to
form a large proportion of the servants, both male and female, and of
porters and the like. We are disappointed in the fruit. The peaches are
cheap, and in great quantities, but they are very inferior to ours in
flavour, and the melons are also tasteless. The water-melons are cut in
long slices and sold in the streets, and the people eat them as they
walk along. The great luxury of the place is ice, which travels about
the streets in carts, the blocks being three or four feet thick, and a
glass of iced water is the first thing placed on the table at each meal.
The cookery at this hotel is French, and first rate. We have had a few
dishes that are new to us. The corn-bread and whaffles are cakes made
principally of Indian-corn; and the Okra-vegetable, which was to us new,
is cut into slices to flavour soup. Lima beans are very good; we have
also had yams, and yesterday tasted the Cincinnati champagne, which we
thought very poor stuff.

_Fillmore House, Newport, Rhode Island, September 13th._--We left New
York on Thursday afternoon, and embarked in a Brobdingnagian steamboat,
which it would not be very easy to describe. The cabin is on the upper
deck, so that at either end you can walk out on to the stern or bow of
the vessel; it is about eleven feet high, and most splendidly fitted up
and lighted at night with four ormolu lustres, each having eight large
globe lights. We paced the length of the cabin and made it 115 paces, so
that walking nine times up and down made a nice walk of a mile. The
engine of the steamboat in America rises far above the deck in the
centre of the vessel, so this formed an obstruction to our seeing the
whole length, unless on each side of the engine, where a broad and clear
passage allowed a full view from end to end; but instead of taking away
from the fine effect, the engine-room added greatly thereto, for it was
divided from the cabin, on one side, by a huge sheet of plate glass,
through which the most minute workings of the engines could be seen.
There was in front a large clock, and dials of every description, to
show the atmospheric pressure, the number of revolutions of the wheel,
&c. This latter dial was a most beautiful piece of mechanism. Its face
showed six digits, so that the number of revolutions could be shown up
to 999,999. The series of course began with 000,001, and at the end of
the first turn the _nothings_ remained, and the 1 changed first into 2,
then into 3, &c., till at