spend a
somewhat longer time in transit to my destination.

Over the New Jersey Railroad, then, I rattled, one fine, sunshiny autumn
morning, in the year that has recently taken leave of us, as far as
Bordentown, a distance of some fifty-seven miles, on my way to a
locality the very existence of which is scarcely dreamed of by thousands
in the metropolis, who can tell you how many square miles of malaria
there are in the Roman Campagna, and who have got the topography of
Caffre Land at their fingers' ends. It is a region aboriginal in
savagery, grand in the aspects of untrammelled Nature; where forests
extend in uninterrupted lines over scores of miles; where we may wander
a good day's journey without meeting half-a-dozen human faces; where
stately deer will bound across our path, and bears dispute our passage
through the cedar-brakes; where, in a word, we may enjoy the undiluted
essence, the perfect wildness, of woodland life. Deep and far "under the
shade of melancholy boughs" we shall be taken, if together we visit the
ancient Pines of New Jersey.

In order to do so, we must make at Bordentown the acquaintance of Mr.
Cox, and take our seats in his stage for a jolt, twelve miles long, to
the village of New Egypt, on the frontier of the Pines. Although the
forest is accessible from many points, and may be entered by a number of
distinct approaches, I, the writer hereof, selected that _via_ New Egypt
as the most convenient to a comer from New York, and as, perhaps, the
least fatiguing to accomplish.

But, oh! the horrors of those New Jersey roads! Mud? 'Tis as if all the
rains of heaven had been concentrated upon all the marls and clays of
earth, and all the sticky stratum plastered down in a wiggling line
of unascertainable length and breadth! Holes? As if a legion of
sharpshooters had been detailed for the defence of Sandy Hook, and had
excavated for themselves innumerable rifle-pits or caverns for the
discomfiture of unhappy passengers! Up hill and down dale,--with
merciless ruts and savage ridges,--now, a slough, to all appearance
destitute of bottom, and, next, a treacherous stretch of sand, into
which the wheels sink deeper and deeper at every revolution, as if the
vehicle were France, and the road disorder,--such is a faint adumbration
of the state of affairs in the benighted interior of our petulant little
whiskey-drinking sister State!

But all earthly things come to an end, and so, accordingly, did our
th