ich time is
strengthening.

On the twelfth, our whole party left for Buffalo, by railway, getting a
transient view of Lake Ontario before entering the city. Here we parted
company, they proceeding to Toronto, by steam packet, and I to Syracuse
by coach. The American vehicle of this name, carries nine inside
passengers on three cross seats. It is hung on leather springs, so as to
be fitted to maintain the shocks of a _corduroy_ road. Wishing to see
the country, I mounted the box, by the side of the coachman, but at
times had some difficulty in retaining my seat. The value of land in
this part of the country, when cleared and in cultivation, I understood
to be from thirty to fifty dollars per acre. A large breadth of wheat is
grown, of which the yield is generally good; but this year there will
be, in many cases, a short crop, from the extreme drought in the two
preceding months. I went forward from Syracuse to Rochester by railway,
and thence, with the exception of twelve miles by coach, by the same
conveyance to Auburn, where we arrived at two o'clock in the morning.
One of my fellow-passengers had been a soldier in the so-called
"patriot" army, which enlisted against Santa Anna, in the revolt of
Texas. He stated, that some planters were emigrating from Mississippi,
with as many as two hundred "hands," (slaves,) and plainly said, it was
intended to plant the Anglo-Saxon flag on the walls of Mexico. If half
what he asserted was true, the worst apprehensions of the abolitionists
are too likely to be realized by the Texian revolution, and the
establishment of a new slave-holding power on the vast territory claimed
by that piratical band of robbers, and forming the South-western
frontier of the United States.

At Auburn I paid a visit to the celebrated State Prison, and though,
from want of time to call upon a gentleman in the city for whom I had a
letter, I was unprovided with an introduction, I was politely admitted
by the superintendent, who refused to receive the fee customarily paid
by visitors, when he found, from the entry of my name and address, I was
an Englishman. I passed through the different workshops, in which nearly
all handicraft trades are carried on, and very superior work is
frequently executed by the prisoners. Besides other less complicated
machines, one complete locomotive engine has been constructed within
these walls. As the system of discipline adopted here is the same as at
Sing Sing, also in thi