editable to the operatives who are here
congregated in a lovely neighbourhood.

By the time we reached Waterford it was dark: here we crossed the
Hudson, near the Cohoos' Falls; and at Troy were ferried over, back
again, coach, horses, a waggon, and a couple of oxen, in a schow, or
flat boat, by torchlight.

From our last landing-place to Albany runs a well Macadamized road of
noble proportions, and on this our wearied horses appeared to gain
fresh courage, for they trotted along nimbly, setting me down at the
door of the Eagle shortly after midnight.

_Sunday, 14th._--Down the Hudson to New York, where I rested for a few
days, intending to embark from this port; but finding the ships of every
line crowded, and likely to be crowded for some time to come, I decided,
in company with an excellent voyaging companion, who had resolved upon
sharing my fortunes, to proceed to Philadelphia, and sail from that
place, in the Algonquin packet-ship of the 20th inst. which promised
equal comforts with fewer candidates; the length of the Delaware making
Philadelphia less popular as a packet-station.

GENERAL IMPRESSIONS

OF THE COUNTRY

AND OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.

DEPARTURE.

"Nothing is more common than to hear directly opposite accounts of the
same countries; the difference lies not in the reported but the
reporter." This observation is strictly correct as a general
application, but more especially so when directed to the United States
of America, its people, and its institutions, as viewed by Englishmen,
whose prejudices, strong at all times, and governing their opinions in
all places, are more absolutely freed from restraint and self-suspicion
when set loose upon a people directly descended from themselves, and
inheriting and retaining their customs and their language.

Discrepancies are here also occasioned in many cases by circumstances
over which travellers can have no control, and for whose influence they
are no way accountable; hence things are very differently described, not
so much from the reporters having taken opposite views of the same
objects, but because objects themselves are constantly and rapidly
changing their aspects.--Take the following as an instance.

I remember to have read in one of our most distinguished publications a
few years back a laboured review of a book on America, wherein the
writer found occasion to notice railroads; one of this kind being then
in contemplation as an impro