rich in dark green leaves, and ripe with countless acorns. The golden-brown sumach is scattered by the way-side in plenty; and best of all, buckwheat and maize will repay, not ungratefully, the farmer's care. As we ascend the hills, I cast "many a longing, lingering look behind" on the lovely island-studded lake; at length the vision fades, and other scenes present themselves.

We ride close by "Bloody Pond," a shallow, circular sheet of water, now overgrown with rushes and dank lilies. In olden time a battle was fought here by British against French and Indians. The bodies of all the slain, friend and foe alike, were flung into the pond to find sepulchre there, hence its name. A mile further on, stands an isolated rock, the scene of a gallant fight between Colonel Williams and a number of Indians, in early settlement days. This officer upheld the reputation of his countrymen for bravery, meeting the moment of peril in the spirit of James Fitz James

Come one, come all, this rock shall fly

From its firm base, as soon as I.

It is called Williams's rock to this day. A white stone monument has been raised above the rocky boulder, and a suitable inscription upon it bids fair to record the deed for all time.

We have now reached the summit of the water-shed, and by a rocky road begin the descent. The Hudson river in its infancy lies far in the valley below. At Glen Falls the river rushes over strangely shaped rocks of blue slate-stone, and by many channels it has worn for itself a way through the flinty strata. As a sight it is not much, but the noise is considerable. Below are some caves, in and around which are laid the scenes of earlier adventure, of Uncas and Hawkeye and their "fair charges" Alice and Cora Munroe, in the "Last of the

Mohicans." Times have changed since the period of this tale, for now the energy and life of the falling waters are pressed into the service of man, to turn his water-mills for corn and lumber. The bridge of wood by which we cross the falls, looks so frail and insecure, and through large gaps in the roadway we can see so plainly the dashing torrent below, that we breathe more freely when the coach is fairly over.

We are now emerging from grand scenery into a region of matter-of-fact, industrial life. Here is a steam-machine stubbing up roots of trees, which look ugly customers when turned up chevaux de frise fashion, to form a stump fence. In a factory hard by, Yankee ingenuity, aided with funds from an Albany Company, is converting peat into good house-fuel, while close at hand the consuming organs of locomotives are being catered for by the preparation of piles of logs of hardwood. Here is growing buckwheat, with its three-cornered grain, something like a miniature Brazil nut in shape. The meal made from it soon turns sour, and must be ground immediately before being used, to secure it sweet and good. A dish of smoking buckwheat pancakes served up with molasses, was a great luxury to breakfast in the New Brunswick forest. By the side of buckwheat flourishes a similar cereal,-Indian wheat it is called, it ripens early in the season, and is used for fattening hogs. But the glory of the corn-land is the golden Maize. As we pass by the fields, the reapers are at work, cutting it down plant by plant, and storing it up in "shocks" like our English wheat. Delicate and beautiful is the large ear of maize, of pale amber color, which peeps out from beneath its leafy sheath. It turns out to be the Canadian maize, which is a rather smaller variety than the American, and ripens sooner. The ground beneath is now exposed, all covered with growing pumpkins amongst the stubble.

By this time I was on excellent terms with my fellowtravellers on the coach. With Americans there is little of that needless formality which you so often find in England. If they meet a fellow traveller, they are quite ready to break a lance with him in conversation, and if they find the ring of true metal of honest human nature about him, hospitality and friendship soon follow. I have received more acts of true kindness on occasions when it has been necessary to "take me on faith" in America, than in England, or anywhere else. Not that I blame my own countrymen for the want of it; there are warm hearts enough in Britain, only that warmth is often chilled by a certain icyness, if you cannot at the moment present any credentials beyond an honest face and an intelligent conversation.

My new-found friends were joking me about staying in America, and said that I was half a Yankee already. "But my chances of long life are not so good here as in our foggy island," said I; upon which I was assured that although in American towns and cities men live fast and are old men at fifty, still, in the country, they generally live to a good old age. Speaking of the habit of reading or studying by gas and candle light, one of them, a Professor, said that the practice is more injurious to sight, in the morning, before daylight, than in the evening after dark. I had not heard this opinion propounded before, and must therefore only advance it as half-proven. Alluding to the early hours which obtain in New England farm-houses, where half-past five to six is the usual breakfast hour, one of them repeated the line,

He that by the plough would thrive,

I gave the maxim at length,

He that would thrive, must rise at five,
He that has thriven may lie till seven.

They all laughed heartily, and immediately said, "Oh, we are all English you know, and English in many of our ways and notions." They regarded my country as the old mansion-house of their race, and judged its present tenants by Emerson's standard. He said,

I was given to understand in my childhood, that the British Islands from which my forefathers came, was no lotus-garden.

* In prosperity its people were moody, but in adversity they were grand. The ancients did not praise the ship leaving port with flying colors, but the one which came back with torn sheets and battered sides, having ridden out the storm! England has done this for a thousand years, and I say, All hail! Mother of nations!

"Why do not your young noblemen come and travel in America? said they." Why do not your future statesmen know something of this land by actual observation ? The answer shall be that of our "Thunderer,"

The characteristics of the class in general, in the present age is play rather than work. To judge very many of them by what they do, one would think they were the idle apprentices of Providence. All play and no work costs an aristocracy the respect of the people of which it is the natural leader.

Again they said to me, "Stay in our country, and become a United States' citizen." My last words to them on parting were, "I shall carry with me pleasant memories of you all, and America will always be allied to home in kindly associations, still I shall return to England, fonder than ever of my country."