or may any comments be made by the teachers.[12]

We left Cincinnati this morning in the car appropriated to the use of
the Directors of the Ohio and Mississippi Railway, on which line we are
travelling. It is neatly fitted up with little "state" rooms, with sofas
all round. There were four of these, besides a general saloon in the
middle; but the whole was greatly inferior to the elegance of Mr.
Tyson's car on the Baltimore and Ohio Railway. Our party consisted of
about thirty persons, of whom four were judges, and about a third of the
number were ladies, accompanying their liege lords, and chiefly asked in
honour of me, to prevent my being "an unprotected female" among such a
host of gentlemen. An ordinary car was attached to that of the
Directors, for the use of any smokers of the party. We left Cincinnati
at half-past eight, and reached this place, Vincennes, where we are to
sleep, at about six o'clock. The road was very pretty, though the leaves
were nearly all off the trees; the forms of the trees were, however,
lovely, and it was quite a new description of country to us, the
clearings being recent and still very rough in appearance, and the
log-houses, in most places, of a most primitive kind. Vincennes, where
we are to sleep, is an old town of French origin, prettily situated on
the river Wabash, which we can see from our windows.

_St. Louis, November 4th._--We came on here on the 2nd instant, and soon
after leaving Vincennes found ourselves in a prairie, but it was not
till after sixty miles that we got to the Grand Prairie, which we
traversed for about sixty more. The vastness, however, of this prairie,
consists in its length from north to south, in which it stretches
through nearly the whole length of the State. These prairies are
enormous plains of country, covered, at this time, by a long brown
grass, in which are the seed-vessels and remains of innumerable flowers,
which are said to be most lovely in their form and colour in the spring.
It was disappointing only to see the dark remains of what must have been
such a rich parterre of flowers. One of our party, Colonel Reilly, of
Texas, who had seen our Crystal Palace gardens at Sydenham, in full
flower, said that they reminded him of the prairies in the spring. The
ground is so level, that the woods on the horizon had the effect that
the first sight of the dark line of land has at sea. In many places near
the road on each side, small farms were established,