,
gained no inconsiderable sum of money, by permitting the people to
mount a ladder, which enabled them to view the hero and his friends
through a small window. On leaving Magdeburg, in the evening, they were
still more numerously attended than they had been at landing, in the
morning; and the multitude testified their delight, by every customary
expression of joy.

Lord Nelson, who had never, till this journey, experienced the pleasures
of travelling by any inland navigation, was anxious to behold, and
inquisitive to know, every thing. When night came on, his lordship and
Sir William Hamilton often amused themselves, by playing together their
favourite game of cribbage: and, not unfrequently, while passing down
this river, was the hero's busy mind actively employed in forming new
plans for future naval attacks; the operations of which, he fully
demonstrated to his admiring friends, by instantaneously sketching rough
and hasty illustrations of his ideas, must necessarily prove so
decisively successful, that the affair off the Nile, the hero
maintained, would hereafter be considered as nothing. Mr. Oliver, his
lordship's confidential secretary and interpreter, who had, during the
whole of this voyage, been occasionally dispatched on shore with a
servant, in the small boat rowed by two men, was landed within two
stages of Hamburgh, to take a post-carriage; announce their approach;
and prepare the apartments f